My favorite example of choices mattering is in Nier: Automata, for the sake of spoilers i'm gonna be vague, the entire game basically hammers in the fact that most of, if not all our actions mean basically nothing be it in real life or videogames and that we are only ones that give them meaning, I wasn't really on board with that idea until I was given the final choice of the game, it's a very simple question of yes or no, but the only thing that matters in the question is if it makes you feel something, I actually avoided the question for a few weeks but after me and a friend replayed the entire game with me watching him play we finally got to the question again, this time we both agreed to say yes, we both were sure it basically meant nothing because there's a very well known way to just ignore the question, but we choose to not do it and now it's probably one of our fondest memories and choices in videogames, even if it only means something to us. TL DR: I liked Nier: Automata and play the other Yoko Taro games you cowards.
@@oddiemefav1363 an RPGmaker game where your often forced into choices with gameplay (primarily) and story consequences (to a much lesser extent). Example: do you let a party member (which are all unique) be killed, or do you allow yourself to lose a limb and carry that handicap with you?
You only live once, a flash game on newgrounds, is very much an action has consequences sort of game, because the name is true (outside of tampering). Not only that, but every way you die has its own series of events afterwards, if you keep reopening the game. Very ambitious for flash, I think. Undertale also does it a bit better than you gave it credit for, since the game saves everything you do. You kill someone and reload? The game remembers, the game will even call that out (you want to tell them that you've seen them die before, or, the flower telling you they know what you did). In fact, doing a merciless run prevents you from ever truly getting a perfect ending later, as the good endings get twisted. In game, the single opportunity for a true reset is only if you've done the perfect ending without doing the merciless one. Furthermore, with the way you've set the criteria, basically every single multiplayer game is a game about choices mattering and consequence. In short, the very first videogames ever made, by this criteria, have more meaningful choice than a majority of games on the market today; tennis for two, and pong.
Really enjoyed this video and decided to bring up a game I think does linear choices amazingly. Lisa the painful rpg has multiple moments where you are forced to make choices that don’t impact the story very heavily, but HIGHLY impact gameplay. The one I’m specifically going to highlight is the choice between getting your arm chopped off or getting one of your party members permanently killed. For me it holds an extreme amount of weight despite not really impacting the story itself. If you lose your arm, you lose a solid chunk of damage output, and the majority of your special moves, making the main character a lot weaker. But if you kill your party member, your going to lose a valuable, high level source of damage, but with the added twist of the loyalty mechanic. Every time you sacrifice a partner, you lose loyalty, and the lower that gets, the higher chance a party member permanently abandons you when you rest. I could write an entire book about this game’s choices and mechanics if I wanted too but I’ll just leave it at that.
Choices do sort of matter in undertale. ( SORT OF) do the bad ending first and then do the good ending will cause ur good ending to be permanently cursed to actually be a bad ending. Or if u do the good ending first, then the bad ending and then regret it so u do the good ending again the same applies. But it’s only limited to the bad ending effecting other endings. It still doesn’t change the fact that there are limited branches of endings in the game.
About Undertale, I don't fully agree. There are some things, that stay even after you reset, like if you do Genocide/Pacifist after a Genocide, the ending will be slightly different. but then again, this could be put into the category of "making you think so but in reality no".
I like the video but I disagree. “Matter” is a relative term, you say choices in story games don’t matter, but they do matter in regards to which predetermined ending you will get. Compared to sandbox games some may even say your choices in story games matter more, because compared to sandbox games most of the time your choices will have a much greater effect on the overarching plot of the story. In most sandbox games although the gameplay may change the bosses and monsters you fight will stay the same. The ending at least almost always stays the same, because the people making the game aren’t trying to make decisions matter. Sandbox games may have more relevant choices during the game, but in the end they often matter less than or are just as irrelevant as a lot of story mode decisions, even if they are much more unique. Also you brought up that being informing a decision is important ruins the moment, and I agree. However the ability to save nullifying decisions by making them impermanent applys just as much to sandbox games, however in sandbox games it is much less noticeable because even without purposefully ruining immersion by saving most thing and people respawn and/or are replaceable. Most of this stuff is incredibly subjective however, just wanted to throw in my ten cents. Btw only found your channel today, and was shocked that you weren’t a much larger creator with the production value you have.
