Poll: Game with most effective use of choice?

[BrotherRool]

Why is The Witcher series not in the poll?

From the thread it's pretty clear it had deserved to be there. The reason is I'd never heard people talk about it in terms of choice before and I found myself unwilling to play past the first chapter of the first one so I never experienced it by myself.

I'm also kicking myself about Chrono Trigger, I haven't played it, but I've heard a lot of good things about the way choice is used in that game

 

[afroebob]

First of all, Spec Ops would be a good one to put up there, too. Just because the choices made are usually ones that aren't actually presented upfront it doesn't mean they aren't choices, in fact they're better in a lot of ways. Anyhow, I did Walking Dead because it actually felt like my choices mattered and it wasn't a matter of 'Are you an angle or a dickhead' it actually asked me what I believe is right and wrong in a world of greys. I love Mass Effect and KotOR but they got nothing on Walking Dead in the way of choice in any way shape or form.

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

The best I've seen so far is Alpha Protocol. Like the OP says, they go to great lengths to make the story as malleable as possible.

very true, it is disgusting with full fledged voice actors how much you can change in that game, from beginning to end what choices you made early on will affect shit later in the game that you didn't even realize at the time.

 

[MoreThanANoob]

Having recently played 9 Hours 9 Persons 9 Doors, I'm going to have to go with that. Granted, there isn't that much actual gameplay in it, but it holds a lot of emotional weight when you know that you got a bad ending because of your own short-sighted choices.

 

[Soviet Heavy]

Fallout New Vegas. What other game can let you be a mastermind blackmailing, scheming and pitting every other faction against each other for personal gain?

 

[BrotherRool]

First of all, Spec Ops would be a good one to put up there, too. Just because the choices made are usually ones that aren't actually presented upfront it doesn't mean they aren't choices, in fact they're better in a lot of ways. Anyhow, I did Walking Dead because it actually felt like my choices mattered and it wasn't a matter of 'Are you an angle or a dickhead' it actually asked me what I believe is right and wrong in a world of greys. I love Mass Effect and KotOR but they got nothing on Walking Dead in the way of choice in any way shape or form.

I wouldn't necessarily agree about in any way shape or form because the KotoR/ME style choices give a sort of carhartic pleasure at seeing the world shape to your will, which the Walking Dead wasn't aiming for (it was aiming for the opposite, trying to make you feel powerless in a zombie apocalypse). And because the Walking Dead has a less excessive narrative it can't have all these individual elements that can diverge wildly without affecting the story (although weirdly, even when there were those bits, the Walking Dead would

Spoiler

go out of its way to stop it diverging. For example, the St John's never come into the story again, but they kill them off by implication in the very scene after you save them. Or worse, if you save Ben they create a huge extra cutscene to kill him off, even though everyone gets separated from you never to be seen again in the very next scene

. *I'm not saying KotoR is better though, this is more devil's advocate

Spec Ops would have been a good option, I considered that one because of the Extra Credit's episode on the way the choices were presented to you. I should've probably knocked off one of the KotoR 2 because it's way of using choice was basically a combination of KotoR and Torment. Maybe a poll isn't very suitable because there's way more than 8 games that could be a contender but I wanted to get people to be evaluating and comparing(at least in their head) the games other than the one that comes most naturally to their head and the competition of a poll seemed to be a good way to do that.

 

[Vegosiux]

I'm going to vote for Torment on that one. Everything you do or say has a consequence. Maybe not many drastic, game-changing consequences like in Alpha Protocol (okay, there is Adahn and the box demon), but, for example, did you agree to kill yourself for the amusement of a bored noble, or to make a point about how the petitioner system is messed up? Well just wait until you learn what exactly the shadows are.

To say nothing of the implications of giving the Modron cube to Coaxmetal.

Agreed. Fallout: New Vegas makes the best use of choice in any game I've seen. You can literally kill every NPC in the game, and SOMEHOW the game finds a way of making the story progress regardless.

Wouldn't that mean that your actions don't matter? If there's no (meaningful) difference in result even if you exterminate everything, it doesn't matter whether you do or don't? I did prefer the way Morrowind did it. "Oh you killed an essential NPC? Well, nice job, you've just broken the prophecy, you nincompoop. The world is doomed and you have to keep living in it now (or reload)".

Okay, so there was a back door, but you could mess that up too, and you always had the option to just go in kamikaze style, but in order for both you kind of need to know exactly what you need to be doing in advance, which kind of defeats any relevance of "choice" to begin with...

