Does a game with multiple main story arcs exist? - Games

I've searched the internet for a game like this for quite a while and nothing has turned up. It's kind of hard to describe, but I'll try to draw parallels that have incorporated this mechanic somewhat: [b]○[/b] Fallout 3: You can decide to [sp]blow up Megaton[/sp] or save it. It has somewhat of an effect on the main story, but it doesn't quite hit the mark. [b]○[/b] Undertale: The whole [sp]Pacificst/Neutral/Genocide[/sp] thing. It adds/takes a lot of stuff from the story, but again, there's no fundamental change to the main story. Repeated playthroughs are still somewhat tedious. [b]○[/b] Life is Strange: you're constantly given choices that affect the story but it only changes minor plot details. After all, at the end of the game you're still confronted with the choice of either [sp]destroying Arcadia Bay[/sp] or [sp]killing Chloe[/sp]. I think the medium that best parallels what I'm looking for is those "choose your own adventure" books. If you've never read them, they typically start on page 1, and after a few pages you're confronted with a decision. "To do X, go to page 43. To do Y, go to page 18." There's a fundamental change in the story based on the choice you made. So fundamental that it actually would be 100% worth it to read through it again. So, back to this game I'm looking for (if it exists): I'll give a hypothetical. Halfway through the game you run into someone who lost the key to their apartment. They tell you what it looks like and what room it goes to, etc. With that information you are given a choice: you either help them find the key and give it to them, or you keep the key to yourself. If you keep the key to yourself, you gain access to their apartment which includes their car keys, laptop, Canadian passport, etc. You can use this to fake their identity and travel to Canada. And then the game just continues in Canada. If you decide to give it to them, then you end up befriending the guy and he gives you some maple syrup or something. And the game just continues in whatever country it is. The change in the story would be so great that it actually would be worthwhile to start over from the beginning and make the other choice, just to see where the story leads. I hope that gives you a good enough idea of what I have in mind. In a sense, multiple stories have to get written and some of these stories / voice acting / levels / etc just don't show up for some players. I feel like this game just doesn't exist due to the nature of modern game development (after all, why make content that won't be seen by most players?). But I hope I'm wrong.

Witcher 2 pulled it off with 2 main story arcs, the human path and the nonhuman path. Witcher 3 had plans for 2 story arcs too, but it ended up being cut just because of how big the game was already.

The Wing Commander games feature branching storylines, and the variations you experience can dramatically change the outcome of the game. In either WC1 or 2 (I can't remember which, possibly both tbh), it is entirely possible to "lose" the storyline (humanity loses the war against the cats), and getting this ending is actually a matter of doing a bit badly in the game and then failing five missions prior to the end of the game. Those remaining four missions are the desperate thrashings of the failing human resistance to the Kilrathi campaign, and each mission makes sure to kill off one of the wingmen you've built up a relationship with during the course of the story (varies depending on your choices). You have to win these missions to get the ending cutscene where humanity loses, but you can't change the outcome because the tide of war has turned and it's already too late. The Wing Commander games are available on GOG.com. Also, at some point during my lifetime Squadron 42, the single-player campaign to Star Citizen and the spiritual successor to Wing Commander, will come out, and it is to have a branching storyline with lots of unique dialogue for the different branches and variations. They've used performance capture with celebrity actors for the characters, and the shooting script (including variations and random environmental lines) is hundreds of pages. So hopefully it won't suck and the branches will be more than different wingmen wanting to fuck you and a different coloured explosion.

the stanley parable to an extent

Corpse party game. Seriously,every single action will effect the ending

Fallout New Vegas diverges a ton towards the end depending on your actions, far more than F3 if you were into that. Hard to find a game where those sort of game-changing decisions take place towards the beginning though because that creates serious amounts of extra content the average player's unlikely to see.

ace combat

[QUOTE=lardycheese;51616708]I think the medium that best parallels what I'm looking for is those "choose your own adventure" books. If you've never read them, they typically start on page 1, and after a few pages you're confronted with a decision. "To do X, go to page 43. To do Y, go to page 18." There's a fundamental change in the story based on the choice you made. So fundamental that it actually would be 100% worth it to read through it again. ...[/QUOTE] You just literally described this game - [url=http://store.steampowered.com/app/439190/]Stories: The Path of Destinies[/url]. I fucking adored this game, but acknowledged that it has many flaws in design execution and the utter repetitiveness.

