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Choice seems to be the spectacle of the hour lately. Everywhere you turn it's staring you in the face, taunting you with a single question. "What you gonna do?" I'm not going to bash choice in video games. The ability to make an experience keenly my own is one I treasure, and urge developers to continue forward. I was giddy the first time I played Oblivion and was tasked with molding my hero. The fact that I was limited to hideously ugly feature sets didn't set in until much later. Playing Final Fantasy IV DS recently, I fell in love with the Augment system and how it allowed me to customize a party that in previous versions had been terribly static.
All of this said, I sometimes miss linearity. A lot can be said about choice and how great it is. But the treasured moments that dominate my gaming history are oftentimes from games with only one possible outcome. How many gamers have fond memories of playing Super Mario Brothers? If ever there was a linear game that was it, and yet it still always dominates the Best Games of All Time lists, whenever a site deigns to print one.
Sometimes it's nice to have a game where the story is mapped out from the start, where you're just around for the ride and the developers have something already in mind for you all their own. That is, if they do it right. The kind of linear game I enjoy is only good if the people behind it use your lack of choice in an effective way.
In example, The Darkness was one of the most linear games I've played in recent years. There is no choice of where to go and what you can do. Your goals are laid out by the game from start to finish, but it works because the game is very much centered on its plot. You play the game happily because you want to experience the story. Moreover when the game really kicks in, its lack of choice makes it all the more poignant. In one scene, your character, unable to move is forced to watch as his girlfriend is tortured and murdered. Other games might have offered you other options. But having no control works to the game's advantage. Forcing you to watch the villain do something to someone your character loves makes you genuinely hate the guy you're after. That emotion drives the rest of the game.
There are times where too many options can work to the detriment of a game as well. Save for a few, most of the recent iterations of the Final Fantasy franchise have fallen prey to a similar criticism. Everyone in the game can do too much. By the end of the games most characters are practical Gods, able to fight, heal and blast away with all the best spells despite the fact that it doesn't really fit their character all that well. Oblivion does this as well; it's perfectly possible to join the Dark Brotherhood, murder a ton of innocent people and then go on with the same character and become the hero of Tamriel. You can choose to be everything to everyone and that just doesn't make sense. In both mentioned series, it would have made more sense, and made it even more tactically interesting to make each choice bear consequences. If you fashion a Final Fantasy character into a warrior they should lose the ability to use magic. Choosing one path in Oblivion would have held more weight if it cut you off from another. Sometimes less choice is more.
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