Hello again! I am back after an extended absence.
This week I am looking at player agency, games that really give players considerable control over the story or allow for deeper than average roleplaying. Agency is one of the great things about games that I think truly sets them apart from other mediums. In almost all other mediums, a consumer is set upon the path set by the creator. But even linear games offer greater consumer agency than films, novels, or television shows. By allowing a player to have wider control, a personal and unique experience is created. Not every player is best suited to a certain style of gameplay; some may prefer stealth and sneaking while others prefer to “run and gun”.
In previous entries, I have mentioned games with branching story lines and choices that players must make that differentiate different play sessions. While they provide players choice, the choices offered are often specific and lead to certain scripted outcomes. The games I will be discussing this time typically go beyond choices made in games like Tell Tale Games (The Walking Dead and The Wolf Among Us) and the Mass Effect series. Instead, I will be talking about games that often offer large sandbox environments that allow a player to do almost anything he or she wants or can imagine.
Rockstar Games Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption
Rockstar popularized what is known as the sandbox game of today. The series Grand Theft Auto, despite any personal moral qualms with the games, is an important milestone in allowing players to play how they want. In the games, players are given access to a vast array of weapons, including pistols, shotguns, assault rifles, grenades, RPGs, and more still. They are then given access to a large amount of vehicles of their choice and a large city to then cause havoc in. If that weren’t enough there are plenty of legal activities to partake in as well, including bowling, darts, golf, and skydiving. Each of these is fully fleshed out and feels as detailed as a game devoted solely to that singular activity. With so many possibilities, a player is able to pass the time in the game however he or she wants: completing missions, causing chaos and death, racing, or shooting 18 holes on the golf course.
The other games created by Rockstar share this sandbox quality, chief among them Red Dead Redemption. This game throws you back into the wild west as John Marston, outlaw turned rancher family-man, turned outlaw again. It wasn’t until RDR that I gave much interest in Rockstar games. The story is one similar to the Man with No Name movies with Clint Eastwood, or you could forgo the story and instead hogtie an unfortunate character and throw him on the railroad tracks like a mustache twirling villain.
Dishonored
Dishonored adapts its environment and story to the way that the player plays the game. The choices a player makes aren’t clearly given and chosen with a push of a button. Rather, a player in Dishonored chooses whether to infiltrate a building unseen and make the target “disappear” or carve their way through guards and leave a bloody trail. Most games will give a player these choices, but won’t alter the environment or story based on how the level is cleared. The bloodier a player makes the game, the more enemies there are, the dirtier the city becomes, and the darker the ending is. If, instead, a player is able to complete the game without killing, the city is cleaner, there are less enemies, and they finish with the “good” ending. All of this is the player’s minute-to-minute choice.
Beyond this, the way a player navigates a level can be drastically different depending on what gadgets and powers are used. Admittedly, I was not great at this game, but a player that is, makes it looks almost beautiful.
The Elder Scrolls and Fallout
Both of these games series have been mentioned heavily in previous posts. They are RPGs that allow you to immerse yourself into the world and create any kind of character you want to play as. The large open worlds aren’t too different from how open Grand Theft Auto is, though not as viable for fun, full destruction of towns.
The Elder Scrolls series, as described earlier, is a high fantasy series that allows the player to utilize bows, swords, and magic in any combination they want. The leveling system is rather unique, though, in that a character’s skills are leveled based on how often that skill is used: in order to become a better archer, a player must shoot more enemies with arrows. The series is also famously known for allowing a player character to be skilled in everything. A player may choose to go through one dungeon silently as a thief- or assassin-type build, shooting enemies from afar without being detected, and then do another dungeon using spells to heal and cause enemies to turn on one-another. It is this style of gameplay that makes me include it on my list for player agency.
Fallout, is a post-apocalyptic game in which the player is exploring American nuclear wastelands. The gameplay is largely gun-based, though melee weapons and explosives are available as well. While the gameplay is not as variable as in the Elder Scrolls, dialogue and roleplaying is a larger part in this series. If a player is sufficiently skilled in a certain area, new dialogue options are opened up. Players knowledgeable in medicine and science may be able to convince a character to let them have additional supplies. The Fallout games (particularly New Vegas) also allow for varied outcomes based on multiple player choices, choices made in gameplay, not just selected from a list. Interestingly, in Fallout: New Vegas, the final boss of the main story line is able to be passed entirely through dialogue, if the player has taken the correct steps and points. In the upcoming Fallout 4, players will have unprecedented customization available, in which they will be able to customize weapons and even buildings in their own settlements.
The Stanley Parable
This game is what inspired this particular post. The game is constantly narrated, and comments on whether you follow the instructions or not. A player can choose to follow the path as the narrator tells the story, or the player may choose to go off the path and explore. But The Stanley Parable isn’t explored like most games. Strange things happen as the player goes against the narrator, and the game becomes a meta-discussion of games with linear stories and the illusion of choice in games. Unfortunately, I am having difficulty doing this game justice with words alone, so I recommend playing the game, or at least the free demo, which is a different story than the actual game itself.
Minecraft
I speak a lot about Minecraft on this blog, and for good reason: the game has a lot of potential in various fields. Minecraft, more than any Rockstar game, is as much of a sandbox game as you can find. In creative mode, you have access to unlimited amounts of every resource and item in the game to allow you to build anything that you can imagine. Even survival mode allows for amazing amounts of player agency, as there is no story for the player to follow. No two game sessions are the same, and the player is (almost) in complete control of the world.
No Man’s Sky
This game is still in development and almost wasn’t included on this list, but I am very excited for it to come out and the potential is seems to have. No Man’s Sky is a space exploration game unlike any other before it. The developers are claiming that every distant star you see has its own solar system of planets, which can each then be explored at the players. Each planet is created as it is discovered. Where player agency comes in is how it can be played. the game developers claim (as this is the only information to go off of) that players can play as explorers, trying to find new planets and new species; traders, mining resources and combining them to make new items that can be sold for a profit; pirates, attacking trading vessels filled with resources and money; or simply try to make their way to the center of the galaxy. Players that make discoveries of course get to leave their impression in the game forever by naming their discovery as well.
As games continue to evolve, more and more are aiming to be open world games that cater to multiple play styles. The more agency a player has, the more replay value that game has. Additionally, a wider availability of play styles makes a game more accessible to a larger variety of players, bringing in more players to the community.
Do you agree with this list and what I have to say about player agency? Any games I didn’t include that made you think “wow! I can do anything in here!”? Let me know in the comments.
Now is the Time for Games 