'Detroit: Become Human' has the worst twist

My bridge to the future

You may have heard me say it before, but I'm really not a huge fan of Quantic Dream, and not just for the obvious reasons of the way they conduct themselves internally. Actually, I disliked them before a lot of these recent allegations. And that doesn't come from an inherent dislike of narrative based games for the accusation that they're 'boring' and 'lack action' as some others believe, my problem stems from what I believe are an overrated catalogue of games propped up by the impressive nature of the tech and graphics that bring them to life. So that's to say that I don't like David Cage, or his stories, and the things that he chooses to write about. Indigo Prophecy was entertainingly out there, but as far as I'm concerned that was the peak of his work and since then he's spiralled in so many weird directions that either play things too safe, discredit themselves or both. Beyond Two Souls seemed to war against the very concept of branching narrative, Heavy Rain cheated it's audience out of a real solvable mystery in favour of a cheap twist and 'Detroit: Become Human'... oh there's so much I have to say about Detroit.

The fact that Detroit is one of their most well received and lauded games just annoys me deeply, for whilst it is easily the best game that Quanitc Dream has put out and arguably has the best writing, I find the concept to be so mundane, overdone and lacking in genuine creative spark that I broil every time I think of how much more famous that game is compared to Nier Automata. But I'm not here to talk about that today, I'm here to talk about what I consider to be one of the worst twists in a narrative based game from every one that I've played, and I've played all of the big mainstream ones. From Telltale to DONTNOD to Supermassive, I've done the rounds, and still I think Detroit become human takes the ca- actually 'Dark Pictures Anthology: Little Hope' had a final twist which really annoyed me... But that's more a subjective opinion, what I have to say about Detroit cuts a lot deeper than that. And in discussing this twist I want to bring a comparison game with a grand twist of it's own in a somewhat similar vein so that I can compare how this is done right compared to how it can be done catastrophically wrong. The comparison I've picked is from Death Stranding, but unfortunately that means I'm going to have to spoil an incredibly big (as in literally the last hour of gameplay is dedicated to it) plot point as well as a central big route spoiler for 'Detroit: Become Human.' If that's going to be a problem for you, I suggest you skip this one. Still here? Good.

So 'Detroit: Become Human' paints a world were an American servant class of humanoid android suddenly gain sentience and everything plays out pretty much the way you'd expect from a decently budgeted Sci-Fi channel miniseries. Cue hammy and slightly belittling civil rights analogies and a shaky grander world setting that doesn't really come together cohesively outside of immediate events but it doesn't matter because Cage doesn't care about world building apparently. In typical Cage fashion, the narrative is split between the perspectives of three protagonists, although rather atypically, they don't intersect nearly as much as you'd think they would. In fact I think there's only one scene where all the protagonists are in the same setting at the same time, which I guess isn't totally uncommon, but overall motivations seem individually distinct too. I'm not sure how I feel about that plot structure, but this isn't about that right now. Right now I want to talk about the machinations of one storyline in particular, the one that follows Kara.

Kara is the service android of one Todd at the beginning of the game, your typical single abusive father who beats his child daughter: lovely. The entirety of Kara's narrative follows her relationship with this child, Alice, as they escape the abuses of Todd and go on the run as fugitives together. Whilst the other two storylines are based around prototypical oppressed freedom fighter and discount Bladerunner 2049, Kara's journey with Alice is the only one that seems somewhat unique to the typical formula you'd immediately expect from a setting like this. I think that special spark comes from the very idea of this android and human child coming together in a mother-daughter bond, both damaged and traumatised in their own way and forming an emotional bond that transcends their differing constitutions because of that. In a game with very underexplored avenues for the way that androids crossed the event horizon and gained sentience, Kara's story doesn't fill that void but it does work some way to justify it, arguing that the specifics don't matter when we have this sort of relationships between the species that demonstrates powerful unconditional love. A human child and an android mother- truly a fertile little bud of a story there. Sure they weren't my favourite characters, but I felt emotionally connected and intrigued to their journey more than the other two.

