I’ve been thinking a lot about choices in video games since playing Mass Effect 2 and The Walking Dead. (No spoilers for either game in this post)
What’s intriguing about Mass Effect is that it incorporated some failure as part of the game. In other games, failure means that you need to try again, or that your experience is incomplete. However, in Mass Effect, accepting failure results in a different yet interesting story. The first time I failed, I considered loading my last save and repeating until I ‘won’. I hesitated because the game had kept going in spite of failing, and that the world was incorporating my actions. Failure became a new way to define my character. My character had already been defined by my interactions with other characters, especially when they talked about me. I hadn’t played the first Mass Effect game, so my understanding of the character was informed by what others thought of him. Most of the choices I made became very straight forward because it was easy to imagine what my character would do, and it was easy to see the consequences of my choice.
Just as I was getting used to the idea, I reached a choice where I didn’t know what my character would do. What made this choice so different than anything before was that I knew what I wanted to happen, but I didn’t know which choices would lead there. I agonized over this for several minutes, because I could clearly see how each choice could go badly.
And while I was thinking that the choices in Mass Effect were neat, I was floored by the way things worked in the Walking Dead. The choices are much less clear; the consequences are hidden and your time to decide is limited. It created this immense sense of responsibility mixed with anxiety. These choices were often between two crummy outcomes. This led to the same feeling that Mass Effect gave me where my failure carried the story forward. But because each choice was poor, I didn’t feel like I had somehow missed the opportunity to win.
In the end, the choices weren’t very big or meaningful, but they belonged to me. They defined my experience. By giving me the opportunity to make choices, it allowed me to think about the characters, and create motives and personalities and extra depth. By allowing and encouraging me to fail, I get to experience a personal story where things don’t always go as planned.