Quote: Original post by Tim Ingham-Dempster
Guildwriter, thats not quite what I'm talking about. The issue is that if you give the player a choice then that choice has very little emotional power because the player could repaly the game and choose differently. Therefore the choice has no real consequences and so doesn't matter. This has me slightly worried about the whole concept of interactive narrative, if no choice the player makes has any significance, then how can a narrative (which is essentially about choices) have power if it is interactive? I'm thinking that maybe if every option led to the same place but by different paths it would work, and we would just loose the tool of the difficult choice for the player.
Tim, the problem I see with your reasoning is this:
While the player could go back and replay a different game a certain way, that does not necessarily divest emotional power from the choice in question. If the choice were the last choice the player made or did not have to live with the consequences of said choice for very long, then yes, the choice would have no meaning. But if the choice falls into neither of those categories, that means that for the rest of that playthrough, that narrative thread that the player and designer share together, it is for all intents and purposes permanent. The player cannot time-travel back, change a decision, and then zip back to the present and feel the effects of the new choice with no effort expended.
In short, if there is no cost to reversing a decision, then that decision does not matter. But with what you're worrying about, there is always a cost because in order to reach that choice, the player has to go through the game all over again.
Furthermore, according to your view, a narrative is purely an event driven affair. Stories are more then plot forks along a linear path. If that were the case, then there would be no difference between say, "Bridget Jones Diary" and "Pride and Prejudice".