Editorial: consequences matter in RPGs

Jeremy Signor has an interesting editorial up on bitmob about what makes choices meaningful in an RPG:

Many modern designers fall into the trap of choice for the sake of choice; they try to make the game meaningful with something that doesn’t change the experience much. Infamous exemplifies this in a particularly egregious way with the morality system the developers tacked on to the open-world gameplay. Its extremely binary nature nearly parodies other morality systems, but it really fails with its lack of consequences behind its choices.

Click here for the rest.

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

1 Comment »

 
  • Callan S. says:

    I think the problem he’s having is with the notion of there being good and evil endings, rather than just endings without any moral stamp applied by the game.

    Indeed I think he’s shooting himself in the foot because he’s looking for effects like how you are greeted the next mission – that could matter to the ending, but by itself it’s forgetable ephemera.

 

Leave a Reply

XHTML: You can use these tags: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>