Films are Written, Games are Designed.

Tutorials are a tricky thing: being both a first impression and instruction for the experiences ahead; however, I know for a fact that if there is one part of a game that the majority of players complain about, it will be the tutorial. Be they too short, overlong, overly complex, deceptively simplistic, or a myriad of other complaints, poor tutorials fail to communicate some aspect of the game’s design. A problem made even more difficult by the variety of gameplay styles and genre conventions, muddying the waters further; a problem thankfully solved with the passage of time.

Games today operate on a shared knowledge base, which has elevated the pressures of yesteryear by distilling universal concepts like movement, item interaction, and so forth into single images or button prompts. A game no longer teaches you how to move in the play space, because it assumes you already know, and that you only need confirmation of which key binds the developers' default movement to. A solution that has made games more digestible to the initiated but harder perhaps to the outsider — but that is a conversation for another time. I broach the topic because Narrative conventions are not cemented into the shared Games lexicon like movement, camera controls, and pressing RT or R2 to shoot a gun.

Primarily, I am speaking about narrative choice in games: the player’s ability to diverge from or interact with the game's story in meaningful ways. The times when the player has to choose what side of Garelt’s personality they want to lean on in Witcher 3 or when Commander Shepard is poised with a hard call in the Mass Effect series. More to my point, I am speaking about when games fail to communicate the importance of these decisions.

Doing so is two-fold: the player must first understand that their decisions have consequences, whether implicit or explicit, and those consequences must be known to the player in the moment. Hence, they understand the gravity of their decision. In a perfect game story, the player can achieve the outcome they want using what the game has already told them. In Mass Effect, for example, when you finally track the big bad down and discover that he is close to curing the Krogan of the Genophage (a bio-weapon unleashed on the Krogan that turned 98% of their women infertile), your Krogan companion Wrex turns unstable as he puts curing his people above the player’s conflict with the big bad.

After this problem is raised, Shepard has four options: use either their accumulated Paragon/Renegade score to convince Wrex that the big bad will only use the cure to enslave his people, not free them, have another party member shoot Wrex dead, shoot Wrex yourself, or put your trust in Wrex that he’ll see the big picture himself. Now, option four only works if you’ve completed Wrex’s loyalty mission beforehand, gaining his trust in the process. Option one only works if you are committed to either Paragon/Renegade, while options two and three are always open — but result in the worst outcome.

Up to this point, Mass Effect has been informing the player not only about the power of their decisions but also encouraging them to take an active role in getting to know their crew aboard the Normandy. As binary as the Paragon/Renegade system is, it taught new players that whenever they see those options, the game isn’t going to pull any punches. Not only that, but they will be rewarded with a better outcome than if they picked one of the generic options, a choice they earned by playing Shepard one of two ways and not flip-flopping between them, making the Commander a more solid character. In short, they were rewarded for consistent character choices. However, importantly, they also rewarded players’ trust in Wrex if they had grown to like the Krogan as a character; a trust that Wrex only reciprocates if the player interacts with the characters BioWare gave them. This is variable storytelling; this is a Video Game story. 

In essence, BioWare trained players to recognize that certain options carried more weight than others. That said, options are unlocked by making consistent character choices, and you get the opportunity to make those key character choices by interacting with your party members outside of combat.

What’s more, when the player is given this penultimate decision with Wrex, their options are spelled out in plain and simple English on the Dialogue Wheel. Hence, the players know exactly what they are getting themselves into before they make that decision. 

In the event that you have done Wrex’s loyalty mission, Wrex will give you the benefit of the doubt but will ask Shepard if they are doing this for the right reason, prompting the player with the following:

Mass Effect - Confronting Wrex on Virmire w/Family Armor Quest Completed.

Here, “I wouldn’t do this otherwise” and “We are” are similar phrases, but both yield the same ending: Wrex listens, making it clear to the player that all Wrex wants to hear is that Shaped has his people's best interests in mind. If you haven’t done Wrex’s loyalty mission, Wrex will ask a similar question  , but the player will be given this response: 

Mass Effect - Confronting Wrex on Virmire without the Family Armor Quest Completed.

On the left, the Blue and Red options are the ones tied to Shepard’s Paragon and Renegade scores (as they have appeared throughout the game). On the right are the generic responses that don’t answer Wrex’s question and therefore won’t calm him down, leading to another squad mate shooting Wrex if you take too long or don’t do it yourself – outcomes that the game set up in the scene prior to the above confrontation.

Shooting Wrex is the worst outcome. On a narrative level, it is a tragic and somewhat unsatisfying end to Wrex’s story. What’s more, it makes future dealings with the Krogan more difficult. If Wrex lives, he becomes the leader of his clan back on the Krogan home world, unties his people, and repays Shepard’s friendship in Mass Effect 3 by helping the Alliance retake Earth during the Reaper Invasion. An ally the player lacks if they kill Wrex in Mass Effect. However, this is an avoidable outcome if the player is well-versed in how the game works.

