Disclaimer: This piece contains spoilers to Heavy Rain and inFamous.
You slowly open the door to the final trial, unaware of what lies beyond the dark, narrow hallway. A blinding light shines in room from a distance as you limp slowly, yet steadily towards a table within that room. You emerge from the dim passageway into a bright white room, elegantly decorated with mirrors, and garnished with multiple video cameras pointing at you. You approach the table, which holds a phial of clear liquid, a device with a touchscreen, and a timer. You extend your bandaged hand and press the touchscreen. The disguised voice of the serial killer comes through the speakers: “Are you prepared to give your life to save your son’s? There is a deadly poison in the phial. It will kill you in exactly 60 minutes. If you drink it, you will get the last letters of the address. You will have enough time to save your son and say goodbye to him.”
Heavy Rain was hugely successful in the realm of "permanence of choice"
Your hand shakes uncontrollably as you slowly reach down and gather the phial. You struggle to gather your thoughts as they race by faster than ever. “Will the killer stick to his word?” “Will my son be alright without his father?” “Is there another way?” Your pulse is deafening as you attempt to decide the impossible decision. You know that time is of the essence, so you force yourself into a decision.
What do you do?
That example, which was taken from a segment in Heavy Rain, is one that resonated with me and my desire to have my actions hold actual weight in a video game. While the game certainly had its flaws, there was no doubt that I had a lot invested in each character that I controlled. I remember when I encountered the aforementioned passage, I remember pacing back and forth in the game itself, trying to figure out if there was some way to outsmart the killer on the other line. I had no idea what to do.
A morality system in Donkey Kong Country would've been tricky due to DK's murderous and enslaving nature.
Permanence of choice has been something I’ve wanted in my games since I was a young child playing on the Super Nintendo, but not until recently has that dream started to become a reality. Games like Mass Effect have introduced a choice mechanic that not only affects the ending of the game in progress, but also future entries in the series, and have paved the way for the upcoming titles, both near and distant, to really take the idea to the next level.
It’s an interesting concept that few games have come close to pulling off in the past. The idea that a happy ending might not always occur could, in fact, be a daunting one, but without the threat of some type of consequence, I feel that the gaming experience as a whole is vastly hindered. If a character’s actions have no bearing on the story itself, then players are simply just going through the motions in order to progress to the point that the writers wanted.
We’ve seen this before with several of Rockstar’s games. Sure, games like Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption held strong, intricate stories, with themes of betrayal and retribution, but there’s literally nothing, aside from the law, stopping you from going on a killing spree. The open-world gives you a lot of freedom, but that freedom does not allow you alter the story, or even tarnish your reputation. L.A. Noire, which saw its development staff funneling years of time and loads of money into technology to make interrogations realistic, had such a linear story that outcomes of the interrogations didn’t matter at all.
Even Sucker Punch’s inFamous, which implemented a morality system to a Grand Theft Auto-meets-superhero title, fall short thanks to very black and white morality, and choices that end up being inconsequential to the overall story arc. There was one point in the game where you have a choice to save several doctors, or your love interest. The studio obviously recognized that the story needed to go in a specific direction, so, regardless of the choice made, the result was the same, which felt like a total cop-out. The decision that Sucker Punch made to, more or less, make that decision for player, while giving the illusion that they made it for themselves, really worked to break down the wall and discredit the decision mechanic for that game as a whole.
Mass Effect has done an excellent job of making the choices of the player matter
In the future, developers will strive to connect with players like never before, through connecting with their emotions and playing off of those very emotions to force the player into making decisions with serious weight. It all starts with a story and cast of characters that are able to connect with players and make them relatable. It will certainly take time for the development community to get right, as we’ve seen with games that have tried and completely failed to include a decent morality system. The only question is: what’s the next step?
The more games are able to allow the player to share the magnitude of their in-game actions, the greater the impact will be on the player in general. In order for that to happen, a storyline must take players to that point where they are invested, something that will only continue to become more and more commonplace as the industry becomes bigger and budgets increase.
All eyes on you... what do you do?
Going back to the scenario I presented at the beginning of this piece, I ultimately made a decision. It turns out the decision I made was incorrect, and my character, as well as his son, suffered the harsh consequences. Do I wish I would’ve chosen better? Absolutely, but that’s part of life; and luckily, it was part of this game. Had I made the incorrect decision and the game gave me a game over screen and respawned me back to the last checkpoint, I wouldn’t have cared as much about the choice I made.
Instead, I saw the permanence of my decision through the ending cutscenes and I had no choice but to deal with the ending that my actions had brought on. Knowing that my choice would ultimately determine the fate of my character that I had spent the entire game with, I proceeded with extreme caution, not taking the irrational risks that I would normally take with a game that would just let me start over at the checkpoint. That is the very aspect of gaming that I’m beyond excited to see the next stage of.
*Read more from our “Future of Gaming” series
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