Why do games punish players for dialogue choices?

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Started by Legend, May 15, 2020, 03:33 AM

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Legend

I'm guessing it's just a way to make a player feel like their choice did something. But it's about the least rewarding way they could have done it.
Yeah feedback loops with every other type of gameplay are only minutes long. If you do something wrong during combat, the consequences are obvious and immediate. Yet the consequences of a dialogue choice might not show up for 50 hours.

Plus combat and other forms of gameplay are forgiving. A mistake is something that can be overcome. It would be so so so much nicer if a "wrong" past choice made the desired outcome harder to achieve, but not impossible.


At its core though, I think the whole concept is fundamentally broken as partially shown in this video:


There are so many reasons for a player to chose one option over another and it's impossible for the story to know them. Super early example from AC Odyssey is that there is a plague killing a city so priests are burning everything down. You have the option to kill the priests and save the last remaining sick family, or walk away and let the sick family get killed. Given the current global situation, I approached this choice with a completely different mindset then the developers intended.

I think any sort of branching narrative needs to focus on individual people's reactions being biased, instead of them being right. An NPC can hate you for your actions but the game shouldn't imply that your actions were wrong. Endings can't be tied to how "well" you chose dialogue.