When i talk about sandbox games stories i am not talking about their actual story but the little player created adventures . Those are the one of a kind stories that matter . Of course the overarching story is set in stone but the individual experience and journey is unique to all the millions of BOTW players . And yea the second we talk about matter being subjective the whole discussion disolves into layers and layers of IF and BUT . Also thank you ^-^
Wait, so I'm a bit confused, let me try to understand this. (Beware of very long post, please read anyways tho cuz I really put effort into this one) You described your definition of "what makes a choice matter" by saying that it matters when it has lasting consequences. But if you think about it, even the entirely unique gameplay experiences of breath of the wild will eventually even themselves out. Play the game for long enough (or just delete your save), and your game's code and save file will return to a state where your prior choices no longer have any effect on it. So there's no real physical consequence. What separates your described scenario from any "railroaded story" is that it's entirely unique. The choice presented to you at that moment will never be presented to any player, including yourself, ever again. In Undertale, even if you play Genocide first, you can still go knee-deep in the game's appdata, find that one line of code that causes the skewed pacifist ending to happen, and delete it for an unspoiled experience on your next run. In Breath of the Wild, recreating the same scenario again (though not technically impossible) would require infinitely more effort. So what is the consequence arising from this? After all, a first time player couldn't care less about the uniqueness of the current scenario, right? If you only plan to play the game once, or if you go in with the mindset that "this is the one definitive playthrough", or even if you merely try to immerse yourself as much as possible, then the choice will remain unique for you personally, because a second playthrough cannot recreate that same feeling of uncertainty and emotional tension. In that sense, even railroaded decisions "matter", because all you'll ever get out of a game is an experience. It cannot offer more to your life than a good time while playing, and the emotions and feelings you take with you. In physical terms, only actions in the real world can have a lasting impact on your life. In mental terms, even a railroaded experience remains an experience, and the emotions felt through a railroaded choice have a similar effect. And this tension is created by the knowledge or fear that the story might drastically change, based on what you chose. Both outcomes are predetermined, both of the fates in store for the precious main characters are already pre-written. But just as you came to care about the predetermined fate of these characters before, imagining that it was actually playing out before your eyes despite it really being laid out in advance, so too can you feel pride or guilt in the fact that this new predetermined outcome is in part your doing. So where is the big difference? Well, there are two differences really. First, the knowledge of your ability to screw the outcome in your favor retroactively greatly alters your perception of the game. The idea that your decision isn't final can greatly reduce the impact of any vital decision. And beyond that finality, a railroaded story greatly reduces your agency in the game's world. No matter what you choose, there are certain outcomes that you cannot create or prevent, regardless of how plausible they might be from a logical perspective. In Breath of the Wild, you can always slaughter the horse you were planning to tame earlier. In a railroaded story, said story will continue making sense and follow a character-driven path (most likely answays). In essence, the great alteration to the experience isn't just what you *gained* through it, but also what you *lost* (such as the "other choice" which you may or may not get to repeat). The ensuing "consequence" isn't as much a direct one as it is very indirect, but it still has a great effect on you as a player. Well.... all of this only matters until you involve other players in the equation. Stories happening around and playing out between two players have entirely different sensibilities to it. And don't even get me started on Eve Online or Minecraft servers like 2b2t, entire separate worlds designed to run for as long as humanly possible. Oh boy.
