What games have actual, meaningful "branching paths"? A lot of AAA games *promise* branching paths but it turns out to be a crock of shit (a la Mass Effect).
The only game I can think of, off the top of my head, is Chrono Trigger, but that isn't really branching paths so much as "You can end the game at multiple points before you have technically completed it."
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Lost Magic
There was a game "Tactics Ogre: The Knight of Lodis" that had two completely different paths, although the ending wasn't that different.
Way of the Samurai series, feels like every single confrontation has a branching result from it
Hell the replayability comes from taking every side ever
The Darius series. Encourages multiple play-throughs, fairly unique for a shmup.
Shadow the Hedgehog, not even joking
The only thing that shadow the hedgehog game had going for it was the branching paths
As someone who ate up the tactics advanced series I really need to play ogre
Zero Escape games.
Dragon Valor for PS1
Faster than Light, although it really had very little effect on the game other than what sort of random encounters you got.
...
outrun
Any visual novel, really.
You're intended to play all the routes though- not the same as "your choices matter."
Does low intelligence mode in the original fallouts constitute the most significant branch in any rpg ever?
man that fucking reptite ending genuinely gave me the chills
nothing felt like a "BAD END" more than that one
Speaking of Visual Novels...
Sengoku Rance did an *extremely* good job with branching paths. Each path has a rather substantial effect on the flow of the game and alters the victory condition. It is also a rather incredibly good game.
>That feeling when you remember that you will never play Sengoku Rance for the first time ever again
How's the combat in that?
you flick a coin wether you win or lose every fight
Star Fox 64 has one of the best branching path systems in a game that I've seen, despite being a game that only lasts a bit more than an hour.
The fact that the only true failstate is death is fantastic. You can fail a mission, but doing so only makes you take another path rather than giving you a game-over. This also works like an in-game casual filter where the more skilled people are able to stay on the hard path, while the less skilled are filtered toward the easy path. It should be mentioned that certain "Easy" path levels are actually harder than the medium level stages.
Even among the hard branching paths like stages, there are also smaller things that can happen depending on how you play the game. If you defeat Star Wolf at Fichina you will not have to fight them at the Venom Satelite. If you only defeat half the team you will only fight half the team later. If one of your party members lose they will be out of commission for the next level and so forth.
Overall, I think it is the game with the most meaningful branching paths that give you the most varied experience depending on the choices you make and the challenges you do or don't complete.
What I remember most about this game was the two forms of Andross' big ass head at the end.
If you got to it normally it's second stage was this goofy wooden thing flapping around, but if you took the harder path the second stage was this laser spewing brain with two eyes attached
Yeah that shit was great.
Just wished I could save the game though; every time I played I had to start at the beginning, only way to win was to beat the game in one sitting.
It is basically a Strategy game where you have a list of generals, and then you send some of them to this or that Provence to attack (in front/back etc). The thing is you can only "use' a general once in a turn, and your enemies will also attack your province, so there is some strategy in who to send, and how many times to attack in a turn. The actual battles is fully turn based and different generals have different "classes" and abilities.
There is also a *lot* to the game beyond the actual fighting. You explore dungeons, "interact" with your generals, so on and so on. Probably more than half the game is outside of the actual combat.
It can be a pain in the butt to get working but it is 100% worth it. It is seriously one of the best games ever
Black Ops 2
Shadow The Hedgehog
This porn game is one of my all time favorite games. The replayability is insane, I always learn something new each time
Almost any game with actual lengthy branching paths is gonna be shit because they have less time to work on making a good game.
I'll give it a go in a few weeks then
>flick
You must be 18 years or older to post here, bub.
why would you say that
Alpha Protocol
its like Mass Effect except good
Go home Telltale
Until Dawn did a half-decent job, but that is largely because it was a slasher flick that was willing to kill most of its characters off. The Plot itself doesn't *really* branch until the very end though.
Yes, I know it is a "QuickTime-story" notagame, just giving an example.
SaGA series. Legend of Mana. The first two Fallouts.
These are the only ones I can think of at the moment that have significant branching. There are plenty of games with a "pick a or b" style branch sometime in the story though.
Came to post. Read post, came
The Main Plot doesn't, but a lot of the sidequests in Witcher 3 have meaningfully different ways you can complete the quest, and some that actually have consequence later in the game.
Because there were lots of games that aren't even that old that did. Big companies just like to spin it that way so they can be lazy.
