Alternative title: Why choices and consequences became RGB
tl;dr It has become inefficient due to the increasing amount ADHD, media consumption and sheer size of the gaming industry.
Choices and consequences, when done right tailors the game around the player, like a choose your own adventure with more depth. When done bad it becomes "Do you want the Red, Green or Blue ending?", a fake sense of choice. No matter what choices you make, you end up with the same scene, just with different voice lines. The latter has become the bransch standard, do you want to create one amazing scene that all players will see, or do you want to create 4-5 good ones that only some players will see?
The majority of the players will not replay the game more than once, some will replay it twice, and very few will replay it more than that. I can count on one hand the amount of games I have played more than twice: Fallout 2, Planescape Torment, Baldurs Gate 2 and Arcanum and Disco Elysium (We will get there later). Because thos worlds made me want to visit them again and see what I missed. I never got that feeling from for example Mass Effect. I have replayed the first and second game twice, and the third only once. I tried to revisit it, but I got bored about halfway through and never finished that playthrough. Maybe I will give it a new chance with the re-release of the trilogy.
Either way, the point I am trying to make is that it is hard to justify the expense of creating so many scenes
that so few players will ever see. Just like with a movie you want everyone to see the cool shit you created.
Now, which games does a good compromise? Witcher 3 for example, allowed the majority of the players to see the same cool scenes, but made the changes on the side (Jen or Triss) and som additional voice lines to make it seem like you made a choice. Different endings. But the story up until that point will be mostly the same every playthrough.
Disco Elysium, however, one of the best games in the last, decade? Takes a different route. The game is shorter. Much shorter than your EPIC BIOWARE ACTION RPG WITH 40 HOURS OF FETCH QUESTS, but with so much more substance. Every playthrough feels different, you constantly discover new things, new solutions, new designer drugs. It's a beautiful game, and it is the sort of game that you think, would you have bothered to replay it if it was 50 hours? Discover all those hidden mechanics, seen all the different scenes? Some of you, probably most of you would probably not bother. So, maybe this type of reactivity and choose your own adventure style of games are much better of shorter.
The games you remember, the long story driven RPGs where your choices in the story mattered where from an era where there were less games, especially less of this type of game. The golden era of 90s RPGs has gone the same way 80s action hero movies went, they changed, people wanted other things. We still get nods to it from time to time.
So what is the point I am trying to make here? Honestly, I am not sure. But I do know that we cannot only blame poor writing forever. Yes, Bethesda has shitty writing, but their worlds seem to appeal to a lot of people, and that is what drives them to come back, not the choices and consequences, but the world. Just like with me and Planescape Torment or Arcanum.
tl;dr It has become inefficient due to the increasing amount ADHD, media consumption and sheer size of the gaming industry.
Choices and consequences, when done right tailors the game around the player, like a choose your own adventure with more depth. When done bad it becomes "Do you want the Red, Green or Blue ending?", a fake sense of choice. No matter what choices you make, you end up with the same scene, just with different voice lines. The latter has become the bransch standard, do you want to create one amazing scene that all players will see, or do you want to create 4-5 good ones that only some players will see?
The majority of the players will not replay the game more than once, some will replay it twice, and very few will replay it more than that. I can count on one hand the amount of games I have played more than twice: Fallout 2, Planescape Torment, Baldurs Gate 2 and Arcanum and Disco Elysium (We will get there later). Because thos worlds made me want to visit them again and see what I missed. I never got that feeling from for example Mass Effect. I have replayed the first and second game twice, and the third only once. I tried to revisit it, but I got bored about halfway through and never finished that playthrough. Maybe I will give it a new chance with the re-release of the trilogy.
Either way, the point I am trying to make is that it is hard to justify the expense of creating so many scenes
that so few players will ever see. Just like with a movie you want everyone to see the cool shit you created.
Now, which games does a good compromise? Witcher 3 for example, allowed the majority of the players to see the same cool scenes, but made the changes on the side (Jen or Triss) and som additional voice lines to make it seem like you made a choice. Different endings. But the story up until that point will be mostly the same every playthrough.
Disco Elysium, however, one of the best games in the last, decade? Takes a different route. The game is shorter. Much shorter than your EPIC BIOWARE ACTION RPG WITH 40 HOURS OF FETCH QUESTS, but with so much more substance. Every playthrough feels different, you constantly discover new things, new solutions, new designer drugs. It's a beautiful game, and it is the sort of game that you think, would you have bothered to replay it if it was 50 hours? Discover all those hidden mechanics, seen all the different scenes? Some of you, probably most of you would probably not bother. So, maybe this type of reactivity and choose your own adventure style of games are much better of shorter.
The games you remember, the long story driven RPGs where your choices in the story mattered where from an era where there were less games, especially less of this type of game. The golden era of 90s RPGs has gone the same way 80s action hero movies went, they changed, people wanted other things. We still get nods to it from time to time.
So what is the point I am trying to make here? Honestly, I am not sure. But I do know that we cannot only blame poor writing forever. Yes, Bethesda has shitty writing, but their worlds seem to appeal to a lot of people, and that is what drives them to come back, not the choices and consequences, but the world. Just like with me and Planescape Torment or Arcanum.