How i see it is its not a black and white thing . More like a gradient of what's a choice that matters . My point here was that sandbox games inherently allow for spontaneity that make memorable game-play adventures as opposed to the railroaded decisions that are set in stone while the railroaded decisions can also tug the heart strings much harder because they are designed to do so and have depth to the story being told . Idk its just a super interesting discussion on how much a choice matters and what the goal of a choice even is
So are you saying choices ONLY matter when the outcome is unknown and can never be undone? Like a game with multiple endings has no meaning because you can always replay it? And so the only way to make your choices matter is to ensure that once you beat a game, you can never play through it in a different way ever again. Is that what your point is? Or alternatively, choices matter in a game where the story is procedurally generated and so there are infinite endings and you can't definitively replay the game to get a different ending because it depends on rng and luck. Overall, I'm just really confused by your argument Edit: Now that, I've actually finished watching the video and thought about it more, it seems your conclusion is that emergent narratives that are not predetermined by the designers but come about naturally through your interactions with the game are what you consider stories meaningfully affected by choices. However, a tinge of this type of personal story derived from a player's individual experience with the game is dependent on factors that are notably pretty varied from player to player (such as where the player chooses to explore first, their skill level/familiarity with the genre, their creativity while interacting with the game's systems, etc) As such, I do not really find this falling under the category of "choices affecting the story" but rather "choices affecting the moment to moment gameplay, and the player's individual interpretation of their personal experience playing the game". Therefore, I think the title is a bit misleading. Your choices in such scenarios do matter. But they only matter to you. And games that have dedicated choices you can make during specific narrative beats also make your choice matter. It just won't be unique to your own gaming experience. It still aligns with what sort of character you roleplayed as or your moral leanings/preferences in making certain decisions, which is quite fun to me and can matter to some people as their own desires as a player were respected and considered to be a route through the story, even if the possible endings or outcomes are experienced by many other people. I hope you can understand what I'm trying to say. I still think your video was kinda cool but a tad confusing nonetheless.
I’ve always thought that this sort of concept was really cool! What I really want to see is a game that specifically states that your choices DONT matter. ( I don’t really know how to explain it, it just seems cool)
I think Rimworld can be a decent example of choices mattering. I can't say the game leads to different endings cuz I've never actually finished a game. But how you manage and build your colony can completely change what happens between start to finish. If you choose to eat people you might upset half your colony and they'll all leave. If you don't half might starve and die.
I was actually thinking about this video the other day. I realized that by making your choices so pointless and inconsequential, you add an immeasurable amount of value and consequence. if your choices don't matter, *then that fact makes them matter all of a sudden.*
Yeah, not a fan of the video. You're choices always matter however small or big they are, it's a simple matter of how much you actually care about it. To me, small differences in dialogue can be a lot more impactful than not getting a weapon and losing to Ganon because I didn't have that weapon and you know why? Because I can always load my save back like many other games or just try again after getting more prepared.
Okay i don't understand chess . It's just if opponent does this then you do this . Is chess not just a science by this point where every move that is optimal is known ?
Toby Fox is gonna pull a fast one on us and make every single step you take and every tiny choice you make in deltarune have a major impact on the rest of the story to the point where you wouldn't even recognize it
How would be a game that create situations in real time depending on your actions and decisions? Really bad? Really good? Extremely weird? Maybe like talking with and AI that answers something completely different to the thing you asked.
i see Undertale Being brought up to this topic But OFF was the Undertale before Undertale. OFF puts you on a linear story. You play as the batter going on a quest to purifiy the world you trage trough zones. Zone0,1,2,3 and the room. Every zone has a guradian You purifiy the zones only for them to beacome wastelands absent of color The Game gives you one choice a useless choice destroy all the progress you made on you’re quest and travel with zones 0 guardian trough this soulless wasteland. Or kill the guardian. And finish you’re quest. Thr final boss is easy. The battle is a ,,screw you” to the player. You don’t deserve a happy ending. You don’t deserve a tough final boss you killed a lot of inocent pepole. You’re playing as the op final boss. You’re the Bad guy.
