How should the story unfold in a game? Should you be limited to one straight linear path, or many nonlinear ones?

How should the story unfold in a game? Should you be limited to one straight linear path, or many nonlinear ones?

D, give you some different endings and still have a true ending in there somewhere.

G if it's not minor differences.

Depends on the game. Some benefit from having one straightforward story, others are better with branching paths.

A:action.
B: action adventure.
D: RPG.
E: JRPG.
F/G: Survival Horror.
H: is just retarded.

>should
Go fuck yourself

A is fine. It's the only way to tell a decent story generally. The more freedom the player is given, the more strain on the writers.

This guy gets it.
Being limited to one path is silly.

two parallel F timelines like Radiant Historia

F's the most reasonably possible, D strikes the best balance between complexity and length, and G is ideal with infinite budget.

>H: is just retarded.
Nah, it allows for several different beginnings and endings while having a converging critical plot point. Essentially meaning that it's all about how you deal with the problem, then the dealing with the aftermath.

H is Dark Souls where all paths converge on Anor Londo and then split again for Lord Souls

Pretty much, with exceptions that G should accompany D as example of RPG solution.

It would be pretty hard to make one, tho.

H is my preference. I like when RPGs allow you to choose your origin. One of the few things DA:O did right.

you are missing some paths. One of them many paths being ineterconnected with each other.

I prefer G aka ds2

Why so hostile friend?

A

There are infinite points on a line and A also never ends

A is ∞

Name ONE (1) game that is G

how do you do that neat sideways 8 m8

G looks like dungeon design not story design. In fact most of them look like dungeon design.

Depends what you're doing. Not a big fan of A, C and F, though. H is probably the most interesting method to me and handily suports multiple starting characters.

If we are talking about RPGs, then it should offer you different paths that do not fucking converge and all lead to different conclusions, and also branch either early or at most mid game so you don't end up with trash like SMT where 95% of the content remains the same no matter your alignment and pretty much only the very fucking end of the game changes
Also no multiple protagonist trash like SO2. Best way is a single protagonist with multiple routes available so you get to see how other characters react to his choices.

I love things that do H

depends on the game.

But B C and F are shit

g is best but also the worst because backtracking
d is only good in as far as the starting point for the divergence being a hub world because then its basically just sidequests
e and h basically encourage the use of a walkthrough because theres always a "best" path and you fuck players over for not picking it
f and a are identical and fucking terrible
c is the same as h/e but dumber
b is literally mass effect 3

Maybe the Stanley parable.
I don't know.

G is the best.
It is also by far the hardest to develop and flesh out properly, the most difficulty and risky of any of these and thus, the one you'll never see in a video game ever again.

DRR DRR DRR

>ever again
But this implies it ever happened in the first place.

Keep in mind that every time the plot splits, the quality of the plot along each branch is 1/2 of the quality if there was no split.

Well if nothing else - it did in text adventures.

this

Why are you implying the opposite?

It depends, there's no one universal way to do it.

user, that's literally ME3 and it was cancer.

Because saying "the one you'll never see in a video game ever again" implies there is actually a videogame like G, however because of bugdet or whatever it'll never happen again.
Name one game like G.

A is my favourite. I don't want to pick up story routes in a game so I usually end up dropping it at the first choice.

Stanley Parable

Jade Empire was more of a CYOA book than a game. Not complaining (I liked it) but if you give the players too many choices then it generally just you making those choices and not playing the game. Jade Empire is a combo was E and B on the chart. The main ending is you either kill the water dragon or saved it (B) but depending on how you treat your friends and your actions throughout the game the endgame text ending will describe what happen to the character and his/her friends (E) though non of the flavor text really matter and the ending is still just you killing/saving the water dragon. In fact the killing/saving of the Water Dragon is so importation to the game that it will throw out how good/evil you are from the choices before and just decided on the spot if you are good/evil for the ultimate ending. So even though you let the evil spirit take over a young girl (after personally killing the good spirit), kill all of the good fox spirits to have a corrupting "mother" monster eat away at a forest and killing countless people along the way you are seen as Jesus fucking Christ for the ending ultimately if you just saved the dragon spirit. Appealingly that removed all of your sins beforehand. Thankfully the saving grace was the E side as the flavor text will explain that the world and little girl are still totally fuck even though you are appealingly the nicest person ever now for that simple little deed. Jade Empire is fun but it done the ending worst than fucking Mass Effect 3. Mass Effect 3 may insulted the player but Jade Empire insult both the player and the game itself as nothing you did really matter in terms of the karma bar that is appealingly completely useless aside of getting a good/evil only skill that one time.

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This, pretty much.

A well done linear story is worth more than a mediocre one with 100 choices (which they almost always are).

The only choices that actually matter are in the gameplay

I hate E and C games, they give an illusion of choice. Why have all those choices if they don't effect things plot wise?
D and F sucks sorta since they don't give you a real ending for branching paths but they have choices so they're ok.
A and B are usually games with set pieces and pretty much no choice. B does have a choice in endings but they may not vary much from each other.
G is the best. Bad endings and character deaths, plenty of choice that effect the game/plot. Makes hunting for the true ending fun, though can be pretty hard/tedious without a guide or savescumming.
H is pretty okay. You make branching choices that all meet at one event and you get to see what ending us the result of your actions.
All in all, G and H are my favorites.

