- Oct 13, 2020
- 49
- 59
Tyrant had a good mix of "If you don't do it, somebody else will" for me. Power Vacuum has struck a note with writing and non-canonical NTR endings that completely satisfies my weird sense of humor and getting to do a romance path while constantly falling off it. I'll look for the others, because I don't think I've played them.
Superhuman also has a path like that. You can go with your friend to pretend to be her boyfriend, but she's made it clear she'll do anything to get ahead. You can pursue her, or if you won't do that, somebody else will. Kind of makes the world feel more alive if other people are engaging in their lives when you aren't around. Like getting to the end of Mass Effect without romancing Tali or Garrus only to find out they've been romancing each other because you picked someone else.
I do think a game that lets you pick, ala Tyrant, is both a lot more work (because all the parallel branches) and multiple endings can mean the author doesn't get to tell the story they wanted to. Fiction to game adaptation is all about the compromise in the end. Kinetic novels can be completely enjoyable. Interactive Fiction is interactive to a point, but I don't blame anyone for not wanting to shoulder the load of all those branches. Look at all the half finished content that started out with passion and then burned out or wrote itself into a corner.
I like how A Promise Best Left Unkept and The Edge Of were written. There's just a part of me that wants to take the title's advice and go "You know what, fuck it. We're going to be a power couple or nope right out of this because I'm a sane person that has rationalized what's really important to me."
It would be a short fucking branch, but some ends are. I have been eaten in the dark by a grue, after all.
