In Telltale's The Wolf Among Us, a choice based game, the player gets to make choices in the form of actual branching path decisions, and dialogue choices, with varying degrees of subtlety. Decision choices, like allowing Faith to continue to drive the axe into the Woodsman, or the choice to rip Grendel's arm off or not, are clear, and exactly as they seem. These are often your 'major' actions, and offer you an opportunity - left or right, yes or no. Whenever I encounter one of these options, I can easily tell which one will progress my story in which direction - choosing to give Faith money, results in Bigby emptying his wallet for her. Choose not to, and you don't, keeping the money for later. Choose to rip Grendel's arm off, and, well - he looses his arm. Not permanently, but you sway him further into his hatred of Bigby. These choices are far from subtle, and for good reason - as most of these are defining choices, and often more specifically, actions. These are the moments where you know there's no grey area. You either do, or you don't, and the game offers you the chance to decide which route you want to take.
Do you want to live up to your fable, and be the Big Bad Wolf they all fear, or do you want Bigby to take the chance to redeem himself?
These options need to be clear, because they form a large part of how other characters will view you, and the overall ending you'll get to the game, whether or not the choices themselves seemed important or not. Sebastian Domsch (2013) suggests that "If all possible ‘after’ states are identical to each other or
even to the ‘before’ state, the options have no differential consequence, and the
choice is therefore not a real choice after all" (p. 114). Almost (I do not remember a single active choice during the game which did not have a differing outcome, but I will not definitively say all of the choices do, as I have no gone through and checked every single scenario again) all of the choices in The Wolf Among Us offer you clear cut variants in the story - Action A leads to Change A, which could be as small as having no money later on in the story, Action B leads to Change B, which could be keeping said money. The changes, and therefore the 'after' states, always differ from one another, meaning that therefore, your choices do matter, albeit in what can often be a minute scale. This is actually a matter that a lot of players tend to complain about in general with Telltale games - they tell us that our choices will shape the narrative, but overall, the stories remain very linear. This however, does not mean these choices are not there, and do not affect the game - they just do such on a smaller scale. These choices are still important to the interactivity of the narrative.
Dialogue, however, tends to be much fuzzier when it comes to which choice means what. The four choices of dialogue offered each time make it clear that it's time for the player to contribute to the story, and help to decide how Bigby's personality comes across. We understand that there is a choice, seeing as we, the players, are being offered options. However, as can be considered a trend with Telltale games, some of these dialogue choices are far from as expected. Some, are, of course, as clear as they were with the action choices. Some, however, reveal less than predicted results - I sat down next to Grendel, hoping to try and be nice to him, and next thing I know, Bigby is snarling at Grendel, tension is rising, and the situation is rapidly going south.
The Wolf Among Us is a heavily choice based game, and yes, the choices are often obvious, usually predictable.
- Domsch, S. (2013). Storyplaying: Agency and Narrative in Video Games. Retrieved from http://animation.onlearn.co.nz/pluginfile.php/2509/mod_resource/content/0/Domsch%2C%202013%20-%20The%20anatomy%20of%20a%20player%20choice.pdf
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