But before I pull the rug out from under you, let me bring up my competing twist from Death Stranding. (strap in, because discussing anything about this game is a trip.) So the world of Death Stranding's America is beset by an invasion of spirits from death known as BTs (Beached Things) that can only be seen when someone straps themselves to a BB (Beach Baby). a BB is a human child that has been taken out of it's comatose mother before birth and placed inside of a mechanical simulated womb that porters strap to their chest and then connect to via tubes so that they can integrate their suit systems with the emotional response of the BB. Oh, and BB's can see BTs because having not been born yet they technically aren't alive and since their mothers are brain dead they 'bridge' the gap between life and death. Did you... did you follow all of that? Because I'm not sure I even did.

The story makes clear there is a twist coming right away, when the protagonist Sam first connects to his BB, (known as BB-28) and is greeted to a memory which shows the perspective of a baby in a pod observing the goings on of a man we would come to know as Clifford Unger and his comatose wife. The problem being that the twist here is obvious. Clifford, played by Mads Mikkelson, is obviously going to be an important reoccurring character in the story, the visions (which are repeated and only happen when connecting to BB-28 after a rest) clearly show a BB before service, and Clifford literally talks to the BB like it's his child throughout the entire game; and yet Sam never seems to directly address it. I mean sure, he's attacked by the spirit of Cliff throughout the game, dragged through hell and forced to fight him. Every fight is inundated with the ghostly calls of Cliff to 'return his BB', and every boss fight ends with him literally trying to rip BB-28 from your arms, but Sam and cast still play twenty questions trying to figure out who Cliff could possibly be and what his connection to you and BB-28 is.

It's almost insulting how much the game drags out this twist which lays itself out so evidently from the getgo, no one with a working frontal cortex could fail to make the connection between Cliff and BB-28 after the first cutscene, let alone the thirtieth! Thus we don't even engage with that aspect of the story and question it as the narrative pans out, even when scenes don't play out quite as you might expect. The final boss fight with Cliff, for example, ends with him finally coming to his senses and directly addressing the player. "They told me you were Sam Porter, but your Sam Bridges. My bridge to the future." Sam even hands him the BB-28 pod, recognising Cliff as the father, only to see Cliff take it, hold it for a moment, and then hand him back. It's a simple scene, but seems to vaguely threaten what seemed like clear cut fact at the very start of the story. It's only after this encounter that Sam even mentions the possibility that Cliff could be BB-28's father, but with how terminally un-insightful Sam has proven himself throughout the entire game, this moment actually shakes belief in what seemed to be immutable fact more than anything else. What we have here is a twist made so obvious that we don't even realise when it hides something deeper.

Coming back to Detroit, the twist set-up is much more straightforward so let me resolve that one for us right now. Alice and Kara meet another android and they expand their familial unit whilst trying to escape the country. Only once all the protagonists come together do we get the big reveal, as Kara goes off to meet with the cameo squad and gets a bit lost when she returns. She bumps into Alice, only to discover that she isn't her Alice, but another Alice altogether. Another android Alice. That's right, little kid Alice was an android that Todd (a man who is apparently destitute and depressed and yet can afford two androids and a replacement for the one he smashed) bought to replace his daughter who left with his wife when they got divorced. And the game waits until now to tell us. The reveal is handled decent enough but the twist... is just actively terrible.

I don't mean that it's weak, although it kind of is; but it is unique in that it actively cheapens the dynamic that the game worked so hard to set. It's a twist that takes depth out of the narrative, rather than one which enriches it. Think about it- we had a mother figure android looking after an ostensibly human girl and providing a model for the way that these robots can serve just as important a role to humans as flesh and blood family members can. We had a story of species being bridged together! Only- no. The kid was an android the whole time. So it's just an android that looks like a kid being adopted by an android that looks like an adult, suddenly feeling like a pale imitation of human relationships just because. Because that's what humans do and that's what they're doing. In a smarter game, like Nier, this would have been a branching off point to explore the significance of inherent human societal functions and what those roles look like dragged out of context and purpose.(And Automata actually has a scene which does exactly that) But in Detroit, managed by David Cage, it just feels vapid in way he clearly wasn't planning it to be. You took the human out of the relationship and, despite the heavy lifting the actors put in to make it work, sullied it with misplaced and badly judged context which served as nothing more than a 'gotcha'. Nothing was elevated about the emotion or meaning of the story, all that has changed is that significance has been drained. I knew that a twist could be disappointing and eye rolling, but 'Detroit: Become Human' was the first time I realised that a twist could be so bad it's actively harmful to the narrative. Who let David shoot his own script in the foot like this?

