My gripe isn’t against games that let you choose branching narratives; it’s against the assumption that that’s the only way to go, that that’s what makes a storytelling game a game in the first place. So many people just take it as a given that a game with 12 different endings is obviously better than a linear game. I say it’s a lot more likely that if you took all the time and energy it took to make those 12 different stories, and combined them all into one linear story, you’d end up with a much deeper game.

But that’s just because I haven’t seen it done well yet; it’d be arrogant to assume that just because it hasn’t been done yet, that means it can’t be done. I am a little put off by the character selection screen in Mass Effect, though — they show how you can choose your character’s sex, race, age, and all kinds of other features, and then you see the scenes on the bridge still work whether you’re a white man or a black woman. That’s pretty impressive technically, but from a story standpoint: if the scene plays out the same no matter what choices I made during character creation, then why do I care about that choices? What if they’d just said, “Your character is a black woman space captain,” and wrote all the scenes specifically tailored to that? Seems like it’d feel a little more real to me.

It could be just because I have less time to play games now, but there are almost none that I play through more than once. So all the extra branches of a game are wasted on me. I kind of wish more developers would take the X-Wing and TIE Fighter route instead of KOTOR. The license obviously has a light side and a dark side, and it’s potentially interesting to play either. But instead of trying to jam them both into one game, you can let the player make the choice at the beginning and stop trying to support good & evil throughout.

I totally hear you about linear levels with scripted events, though. That’s probably my biggest gripe against BioShock, is that every significant event felt totally scripted. Half Life felt a little better to me, but there were still plenty of times that screamed out “jumping puzzle” or “physics puzzle” and knocked me out of the story.

There’s something about making “non-tactical” choices in video games that I really like. Be it Mario 64, Baldur’s Gate, finishing a mission in an RTS game or even the overall strategy I choose to pursue while playing board game.

Sure I still play games with linear stories and levels, but I guess I’ve been making game sausage too long and tire a little of the “scripted” nature of those games. Or maybe I just appreciate the craftsmanship required to support two endings in something like KOTOR. I did play through it twice just to experience the differences. :)