I want to see more choice and agency given to player in shaping the narrative, too. I'd only add to Corey's rather stellar observations that consequences be permanent. Increasingly, games employ such results as too easily reversible to matter anyway, which directly undermines their inclusion in the first place.
I'm 24 years old and my taste in games is changing. What I look for now is nowhere near what I wanted at the age of 12 or even 20. I still enjoy getting points, earning credits, and beating my friends' high scores, but what I most long for is a connection to the game. I want to feel something. I want to make decisions that alter the course of the experience and offer up consequences. I want a game to make me feel emotion.
I think it's time we talk about choice, consequence, and linearity.
I don't mind crying when I play. There have been moments where I get this absurd adrenaline rush like I've never felt. I'll get a lump in my throat, and my eyes well up. It's rare, and I wish it happened more often. But things have to line up just right. I have to be emotionally involved, which means I need to be able to see a definitive impact on the game world based on my decisions.
Lets talk about linearity. I played through Alan Wake, and I loved it. What I didn't enjoy is that I felt like a bystander when playing. The game offers me no opportunity to have an effect on the world. At no point during the campaign did I feel like anything I was doing amounted to more than playing with a marionette: Here's me; there's where I need to go; follow this path. It was debilitating to say the least. I understand the need to keep the story intact, but dammit, let me make it my story. Let me make it unique to me.
I'm not asking to change the narrative Remedy came up with. I'm asking for little-sister moments. In Bioshock, you were able to choose whether to save or harvest a little girl. This didn't alter the main story, but it allowed me to craft a unique experience. History won't remember me as the guy who fought through Rapture like everyone else: It'll remember me as the guy who fought through Rapture and harvested little girls with authority. It doesn't sound like much, but it makes me feel as though I'm making an impact on the world.
In the case of Bioshock, which is fairly linear, I never felt as though I was being guided to the end. This can be attributed to a slew of things such as spectacular writing and great level design. The genius of the game is that while it seems as though you have choices, you really don't. Sure, there are three different doors, but they all lead back to the same place: the next checkpoint. At times it feels like an open world, but it isn't. You're masterfully forced down a hallway, but allowed to enter a door on the left or right to sniff around.
The best way to elicit an emotion from me is by making me deal with consequences -- not the threat of death. I think the threat of being killed in games is overused. If I make a decision and it turns out to be the wrong one, I want to see it effect the world around me, and I want to feel it. Instead of me being the one who could die, how about my wife, my child, or a close friend.
The opening of Fable 3 forced me to make a tough decision. I thought about it long and hard before making a choice. The same goes for making decisions once you become the king. You think, “Oh, it's just a game, hit a button and move on.” It isn't like that at all. I made promises, and now I had the welfare of the people in my hands. Those two things conflicted, and it wasn't an easy choice.
Speaking of choices, I need more of them. For me, choice can be the difference between a purchase or a rent and a great game or a not-so-great one. When playing, I want to feel as though I'm the only person in the world to have had my experience. If I'm forced to sit idly by as the story unfolds with no input or direction from me, it becomes generic. While a generic game can still be good (e.g., Alan Wake), it isn't what I'm going to spend my money on. I want something that will allow me to craft my own story -- something that at the water cooler is completely different from my friends' experiences.
I appreciate the complexity involved in game development. Getting everything to line up perfectly and being able to please everyone at the same time is tough. I probably seem like just another grumpy enthusiast who has had it with the industry. That couldn't be further from the truth. I long for the day I join a development studio and am able to partake in the amazing process that is crafting an engaging, emotional experience. When that day comes, I'll be the happiest man on the planet; I might even cry a little.