On the otherside of the fence we have Death Stranding and the mystery surrounding it's seemingly straightforward twist. By the subsequent credits of the game there are still lingering mysteries hanging around the finer points of the story, alongside that uneasy sense from your last strange encounter with Cliff. Key point of frowning for me came when Amelie lectured Sam throughout the credits about her history, and stated matter-of-factly "A pulled the trigger twice that day." What day? What trigger? Did I miss something? I'm sure I was paying attention. Why did you say that like I knew what you were talking about? It's literally the credits right now, so should I know what she's talking about? I was in a bit of a tail-spin moment. And as with any good twist, that oddity compounded with other clear inconsistences that rubbed me the wrong way. You have Die Hardman carrying a gun onto an afterlife-beach (something you can only do if an item has significant emotional importance to the person's beach) stating that he can do it because the gun is loaded with Hematic rounds from Sam's blood. Oh is that how that works? So I can just slather my blood on anything and drag it onto a beach? Or is he wantonly lying to avoid questions? Or the way Amelie takes to Sam as a literal baby despite them apparently having no relation to one another. Why does she care so much? Or Die Hardman's tear strewn confession to you about his murder of Cliff, which comes across as an apology for some strange reason.

Of course, the real 'smoking gun' (pun intended) comes once we learn the name of Cliff's comatose wife. Lisa Bridges. A real kick-in-balls "Wait, what?" moment which rocks the seemingly straight forward narrative. In the subsequent hour it's revealed that those visions throughout the game were not those of BB-28, now named Lou, but in fact those of Sam. Sam was the first BB, Cliff was his father, and the reason why Cliff is so invested in Sam's journey is because he's hunting him, but he doesn't recognise his son grown up because he died when he was still a baby! It's a brilliant cog-fits-into-place moment for the way it makes every last bit of confusing narrative make sense and enriches the tale for it. Suddenly Cliffs last interaction "They said you were Sam Porter- but you're Sam Bridges" makes perfect sense- he stops fighting because he realises that Sam is his son. Amelie's weird talk about shooting things and Die Hardman's gun lies- were because that was the revolver Amelie used to kill them. And the reason why Amelie is so attached to Sam is because she was the one who shot him and his father and was trying to make amends by raising Sam. It's a perfectly neat and, crucially, satisfying twist which wraps up everything, and which is danced around the entire game through clever manipulation on Kojima's part to make us think the events were more straightforward than they appeared to be. (And given Kojima's past with writing narratively convenient family trees, the misdirection was utterly necessary for the reveal to land as well as it does.)

So there we have two twists based around a revelation of who a character actually is, but one being straightforward yet a total mess to the emotional heart of the narrative and they other being strewn with misdirection and intentional confusion for the reward of ultimate story satisfaction. I hope that space between the two extremes shows you a bit of why I find Detroit's twist so revolting, not just for what it did but for what it could have achieved. I mean to be honest, David just wanted to have his special little moment to match Scott Shelby's reveal from Heavy Rain, Detroit didn't need any sort of twist whatsoever. But in his hubris I think David botched more than he could have ever dreamed and sullied my last vestige of faith in him as a writer director. Let him stick to bringing teams together and organising; that's where his talents- wait, Star Wars Eclipse is slated for a 2026-27 release date? Snap, guess he sucks at that too...

Star Wars Eclipse

 That went from 100 to 0 real quick.

Okay so I usually know what I'm in for when it comes to a game reveal, I can typically identify what the game is or what it's about within the first frame of footage and from there I've pretty much made up my mind with expectations: am I more likely to be happy or is this trailer going to have to put the work on me? I'm signalling out myself but the truth is that we all operate with this level of informed instant judging that makes our situational awareness so rapid. So rare it is, then, for a game reveal to not only keep me guessing as to what it is, but take me on a rollercoaster of emotions from the highs to the bittermost lows. I feel like I'd been through my very own anime arc when I was on the otherside of this trailer and I've just got to convey a bit of that journey with you today.

So it started with the reveal of the Lucasfilm games logo and my knee jerk reaction was that we were finally seeing that Indiana Jones game that Bethesda is said to be working on. Of course, in hindsight that's a ludicrous expectation what with their efforts split between Redfall, Starfield, TES VI and post release support for Deathloop, but that was where my head was at. And I wasn't at all shaken by the scenes of shirtless men pounding on suspended metal dishes with a drone groan to compete with the clarion call of the Sardaukar. Heck, that ain't so out of ordinary for Indi, The Temple of Doom had stuff like that going on. But then we saw a busy market street with Duros wondering around and I figured that this might actually be something else instead. Fair enough, but that was my mildest emotional twist.

