choose your own adventure

[Jdawg]

I have been thinking and playing a lot of games lately where you make choices that supposedly affect the outcome, for instance I just beat walking dead season 2 and it became obvious to me just like with the first season that the choices you make really dont affect much and you still get the same story, same as with mass effect. then you look at older games like the wing commander series and your decisions truly do matter and there are very different outcomes depending on your choices and flying abilities, so my question is why do you think older games got these things right, while newer games seem to be struggling with presenting real choices that effect the game world in truly unique and meaningful ways

 

[-danr-]

Except for Wing Commander, I just can't play linear games and enjoy them. To a certain extent you're right, many modern games just don't cut it with creativity and open-endedness, there are some exceptions to this, and there are plenty of old school adventure games that are totally linear - I loved Monkey Island as a kid, but I couldn't touch it now, there's just no variation.

Wing Commander isn't open ended because once you've played the game enough times you'll always end up with the same eventualities. That said, you can go about things differently every time so there is some replay appeal, well there must be, I'm still playing them every year without fail.

As for good open ended games, first off, Sid Meier's Pirates! - both the 1987 version and the 2004 remake. @Quarto will vouch for this, the variation of the adventure is unrivaled. It is far less shallow than Privateer, less lonely and much more absorbing. Also, Civilization: not adventure, but you'll never have the same game of Civ twice. Then there's Grand Theft Auto, yes the story is linear, but like Wing Commander the outcomes are different and there's a sense of freedom and immersion you don't get in many other sandbox games, again you can go about missions in any number of ways.

Another one I really like is Commandos, to somebody like me who demands creativity in my gaming experience, this is sweet candy. There's no 'correct' way to win a mission, it's all about improvisation and creativity. The same things never seem to happen twice if you replay a mission. The Hitman series, especially Contracts and Blood Money are two of my all time favourites for the same reason.

 

[Jdawg]

Except for Wing Commander, I just can't play linear games and enjoy them. To a certain extent you're right, many modern games just don't cut it with creativity and open-endedness, there are some exceptions to this, and there are plenty of old school adventure games that are totally linear - I loved Monkey Island as a kid, but I couldn't touch it now, there's just no variation.

Wing Commander isn't open ended because once you've played the game enough times you'll always end up with the same eventualities. That said, you can go about things differently every time so there is some replay appeal, well there must be, I'm still playing them every year without fail.

As for good open ended games, first off, Sid Meier's Pirates! - both the 1987 version and the 2004 remake. @Quarto will vouch for this, the variation of the adventure is unrivaled. It is far less shallow than Privateer, less lonely and much more absorbing. Also, Civilization: not adventure, but you'll never have the same game of Civ twice. Then there's Grand Theft Auto, yes the story is linear, but like Wing Commander the outcomes are different and there's a sense of freedom and immersion you don't get in many other sandbox games, again you can go about missions in any number of ways.

Another one I really like is Commandos, to somebody like me who demands creativity in my gaming experience, this is sweet candy. There's no 'correct' way to win a mission, it's all about improvisation and creativity. The same things never seem to happen twice if you replay a mission. The Hitman series, especially Contracts and Blood Money are two of my all time favourites for the same reason.

im not talking about games that are linear like monkey island, it never pretended to let you choose, im talking about games like mass effect and the walking dead where the game's whole marketing is that it lets you choose what type of character you want to be and it will affect the story. im saying these type of newer games mostly fail where older games like wing commander succeeded. the only recent game that got it right to me was witcher 2.

see your talking about open world games like grand theft auto, im talking about the choose ya own adventure genre, which wing commander is, you can choose to lose wc3 and have a complete different ending that if you won in wc3. mass effect is supposedly all about choice but, you realize that its all a ruse and that your decisions truly dont matter, same with the walking dead and all of telltale games.


also I love pirates its a great game I have owned it three different times, as far as games like gta and assassins creed I find them boring, even the elder scrolls series, they give you lots to do but dont give you all that much interesting stuff to do and the main stories suffer for it. the last gta game I really liked was vice city, although have not played gta5 yet, I hated gta4. one reason im not all that excited for star citizen, is bc I could care less about mmo aspects of it, and thats all they ever talk about., I just want to know how squadron 42 measures up and we dont get much info on that ever. the only "truly open world" rpgs I love are the quest for glory series, the witcher series, and some others. I like more controlled rpgs with direct goals like skies of arcadia, and grandia 2. I guess since im first and foremost a movie buff, I need a good story that will engage me from the start, if it dont have that then im not interested see dark souls.

