When it's okay that your choices don't matter.

We all want our choices to matter, or at least feel like they matter, in games.  When we see that they actually don't, when players discover that no matter what choice they made will result in the same outcome, we feel insulted.  This is a completely understandable reaction to have.  It can feel like the developers are trying to deceive us, or even insult us, by giving us the so called "illusion of choice."  To be fair, in more cases than not, it's kind of true.  Games built around choice, like those from now defunct developer TellTale games, would need to basically build dozens of versions of their games to actually make every important decision a player makes have a true payoff beyond slightly different dialogue or one character being swapped in or out with another.  This is not a new issue, in fact it comes up all the time, but I want to look at it from a different angle (I hope).  We all know the argument that choices should matter, but it's not realistic, so it's okay that they don't as long as we feel like they do.  That's all well and good, but there's another type of choice that games can throw at us that sometimes matter, sometimes don't, but even in cases where they clearly don't can accomplish something even greater in my mind.

One of the difficulties I have when approaching a topic as broad as choice in games is how to handle approaching it on a general basis.  Specifically, games that feature a lot of choice are often RPGs or have RPG elements in the sense that you are role-playing a character.  This can either be a blank slate, or a somewhat established character.  In the latter case, there is a large range of how far the developers allow the player to divert from that base character in their choices.  Sometimes you can turn a pure, good character into the most vile and ruthless anti-hero, while other times you can only slightly tip the morality scale.  So there's that issue, but another one that compounds on it is how the player chooses to play.  When you get a character with a baseline of personality, however small, do you make choices in the way you think they would, or how you would if put in that situation?  There are so many things that make talking about choice so difficult because not only does each game treat them differently, each player going through that came will come with a unique approach.  All that acknowledged, hopefully my main point will still make sense.

Hot take coming up:  My favorite choices in games are ones that not only don't change how the game plays out, but often times can't.  Let's explore what I mean.  Regardless of if you're playing as yourself or the character built for the game, you absorb each choice and view it through a unique lens of experiences and morals to make a choice.  At least when the choice is well crafted and all aspects are properly built up and understood by the player.  The most common is the traditional choice of who to save and who to let die.  This choice typically occurs somewhat early to midway through a game, so that the player understands who each character is, what they offer, and their faults so that they understand the weight of their decision.  While all well and good, this choice, among most that effect a game on a mechanical level, can be broken by logic too easily.  Everyone has preferences in how to play a game, and if one character offers a more enjoyable experience than the other, I would guess a large majority of players would make that choice regardless of how they actually felt about their personalities or any other factor.  Please let me know if I'm wrong in that assumption.  So, what does that have to do with choices that don't, or can't, matter?  It's all about divorcing the choice from being strictly grounded in the mechanics of the game.  If the choice can't possibly have repercussions on you, as a player, then you're going to think about it without the baggage of wondering if you're making the game harder or on yourself, or anything else along those lines.  

But, if the choice presented makes no impact on the game, or even the narrative, then how could it possibly be the "best"?  What's the point of a choice with no stakes?  Simple, my dear reader: introspection.  The examples I think of are usually ones near the end of games, but not always, that involve the larger universe.  Think the choices at the end of Dues Ex: Human Revolution where you are asked to decide to reveal the truth about what happened with all the augmented people going crazy, blame it on the anti-augmentation terrorists so that augmentation technology can progress, cover up the Illuminati and allow them to continue running things from the shadows, or do nothing and let the populous come to its own conclusion with no interference.  None of these choices will have an impact on your game, at this point its clear the game is over, but also are so wide-reaching that the consequences of your choice are essentially for everyone but you.  You know everything already, that can't be undone, so the choice is if you want to share or hide that information, with the potential ramifications of each option explained.  There's no 'right' answer, and no way to make one by gaming the system by looking for some objective positives or negatives.

In a way, uninvested or mentally lazy players might see this kind of choice as pointless.  If the game's over and the choice has no bearing on anything, why give it any deep thought?  And I can't really argue that except to say that games are amazing at positioning these kind of deep philosophical thought experiments and hypotheticals to work through.  After living in that world, knowing the characters, getting a grip on society, politics, and everything presented to the player, what better way to end that experience than by asking: "Would you change this world, and how?  Would you do it if it was based on a lie - your lie?"  The rabbit hole of questions goes as deep as you want, which can't be said for choices like which character you want to save, or which side of for choices that do have an impact on the game like which side of conflict you want to fight for.  I don't remember those choices very often, but I remember the ones that ask me to really think about my own moral alignments because even  though they don't matter in the game, they matter in learning about ourselves.

Thank you for reading,

J.Lennox