The world around the protagonist reacts to his action, encouraging his right decisions, and punishing for the wrong ones.

The protagonist attempts to overcome an Obstacle, but due to his inner Weakness, he can’t do it.

But there is also an Obstacle, which prevents him from obtaining what he wants.

There is a protagonist and he has a Desire to get something.

At a very simplified level, it’s something like this: To understand why games can’t teach the player the way in which movies do, let’s firstly take a look at how this purpose is ideally achieved in filmmaking. The problem with teaching players in games

And because of the very basic difference of the story in movies and games, branching storytelling simply can’t deliver the moral message to the player in the same way as movies do. But I think the way, in which games are trying to teach the player, is very similar to movies. So is it a bad idea for games to have a moral lesson? No, it’s a great idea. In the case of Dishonored, the moral message obviously is: “ Cruelty is bad because what goes around, comes around.” That’s it.īut such games can have a great story (like Dishonored has), so why this issue happens? Well, with punishments they are trying to deliver a moral message to the player. We are choosing between, to paraphrase Shakespeare, “to be punished” or “not to be punished”. We are not choosing between equal options with their advantages and disadvantages, and we are not even choosing between good and evil. And despite the fact that we can make major decisions that dramatically change the course of the story, we are not allowed to actually express our view of the world or to make a really meaningful choice. In this and in many other games with similar decision-making system, our “wrong” ambiguous moral choices lead us to a complete loss. It happens both on the gameplay level (game becomes harder) and on the level of the storytelling (player eventually doesn’t get what he was promised in full). Thus, despite the fact the game offers the player a lot of abilities and tools to kill enemies, despite the fact that some villains deserve to die, the game still just punishes the player if he does not play the way it was intended.

Even if the player saves Emily, the city remains in turmoil and is overrun with the plague. High level of chaos leads to the “bad ending” irrespective of anything else. High level of chaos complicates the walkthrough due to the increasing amount of rats, which attacks the player. Sounds cool, right? And indeed it is, but the catch is how this chaos system manifests itself: This decisions eventually influence the “Chaos Level” of the game - the crueler was the player, the higher Chaos Level in the world will be. The player can either kill enemies or sneak behind them and stun thus avoid any casualties. He can either kill villains or neutralize them by other, more complicated and non-violent ways. His approach to the elimination of main targets. His ultimate goal is to help his daughter to regain power and become new Empress, while he is aided in his quest by the Loyalists-a resistance group fighting to reclaim Dunwall, and the Outsider-a powerful being who imbues Corvo with magical abilities.Īpart from the accomplishment of side quests, the player can influence the plot by: The premise of Dishonored is: Corvo Attano, a bodyguard and secret lover of the Empress, is framed for her murder and forced to become an assassin, seeking revenge on those who conspired against him. To give you an example of such approach let’s dive into choices and consequences in Dishonored. So no matter how many possible outcomes they have, if you have to follow one predefined path or game style to get the best possible experience, it hardly could be called a “self-expression”. What I’m talking about is that I felt games usually pressure me to make the decisions they want me to make. And I’m not complaining about a small number of possible branches. But, despite the fact that I see statements like “rich and reactive world” and “your choices will have consequences” in almost every trailer of AAA title, I still rarely feel that I have real freedom or an opportunity to express my own view of the world in the game. Personally, I am a huge fan of branching storytelling. It’s crucially important because self-expression and interactivity are the very basics of games, so when it comes to well-elaborated plot players also expect the game to give them an opportunity to influence it as well. Many story-driven games offer the player to make choices that will eventually affect further events.

Frostpunk order or faith