There have been games with branching narratives for a long time, such as Mass Effect which gave different endings, but also different details such as which of your companions survived, and would come back in sequels.
So, it can be said that while branching narratives are not common, they have been used for a long time.
I believe All Hail Temos is doing something newer in this area, which I am calling an “Open Branching Narrative”, which is much less common and you may not have seen before.
Previous branching narratives were still a linear story, but had different endings or details, and sometimes they were cut into different chunks of linear story and branching endings, but could be played in any order. We can also say branching narratives have “side effects” such as some characters dying, and not being available later, because it changes the total experience of the story, but doesn’t change any of the potential endings.
So if a linear story is just one chunk with one end, a branching narrative would be several chunks with different endings, that can be rearranged.
Open Branching Narrative has the same elements as a branching narrative, but also can be entered in different ways, entered at different progression of the narrative chunk.
What Is Open Branching
In a previous post, I wrote about the Shape of an Adventure, and showed how there can be multiple ways to end an adventure, but also multiple ways to enter an adventure, and that adventures could be entered in the beginning or middle of the adventure.
Why would you enter into the middle of an adventure? Because you had already changed the world in such a way that the beginning of that adventure had already progressed.
For example if you had an adventure about rescuing a captured person, and there are several ways of the learning about the captured person, but as you encounter them, you say “No, I don’t want to do this”, rejecting the adventure.
Then later, when you happen to find the captured person, you also find the group of people you rejected helping, and are now in the middle of that adventure, if you choose to engage with it. Later, you may hear about the end of that adventure, and how the ending changed the world, because you declined to engage with it, rejecting it through action or inaction. It’s not a timed quest, it is an adventure that progressed along because of choices you made during interactions presented to you.
You were the one who made that adventure move forward by first rejecting the adventure. Then when you found the prisoner area, the adventure progressed so that you met the people there who want to rescue them.
If you had met a different group of people initially, then different people would be trying to rescue them, or perhaps guarding them, because alternative branches of the story could be presented differently. The same adventure, but with different parties having different goals.
So, I think about it like this:
- Having different endings means it is a branching narrative.
- The amount of branching increases if these branching narratives stack together, so a branch in one changes the next narrative. This means there is “more branching”, compared to being “more linear”.
- Next, if you allow different ways to start an adventure, and those different starts bring along new context to the adventure, this is now an “open branching narrative”.
- If there are even more times to start (such as in the middle of the adventure), or there is stacking between other adventures, then this is “more open branching”.
In this way All Hail Temos strives to be a “more open branching” style of gameplay.
Breakdown
Linear
- 1 entrance to story
- 1 exit to story, 1 ending
- No side effects from story
Branching Narrative
- 1 entrance to story
- Multiple exits to story, multiple endings
- Has side effects, that change future stories
- Can do some in any order
Open Branching Narrative
- Multiple entrances to story
- Multiple entrances available, even after the story has progressed
- Multiple exits to story, multiple endings
- Has side effects, that change future stories
- Can do any in any order
A more complex Open Branching Narrative adventure
When to Stop Open Branching
There is a time when I stop open branching being possible in All Hail Temos, and that is when you have entered an “Epic-Ending”. This is a final branching narrative section that leads to a multiple ending state and gives you the credits. The end.
The purpose for this is to still have big build ups and climaxes, even though it is normally an open branching game. This keeps some of the excitement of a normal Main Quest, even though All Hail Temos does not have a main quest.
At the time you reach the decision point to start an Epic Ending, you will be prompted to agree, once you start you can’t get out of the adventure, and it could end well or badly, but the end is coming once you agree. It won’t be timed, all the progression will be from things you do through dialogue or action.
After the skippable credits, you can continue playing and have many other adventures with Epic Endings, although for the initial release I will only have 1 Epic Ending to get things going.
How does this affect gameplay?
In a linear narrative, the adventure you go on is not gameplay, it is the theme and background to the gameplay, and provides context and meaning, but is not gameplay in itself. Because the story is linear, the player has no input to modify it.
In a branching narrative, the adventure you go on has gameplay at points along the story, and it can change how you play, making the narrative now a strategic and tactical gameplay tool.
In an open branching narrative, the adventure just has more ways that you can make choices, and the choices are more likely to have different outcomes that keep stacking more as you play. History accumulates from previous open branching decisions you made, which alter everything you see afterwards.
This means that the narrative is now gameplay more frequently, and that the topology of game-world (characters, story, scenery, the meaning behind actions), will change to become more and more unique as the game progresses.
Even selecting the starting adventures you take will start to change the later adventures, because there is context saved from each adventure, so the branching may have already started from the beginning.
At each moment of decision, there are only a few choices, but over time there will be a large number of inter-dependent choices creating a unique contextual situation for the player.
Conclusion
Hopefully this wasn’t too abstract, but I thought it was an interesting distinction. I am always trying to think about what I’m doing in All Hail Temos that I think is different or an important element that might be especially appealing.
