When it comes to branching narrative it’s always difficult to show a player that their actions have consequences without massively bloating development time. This task gets especially challenging if the player needs to be invested throughout multiple playthroughs. In riding the fine line, developers have devised several different methods of demonstrating the consequences of the players’ choices.
They are sorted like so:
Inconsequential, Easy to develop
- Add references to previous dialogue choices
- End the game with a few button options
Neutral Both in Impact and Development Time
- Modify level decorations
- Alter gameplay scenarios
- Certain dialogue options skip combat
- Alternate post-ending environments
Impactful, Painful to develop
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- Create completely new levels
- Let players spare or kill any NPC
There is one option I am personally a big fan of which is:
Change the primary antagonist depending on the players’ playstyle
Undertale implemented a system similar to this one with great success. The midgame bosses and the circumstances behind the final boss fights change with each playthrough, but the end bosses are and always will be Asgore, Flowey, and his alternate personalities/forms.
The Shadow of Mordor series by Monolith Productions also did something similar with their Nemesis System where every mini-boss was procedurally generated from their look to their strengths/weaknesses. However, their system has since been patented, and the final boss is always Sauron. This also doesn’t include all of the large, open-ended RPGs where you can side with any faction you’d like.
Let’s hone in on this concept. I’m imagining a semi-linear Far Cry style first-person shooter which lets the player take any number of approaches to the main campaign missions, side quests, and overworld, and uses the greatest number of takedowns from one category (driving, long-ranged, explosive, melee, stealth, etc.) as the deciding factor for which bosses the player will face up against for that playthrough.
From there the player would either need to double down on their approach to truly overwhelm the enemies or find a combination of skills that would synchronize really well… or exploit the physics engine in a way that will never stop being funny. The point is, the player should never earn enough points to be good at everything, otherwise, all of the challenge and planning goes out the window. Let’s weigh up this approach’s pros and cons, or in this scenario: impactfulness vs extra development time.
Impactfulness
- Directly ties the primary gameplay loop into the story
- Every boss fight could be tailored to one specific playstyle rather than being forced to generalize their weaknesses
- Prevents bosses from being overly challenging/vulnerable to one approach
- Player characters are allowed to do playstyle-specific actions in cutscenes such as using explosives in a high chaos playthrough
- Uses the story to encourage replayability rather than a high score or completionism
Added Development Tasks
- New character models
- New animations
- New set-pieces
- New and/or altered arenas
- More dialogue writing
Overall, it’s a similar amount of work to the more complex forms of branching narrative, and with similar impactfulness. In the end, it doesn’t work for every game, especially if you’re looking to develop an open-ended RPG, but it could be a fun twist on a typical linear narrative.