[url=https://vndb.org/]Most visual novels[/url] do this. Borderline-games though. The Witcher 2 did this where the second chapter (half of the game) takes place in a different location with different characters and your allegiances for the rest of the game depend on it. I imagine you're not going to find a lot of video games like this however because truly branching narratives are difficult to write and might be considered wasteful if choices end up locking the player out of most of the game's total content.

If you think Visual Novels are games, then [URL="https://vndb.org/v11"]Fate/Stay Night[/URL] is your best bet. Each of the three story arcs (Fate, Unlimited Blade Works, and Heaven's Feel) are different in their own unique ways.

Obsidian Entertainment has recently released an isometric RPG called Tyranny, where you are basically a law enforcer for an evil wizard overlord sent in an indipendent region to break the inhabitants and make them join the Empire. The story developes in three acts. In the first one, you either decide to support Evil Legion A, Evil Legion B, the freedom fighters themselves or, simply put, yourself as an anarchist. The following two acts are about see where your choice will lead you (though you are given the option to betray your allies of choices and go anarchist at any point). Granted, Tyranny ends rather abruptly (apparently they couldn't make the fourth and fifth acts) and, after a point, the game stops being interactive, as far as the story is concerned, but you may find it to your liking. Other games I played in the past that may help you would be: - Obsidian Entertainment games in general, which always strive to achieve interactive storytelling, with varying degree of success. Among them, I'd avise Planescape: Torment, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II - The Sith Lords and Fallout: New Vegas - Old BioWare games. In the past, BioWare had an habit with featuring a single, end-game choice capable of changing your character and your final objective, but mind you, only in the later stages of the game and not before. Examples of such games would be Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and Jade Empire - Recent BioWare games as well, which feature choices that, at first, may not appear to change anything in the current story, but tend to turn up in following games, sometimes in unexpected ways. Examples of such games would be the Mass Effect and the Dragon Age series - Bohemian Killing, a small indie adventure/walking simulator game. Basically, you play as a Parisian guy convicted for murder as he narrates the events of the murder's evening. You can interact with people and items on the scene to change events and try to escape your responsability. Depending on how you manipulated the scene, you can end up on the guilottine, found innocent, ... for a total of nine endings - Layers of Fear, another indie on the same vein as Bohemian Killing: you are a painter fell on hard times who is exploring his own mansion in order to find the inspiration for his next painting. Everything has this dream-like atmosphere and what you do (or don't do) while walking around affects the ending - Papers, Please, a strange hybrid between a visual novel and a puzzle game. You are a frontier officer of a communist-like country tasked with checking the documents of the people coming to you to pass the border. While you can execute your duty to the letter, you can also take more unconventional options, which open up different "storylines" that end the game in a different way each time. You must also manage what you earn to provide for your family (which, of course, needs to eat, recive medicine and be warm) - Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines, a third person action/stealth RPG by Troika Games where you control a man/woman who has just been turned into a vampire. Not only you can customize your vampire with the stats, attributes and powers you want (depending on your clan of choice), but during the main questline you are called to make several decisions both for your character and the vampire community. Bloodline also plays very much as a Deus Ex game (different abilities allow you to face different situations differently), so even gameplay can be molded to your liking - The Witcher and The Witcher II: Assassins of Kings, which both feature a certain point in an early act where you must choose your allegiance to one of the available groups. In the first game, this only changes the NPCs opposing or helping you in the final hour of the game, but in Assassins of Kings choosing the rebels over the humans open two different storylines entirely, with you meeting different people, uncovering different aspects of the plot and be tasked to do different things. The common opinion here is that you can't say you cleared The Witcher II's story if you didn't experience both pahts I hope I was of any help. Games with interactive stories are so hard to find these days, among so many wannabes (like Firewatch or the TellTale series)

[QUOTE=Zonesylvania;51616712]Witcher 2 pulled it off with 2 main story arcs, the human path and the nonhuman path.[/QUOTE] Only issue is that it doesn't give you that much of a different game, level wise tbh I wish it ended up having 2 drastically different levels per choice. Choosing was one of the harder decisions I had to make but it didn't matter as much as it should have in the end.