Because the thing about this trailer, and I've watched a few times since to make sure that I wasn't giving it an unfair shake; there's no story to it. And I'm sure someone out there is going 'duh, it's not a story trailer', but to them I'd say that you might be misunderstanding me. When planning out a video of any sort, a trailer is no exception, you make a storyboard in order to inform which scenes go where, how they might look, that sort of thing. This just naturally makes it so that there's some flow, even if not a traditional narrative, to most trailers; every scene has a purpose, usually to get you hyped and involved in the trailer and to move from quickly digestible action sequence to another so that everyone can keep up and have some understanding of what sort of experience they're being sold. But somehow this trailer had none of that. Scenes just happened. Yoda in the throneroom, some Jedi with lightsabers, more Jedi but they're fighting this time, now a space battle, back to the bald guys, or look there's an eclipse happening. It felt more like a pitch for a potential Star Wars game than a trailer for a specific game.

And of course, that left me totally clueless. Heck, for a moment I even thought that this is a first look at that KOTOR remake which is being made, despite knowing that story back to front and not seeing anything familiar here. I mean there was the Jedi council in Courasant, but then there was a yellow saber, (much more typically scene in the Old Republic era) nothing was adding up. Maybe it was Fallen Order 2? Nah, Yoad wouldn't be in that! Some wild thought even considered that this might be the announcement of KOTOR 3 that we never thought would happen, but alas we were short-changed. I spent the entire trailer totally lost and bewildered, especially since the recognisable Star Wars visuals seems era-confused with bits from everywhere being haphazardly thrown together. And then we saw the title; Star Wars Eclipse. Oh, a brand new Star Wars game! Well I always love to see this universe in a new l- by Quantic Dream?- well that goes all of that optimism.

I know that sounds sudden, but this is a David Cage game now. Nothing can save it. For years Cage has been this loveable goofable that just wanted to marry together the disparate areas of video games and movies. Oh, not in a revolutionary way that pushes forward both mediums, but in a gimmicky way where 'your actions have (typically limited) consequences' and all the characters are rendered in as uncanny valley as current tech can manage. I mean I hold no ill will to that sort of game, I like a few of them quite a bit in fact, but then Cage started to take himself a little too seriously. Somewhere between 'Beyond Two Souls' and 'Detroit: Become Human' he adopted that surliness that all 'artists' get when they see themselves as better than their piers, and thus he developed this perception that traditional games were 'backwards' or 'unevolved'. Just read his thought back in 2013 where he claimed games need to 'grow up', or 2012 where he called for an 'Apocalypse now' type shooter. (In his defence, 'Spec Ops The line' only came out a couple of months beforehand, so he was just behind the immediate times when he made those comments.) He's a guy with a high opinion of himself.

Which led to him making 'Detroit: Become Human', a paradigm to race relations in America where black people are replaced with slave robots- wait what? Yeah, Cage has tried to back pedal and claim that he wasn't trying to say anything whatsoever with his premise, despite railing other games for years because they didn't have enough to say, but his work speaks for itself. The analogies are deliberate and obvious, and they are as ham fisted and cheesy as you might expect. It was brave, in a way. I wouldn't even dream of writing that story and I've actually grown up in and around at least one black community all my life, so kudos to this French musician for at least making the attempt, but maybe he should take proper account for his glass house the next time he's planning to go brick juggling. Oh, and that's beside the fact that Detroit's premise was as trite as this setup could have possibly been, at key times narratively incompetent and is held up by the performances of it's actors. Who all did fantastic, by the way, I have nothing against them. Just David. And any game he touches from now on. Like Star Wars Eclipse. Yikes.

Still, I took solace in the fact that David isn't going to swing above his weight with a story anytime soon (or at least, not so soon) and kind of grew attached to the idea of a narrative based Star Wars game with AAA quality graphics and presentation. The story doesn't need to be great, we're talking about a Star Wars story, it just needs to feel fun and immersive. But that new hope lasted all of 15 seconds before Geoff Keighley took the top belt in order to successfully power bomb all dreams I might of had about this project into the dirt. It's setting has been announced to be during the High Republic. Eww. Disney's personal little vanity project for Star Wars. Guess that explains why the visuals seem like an unsteady tightrope between Old Republic and Clone Wars stuff, no one really came out to create a solid vision for this era, huh. I'm very much yet-to-be-sold on this era, and it's been putting out content for nearly a year now so that's not a good sign.