Please tell me you don't actually think telltale actually does this. They're glorified visual novels with button prompts added in to make sure you're paying attention.
Soul Nomad
Every time I finish a sidequest, I am reminded just how different the entire game will be once I play the game again in the future. Definitely adds some meaningful replayability value
>Musclebound Mouri Motonari
That's certainly a unique take on the God of Strategy. I'm assuming the Kobayakawa pictured is meant to represent Motonari's son Takakage, and not Hideaki? Do you think Sengoku Rance would flare a historyfag's autism, or is it different enough where it's possible to appreciate it as its own thing?
So they take more time to make it. If your team is setting out for quality, you traditionally have the ability to delay its release.
Well, it certainly takes a few liberties with how it depicts Oda's rebellion.
He is also only that big because of a curse.
The Darius Series
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Kichikuou Rance
Not just in terms of the different endings but a lot of other things.
If Sill is dead or hasn't been rescued when you invade Zeth then Shizuka gets killed and turned into a weapon.
If you save Shizuka then Annis dies instead.
If you ally with Patton then you can't recruit Roles or Aristoles.
If you choose to keep a magical loli goddess imprisoned it's easier to save Sill but you've kept a loli goddess imprisoned.
If you've allied with Patton you get Freak who can take down Red Eye.
If you're a dick to Kanami she hooks up with an enemy ninja and assassinates you
Play it as it's own thing and enjoy the nice references.
The villain is named after Xavier. Isoroku Yamamato is a young Japanese noblewoman and Oda Nobunaga recruits a foreigner to rule his country for him
The problem with until dawn's branching paths is that certain characters just have more ways to die
Mike and Sam will always make it to the last scene, so there's 2 of them who can not die anywhere else in the game
And because they can't die, but they still need to put the player in situations where characters can die, they give other characters dozens of possible deaths like the black guy or chinese girl
Even without the easily mentioned VNs and fighting games, there's fallout, star ocean, alteleir... Quit believing the AAA industry's lies.
all the way of the samurai games
>fallout 4
its shit so the point stands
the other 2 are some JRPG VN shit. Not hard to make branching paths in a game that you can pump out in months
Ace Combat 3, the japanese version, had decent branching for what it was. It was only a total of 5 endings (not counting the sixth ending which is given when you get all the others), but branches were simple and actually impacted events in a major way, as well as the missions offered.
Other Ace Combat games also have some minor branching that changes a mission or two, but not the overall ending.
Undertale is a completely different game depending one which route you decide to take. There are 3 different final bosses depending one which ending you get, and multiple minor variations on those endings depending on who you befriended/killed.
fallout doesn't have branching routes
You know what sort of shit branching is good? Front mission 3.
Only one 2 branch choice given to you at like half an hour in.
It's a dumb branching, but what's fantastic is that you get 2 big stories with the same premise set in the same locations, but from a difference perspective. Brilliant reuse of assets to double the length of the game.
this, I loved ace combat 3 the most because of the fact that your choices matter a lot.
Witcher 2 midgame is vastly different depending on your choice. Plenty of smaller choices that get referenced or slightly change the outcome of quests or the game, but the big one does offer a genuine branching path into two different several hours long experiences. They do form a single branch back in the final act but while the direction is the same the content can be rather different, influenced by the previous choice.
For a AAA title I think that is rather radical.
I am also not a great fan to be perfectly honest, because I am constantly reminded that I have missed out on like 33% of the content the game has to offer. But I don't feel like replaying throught the two thirds of the rest. Not that it's a bad game, but I remember it, I know what to expect, and replaying games is not something that particularly appeals to me.
>fallout 4 is the only fallout game
Also confirmed for not knowing what a VN is, but I'll humor you. What about resident evil? What about shadow the fucking hedgehog? Even Western games can have multiple endings you cum-juggling ass clown.
In 3 you could join either side or skip the final boss fight altogether.
Just play roguelikes
branching plot is a meme, emergent gameplay is where its at
Why not have both?
>Any visual novel, really.
Nah. There are kinetic visual novels with no branching path whatsoever, and those visual novel with enforced playing path order like Fate/Stay Night.
I totally saw a 4 in there for some reason, my bad.
The endings are pretty much all the same in RE, just different people survive. You could say ME2 had branching because you could let people die, but I don't agree that is really a branching route.
Never played StH so you got me there, I'll check it out
One very often gets in the way of the other.