When I originally played Telltale's TWD I genuinely thought the story would work like represented in line G. They even said "story is tailored by your choices" at the start of the game. That was a lie, though. Truth is it would be very expensive to create a story with actual decision making.

These options are all awful.

C does have to be bad. Faction choices would be under C right? While the ending of the game might be the same (killing the big bad) how you do it might totally change depending if you went with the warrior guild or mage guild. You can debate choices in the middle of the game that can set up your playstyle can change who you are at the ending give more of a impact compare to just selecting if the big bad get to live or die.

There is wrong ways to do choices but there is also right ways. Often the right ways get ignored because you aren't aware until you already completed the game as a badass mage instead of a powerful warrior til your next playthrough.

C doesn't have to be bad*
typo.

H or G or go home

Wolfenstein TNO is C, right?

Faction choices would be E. Choose a group and stick with them the whole game with each having their own story then coming to the same ending with very slight variation.
Your whole point is pretty good but E is what you're talking about since you don't have the same experience if you choose differently at the beginning.

Check out the SMT Devil Survivor games.

I just want a good and solid plot. So A and maybe B.

Considering H was Birth By Sleep, but with two convergences, yeah it's retarded

Name one trully nonlinear game

F is Radiant Historia aka. Bad End Collector

H-
>starts open ended
>major event causes all lines to meet halfway through
>ends in different ways

G, but with a central line. I hate missing shit. Story, scenery, items, everything.

grand strategy games

mount and blade

Everything but C and E if top is beginning and bottom is end.

Some stories benefit from straightline, some benefit from branching. If you a branching story is a main feature, don't make me replay the game to see everything. Allow me to go back to major decisions like Zero Escape.

No, Dark Souls is D. H suggests that you continue on after you reach the first converging point, not go back and complete the other paths before continuing on. D suggests you go back and do the other zones and then continue on through one zone. If we wanted to get really specific then we could modify D to have more paths branching off the longest path with an additional slightly longer path.

These choices are irrelevant since there's not a single good story in any video game

Thanks for actually making a good thread OP

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These thread makes no fucking sense because it's not clear if we are referring to story, gameplay, or what.
For example, F probably was intended as a linear game with side querst, but seeing it exclusively from a story point of view it seems like a game where you can make bad decisions and the story ends early.

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>Are you a boy, or a girl?

G > B > *

I remember this

H master race here

H>E>A>G>F>D>C>B. Prove me wrong, faggots.

G, D, and F are choose your own adventure garbage, B and C are Bioware. A is missionary tier, right to the point. H and E are the patrician choice.

Always start with E then end with H for perfection.

>best path is G

>Chrono Trigger is G

That explains everything

>How should the story unfold in a game?
>How should the story
>story

The diagrams don't match is what I'm saying, genius.

optional sidequests a best

Deus ex uses H to a degree. You can manipulate the story in a way, but there's still an overarching plotline. There are still three endings.

fug that was meant to be called i

TRACE ON!

Except the afternath was never dealt with.
This is more like kotor, where you can do any planet in any order, but you always end up realizing you are Revan, light or dark side, no matter the order of star map acquisition. Then you get to deal with that revelation and branch to either light or dark side endings. H just involves more choices.

Life is Strange pulled it off for like three episodes then fell apart showing how hard it is even when you are trying really hard and pushing it more than most games do.

Multiple endings is always good.

They better not spell it out, though. Clear-cut endings suck. I don't need to be told my choices were good or evil.

Same shit with dialogue. It always needs to be morally ambiguous. No red/blue Mass Effect faggotry. That shit is the antithesis of fun.

Best example of this is Lords of the Fallen. Old WRPG games often did it right, too.

F is just a low effort G.

depends on the game. i like e a lot in action games

C is Mass Effect 3

H is best. It allows the player to make meaningful choices with meaningful consequences while still staying focused on a central narrative.

added more options

is this a jojo reference

What's the difference between G and K? What game uses I?

The pic is literally a meme. Look at fucking M.

E is the straight storyline game with the most extras to it though, a lot of Final Fantasy and Tales games are E

It's also how dragon age origins was and it's a great game

>i is seiken densetsu 3
neat

>N is a fucking gardening rake

this is kinda of how I interpreted F, you either see it has side tangents or dead ends

M is telltale games

Best path is G but it'd be expensive as fuck, far more work has to be put into. If the goal is multiple ends then H is the most economically viable, as the center point in its path gives unity to other paths and gives programmers a good foundation to work with

G but with different starts too

Any except E is good

A

nobody in the video game industry can write for shit, so don't try to be fancy. less worry about story means more worry about gameplay

sometimes it's more important to stick to what the game is supposed to be than try to pretend there's all these other outcomes, if there's a story that they want to be told just tell it, adding all these what-ifs are just extra and too many will just confuse the narrative

Out of these H looks the most interesting. The other games are filled with dead ends and too short routes.