The whole point of this shift in design philosophy is understanding that trackable outcomes is not really what makes a choice “matter” experientially; that framing tends to be more appropriate to and derived from e.g. strategy games, though some narrative games are certainly built around it
Most choice-driven narrative games have hundreds to thousands of choices; only a handful are tracked in a way that is “integrated” into state after more than a short period later. The vast majority of choices matter experientially because they feel like they matter in the moment, even if forgotten.
This is why I prefer text-based protagonists instead of voiced dialogue protagonists. Because then you can have many many more options; even if meaningfully the results of two different dialogue choices are the same, it gives me the illusion of telling *my* story the way I want.
Comments