Choosing your own Adventure

I had a large collection of Choose your own Adventure books as a kid, shoved under my bed in a box and told that I should read them. I was told that they were my brothers favourite books, so I should read them. I gave a handful a go and just got frustrated and said "nuh, I dun like em". Though there was a book that I did like, the SORCERY! books, where it was a RPG book where you made your own Character Sheet and rolled dice to get different results, and/or chose what you wanted to happen. I always seemed to get stuck in the sewers with the monster though. (See Picture)

Now I play a game called Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together. It's a Turn Based Strategy Role Play Game. (Say that five times fast) It has one of the best Video Game stories I've come across, particularly the areas that the story branches out. The story starts off fairly straight forward, you rise to power under the wing of a lord and are sent off to do a mission which twists at the end of the chapter, allowing the player to choose what future they want. One leads to staying loyal to your lord, the other marking you a criminal. Then the story branches out again before moving towards a similar, yet still very different, final chapter.

Recently I finished "Deus Ex: Human Revolution" again. Now I like the game, it literally turned up right when I had the mood for the same style of game, a game that has multiple methods of completion from mission to mission. The problem therein is that from Mission to mission is how the games story plays out. Yes it has small variances, such as "If you don't kill X, you will have this happen to you" which is cool.

However, there are a few areas that the game falls a bit flat in and have been covered by a lot of people, but I'm going to point out the gripe that I'm leading up to and that's The Very Ending.

You can get four results for the end of the game, each showing different things happening. But to get to those points you have to fulfill a few things. First of which is Reach the Last Level. Second of which is speak with the three Leaders: Hugh Darrow, David Sarik and Bill Taggart. Third is to defeat the boss. Then you get led into a back room and given four options to summarise the game, or less depending on who you haven't talked to.

...

Actually, I'm probably lying there. I think you have to generate a good standing with the afforementioned characters. But as you play the game, you have various mini-missions which are like tests. You can fail them, or you can pass them and something will happen later on in the game with regards to them. I know I failed a conversation with a one character while he was at work and while I got what I wanted, he got fired and he attacked me as I left my apartment much later in the game.

Mass Effect is another game with a "choose your own adventure" aspect to it, but recently caused a Nerdrage over it's third, and last, iteration of the franchise. The premise of the game is that you're leading a defensive force against a terrible threat to the galaxy, and you spend the game building up reputation as a Good Guy or as a Badarse, and depending on how well you go, you get an ending based on your career. So you can get a few different endings from each game. On top of that, your character can roll over into each successive game, so any effects you had in the previous game rolls over into the second, and same with the second to third.

The Nerdrage for Mass Effect 3 is apparently a little more than what I thought. From what I know, the problem was in the very ending of the game, where rather than follow the signature pattern of multiple epilogues, they gave one set epilogue and that was it. There were no changes based on your career, it converged into one static event, and that was it.

Personally, I was disappointed to hear that as I consider the multiple endings a Signature Feature. And many others obviously agree with that, some to the point of suing the developers for False Advertising. While true, as their major advertising campaign was "Make your Ending" or something like that, I would consider that extreme. There was also a petition which requested the developers change the entire last chapter, which I consider just as extreme. Sure, amend the ending to show the consequences of the players actions, but you don't have to change an entire chapter for that.


So what are the chances of a game taking on some, if not all, of these features? Creating not only different endings, but completely different middles as well? As a developer, making a console game of this size would take an immense amount of time and effort. But you know what? It's a nice thought.