Okay, so video game stories are unique
because you get to make decisions.
Like, whether or not you
should mock this preacher.
GERALT: “How many people’s lives have
you saved? From bruxae? From leshens?”
PREACHER: “That has no bearing—“
GERALT: “Asked you a question. How many?”
Those choices might cause an immediate reaction…
GERALT: “There’s something to think about, folks”.
Or, in some cases, the game might
remember your decision and issue some
kind of consequence later down the line.
GUARD 1: “Geralt of Rivia. Witcher”.
GUARD 2: “You stand accused of offending
religious sentiment. We’ve orders
to take you in for interrogation”
Now, these sorts of choices have
historically been associated with RPGs,
interactive fiction, and… whatever we’re
calling these Telltale-style games.
And I think that’s partly because
of their lineage that stretches
back to improvisational tabletop games, and
branching Choose Your Own Adventure books.
But I think it’s also just an interface thing.
These are games where your primary mode of
interaction is to pick options from a menu -
like a dialogue tree or a list of next moves.
So making choices about the
narrative is a perfectly natural fit.
But what if your game doesn’t have that?
What if it’s a shooter, or survival horror,
or an action game? How do you let players
make choices in those sorts of games?
Well, one way to do it can be seen in
Bioshock. This is a first-person shooter,
but it features an infamous moral choice:
each time you meet a Little Sister,
you need to decide whether to save her - or
harvest her lifeblood for magic super-juice.
And, in these moments, the game slows
down, takes away your normal controls,
and just slaps a big ol’ pair of button prompts
on screen. Press X to harvest. Press Y to rescue.
LITTLE SISTER: “No, no! No no!”
So that’s one way to do it. Just kinda
borrow the interaction systems of these
more suitable genres - whether that’s
button prompts. A list of options.
Or a dialogue wheel. I’m going
to call these “explicit choices”.
But there’s actually another way to do it.
Let’s look at another shooter -
this time, Spec Ops: The Line.
Here, we come across two men,
strung up by their hands - with
snipers aiming at their bodies.
And you have to make a decision.
WALKER: “I get it, we’re meant to choose”
But this time, there are
no button prompts and there's no menu.
Instead, you decide which person Walker will
shoot… by literally, just shooting them.
*Gunfire*
So that’s a very different way to do it. Instead
of leaning on the systems of a different genre,
Spec Ops lets players express their intent by
using the basic tools they use elsewhere in
the game. This is a game about shooting
- and so you make choices by shooting.
I call this, you guessed
it, an, “invisible choice”.
And I think these, rare beasts have some
incredibly exciting advantages. And so, in this
video I’m going to share four key reasons why you
should think about making your choices… disappear.
Okay. Advantage number one - invisible
choices can make the options ambiguous.
So in Bioshock Infinite, you’re told to
throw a ball at an interracial couple. But
did you know you can actually throw it at the
racist announcer inste… oh, right, it says it
right there on the screen. That kinda spoiled
it, didn’t it? That’s what happens when your
input system demands you list every
possible action the player can take.
Back to that choice in Spec Ops, though, and
while the guy on the radio asks you to shoot
one of the two men… you can also decide to
shoot the ropes that they’re being hung with.
Or refuse to make a choice at all.
Or fire at the snipers instead.
Because the choice is invisible, the game can
hide additional options that are only found if
enterprising players really think about the
situation and the tools at their disposal.
Spec Ops is actually full of these things.
Later, an angry mob of civilians descends
on Walker and you’re encouraged to shoot
them - but you can also fire into the air,
or just do a non-lethal melee
attack to diffuse the situation.
There’s also a memorable one in Far Cry 4 -
Pagan Min asks you to wait for his return,
giving you a chance to escape from his fortress.
But if you actually just wait for his
return, you’ll unlock a secret ending.
These hidden options can make players
feel smart. And it makes the game feel
less like a rigid sequence of choices - and
more like an organic and believable world.
Advantage two. The choices don’t have to be equal.
So back to Bioshock for a second - when it
comes to rescuing or harvesting a Little Sister,
the choice is equal. I mean, sure,
the consequences are different.
And one might make you feel bad. But the
physical act of making the choice is identical:
press one button on your controller, or the other.
But then consider a game like Undertale.
Here, you can choose whether to kill all the
monsters and bosses in the game - or
spare them. But it’s far from equal,
and it’s - usually - a lot harder to save the
creatures than it is to simply wipe them out.
So that means you need to put in
effort if you want the better outcome.
And you might decide to make a certain choice…
simply because it would be too difficult,
or cost too many resources, to do the other thing.
Like, there’s a bit in Deus Ex: Human Revolution
where your pilot Faridah is pinned down by enemies
and it’s possible to save her - as long as you are
able to defeat a bunch of baddies in record time.
It’s not a moral choice whether she lives
or dies - it’s a test of your skill.
Also, picking immoral and selfish choices
from a menu can make you feel pretty
icky - but it’s even worse when you have to
physically carry out those actions yourself.
When you slowly, manually, personally steal
from this elderly couple in This War of Mine…
it makes you, the player, feel even
more complicit in these awful actions.
Okay! That was a bummer. Uh,
advantage three! Fine-grain choices.
So, when we think about more explicit choices,
we usually think about quite significant decision
points. Picking between the lives of two
characters. Or the fate of an entire town.
Or, uh, what to have for breakfast.
But when a game is tracking invisible choices,
it can build up a massive, and highly detailed
databank of everything the player is doing - and
use all of that to shape the rest of the game.
