Massive Effect

So, Mass Effect, then.

Mass Effect is a multimedia property centring around a series of three video games released between 2007 and 2012. I have recently been playing through the series for the first time, and -

Wait, let me first talk a little about Star Trek: Resurgence.

Star Trek: Resurgence is a video game and, mostly, visual novel based around the multimedia property Star Trek, released in 2024, which -

Wait, let me first talk a little about interactive novels.

Back in the late 20th Century, there were a series of books (and many imitators) called "Choose Your Own Adventure". Upon reaching the end of each numbered passage, the reader would be given a choice, a branching path in the narrative, with each choice prompting a continuation elsewhere in the book. A recent article by Atlas Obscura showcased some diagrams illustrating the structure of these narratives; in many cases each choice led to an entirely distinct narrative, two or more paths that did not reconnect at all. In other books, some choices could loop back to earlier paths, the narrative being carefully written so that it does not comment on whether you came straight here or took the detour.

It's a key concept, I think, that the book has a limited number of pages. No, bear with me.

If your book has 100 pages, and you want that first choice to result in two entirely disparate stories, this does not magically give you two 100-page stories. You have to split those pages between the two branches. Effectively you have two 50-page stories. Any genuine branching must naturally shorten the length of each remaining branch.

Fast forward thirty years and we have a wealth of virtual interactive novels - computerised stories which mimic the CYOA structure except instead of having to manually flip to each selected passage, you simply make your selection and the computer shows you the appropriate text. (I'm skimming past text-based games like Zork or HHGTTG because these were more often like a series of puzzles than a branching narrative.) One would think that, in the virtual realm, the page count limitation is gone, and it kind of is, except there is still the practical limitation of development time. The story can't simply be infinite because somebody has to write, craft, orchestrate all of these branches and the more you do that, the more your game is delayed. So again, any actual branching in the narrative must inevitably shorten the effective experience from beginning to end (replays notwithstanding).

As a consequence many modern interactive novels hew closer to that recombining-paths model, a single narrative with some optional detours. Yes, you still have premature endings if your character leaps into the abyss or falls on a sword, but ultimately the entire story has a beginning, myriad middles, and a single end.

Star Trek: Resurgence is an excellent example of this.

It is, essentially, a single, fixed story. There are a ton of points at which you can influence the narrative - you can pick characters to support, rescue, or jeopardize, choose strategies to resolve problems. And these decisions have, kind of, lasting consequences! Characters you ignore may side against you later. Somebody you help might lend you aid. Wounds you cause will persist through the rest of the game and could colour somebody's perception.

But here's the thing: Those narrative consequences are not functionally significant. If you decline to reveal a significant fact, and the story requires it to be revealed, somebody else will mention it. If an ally abandons you at a crucial moment, the only difference is that they are not featured in the cutscene. Any actions they would have taken are either picked up by somebody else or simply not essential. I know this because many of these story junctures reward you with trophies for making different choices, and you can only get all the trophies by playing it at least twice, and so that is what I did. Despite the diametrically opposed decisions, all the same beats were hit, everyone got to the same places. There were some differences in the final cutscenes, particularly the number and nature of casualties reported, but fundamentally The Threat Was Overcome at the same time in broadly the same way.

(one of the junctures actually has three trophies for mutually-exclusive decisions, so in theory you'd need to play it through three times; I cheated this by making one choice and reloading the scene, because I did not need to play it through again.)

This is a common strategy to a lot of interactive fiction, from Choice Of Games LLC text adventures to the more animated offerings from Telltale Games. Text adventures tend to have a lot more branching simply because a paragraph of text isn't a fully rendered scene - if you choose your words carefully the same paragraph can be read after multiple disparate paths without any changes, because the reader's context and memory will fill in the blanks. You simply don't mention whether the POV character is fresh and fit or exhausted or bloodied. You can't do that with a visual depiction (though modern real-time game engines can of course switch in character models or textures with little difficulty). So your full 3D game experiences tend to follow the more rigid, single-path-with-some-tailoring structure Resurgence is a paragon of.

Which brings us to Mass Effect. Where Star Trek: Resurgence is a visual novel which includes some video game elements, Mass Effect is a solid action-RPG video game which employs some visual novel techniques.

The Mass Effect series prided itself on allowing its players choices and options. The first game offers a series of Apparently Significant decisions! The third game then has to Deal With these decisions. And it deals with them, in the classic visual novel style, by not dealing with them at all.

The best example of this is probably (famously?) the Rachni Queen, and you'd better believe there will be SPOILERS from this point on.

In Mass Effect 1 you are given the choice to execute or spare the last remaining Queen (in the insect sense) of this known invasive species. It's partly a moral quandary but also a gamble; the Queen assures you she has no interest in the aggressive ways and wants only for her species to survive. More than the question of whether it's morally acceptable to do a genocide to protect innocents, it's about whether you can show trust and empathy for a creature that has done you no harm. Whatever you decide, the consequences immediately shuffle off screen and are absent through ME2.

Come Mass Effect 3, the developers clearly decided they needed to follow up on this plot thread. There is therefore an entire mission where you face off against more rogue Rachni, corrupted by the Reapers! You fight your way through the nests to find, at its core, the very Queen you allowed to survive in game 1! In another fraught decision point you must choose whether to free the Queen again, hoping they can throw off the Reapers' control, or execute them!

You've no doubt noticed where I'm going here: What if you didn't spare the Queen in the first game? Surely, this entire thing is dependent on that? If you killed her off, the Reapers must have no Rachni forces and this mission never happens?

Nope! In that event, the Queen is simply swapped out for a clone ("The Breeder"). The action plays out as before. The dialogue is slightly changed and their reactions are a little different, but the only substantive difference is how many points you get towards the Big War Effort Score. And that only really determines whether some of your companions survive a late-stage mission (after the point where their death can have any actual impact on the story, of course).

The same happens with most of your other major decisions or success/failure points through the games. You decided - or your performance determined - who lived and who died, but any character who actually died or whose sympathy you did not earn, is replaced by a substitute. A clone, a brother, a random officer. The tent remains propped up in a pre-determined shape, only the poles supporting it are changed.

All of which isn't necessarily to say "This is bad." As noted above, this is a somewhat inevitable consequence of the way video games are developed and conceived. The idea of robbing somebody of several hours' worth of gameplay, simply because they picked the wrong option two games earlier (or selected that option in the "what has gone before" dialogue, if they're not importing a game)? Ridiculous. Presenting an entirely different mission for people who made that choice? Simply not practical. Not everybody's going to play your game multiple times, you have to at least give everyone the chance to access all of the missions the first time through. These people have paid for your entire game, after all.

(There are points in ME3 where you can miss missions, by virtue of their being Emergency Distress Calls that there are consequences for ignoring for too long, but that is of course a form of decision.)

Anyway. In conclusion: Interactive fiction is hard, and video games are expensive. Any game that wants to present a truly branching narrative has to do an awful lot of extra work, and ideally be short enough that players can experience all the permutations they choose. If you want to know more about this - and The Illusion Of Choice - I strongly suggest you play "The Stanley Parable", which is a game that is all about choice and branching narratives and really, really worth your time.