The Power of Invisible Choices

Okay, so video game stories are unique because you get to make decisions. Like, whether or not you should mock this preacher. GERALT: “How many people’s lives have you saved? From bruxae? From leshens?” PREACHER: “That has no bearing—“ GERALT: “Asked you a question. How many?” Those choices might cause an immediate reaction… GERALT: “There’s something to think about, folks”. Or, in some cases, the game might remember your decision and issue some kind of consequence later down the line.

GUARD 1: “Geralt of Rivia. Witcher”. GUARD 2: “You stand accused of offending religious sentiment. We’ve orders to take you in for interrogation” Now, these sorts of choices have historically been associated with RPGs, interactive fiction, and… whatever we’re calling these Telltale-style games. And I think that’s partly because of their lineage that stretches back to improvisational tabletop games, and branching Choose Your Own Adventure books.

But I think it’s also just an interface thing. These are games where your primary mode of interaction is to pick options from a menu - like a dialogue tree or a list of next moves. So making choices about the narrative is a perfectly natural fit. But what if your game doesn’t have that? What if it’s a shooter, or survival horror, or an action game? How do you let players make choices in those sorts of games? Well, one way to do it can be seen in Bioshock. This is a first-person shooter, but it features an infamous moral choice: each time you meet a Little Sister, you need to decide whether to save her - or harvest her lifeblood for magic super-juice.

And, in these moments, the game slows down, takes away your normal controls, and just slaps a big ol’ pair of button prompts on screen. Press X to harvest. Press Y to rescue. LITTLE SISTER: “No, no! No no!” So that’s one way to do it. Just kinda borrow the interaction systems of these more suitable genres - whether that’s button prompts. A list of options. Or a dialogue wheel. I’m going to call these “explicit choices”.

But there’s actually another way to do it. Let’s look at another shooter - this time, Spec Ops: The Line. Here, we come across two men, strung up by their hands - with snipers aiming at their bodies. And you have to make a decision. WALKER: “I get it, we’re meant to choose” But this time, there are no button prompts and there's no menu. Instead, you decide which person Walker will shoot… by literally, just shooting them.

*Gunfire* So that’s a very different way to do it. Instead of leaning on the systems of a different genre, Spec Ops lets players express their intent by using the basic tools they use elsewhere in the game. This is a game about shooting - and so you make choices by shooting. I call this, you guessed it, an, “invisible choice”. And I think these, rare beasts have some incredibly exciting advantages. And so, in this video I’m going to share four key reasons why you should think about making your choices… disappear.

Okay. Advantage number one - invisible choices can make the options ambiguous. So in Bioshock Infinite, you’re told to throw a ball at an interracial couple. But did you know you can actually throw it at the racist announcer inste… oh, right, it says it right there on the screen. That kinda spoiled it, didn’t it? That’s what happens when your input system demands you list every possible action the player can take. Back to that choice in Spec Ops, though, and while the guy on the radio asks you to shoot one of the two men… you can also decide to shoot the ropes that they’re being hung with.

Or refuse to make a choice at all. Or fire at the snipers instead. Because the choice is invisible, the game can hide additional options that are only found if enterprising players really think about the situation and the tools at their disposal. Spec Ops is actually full of these things. Later, an angry mob of civilians descends on Walker and you’re encouraged to shoot them - but you can also fire into the air, or just do a non-lethal melee attack to diffuse the situation.

There’s also a memorable one in Far Cry 4 - Pagan Min asks you to wait for his return, giving you a chance to escape from his fortress. But if you actually just wait for his return, you’ll unlock a secret ending. These hidden options can make players feel smart. And it makes the game feel less like a rigid sequence of choices - and more like an organic and believable world.

Advantage two. The choices don’t have to be equal. So back to Bioshock for a second - when it comes to rescuing or harvesting a Little Sister, the choice is equal. I mean, sure, the consequences are different. And one might make you feel bad. But the physical act of making the choice is identical: press one button on your controller, or the other. But then consider a game like Undertale. Here, you can choose whether to kill all the monsters and bosses in the game - or spare them. But it’s far from equal, and it’s - usually - a lot harder to save the creatures than it is to simply wipe them out.

So that means you need to put in effort if you want the better outcome. And you might decide to make a certain choice… simply because it would be too difficult, or cost too many resources, to do the other thing. Like, there’s a bit in Deus Ex: Human Revolution where your pilot Faridah is pinned down by enemies and it’s possible to save her - as long as you are able to defeat a bunch of baddies in record time. It’s not a moral choice whether she lives or dies - it’s a test of your skill.

Also, picking immoral and selfish choices from a menu can make you feel pretty icky - but it’s even worse when you have to physically carry out those actions yourself. When you slowly, manually, personally steal from this elderly couple in This War of Mine… it makes you, the player, feel even more complicit in these awful actions.

Okay! That was a bummer. Uh, advantage three! Fine-grain choices. So, when we think about more explicit choices, we usually think about quite significant decision points. Picking between the lives of two characters. Or the fate of an entire town. Or, uh, what to have for breakfast. But when a game is tracking invisible choices, it can build up a massive, and highly detailed databank of everything the player is doing - and use all of that to shape the rest of the game.