 

[lacktheknack]

I've said it before, I've said it again: GENEFORGE SERIES.

More people need to play it.

Basically, it sets up an ethical dilemma (if genetically engineered creatures become sentient, how do we treat them?) and structured a brilliant RPG quintilogy around it. If you're honest with yourself, your choices (treat them as human vs. treat them as creations vs. I don't wanna pick sides) will eventually compile into an expected response from group to group. And if you pick "I don't wanna pick sides", the moments where you have to suddenly become all the more nail-biting.

Plus, your opinions will change as you play and gather information, and the game can handle that. I switched sides very suddenly partway through Geneforge 2, and the game noticed and reacted accordingly.

 

[MeChaNiZ3D]

I haven't played half of those games, but I haven't been impressed with any I have played. But Alpha Protocol sounds like God's gift to gaming from that description to be honest, so while I'm not voting for anything, that would probably be it.

I do however, like Dark Souls' approach, where you can kill any NPC in the game and suffer the consequences/reap the benefits, and act as you see fit. While there tends not to be much payoff to these choices, they don't pretend that they matter anyway. Part of the point is that you and what you do don't matter that much, and other NPCs are generally apathetic to each others' deaths anyway. I do however like that there is often an advantage and disadvantage to every choice you make, in the form of drops or services of the NPC. The reason I like it is that between wanting to role play and being a perfectionist, I generally can't bring myself to forgo something for no tangible benefit, but at the same time, Dark Souls does it in a natural way that is never contrived. I also like that the choices are not presented to you blatantly, and rather you just do what you want to do and see what happens. However, the overarching narrative choice is arbitrary and I am definitely not a fan of endings where you are just shown what happens and that are chosen seperately from everything you've done to get there (Deus Ex:HR is a particularly bad culprit). For example, you can place the Lordvessel with Frampt and instead become the dark lord and nothing deters you. I would have liked to see a symbolic miniboss battle with the serpent you choose if you try to defy them at the last moment, giving an actual point to placing it without either of their help. I know, I'm obsessed, but this is a relevant discussion.

 

[veloper]

The original Deus Ex deserves credit for not limiting your choice to only dialogue options and by not presenting all the choices to the player in just a binary fashion. Consequence was a pleasant surprise in DX. Bonus points for being early.

Alpha Protocol deserves a honorable mention for trying real hard to give the player some meaningful C&C. Just too bad the game was crippled in too many areas.

If you don't count indie titles, the C&C list is rather short: RPGs by Troika (RIP) generally offered some decent C&C aswell. Behind them come Black Isle/Obsidan, then 2 Witcher titles and finally some Bioware games just barely qualify.

Games like Dreamfall, the Walking Dead and SpecOps merely fake player choice and deserve no credit.

 

[rob_simple]

I'm going for the original Deus Ex because it's the only game I've played where your choices can have an impact much later in the game, as opposed to most modern choice systems that just changes what ending you'll get.

I also really enjoyed Human Revolution's conversation trees because they felt really natural and made me think a little bit --I actually only had to reload a save once to get the outcome I wanted-- again, as opposed to games like Fallout that have the next to the evil choices.

plus being able to deal with people in creative ways and its not till later you realise you have skipped an entire boss fight is really cool. ie. get stuck in a confined space with a boss or earlier on fire a rocket launcher at boss through a window

Totally! I'm a huge fan of any developer that is willing to let you bypass content they've created in favour of forging your own story, instead of rooting you to the ground and saying 'watch this! Now kill him! No you have no choice, just do it!'

It's one of the few things I think the Metal Gear Solid series is clever with, too; like that boss you can kill by just not playing the game for a week.

 

[spartandude]

based off the list you gave us and pf those ive played a good amount of id say either the Walking Dead or KotOR II because choices werent simply black and white (a couple were but not many)

however i say the best would be The Witcher 2, not only are choices morally grey most of the time but the second act is actually rather different dependning on what choice you made in the first, you get entirely new quest lines. while in most games it would just be a different character or a couple of lines of dialogue difference but nope not in TW2

 

[Mr Cwtchy]

In terms of what effect the choices had on me, then Walking Dead hands down. There were very few choices in that game where I had absolutely no hesitation in what I was doing. I especially love that they try to rush you into making a snap decision, no time to consider it or anything, because hell, you're in a zombie apocalypse and you don't have all the time in the world to decide who lives and who dies.