3. How does morality influence the choices you make in the game?
The Wolf Among Us
The Wolf Among Us is an interactive adventure video game that is separated into multiple episodes. It operates as a mystery drama that feels like a playable comic. While it works as a point-and-click adventure game, the core of the gameplay relies upon the player's decision-making. Knowing this, the player's morality is the most influential defining factor in the choice of prompts to progress through the game's narrative.
As I played the through the game with Sheriff Bigby Wolf, I was faced with both minor and major decisions in ensuring the safety of the residents of Fabletown. The minor decisions influenced how a scene folded out and also how I perceived all characters and the situation presented to them, while major decisions determined the fate of certain characters and what future events I could experience next. From reactions received from other characters to a shocking turnout of events, I felt that the decisions I made based upon what I thought was 'righteous' tailored the events to unfold onward.
Like Adam Bishop said, "If you want the player to actually feel as though they have agency, you need to provide them with more than just aesthetic differences between their options." While there aren't major mechanical gameplay changes influenced by your decision-making, there is heavy change in the development of the narrative and events to be experienced, which would then suffice as encouragement for player agency. Gameplay would change in the sense that you would be experiencing a different part of the story according to your morality and how it influenced you in picking your choices, compared to something such as getting upgrades or increasing the game's difficulty. This works well for a very narrative-driven game such as the Wolf Among Us and proved to be a wonderful experience.
References:
- Telltale Games (Developer). (1992). The Wolf Among Us [Video Game]. United States of America: San Rafael, California
- Bishop, A. (2009, 9th March). Gamasutra: The Art & Business of Making Video Games. [Weblog]. Retrieved 13 March 2016, from http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/AdamBishop/20090309/832/Morality_In_Video_Games.php
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