Mass Effect wants the player to co-author a story alongside the designers, but not everyone is a writer, nor is everyone versed in the same unspoken language of storytelling. Most have a gut feeling for what makes a good story, one they can’t properly articulate; therefore, it is the designer’s job to guide the player to a satisfying outcome without removing agency.

In Wrex’s case, killing him in Mass Effect is the tragic outcome. An option that the designers don’t intend the player to get, but one that must exist so the internal logic of the story makes sense. Wrex has been characterized thus far as proud and stubborn – like most Krogan. We have also seen that Wrex, like all Krogan, has suffered because of the Genophage. So when a chance to cure his people appears, Wrex, true to his character, demands that this cure be protected and given to his people. This forms the chapter's conflict, and if this were a traditional story, it would end one of two ways: with Wrex dead or swayed. Within a Video Game, both endings are possibilities, depending on what the player decides.

While the designers want the player to save Wrex, they can not make the player save him. What if the player doesn’t like Wrex? Or care about his struggle? Or hell, they might side with the Salarians and approve of the Genophage, seeing it as the one thing keeping the Krogans from breeding like rabbits and taking over the galaxy. These are all possible outlooks the player might have, and the designer has to respect them to preserve agency. If they don’t, the player is back to being a viewer of the story, not a participant. However, the stories those perspectives tell stray from the desired message of Mass Effect, so they must be framed as tragedies, which the game is happy to have play out – but the player will know that there was a better solution without talking down to the player.

What makes a Video Game story engaging is that you are always shown the consequences for your actions, even if they do not align with the designer’s intentions. Consequences you fully understood as you made your choice because the designers took the time to train the player to notice narrative elements within the game’s design. They made sure the player knew when the game was listening, what clues to look for to inform their decisions, and a a clear understanding of what each option would entail once selected,, so there were no surprises. While players may have different opinions on where the story should go, it is the designer's job to ensure that they understand the steps leading up to the choices they make, as well as what comes after.

Poor narrative systems, conversely, are games in which the designers fail to communicate the extent of the player's agency within the narrative or punish players for not adhering to the path the designer had written. In Fire Emblem: Three Houses, you are told that every decision matters; which house you choose to back, who you choose to recruit, how you train units, etc. However, in practice, only four choices matter in this game about choices. The first is your choice of house, which does lock you into a different story path once selected, and you are given the first three story chapters to make that decision. However, that choice is framed differently from every other choice the player gets to make. Normally, Three Houses displays player inputs as a simple list of options.

However, the house choice has a unique UI used only for this one choice, which, in theory, could be used to communicate to the player the differences between a minor and a major choice. Still, this distinction appears only for two of the remaining major choices.

If players choose to side with the Black Eagles, and you have a C+ level support with the house leader, Edelgard, she will ask the player if they will accompany her back to the capital for her coronation as Empress. Now, this choice is optional, similar to Wrex’s Loyalty mission, rewarding players for getting to know key characters in their chosen route. However, unlike with Wrex, there is no safety net; if you pick ‘I must stay,’ you are locked out of siding with Edelgard in the chapters to come. 

While the game tells the player that this decision will have consequences, it has not explained what those consequences are, leaving the outcomes vague. With Mass Effect, the player knew that the difference between helping Wrex and opposing Wrex meant either keeping or losing him as an ally, as it had built up the ravages of the Genophage and Wrex’s pride as a Krogan before you were asked to make your decision on Virmire. What’s more, the player could easily predict the outcome of each choice given to them, either through their understanding of Wrex as a character or their confidence in the game’s narrative systems.

In Three Houses, the player is left with neither a firm understanding of why this choice is make-or-break for Edelgard, nor of her coronation or her responsibilities as the heir to the Empire, which have not been properly communicated. The story up to this point has been more focused on the player/protagonist Byleth and the machinations of the Flame Emperor. And while yes [Spoilers] Edelgard is the Flame Emperor, there are no hints or options to discover that fact before the reveal. This, combined with opaque wording and sparse use of this UI, conveys a false impression of the player's agency. The player was told that every decision has consequences and that those consequences will have knock-on effects in the story, as in Mass Effect;  however, that is not how the designers have trained the player. Instead, they have made it clear that unless they see the UI change, their choice doesn't really matter.   

Being generous, this optional dialogue is meant to trigger a secret path where you team up with Edgelgaurd and take over the world together, and this is supposed to be her test to see if you can be trusted. If that is the case,  why is there not another option for the player to take if they missed this optional interaction? If this choice, whether or not to support Edelgard, is the crux of her storyline like Wrex on Virmire, then the choices the player is given beforehand should build to this moment; gradually testing to see if the player agrees with Edelgard and, in turn, earn her trust.

Essentially, what I am describing are Nightsong Points in Baldur’s Gate 3, the variable used in conjunction with Affinity to decide whether or not Shadowheart listens to the player during her pivotal scene. If Edelgard had asked more probing questions either as herself or the Flame Emperor, ones that the player can respond to and the game can track; questions about loyalty, their opinion of the Church, or how Crests dominate society, then not only does the player get more breadcrumbs to piece the puzzle together themselves, but they are going into that final decision more prepared. Doing so would also reinforce player agency, as all of these questions would be stamped with the same UI as the coronation question, better showing players that their actions do have consequences while also signaling which actions the game is keeping track of; something Three Houses does poorly as well.   

