Choices in video games can be as small as choosing how to greet an NPC, or as large as deciding the fate of the entire universe. Games like The Quarry or Detroit: Become Human will make your decisions shape the entire story, while in others, like The Witcher 3, you feel the weight of your choices by the impact they have on ordinary (and often desperate) people. As important as it is, giving the player the ability to make a choice can lead to an experience they can truly call their own and keep them coming back for more. However, not all games handle the choices they give players this way.
When you make a choice that can have an effect, whether it’s at the end of a story or how an NPC feels about you, it usually gives you a sense of power and influence. That feeling can make a player feel like they’re really a part of the world they’re in, since what they say or do things can affect that world. On the other hand, there are games that fail to give the player this feeling from the choices they give them. It’s usually because the choices don’t really make a difference, or the differences aren’t worth anything. The illusion of choice, in other words.
While there are many games that have done this, the modern Pokémon games are the main culprits. Some choices, like Lillie asking you to pick out your own clothes in Sun and Moon, only affect a few lines of dialogue before the game resumes on the main course. Other choices don’t even change the dialogue. The answers you can choose when talking to Vlov about Hisui’s story in Pokémon Legends: Arceus both mean the same thing, and he will answer in a way that accounts for both choices being chosen. Decisions like these have been all over the Pokémon games since the sixth generation back in 2013, and nothing has changed since.
This is not to say that the illusion of choice is necessarily a bad thing. Some amazing things can be done with it when used correctly. Take The Walking Dead: Season One, for example. You can make many choices throughout the game that affect your relationship with other characters and how certain events unfold. However, the illusion of choice comes when the endgame will always be the same, give or take. The Walking Dead masks this well and so it doesn’t detract from your journey, which is why the illusion of choice it gives players works so well.
Even obvious illusions of choice aren’t bad when done right. An example of this is DELTARUNE. The game takes you through an entire process of creating a character, only for them to be discarded when you’re done. This sends an explicit message that unlike the first UNERTALE game, the choices you make will not matter. This is a theme that persists throughout the rest of DELTARUNE’s history as well. The game is self-aware of its illusion, and it uses this self-awareness to deliver a powerful message about doing whatever it takes to protect the people you care about.
The problem with something like Pokémon is that it offers neither choice nor a compelling illusion. When given a choice, all it takes is looking at the options they give you, and it’s clear that it doesn’t matter what you choose. The games don’t make enough effort to hide this. On top of that, nothing else is done about the fact that the choices are the same or don’t matter in the end. It continues, as if the game itself is ignorant of what most players know. It just wastes valuable time.
Games don’t have to have choice-based gameplay. After all, there are plenty of linear games without a single game-changing choice in them, like the Monster Hunter games. These types of games do not need important choices to immerse you in the world, because it is achieved in other ways, such as the beautiful presentation and believability of the characters. In Monster Hunter Rise, you become immersed in the world as you grow to care for these characters as they face the hardships of Rampage together. Little side stories emerge, like Minoto’s desire to be more like his twin sister Hinoa, and they become more human.
Games also don’t need the illusion of choice. If you don’t have choices that matter, there’s no need to make the player feel the opposite, especially if nothing clever is done with that illusion. There are other ways to give the player agency in the game, and to draw them into the story: compelling world-building and environmental storytelling, compelling sound design, believable characters, the list goes on. You don’t always have to make “meaningful choices” to feel part of the world.
Pointless choices can detract from a game, and games that have them would do better to focus on other ways to engage the player, or at least build up the illusion of choice so that it makes us feel something. Sometimes offering the player no choice at all is the best choice a developer can make.