So Star Wars Eclipse is certainly not landing on my 'most anticipated' list anytime soon, although I am glad that more stuff is being done with the Star Wars licence and that studios outside of EA's backyard stable are jumping aboard the ride. Whilst personally I yearn for the more action oriented Star Wars titles with their great combat, exploration and replayability, I'm sure that this game might be good for watching a playthrough off at the very least. As far as 'bringing new sorts of games to the Star Wars universe' goes, I guess this scores some vague points for trail blazing, although a solid RTS would have been just as appreciated. Oh, or a Turn based strategy game! OH, or a Persona-like! (Okay, I've got a problem.)

Modern Morality aka Choice and Consequence

Your fantasies can never be quenched, can they!

A while ago I dived into the topic of morality systems in video games. Times at which the player is expected to go a certain direction or make a certain decision that proceeds to dictate their moral leanings. This was the way that Video Games tried to initiate moral discussions when developers were just starting to get the hang of telling branching stories. But we no longer live in that time of rampant experimentalism. Nowadays, video game storytelling has been whittled down to a fine art, so writers who really want to stand out need to do more than just institute a good/bad bar on your character sheet. In modern video game storytelling, the weight of a player's moral fibre is judged by more than just an 'evil bar' coupled with a bad ending. Discussing morality requires a tad more nuance than that. And so the marketing gimmick of 'action-consequnce' was born.

I'm treating it with some flippancy but I do believe that the way we handle morality in games now is leagues better then the way we used to. At the end of the day, the concept morality is little more than a societal construct, and when you have that in mind then there becomes little weight in wagging a finger at the player and telling them they made the wrong choice. Narrative stories needed to start confronting players with the cold, undeniable reality of consequences. This evolution helped to create some of the most memorable and divisive moments in gaming. Players no longer just argued about 'the good option' and 'the bad option', now they had a springboard to engage in discourse about their fundamental views on the issues. Or at least that is the intention. 'Action and consequnce' can be turned into a meaningless gimmick when half-assed just like anything else in life. The key is to dedicate thought and passion into giving players the freedom to see themselves reflected in the decisions and mistakes they make.

The wider gaming world has very readily adopted the 'choice-consequnce' model and it has become somewhat expected for RPG's to have some form of choice at some point in their narrative. Whilst once this was a huge selling point, worthy of sticking on the back of the box, now it is a requirement for any big budget game. Even Red Dead Redemption 2 had some vague elements of consequence throughout it's story, although that has as much to do with respecting the overarching themes of the series as much as it has to do with ticking that particular box. Modern role playing just doesn't feel the same anymore unless we can make the story our own, diverge from the path that our friends took, and then argue about it with them the next day.

One game that captured the 'Choice/conseqence' craze beautifully, was the excellent: Dishonoured. In Dishonoured, players were put in the boots of disgraced royal protector: Corvo Attano, who was framed for the murder of his charge; Empress Jessamine Kaldwin. Who was also his lover and the mother of his child. (Talk about conflicted interests.) The player is then tasked with unravelling the conspiracy that led to her assassination by hunting down those that seized power after her demise, utilizing Corvo's substantial stealthy skillset alongside a whole host of otherworldly powers. Choice and consequence come into the picture in two distinct ways.

The First way is obvious. As you hone in on your targets, you are presented with two possible ways to proceed. You can straight up kill you target and get it all over and done with; or you can pull some strings in order to set up a special event which will also succeeds in eliminating the target. These events can range from having your target kidnapped by their secret admirer, to branding their face with the mark of a heretic ensuring that they will be cast out of the sect in which they reside. There is no morally pure choice to pick, either you kill the target or ruin their life; the focus in on the consequences. Sometime these consequences are left to the imagination of the player and over times you are shown them directly.