This can lead to a game feeling
very personalised - like how the
Orks in Shadow of War can recall the
precise nature of your previous run-in.
Or how the characters in Hades discuss
the exact details of your most recent run.
HYPNOS: “Daw, one of those Wretched Louts
just killed you dead that last time,
those mean old slappy guys? Maybe try
killing them beforehand, I don’t know!”
It means the game can comment on tiny
things like where you’ve been - which
is why JC Denton gets chewed out for
entering the women’s bathroom in Deus Ex.
Or how long you take to do something - waste
too much time before rescuing your pals in
Mass Effect 2, and you’ll find the Normandy
crew has been reduced to a gooey grey paste.
This makes you think about the effects of every
action you perform - and not just the big,
obvious choices. So, in Dishonored, for example,
every time you kill an enemy you’re adding to the
chaos meter - which can change the outcome of
the narrative, shift how characters see you,
and add more rats to the world. And so because
every combat encounter has the opportunity
to change the future, you end up playing
in a more deliberate and thoughtful way.
Same goes for Metal Gear Solid V, and
how the enemies adapt to your play style
by popping on helmets or
installing more floodlights.
And finally, advantage four. Surprising outcomes.
One of the biggest problems with explicit choices
is that they make it really obvious that you’re
making a decision.
And just in case it wasn’t completely obvious,
let’s put a notification on screen to back that up.
So, it’s pretty hard to surprise players
with the consequences of their decisions.
But with invisible choices, the game
can secretly and silently track your
actions without you ever realising it - and then
surprise you with an outcome later down the line.
Like, in Metal Gear Solid, when you encounter
the mind-reading weirdo, Psycho Mantis.
PSYCHO-MANTIS: “You are a very methodical man. The
type who always kicks his tyres before he leaves.
And yet you’re rather ineffective in battle.”
What’s actually happening here is that all along,
the game has been secretly tracking things like
how often you save, how many traps you’ve sprung,
and even the contents of your PS1 memory card.
And then Psycho-Mantis can give the appropriate
voice line. It’s a typical Kojima party trick,
but a neat example of how invisible
choices can surprise the player.
Other examples might include
saving Biorr from this cell,
only for him to come to your aid in
the fight against Penetrator. Or your
actions at the start of Chrono Trigger
getting brought up in the game’s trial.
The other thing is - because explicit
choices are given such prominence,
I think players quite rightly expect for them
to have equally significant consequences for the
storyline. And to be disappointed when, typically,
they don’t. But when choices are invisible,
even tiny consequences are impressive
and memorable by comparison.
Now, if I’m going to be listing advantages…
I should probably also touch on the
challenges of implementing invisible choices.
For one, it can be hard to honour every choice the
player might make. There’s a scene in Firewatch
where you have to deal with some skinny-dipping
teenagers and the game will react to loads of
different actions - including tossing their
boombox into the water. But the programmers
had to create a very complex and robust system
to account for all of these different actions.
Interested devs can find some resources to
help with implementing invisible choices
in the description for this video.
Also, this system doesn’t really work for
every type of choice. If your only way of
communicating to the game is down the barrel
of a gun, that’s not going to work for more
nuanced decisions. But it doesn’t have to
be either / or. Back to Firewatch, again,
that game tracks actions like picking up
objects - but it also has a full dialogue
system through the walkie-talkie. That gives
you two very different ways to express yourself.
Another challenge is that when choices are
made ambiguous, players might not know that
they even had access to certain options
- and feel cheated when they find out.
I made a video about Fort Frolic in Bioshock,
and mentioned how you can leave the area without
killing Sander Cohen. But according to my comment
section, plenty of people didn’t know that walking
away was a valid choice. So, you may need to
teach players that other actions are available.
And, finally, players may not realise
that they’re seeing the consequences
of previous actions. The nice thing about explicit
choices is that they are, well, explicit about
the fact you’re having an impact on the game. But
invisible choices can easily be missed altogether.
In playtests of Dishonored, Arkane found
that some players thought the game was
incredibly linear - but only because those player
didn’t even realise they were making choices.
They were too subtle, too organic. Likewise,
it’s easy to get to the end of Silent Hill 2
and have no understanding that the cutscene
you receive is actually the result of some
obscure and obtuse actions
you’ve made throughout the game.
It’s important, then, when using invisible
choices, to be quite heavy handed with dialogue,
and make it crystal clear to players that
this is an outcome of their earlier actions.
GHÛRA THE SINGER: “Like a little chorus he comes
back round. He usually dies is what I’ve found”.
Too subtle, and all your hard work is wasted.
So, there we have it.
Action games don’t need to twist
themselves into an RPG or a text adventure
in order to react, remember, or
reflect on the player’s choices.
These games already have ways for the player
to communicate - to express intent, and values,
and decisions, and moral leanings.
By implementing invisible choices,
players can speak using the verbs they’ve
already been using as part of normal gameplay.
And in doing so, games can make
the options more ambiguous.
One choice can be harder to make than another.
The game can track dozens of tiny actions that
the player is making. And the consequences
of your decisions can be more surprising.
Ultimately, we say that actions
speak louder than words - and I
reckon more games should make that
a reality. Thanks for watching.
Hey! Happy new year! So people who
back GMTK on Patreon get a monthly
“reading list” of 20 articles and videos that
I recommend. Here’s one from this January's list:
why the superhero genre is
not comparable to the western.
You can check out the full list over on
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Thanks so much for your support.