I finally got to play broken sword 5 and I really liked it prob the 2nd or third best game in the seires

 

[Shaggy]

Strategy guides and internet walktroughs skew this a little bit.
For example, the first few times I played through WC1 and 2 I would suddenly find myself on the losing track and have no idea how I got there. This was back in the day before the internet was the behemoth* it is today and strategy guides were a little difficult to find in my neck of the woods. So retracing my steps through my mission performance is the only avenue I had of figuring out what I should have done. So researching that made things seem a little more complex than they really were. Looking back on 1 and 2 now, there really aren't that many decisions that effect the course of the story and then it's more an ending A or B choice, with one ending being immensely favorable to another.
When you're dealing with a game series like The Walking Dead, player choices leading to a change in the storyline will quickly bloat the necessary size, and complexity of writing, of the series very quickly. If you choose to let someone die in Epi. 1 and that person is supposed to save you in Epi. 3 then that character has to be deus ex machinaed out of the situation. Or you have to create a whole new character with models, textures, and new audio to fill in. Or The player dead ends in Epi. 3 and can't be saved to move on to Epi. 4, which is massively frustrating for the player.
With semi-singular games, like Mass Effect, it becomes extremely complex to try to predict, write, and design for every choice a player may make and many companies either can't afford to invest that kind of time to design a game to that level or, more often than not, don't want to because they are trying to hit a release date and the production costs a lot of money.
Sandbox games, like GTA, simplify the equation because they allow the player to run around and do whatever he\she likes until they want to be constrained by the story but then the story has a specific trajectory to follow, the only choice effecting it is when you take it on.

 

[Jdawg]

Strategy guides and internet walktroughs skew this a little bit.
For example, the first few times I played through WC1 and 2 I would suddenly find myself on the losing track and have no idea how I got there. This was back in the day before the internet was the behemoth* it is today and strategy guides were a little difficult to find in my neck of the woods. So retracing my steps through my mission performance is the only avenue I had of figuring out what I should have done. So researching that made things seem a little more complex than they really were. Looking back on 1 and 2 now, there really aren't that many decisions that effect the course of the story and then it's more an ending A or B choice, with one ending being immensely favorable to another.
When you're dealing with a game series like The Walking Dead, player choices leading to a change in the storyline will quickly bloat the necessary size, and complexity of writing, of the series very quickly. If you choose to let someone die in Epi. 1 and that person is supposed to save you in Epi. 3 then that character has to be deus ex machinaed out of the situation. Or you have to create a whole new character with models, textures, and new audio to fill in. Or The player dead ends in Epi. 3 and can't be saved to move on to Epi. 4, which is massively frustrating for the player.
With semi-singular games, like Mass Effect, it becomes extremely complex to try to predict, write, and design for every choice a player may make and many companies either can't afford to invest that kind of time to design a game to that level or, more often than not, don't want to because they are trying to hit a release date and the production costs a lot of money.
Sandbox games, like GTA, simplify the equation because they allow the player to run around and do whatever he\she likes until they want to be constrained by the story but then the story has a specific trajectory to follow, the only choice effecting it is when you take it on.

well if its that hard, dont advertise or hang your hat on the fact that your choice matters, in mass effect and the walking dead thats there whole marketing strategy. minor spoiler incoming. in ep 3 of season 1 of the walking dead, a certain character will die no matter what you do to try to and change it. thats not free choice where the game will adapt to what you decide to do, basically the dialogue options dont mean much its just smoke and mirrors. by the way I love the story of the walking dead game im just saying its false advertising

now take just wc4 that was released over a decade ago it had 4 or 5 distinct endings all depending on the choices you make and your flying ability

1. could die in battle
2. perform badly and get kicked out of the military
3. stay with confed
4. defect to borderworld and choose to side with panther a lot, get the true cannon ending
5. defect to borderworld and choose to side with hawk get the cool dark side ending.

not to mention there are also other choices that you make in the game, that effect what ships and weapons you fly with and rather somebody lives or dies, now go to decade later where mass effect and walking dead just use smoke and mirrors to make it seem like your choice matters, trust me for the most part they dont.