The second method that Arkane used to realise your consequences is actually quite brilliant. You see, Dishonored is a stealth action-adventure game, (My favourite sub-genre!) which means that the player can go through levels without being spotted and killing as few or as many people as they so wish. This is wrapped up in the lore through a rat-carried plague that is rampant in the game's setting: Dunwall. Rats are well known to be attracted to rotting flesh and so the game actually keeps track of how many enemies you've killed by proportionately infesting the city. If you are a cold blooded mass-murderer, Dunwall will become a plague ridden hellscape by the final level and even your own allies will start fearing you. This also ties in with the endings that you receive. The higher the chaos you cause, the worse your ending will be. Nice 'anti-violence' message in your game about assassinating people, Arkane.

Now onto somewhat of a contentious figure. David Cage has had bad rap with gamers over the years for making a slew of games that some people would argue aren't games at all. Through his studio, Quantic Dream, Cage and his team have pioneered the interactive storytelling genre, providing games that feel like movies. So what exactly is 'interactive storytelling'? Well, by David Cage's definition, it is a medium wherein in the player is presented with events in a story and they are tasked with making choices to guide the narrative. Sounds like everything I've been discussing today. The trick is that these games feature no actual 'gameplay' like one would traditionally imagine, just choices and the occasional quick time event. Some people would call these glorified DVD games, but I do enjoy the games for what they offer. As long as a compelling narrative comes attached.

Due to the choice-based gameplay that this genre is defined by, consequence is prevalent everywhere. Throughout all of Quantic's games; 'Indigo Prophesy', 'Beyond: Two Souls' and 'Detroit: Become Human', there are numerous moments when action or inaction results in branches through the story. Although the game that everyone remembers for it's consequences would have to be 'Heavy Rain'. Anyone who followed gaming at the time heard all the fuss around 'Heavy Rain' and the fact that, if your character died in the story, they would remain dead. 'Permadeath' was unheard of in this time, so many found the novelty absolutely fascinating. Of course, all those trailers conveniently left out the fact that, in order for a character to suffer permadeath, the player would have to be so hopelessly incompetent at quick time events that they manage to fail a ludicrous amount of them consecutively.

Yeah, the games didn't exactly exude the intense 'life or death at a moments notice' vibe that David Cage seemed to be going for, but the game itself did excel when it came to branching narratives. Big choices had the chance to completely shift the road that your character was on, thus changing the path of the story. This meant that many key scenes featured dozens of possible permutations depending on the route you took to get there. Never before did players feel like they had shaped the events around them quite like they did during 'Heavy Rain'. Following that, many successors would come to pastiche and mature this formula.

One such successor would be supernatural high school simulator: Life is Strange. Whilst you could argue that Don't Nod Entertainment borrowed more from Telltale to adapt their gameplay, I would refute that both owe some degree of their popularity to 'Heavy Rain'. Narrative wise, Life is Strange is a little bit a mess. The story follows the tale of a high schooler, Max Caufield, as she discovers that she has the power to reverse time and... just sort of lives with it for a while. Max goes through the process of reconnecting with her old friend, Chloe, and starts developing their relationship together for most of the game. Only near the end of the game does she realize that Nature is trying to 'final destination' Chloe, and Max must save the town or something, whilst simultaneously dealing with a pervert teacher who is also a murderer. As I said, it's a little bit of a mess.

Where 'Life is Strange' shines is in the strength of it's choices. Whilst it is true, the ability to turn back time kind of takes a lot of the weight out of the decisions you make, some of the most potent consequences you are subject to exceed the range of your powers. (Almost makes you wonder why you even have them in the first pl- okay, I'm not going to get into it here.) On the surface the gameplay experience is very similar to the 'Heavy Rain' brand of interactive storytelling, but the focus on character led drama adds a very personal aspect to the choices you make. Sometimes 'Life is Strange' presents you with a decision you make for emotional reasons rather than pragmatic ones. I find that this makes the consequences of those choice all the more reflective.

Another choice-driven interactive story that garnered attention in recent years is the star studded: Until Dawn. Supermassive Games themed their interactive story around the cliches of slasher movies, so people went in expecting a high body count. What we didn't expect was the heavily reliance on 'The butterfly effect' and all that entails. This meant that the smallest of actions could lead to violent, unavoidable consequences down the line. Some may call this a little cheap, but I see it as a little refreshing. You see, Until Dawn came out in 2015 and by that point everyone had already got a pretty good idea of what this genre entailed. When you go through every scene waiting for a 'gotcha' moment it becomes easy to spot narrative hooks and predict results in advance. Until Dawn threw that all to the wind. Did you throw a snowball at the butterfly? Boom, icicle to the head. Things literally got that random.