I'm gonna take the question in a more literal direction and say Legend of Mana. Three seperate "main" arcs available simultaneously, along with a bunch of other scattered minor missions and arcs. None of the arcs are explicitly required to complete the game, you can do any one or all of them.

Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together does a good job of it. It has multiple story paths and endings, and the post game lets you jump around the timelines and explore a bit. My only complaint is it suffers from what a lot of JRPGS do, with late game being a huge pain with tons of instakills and since new recruits start at level 1, they become burdens when trying out different storylines post game. Also to 100% the game you have to complete [sp]a 100 floor dungeon. Twice.[/sp] Overall I enjoyed it a lot, and if you liked Final Fantasy: Tactics, you'll probably enjoy Ogre Tactics.

[QUOTE=TWKUK;51616959]I'm gonna take the question in a more literal direction and say Legend of Mana. Three seperate "main" arcs available simultaneously, along with a bunch of other scattered minor missions and arcs. None of the arcs are explicitly required to complete the game, you can do any one or all of them.[/QUOTE] [video=youtube;Y1PnieCgVyY]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1PnieCgVyY[/video] One of the last Playstation 1 games and an underrated classic. Also one of my favourite video game soundtracks ever. The first Star Ocean requires you to beat it 2.5x times (you can start from a save partway through for the last side character) to get all of the party members and see their side stories, which does introduce entire new sidequests and alters how scenes play out (for example a certain plot point plays out a bit differently depending on if you picked up the minor character that happens to be related to the NPC in the plot point). As far as I know, the other Star Ocean games follow this broad pattern with refinements.

[QUOTE=elixwhitetail;51616816]The Wing Commander games feature branching storylines, and the variations you experience can dramatically change the outcome of the game. In either WC1 or 2 (I can't remember which, possibly both tbh), it is entirely possible to "lose" the storyline (humanity loses the war against the cats), and getting this ending is actually a matter of doing a bit badly in the game and then failing five missions prior to the end of the game. Those remaining four missions are the desperate thrashings of the failing human resistance to the Kilrathi campaign, and each mission makes sure to kill off one of the wingmen you've built up a relationship with during the course of the story (varies depending on your choices). You have to win these missions to get the ending cutscene where humanity loses, but you can't change the outcome because the tide of war has turned and it's already too late. The Wing Commander games are available on GOG.com. Also, at some point during my lifetime Squadron 42, the single-player campaign to Star Citizen and the spiritual successor to Wing Commander, will come out, and it is to have a branching storyline with lots of unique dialogue for the different branches and variations. They've used performance capture with celebrity actors for the characters, and the shooting script (including variations and random environmental lines) is hundreds of pages. So hopefully it won't suck and the branches will be more than different wingmen wanting to fuck you and a different coloured explosion.[/QUOTE]Speaking of old space games, Colony Wars does the same thing iirc, but as far as I know it's a PS1 exclusive.

[url=http://store.steampowered.com/app/234920]Dyscourse[/url] works that way but it's quite short and the style might be too unique for someone's taste. I always wished for a Telltale game like that but even one major branch split followed by another play hour could be considered risky when development time and money is limited.

There's Wolfenstein New Order but the differences are really small

Resident Evil 2 has the whole zapping system, which provides four different scenarios based on which character the player picks and when.

Shadow the hedgehog had diverging stories that varied heavily.

[QUOTE=Im Crimson;51616859][url=https://vndb.org/]Most visual novels[/url] do this. Borderline-games though. The Witcher 2 did this where the second chapter (half of the game) takes place in a different location with different characters and your allegiances for the rest of the game depend on it. I imagine you're not going to find a lot of video games like this however because truly branching narratives are difficult to write and might be considered wasteful if choices end up locking the player out of most of the game's total content.[/QUOTE] Stein's Gate is the perfect version of this. I didn't even [I]realize[/I] that I made a decision to put me onto a completely different story path.