 

[quaker2k8]

Since adventure games have already been talked about through Monkey Island, I'd like to mention Blade Runner. Released in 1997, its story unwinds in the same days and some of the locations of the 1982 Ridley Scott motion picture (best movie ever, btw).

There's quite a number of different endings to be achieved. Also, some characters' status as either human or 'andy is randomized at the beginning of the game, affecting the outcome of your game hugely.

With all respect for the different paths and endings in WC4, compared to BR the freedom and complexity of its choices are rather shallow.

 

[Jdawg]

Since adventure games have already been talked about through Monkey Island, I'd like to mention Blade Runner. Released in 1997, its story unwinds in the same days and some of the locations of the 1982 Ridley Scott motion picture (best movie ever, btw).

There's quite a number of different endings to be achieved. Also, some characters' status as either human or 'andy is randomized at the beginning of the game, affecting the outcome of your game hugely.

With all respect for the different paths and endings in WC4, compared to BR the freedom and complexity of its choices are rather shallow.

I own blade runner the game and its very fun, but the game has a lot of bugs, sometimes characters wont show up bc of the reason you said that the reps and humans are randomized so it causes glitches.

 

[quaker2k8]

Actually, I played it very thoroughly years ago, re-playing it countless times experiencing every possible path etc... and it didn't appear to be buggy to me then, but that probably also depends on the version or who knows what...

Anyway, while the game was still unfinished, Westwood (I believe) advertised it with statements like "truly open world" or "every AI character, even the pedestrians on the streets, has his own personality and agenda and will react in unpredictable yet highly realistic ways..." blah blah blah. Of course, it didn't turn out to actually be THAT complex in the end. -Still, it's a very remarkable game.

 

[Jdawg]

Actually, I played it very thoroughly years ago, re-playing it countless times experiencing every possible path etc... and it didn't appear to be buggy to me then, but that probably also depends on the version or who knows what...
Anyway, while the game was still unfinished, Westwood (I believe) advertised it with statements like "truly open world" or "every AI character, even the pedestrians on the streets, has his own personality and agenda and will react in unpredictable yet highly realistic ways..." blah blah blah. Of course, it didn't turn out to actually be THAT complex in the end. -Still, it's a very remarkable game.

yes I really enjoyed it, the bug I encountered was the purple hair girl not showing up at the arcade when she was suppose to be there.

 

[AD]

With Mass Effect, they started off in the first game with way more variation than any of the later games in the series. Noveria is a shining example in pretty much the entire series of where their asperations were. You could finish a number of sidequests in a number of very different ways and in different orders. Same goes with choices between Kaiden and Ashley. However, as the series went on it was very clear that they realized transferring these choices in any effective way across three games would be an insanely monumental task and opted for the easy way out. You had all new squadmates in ME2 to avoid killing off ME1 characters and the missions themselves became much more linear. As games get more complex art and writing-wise It certainly feels like developers try and get more value out of the game assets. They don't want to make ship models and characters that people may never get to experience. So they opt instead for the 'value' option.

Old games like WC1 could basically afford to have a million outcomes because no matter how many lines of dialogue all the variations needed, you weren't paying voice actors to record them all and you didn't have to worry about disk space when putting said lines on a CD/DVD.

 

[Jdawg]

With Mass Effect, they started off in the first game with way more variation than any of the later games in the series. Noveria is a shining example in pretty much the entire series of where their asperations were. You could finish a number of sidequests in a number of very different ways and in different orders. Same goes with choices between Kaiden and Ashley. However, as the series went on it was very clear that they realized transferring these choices in any effective way across three games would be an insanely monumental task and opted for the easy way out. You had all new squadmates in ME2 to avoid killing off ME1 characters and the missions themselves became much more linear. As games get more complex art and writing-wise It certainly feels like developers try and get more value out of the game assets. They don't want to make ship models and characters that people may never get to experience. So they opt instead for the 'value' option.

Old games like WC1 could basically afford to have a million outcomes because no matter how many lines of dialogue all the variations needed, you weren't paying voice actors to record them all and you didn't have to worry about disk space when putting said lines on a CD/DVD.

may be true yet recent games like witcher 2 did just that, at the end of chapter 1 you have to make a choice that will severely alter the characters you play with, the main missions and side quest you partake in and out come of the game, sounds like a lazy excuse to me for mass effect. really all the choices you make add up to nothing more than war assets in mass effect and nothing more.