Lol don't, I just mentioned it because it wasn't Japanese. It's pretty terrible.
Is pic related any good? I love me some branching paths
So still stands, for the west at least. I don't play Japanese shit so for me it's worse
> it really had very little effect on the game other than what sort of random encounters you got.
This makes it meaningless.
Darius Gaiden had several routes and all had different endings and levels along with their own final bosses.
Does linear sequence of locations count if characters behaviour and events are vastly different depending on your earlier choices?
Alpha Protocol.
If you want full branching campaign, War of Human Tanks did that. You have to lose certain missions to get alternative routes.
play /tg/ if you actually want interactive
It's okay. There are like 15+ unique endings (Not counting the shared bad ends and extension endings), but the gameplay is just as what you expect from a typical visual novel (choose one option, or wait until the choice dissapear to make the main character go silent instead), and the animation is so-so.
Also, bugs.They somehow manage to make a fucking visual novel buggy. But nothing gamebreaking.
...
Huh, alright then.
I think I'm gonna pass then.
Any good detective visual novel out there?
that's still not really a branching route
>decide to make a text adventure
>turns out it is a fuckton of work to make actual different story lines
>one year late and only 72 endings are done
What the fuck Sup Forums? I thought shitposters said this was easy
This to no end
Kara no Shoujo
YU-NO
Thanks user, I'll check these out tomorrow
Age of Decadence
Some people in this thread seem to be confused about what "branching" means.
If a game gives you a choice between A, B, and C, that's a choice. If, after the game gives you that choice, you can choose 1, 2, or 3 from A, 4, 5, and 6 from B, etc, THEN it's a branching choice. A branching path requires there to be decisions you are only called to make because of decisions you made earlier.
Heavy Rain is okay.
It cheats with some plot armour but the story is very flexible.
That one Furry game, Stories or something? I know it has you play the game multiple times and it has different ends.
The problem I have with the 'branching' in Rance, is that the branches are mostly indirect consequences to your actions that are often only randomly connected to the events by which they are caused (e.g. talk to an NPC with a random item). The branches certainly add to the replayability, but I wouldn't compare the game to actual RPGs where a deliberate choice of the player causes a certain branch, e.g. choosing to solve a quest by a specific means which then has a direct consequence caused by your deliberate action.
Not particularly good. Don't let people tell you otherwise. As a strategy game it's fairly simplistic, since the AI doesn't actually act strategically. Depending on the route you're on, the computer will always have the same strategic objectives and only the tactical move will be evaluated by the AI.
If you're looking for a strategy game you're better off with something else.
Sengoku Rance is good because it's a nice eroge/VN with a bit more than just text and pictures. Also, it involves sort of JRPGish combat sequences which can definitely compete with your average JRPG. As a strategy game it's not particularly good though.
I'd still recommend taking a look at it though.
>"You can end the game at multiple points before you have technically completed it."
Radiant Historia did this. Lots of choices throughout the game but all except the first are either "continue the plot" or "get a bad end".
>Alpha Protocol
People react to the order you do stories, knowledge you already have, people you have met and pissed off, the way you act and of course all of this drastically impacts the playing and the way story progresses. It can't be stressed enough how amazingly story is interconnected.
>Shadow the hedgehog
motherfucking 11 endings that all are different. Also aside from all the edge, that has its charm, it is one of the better 3d sonic games.
>Alpha Protocol
Amazing game with awful combat.
...
Any tips for the stealth level with the cops?
I can't sneak by these fuckers.
>we will never get a version of Deus Ex where you can side with UNATCO
would have been a fuckload of extra work but would have been cool
shadow the hedgehog
999 maybe?
I traded my FUCKING gun for this god damn bread. God damn beggers.
more importantly it requires things to actually branch, meaning there's a significant number of things that you can do in one route but not the other.
>he doesn't know about all the extra story stuff in chrono trigger
>he doesn't know you can get an extra character in your party in chrono trigger
It's the perfect example of a game with branching paths
>Kara no Shoujo
I got only 3 or 4 endings, including the True ending. From what I've heard, I've missed much of the story by doing that. Gotta replay it after reading Cartagra and before KnS2.
>you can finish the story by skipping almost 2 eras
>you can fight the final boss as soon as you learn about him, even if you know something won't be good
chrono trigger was so good
info.sonicretro.org
What in the unholy fuck
yeah what this guy said