[QUOTE=geogzm;51616818]the stanley parable to an extent[/QUOTE] Just played it. That's basically what I'm looking for. Unfortunately each arc is very short and the game is really meta, but I guess that's all that can be achieved nowadays without some insane amount of content put in. It's a really good proof of concept. I'm gonna try Steins;Gate next (I really liked the anime), and probably will have to borrow my friends 360 to play Witcher 2. These suggestions will probably keep me occupied for weeks. Thanks all.

[QUOTE=Lexinator;51617358]Shadow the hedgehog had diverging stories that varied heavily.[/QUOTE] I can't make out this post's intention, but Shadow the Hedgehog [I]did[/I] have brancing storylines you could change on a brim depending on the one of three objectives you decided to follow and clear first in each map. Putting the minor variations aside, you could ally with Sonic & Co., the evil invading alien army, Dr. Eggman and even yourself and yourself alone. Granted, Shadow the Hedgehog had some issues to be sure and, after unlocking every story segment available, you recive a The Last Story sequence which basically provides a canonical, non player-driven final level, but still

[QUOTE=lardycheese;51618486]Just played it. That's basically what I'm looking for. Unfortunately each arc is very short and the game is really meta, but I guess that's all that can be achieved nowadays without some insane amount of content put in. It's a really good proof of concept. I'm gonna try Steins;Gate next (I really liked the anime), and probably will have to borrow my friends 360 to play Witcher 2. These suggestions will probably keep me occupied for weeks. Thanks all.[/QUOTE] Keep in mind that the thing about visual novels with highly branching stories is that they'll often have a main canon story arc that make you finish every other arc to unlock. So from a certain perspective, if you want a really satisfying conclusion it's less "choose which story you want to experience" and more "choose which ORDER you want to experience the stories in". That's true of Steins;gate as well.

Mechwarrior 4: Mercenaries to my knowledge had allowed you to take per-planet missions in any order as well as to get 4 different endings based on your actions: 2 Faction Endings, 1 Independent, and 1 mid-game "Bad" End where you would join a clan. Edit: Correction: There are 3 endings: Davion, Steiner/Clanner, and Rogue Independent.

[QUOTE=LoLWaT?;51626271]I can't believe Shadow the Hedgehog is the only game I can think of that does a branching story properly. Like from the very first level and even the next couple of levels you land on it just completely alters which levels you'll take through to the end. Sucks it was so lame, probably sinking all validation with it. There were some interesting levels you'd possibly never get without playing through over and over again.[/QUOTE] I don't care what anyone says, shadow the hedgehog was one of my favorite games ever. The soundtrack was pretty good, too.

The Dynasty Warriors series kinda does it, even if most of the game play comes down to button mashing. I recently started playing through Dynasty Warriors 8, and it lets you pick which kingdom you want to follow the story of, then in some of the stages they have certain conditions, where if met you could unlock an extra stage, or you can prevent the death of an officer so that they appear in later stages as playable characters, allies, enemies, or reinforcements. In the camps before certain battles, officers and troops will even comment on what you have accomplished. Like, if you beat one stage without saving someone, troops will say "it's unfortunate that (so and so) died in the battle of (certain stage), (s)he would have been very useful here," or "our master wishes he could've saved more people at the battle of (stage)." And cut scenes will even play differently if a person who died in a certain battle gets saved, or if you defeated the enemy officers in a certain order. I haven't beaten any of the campaigns yet, but at one point it looks like the path splits based on whether or not you met certain conditions in earlier stages in your play-through. And there are major 5 campaigns to chose from, and one minor one.

Front Mission 3 has two different, 50+ hour scenarios based on a single choice within the first 30 minutes or so of the game. It's never exposed that's what that relatively mundane choice does, but it gives you a different viewpoint of the story, with new missions and equipment exclusive to each choice. Beyond that it's pretty linear, though.

Sonic adventure 2 You can be good guys or bad guys

It wasn't exactly branching, but in MechWarrior 3: Pirate's Moon you had a choice of two seperate campaigns playing either as the protagonist or the pirates. In the very first pirate mission you kill the protagonist.