Don’t let this fool you guys, Carefree Melody is not worth it in the slightest, and making the choice to get it instead of having an epic fight with NKG has consequences that will haunt you for the rest of your life
There are games where ones choice genuinely matters in a more interactive and interesting way than open world games, those games being well written rpgs, since you took fallout as an example of fake choices where you can reload id like to redirect you to the junk town dilemna, and choosing whether to help killian or gizmo depends on ones personal beliefs, allowing a piece of shit business man who doesnt care about most people to live will allow the town to grow and prosper, attracting more people and in a way rebuilding civilisation, while helping killian in arresting gizmo and eventually killing him upholds the law and serves justice for the people he wronged, but you leave junktown a shithole, these kind of choice are actually real and do sctually matter since they test ones moral fiber without giving such an easy shit choice like in all the TT games or stuff like mass effect, since no matter how many times you reload youll never find an ending where killing gizmo magically lets junktown flourish, you can technically experience both endings but doesnt mean youll experience the "best" ending, but the best games at this are ones which let you make decisions without communicating to you that your earlier decisions actually changed anything, i would mention the witcher 3 here but that game has been celebrated for this quality so much that it actually lost its meaning, so id like to redirect everyones attention to morrowind which does this so naturally and besutifully that 99% of the people that played dont know its faction quests had branching questlines, and while you could say the counter to that is checking the wiki then im sorry that you undermined your own experience by spoiling yourself
I dont get your point. So you say the choices dont matter because you can reload a save and choose the other thing?? I just dont agree with that... If it actually makes you regret your decision that means it is meaningfull, it means that your choice did matter... If there are different conclusions, your choices made consequences!!!
I'm talking about story consequence . And you make the point that "regret" makes your decision meaningful . I AGREE . But how are you going to regret a decision ..... when you can undo that decision ? . Only permeant choices will actually matter and there are only 1 or 2 games that have explored the concept to be played once and those are both flash games
@@oddiemefav1363 The Undertale genocide route has the "story consequences" of not being able to get the pacifist route ever again, but your response to that, "wElL, tHe GaMe DoEsN't StOp YoU gAmEpLaY wIsE" I need to ask you, have you ever played the Genocide route? The entire point of that route is the game doing everything it can to stop you gameplay wise. In the Ruins, the game never tells you how to do the Geno route, or even that you can. There are 21 enemies needed to kill to achieve the geno route, and every enemy you kill the less common enemy encounters are. To get the geno route you have to be committed to killing as many people as possible. And the entire game is just really long segments of repetitive grinding. The game is trying to be as boring as possible to give you consequences gameplay wise for doing the Geno route, then the two bosses you fight are designed to be as challenging and annoying as possible, because that's the gameplay consequence for being as evil as possible. And as mentioned if you go all the way and complete the route the pacifist route is gone forever You. Are. Wrong.
never played any of the other games except undertale, so I can only speak for undertale In Undertale, your choices matter a lot... a whole lot. If you reload to play the other versions of the runs, you are greeted with new dialogue you wouldn't normally see on those runs, unless you reloaded. (Spoilers) for instance, if you kill Toriel and then go back and reload to spare her, there is new dialogue where you "can't look her in the eye. 'what's the matter?' she says. 'you look like you've seen a ghost" which pours salt into the wound, since there's a good chance the reason you reloaded was to not kill Toriel in the first place
I'll have to disagree on the Undertale bit. If you go full genocide and reset, the game is forever marred. The scars are hidden, but only so well. Going through a pacifist run after a genocide and reset, the end screen changes. Same with a fresh game. If you pull that save/reload trick when you kill Toriel for the first time (Who hasn't, let's be real), you are reminded not only during her fight while choosing pacifist options, but you are confronted by Flowey shortly thereafter. If you do a True Reset, the game still remembers. *The game always remembers.* o_o
The game "remembers" yea but what consequence does it bring . Pointing out that this isnt your first time is cool and a good 4th wall break but it doesn't stop you gameplay wise
@@oddiemefav1363 What could a game even do to have "consequences" in your standard? You made the argument "It doesn't matter what playthrough I do, I CAN REPLAY THE GAME!!!!!" and also during the Fire Emblem part " Well, I can load a save and replay choices! So the consequences for my decisions, like letting a character die, aren't consequences because I make the choice to load saves, WHEN NO ONE IS FORCING ME TO DO THAT." I swear, this video is basically like, "Why should I care what happens in a movie, I could just fast forward to the end so I know what happens! This movies has no stakes!" Of course if you look from the perspective that you can just replay a game, so there's no lasting meaning to the playthrough you chose, the choices don't matter, it's a video game, is the game supposed to stop you from replaying it??? What matters is that there are objectively consequences in the world of Undertale, based on your actions. Saying you could replay the game doesn't change that.
