Two of my favorite games from this year—Dream Daddy and Persona V—shared a problem: their choices were entirely unsatisfying.
Choice is at the heart of games. However, games are not the real world, and there is a limit to what they can allow us the ability to do. Games, at most, offer us the illusion of choice. Yet, some illusions are more satisfying than others.
In Dream Daddy, there is a right answer to each of your choices, and this cheapens them. In your interactions with other Dads, you try to impress them. You make dialogue choices, and certain choices will make hearts or hearts and eggplants fly from around the Dad in question.
This tells you that you've made the "right" choice. But it also completely negates any emotional effect making that choice might have had. When there is an objectively correct choice, it ceases to be a choice at all, and it ceases to be entertaining for the player to make future choices.
When Dream Daddy makes certain choices the correct ones, I don't feel like I'm playing a game where I can interact with Dads in different ways and craft my own relationship with them through my own unique choices. Which is what I want. Instead, I feel like I am playing a quiz—a bad quiz at that. Even if the enjoyment of the choices is supposed to be—like a quiz—deciphering which choice is the correct one based on the Dad's personalities, then the choices need to be more intuitively designed. Many of the choices have completely arbitrary correct answers that have nothing to do with the Dads in question.
Dream Daddy isn't the only game this year that struggles to have meaningful choices. Persona V also has arbitrary correct answers to its dialogue choices that rewarded me with music notes flying out of the character, letting me know the person in question approved of me.
No game offers limitless choice. All games have a budget, and most games can't afford to create many different branches to make it feel like the player's choices impact the game. However, there are economical solutions to the problem that plagues both Dream Daddy and Persona V; there are ways to create more satisfying illusions for players.
One solution to the problem these games share would be to simply make the points system invisible to the player. Don't let the player know through the user interface that certain choices are providing them points with the characters—no eggplants or music notes. This would allow for a more satisfying illusion in the moment. However, it's definitely not the best solution. The illusion this method creates is brief. People will find out what's happening under the hood, and the correct answers will be posted online. Most egregiously, I would ultimately still be playing a quiz, when I don't want to be playing a quiz. The fundamental problem is that there's only one correct answer to the dialogue choices in these games. We need a solution that makes all of the possible dialogue choices equally viable and interesting.
The second solution I propose requires more effort but is still cost-effective, and it will create better games and allow me to feel like I'm making real choices in these games. These games—Dream Daddy and Persona V—are about building relationships. My dialogue choices are supposed to be simulating me building relationships; that is the core engagement that the dialogue choices in these games provide. I don't know about you, but in my relationships, I'm not always trying to impress the other person or gain points with them. I'm just living my life beside them, and we are learning to navigate the world together. We can make our dialogue choices in games like this. We can make it so that there isn't a correct choice and each available option feels interesting and viable. To do so, we only need to put in a little extra effort and reference choices made by the player. Referencing player choices is relatively cost-effective, but it requires more cleverness than simply making the dialogue choices quizzes. However, the emotional payoff for the player is powerful; in choice-driven games, it is incredibly satisfying when your choices are referenced cleverly, because you feel like you've impacted the characters and the game world.
So how do we reference player choices cleverly? Here's an example: in my real life, I often share inside jokes with the people I love. Why not have this in Dream Daddy and Persona V? You could present the player with a dialogue choice that has several different jokes and have the Dad or confidant in question reference whichever joke you made later in the game. Another example: you could have the Dad or confidant in question ask the player what their interests are, present the player with dialogue choices representing various interests, then have the Dad or confidant in question get the player a gift based on what they said was one of their interests. Final example: you could have the Dad or confidant present the player with a problem, then present the player with various dialogue responses to give the Dad or confidant advice; based on what the player chooses, the Dad or confidant could later reference the advice the player gave and comment that the player had helped them learn something new. Dialogue choices like these make all of the available options valid and allow for choices that are much more satisfying for the player. More importantly, these games are trying to simulate building relationships, and this is how relationships work. I want to see more tenderness and affection in games. If these games had dialogue choices like these, I would feel that I'm really building a unique relationship with the character; I would care more about the character; I would feel like the character was growing through our interactions together.
There are already games—like last year's Oxenfree—referencing player choices to remarkable effect. Every dialogue choice in Oxenfree feels like it matters because the developers were clever and included references to various choices throughout. In Oxenfree, when I took a beer and was later told I was just drunk when I said I saw ghosts, I was surprised and felt incredible. I felt like I had agency in that world and that my choices were important to shaping the experience. A single line of dialogue can be enough to make a choice feel satisfying because it's a line I wouldn't have heard if I'd made another choice. Choice in games is all an illusion—it's about the feeling a game evokes in the player; Oxenfree and other games like it create successful illusions, so I'm disappointed that two of my favorite games this year failed to do so.
I have been kind in assuming that developers simply don't know how to craft interesting choices with interesting consequences into their games on a budget. It is difficult, but I think there's a more heinous reality: the systems of Dream Daddy and Persona V that reward the player with objectively correct answers allow developers to coddle players. They allow players to make the perfect choice and have the perfect ending. Oxenfree's method challenges players; there's not always a good choice just as there often isn't in life. We have to stop coddling players if we want this medium to grow. We have to challenge players and expect more from them. When we do, we can tell stories that are truly powerful.