One of the other four actual choices that the player has comes if the player chooses to side with the Blue Lions. However, this choice isn’t a dialogue option; it's whether the player chooses to do one of their housemate's loyalty missions. Again, in theory, this is a good thing; in practice, the game fails to communicate that these loyalty missions (called Paralogs) have story consequences, as neither this game nor any other Fire Emblem in the series has done this. What’s more, in Three Houses, this is the only Paralog that changes the story going forward, killing the character who triggers the mission in the second half of the game if you ignore their mission. Again, a lack of mechanical safety nets and poor communication/training are to blame.

In Three Houses, the designers have trained players to be on the lookout for very specific UI changes to determine whether a choice matters. Changes that have so far only appeared in dialogue scenes and nowhere else. So new players are left competently unaware of this choice, as there is no visual indication that this mission will impact the story, nor does the game tell the player that these missions may change the story going forward. The only reward for completing these side objectives is gear, gold, and experience. Fine rewards on their own, but ones that have no effect on how the story branches; therefore, communicating them as non-essential gameplay content.

If the designers wanted the player to see them otherwise, then they needed Paralogs to reward players with new ways to interact with the cast. In Mass Effect, this is done through both the Loyalty Missions and the Paragon/Renegade system, telling the player that every mission opens new outcomes, even if they aren’t obvious in the moment. In Three Houses, something similar can be done by using the Support System, which is how the game tracks relationships between key NPCs. It is also the system that makes it easier to recruit NPCs from other houses. In brief, most named NPCs not in your house can be recruited to your house if you meet certain requirements, depending on the NPC. Dorothea, for example, will only leave the Black Eagles and join your house if you have a Charm stat of 15 and Rank C Leadership. But with every support level you gain with her, the Charm limit drops by 5, and the Leadership drops half a letter grade, making it easier for you to recruit. So if paralogs, for the most part, gave free support ranks for completing them, there would be a narrative incentive for players to complete them, creating a link to the narrative systems. Supports also give bonuses to allied units in battle, so even if an NPC is already in your house, you want a high support rank so they do better in combat.

Regardless of how you do it, the bottom line is that players need to be told that Paralogs affect the story beyond just losing items or experience. There is another Paralog that you get if you are in Black Eagles or Blue Lions, where Dorothea tries to help Ingrid avoid an arranged marriage. If completed, Ingrid sees that her suitor is a creep and calls off the marriage; if incomplete, nothing happens. To better convey narrative stakes, failure to complete this mission should remove Ingrid either from being recruited into the Black Eagles or from the pool of potential partners the players can marry at the end of the game. This way, players know that both action and inaction have consequences, and that if they care about a certain character, they should make it a priority to complete their paralogs without outright removing them from the story altogether. Not saying you still can’t kill a character if you don’t complete certain objectives, but that tragedy has to be known to the player as a possible outcome, and they need to have more than one way of avoiding it. 

I have mentioned this a few times in passing, but it is worth stating once again more directly: player agency depends on mechanical safety nets. Each player will come at your story is different ways, but all your players will have a common goal: interacting with your story. They want to see how their actions will shift the events of the narrative, to get something different than their buddy, or to change an outcome they don’t like. To do this, they need multiple avenues to the same outcome.

Returning to Wrex as the simplest example, players can either devote time and resources to completing his Loyalty mission or amass enough Paragon/Renegade points to pass a speech check. While two options may not sound like much, they are still enough to maintain player agency, as both are tied to mechanical interactions within the play space: completing quests and making choices.

Growing in complexity, in Baldur’s Gate 3, players will have multiple instances to earn Nightsong Points and Affinity with Shadowheart. These points are scattered across the game and require the player to rely on their understanding of Shadowheart to find them. But due to their sheer quantity and tandem relationship with Affinity, so long as you are making an honest attempt to befriend or romance Shadowheart, without further indoctrinating her, you will earn enough points to persuade her without needing to use the Persuasion Check option.

Three Houses has neither of these; it only has four paths to follow, and once you are on one, there's no getting off. Contrast that again with Mass Effect or Baldur's Gate, which will let you veer off course (to varying degrees per title) no matter your current path.

Have you tried placating the Galactic Council at every turn, only for them to continue to treat you as an inferior, so you refuse to save them in the finale? Go ahead.

Did you butcher the Druids with Minthara only to realize you were both being used by the Dead Three to further their nefarious machinations, so swear vengeance upon the Absolute, ultimately destroying the cult and their false God? Better late than never.

Try to convince Dmitri that his single-minded vendetta against the Empire will only end with him dead in a gutter and his kingdom in ruin? Sorry, not in the script.

Telling a good story in a Video Game goes beyond merely writing a scene and positing a camera. It requires dedicated systems, tractable variables, alternate scenes, and a player who understands their own role in the story being told. Because it is their story.