This can lead to a game feeling very personalised - like how the Orks in Shadow of War can recall the precise nature of your previous run-in. Or how the characters in Hades discuss the exact details of your most recent run. HYPNOS: “Daw, one of those Wretched Louts just killed you dead that last time, those mean old slappy guys? Maybe try killing them beforehand, I don’t know!” It means the game can comment on tiny things like where you’ve been - which is why JC Denton gets chewed out for entering the women’s bathroom in Deus Ex.

Or how long you take to do something - waste too much time before rescuing your pals in Mass Effect 2, and you’ll find the Normandy crew has been reduced to a gooey grey paste. This makes you think about the effects of every action you perform - and not just the big, obvious choices. So, in Dishonored, for example, every time you kill an enemy you’re adding to the chaos meter - which can change the outcome of the narrative, shift how characters see you, and add more rats to the world. And so because every combat encounter has the opportunity to change the future, you end up playing in a more deliberate and thoughtful way.

Same goes for Metal Gear Solid V, and how the enemies adapt to your play style by popping on helmets or installing more floodlights.

And finally, advantage four. Surprising outcomes. One of the biggest problems with explicit choices is that they make it really obvious that you’re making a decision. And just in case it wasn’t completely obvious, let’s put a notification on screen to back that up. So, it’s pretty hard to surprise players with the consequences of their decisions. But with invisible choices, the game can secretly and silently track your actions without you ever realising it - and then surprise you with an outcome later down the line.

Like, in Metal Gear Solid, when you encounter the mind-reading weirdo, Psycho Mantis. PSYCHO-MANTIS: “You are a very methodical man. The type who always kicks his tyres before he leaves. And yet you’re rather ineffective in battle.” What’s actually happening here is that all along, the game has been secretly tracking things like how often you save, how many traps you’ve sprung, and even the contents of your PS1 memory card.

And then Psycho-Mantis can give the appropriate voice line. It’s a typical Kojima party trick, but a neat example of how invisible choices can surprise the player. Other examples might include saving Biorr from this cell, only for him to come to your aid in the fight against Penetrator. Or your actions at the start of Chrono Trigger getting brought up in the game’s trial. The other thing is - because explicit choices are given such prominence, I think players quite rightly expect for them to have equally significant consequences for the storyline. And to be disappointed when, typically, they don’t. But when choices are invisible, even tiny consequences are impressive and memorable by comparison.

Now, if I’m going to be listing advantages… I should probably also touch on the challenges of implementing invisible choices. For one, it can be hard to honour every choice the player might make. There’s a scene in Firewatch where you have to deal with some skinny-dipping teenagers and the game will react to loads of different actions - including tossing their boombox into the water. But the programmers had to create a very complex and robust system to account for all of these different actions.

Interested devs can find some resources to help with implementing invisible choices in the description for this video. Also, this system doesn’t really work for every type of choice. If your only way of communicating to the game is down the barrel of a gun, that’s not going to work for more nuanced decisions. But it doesn’t have to be either / or. Back to Firewatch, again, that game tracks actions like picking up objects - but it also has a full dialogue system through the walkie-talkie. That gives you two very different ways to express yourself.

Another challenge is that when choices are made ambiguous, players might not know that they even had access to certain options - and feel cheated when they find out. I made a video about Fort Frolic in Bioshock, and mentioned how you can leave the area without killing Sander Cohen. But according to my comment section, plenty of people didn’t know that walking away was a valid choice. So, you may need to teach players that other actions are available.

And, finally, players may not realise that they’re seeing the consequences of previous actions. The nice thing about explicit choices is that they are, well, explicit about the fact you’re having an impact on the game. But invisible choices can easily be missed altogether. In playtests of Dishonored, Arkane found that some players thought the game was incredibly linear - but only because those player didn’t even realise they were making choices.

They were too subtle, too organic. Likewise, it’s easy to get to the end of Silent Hill 2 and have no understanding that the cutscene you receive is actually the result of some obscure and obtuse actions you’ve made throughout the game. It’s important, then, when using invisible choices, to be quite heavy handed with dialogue, and make it crystal clear to players that this is an outcome of their earlier actions. GHÛRA THE SINGER: “Like a little chorus he comes back round. He usually dies is what I’ve found”.

Too subtle, and all your hard work is wasted.

So, there we have it. Action games don’t need to twist themselves into an RPG or a text adventure in order to react, remember, or reflect on the player’s choices. These games already have ways for the player to communicate - to express intent, and values, and decisions, and moral leanings. By implementing invisible choices, players can speak using the verbs they’ve already been using as part of normal gameplay. And in doing so, games can make the options more ambiguous.

One choice can be harder to make than another. The game can track dozens of tiny actions that the player is making. And the consequences of your decisions can be more surprising. Ultimately, we say that actions speak louder than words - and I reckon more games should make that a reality. Thanks for watching.

Hey! Happy new year! So people who back GMTK on Patreon get a monthly “reading list” of 20 articles and videos that I recommend. Here’s one from this January's list: why the superhero genre is not comparable to the western. You can check out the full list over on Patreon, a link is in the description. Thanks so much for your support.