Great video. As a game designer it's fun hearing these essay videos on game components to try and think of a way you could smooth it out for everyone but: Is it really fair to say that because they put you on a path, it isn't a choice that matters? All choices IRL put you in a set path that you can think of before hand , the thing is with games we can all the outcomes thanks to the internet . So is it fair to say a game you don't know the ending too has no choices that matter or only feel like they do? I think it's not, you have no idea what other paths have or even if they exist. When watching Internet historien play Until Dawn he had this mindset and the people that died he thought was completely scripted when in reality he could have saved most of them. Games do have choices that matter in their own context it just requires a bit of investment from the player to make it shine. I hope you're not as cynical toward this as the video makes you seem. Keep up the high effort edited videos c:
I find myself both agreeing and disagreeing with your point here, assuming I am understanding it correctly. You seem to be saying that choice-based gameplay is bad because the choices ultimately amount to nothing due to a lack of consequences and linear options. To me, well-done choice-based gameplay isn't so much about the results of the choices but how they make you feel. Undertale (which never advertised itself as "your choices matter" but as "a friendly RPG where nobody has to die") does this better than just about any other game I've played. You go around being nice to everyone, and you have a good, fun time. You murder everyone, and the experience is miserable, tedious, and horrifying, plus permanently corrupts your game unless you manually edit the files. If we only look at the end consequences of choices to evaluate how they matter, then even in real life, our choices are meaningless, since we're going to die no matter what. We need to look at choices based on how much they hold meaning for us personally. For most games that advertise themselves as choice-based, the game warning you plus saving and reloading would indeed take away a lot of that meaning. On the other hand, the game OneShot has exactly one choice to be made at the very end of the game, and it ends up being consequence-free, since the game all but tells you (if you think to look) to delete your save and start over for the now-available good ending route, but during those brief moments where you're making that final decision, it is emotionally agonizing in a way I've never seen in a game before or since. I'm not really sure where I'm going with this, more just rambling really, but the tone of the video made me think you don't particularly like choices in games, and I wanted to say that, like just about anything, they can be extremely good if well-done and frustratingly bad if implemented poorly.
"I'm not really sure where I'm going with this, more just rambling really" This is litterally what the video is about . Just rambling about choices in games and no i dont think they are bad or anything , the concept of quality or opinions are never factors . I just think they are games and i wanna talk about them lol . If anything they are some of my fav games ever
Detroit become human choices matter. Lets be real its a game with 85 Endings. Did you read this. 85 ENDINGS. If you dont count a game with so many decisions then in this world will never exist such a game in wich your choices matter.
@@oddiemefav1363 this game I was gonna get this game, I forgot what it was called because, i watched this video and decided to not caare abut it anymore. It was basically a tell tale game, they released a trailer though, the game isn't out yet, ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-dQw4w9WgXcQ.html
@@bostin1472 This isnt my first time using the internet buddy pal . Telltale are a dead company . That link is 100 percent a stick bug or funny orange hair man singing