But let's step away from interactive story games and move to a game that features traditional gameplay but still manages to deliver doses of potent 'choice/consequence' to the player. Let's take a look at 'The Witcher'. Off the bat, CD Projekt Red were in a good place adapting 'The Witcher', as the story existed in an adult morally grey world. All they had to do was accurately translate that world into the medium of gaming, and I think the general consensus is that they pulled it off rather nicely. 'The Witcher' revolves around the character of Geralt, the titular Witcher. Much like Garrett from the Thief series, Geralt plays the role of an observer to a world in flux. Sure, he takes part in events, even has some 'save-the-world' moments. But for the most part, Geralt just tries to live in the turmoil of warring nations.

Whilst this approach may seem like it precludes significant choice and consequence, in practice it actually paves away for more meaningful decisions. 'The Witcher' is unique in that it presents a high fantasy world, and then tells personal, character driven stories with that world. Geralt isn't leading armies and fighting elder gods, he's hunting monsters that disturb the local town life. He isn't the perpetrator of world changing events, he just gets pulled along by them. I love this subversive approach to fantasy storytelling and think it lends wonderfully to the choices that the player is left to make. They get the chance to see the world from Geralt's level and so it makes it easier for them to make the choices they believe he would make. It's a powerful use of perspective that I'd imagine should be credited more to Andrzej Sapkowski then CD Projekt Red. But those writers did manage to utilize that tool to great effect and so I will praise them both the same.

Finally, I would like to bring up one of gaming's classics. Often referred to as 'The greatest PC game ever made', I'm talking about Eidos' Deus Ex. The original cyberpunk gem, Deus Ex situates players in a world fraught with conspiracy and hyper-surveillance as they try to free the people from the grip of a tyrannical secret organization who is not the Illuminati. (They're in the game too, but this particular ultra-shady secret government isn't them.) Choice and consequence is handled the same here as in any other game, every now and then you are presented with a choice between a number of actions and must pick one. The important thing to note here is the fact that this type of gameplay was completely unheard of. Released in the year 2000, Deus Ex was the first action-oriented game to prominently feature branching narratives as a result of player choice. Players were enamoured by the concept and it's one of the many reasons that the game is still widely loved today. I still see fans arguing over that final choice as though debating warring philosophies; which, in hindsight, I suppose they are.

2011's 'Deus Ex: Human Revolution' didn't have the benefit of being the first, but Eidos still found a way to make it's choices stand out. Instead of just giving players clearly marked sections where their specific actions matter, 'Human Revolution' also put players in situations where their inaction can affect the story. Did you stop that terrorist but fail to clear out his hostages beforehand? They're as good as dead. Did you stay your hand from applying lethal force on his men? Then he might be willing to work with you in the future. All this culminates into a ending that put Eidos in an impossible position. They had to provide the player with a meaningful choice whilst baring in mind that this game was a prequel and therefore cannot change the events surrounding the original game. What resulted was one of most igneous set of endings that I've ever seen pulled off by a game. (Which was then ruined when 'Mankind Divided' came along and just picked one of the endings to go off from. But I digress.)

In the modern age of game narratives, traditional depictions of morality is mostly a thing of the past. Light sides and Dark sides are concepts that seem outdated in a world that is more coloured in shades of grey. Although I do sort of miss the old tally-based morality systems, I recognize that these systems worked to constrain storytelling and play styles. That's the reason why so many games that use to champion these systems have since abandoned them. 'Mass Effect: Andromeda' shed it's iconic 'Paragon/Renegade' mechanic, Fallout 4 dropped their 'Karma points' and Respawn have even come out to say that the upcoming 'Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order' will not have any 'light side'/ 'dark side' choices. (Although that may just be hinting at a more linear direction for the game.)
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Going forward I expect to see more clever uses of choice-based gameplay as we move into the next console age. The Outer Worlds and Cyberpunk 2077 are two games to keep an eye on for this kind of stuff, their developers love challenging players with unforeseen repercussions. And there's also 'Life is Strange 2' for lovers of Interactive Storytelling and Supermassive Game's upcoming 'Man of Medan' for fans of chaotic consequence. These types of games aren't going away anytime soon and I, for one, couldn't be happier about it. I just can't wait to see how narrative morality evolves in the near-to-distant future. Who wants to guess how long it'll be before 'Ender's Game' happens?