The end credits roll, and you have just completed your game. Hmm, that ending wasn’t very satisfying. It was still good, but not what you thought it was going to be. You call up your friend who has just beat the same game and talk about it. He talks about the ending and you say, “Hey, that’s not what happened in my ending.” In fact, his ending sounds so much cooler, and you realize that you both played differently, which yielded different results. So, one ending was amazing, the other not so much. Now, think about this situation as a reviewer. Which ending should be reviewed? Should they both be taken into consideration? What happens when there are even more endings that you have no idea about? It’s this very situation that I recently found myself in after finishing Heavy Rain, a game that we will be reviewing shortly. However, this idea applies to so many games now as we see more and more take the branching narrative route. So, let’s look at some of the problems and possible solutions in tackling this type of game.
The main question that arises here is whether or not a review based off of one play-through is fair for a game that has multiple outcomes. Not even just multiple outcomes but branching narratives in general. Sometimes scenes can be missed by players because they didn’t do something to activate it, so should that be taken into consideration? It used to be, in the old days, video games were looked at as a different medium because people said that everyone had a different experience playing the game. Sure, that’s true, but, in the end, everyone has the same general experience. If you beat Mario, you probably went through the exact same levels as your friend and saw the exact same ending. That’s no longer true. In games with branching narratives and level structures, different meanings can be extracted from scenes based on things that you have or have not experienced. These are really uncharted waters, and I feel like reviewers have just jumped in without really thinking about the consequences of judging a game off of a single play through.
The main, and most obvious, problem is that the reviewer may not be reviewing the same experience that a reader has. For example, the reviewer may make mistakes when playing through the game, which could add to extra levels that they feel are too much. In the review, he could write that the game suffers from sections that drag down the game and should have been cut out. Now, say the reader decides to play it and does things perfectly. They may not have to play through these extra sections, and the game could feel like it is a nice length and well paced. The player was given a completely different idea of the game and was lucky that they didn’t just go off the review and gave it a shot anyway.
Another aspect of the experience, and quite an important one, is the narrative itself. The obvious problem here is the case of multiple endings. One ending may play great to a reviewer, and a different ending may have them calling for a boycott. This, however, I will address more in a bit. Another aspect of story is in specific scenes themselves. Sometimes, somebody may not see a specific story scene, or see it in a different context, and it can completely change the way they view the story. For example, in Heavy Rain, there was a scene that I had witnessed that I thought was a sort of fantasy sequence that took place in the ARI world. After talking to Aaron, I realized that I had missed a follow up scene that grounds what I had witnessed in a normal reality. The best-case scenario here is that they both work, and no matter how you view it, it is satisfying and makes sense.
That leads me to what I want to discuss with the endings. Endings should never be poorly done. Even a “bad” ending should make logical narrative sense and bring the story to some sort of a satisfying conclusion. Even if it is an open-ended ending, it should be well done. Multiple endings should be interesting in their own right regarding how they make you view the story and the events that just happened, even if they didn’t happen in the way that you wanted them to.
So, what should reviewers do when they tackle a game that branches out in different directions and can take on different narrative shape? In the end, I do believe that a single play-through is sufficient. As I discussed above, with different scenes that can have an effect on the how the narrative is viewed, and in regards to the ending, the developer should do a good job with every branch. A “good” ending shouldn’t be the only one that you want to see because that is the only one that is good in story quality. Also, in regards to unplayed levels and sequences, again, it is the responsibility of the developer to make sure that the overall experience is good with or without these.
Now, I do believe that a reviewer should discuss their playthrough specifically and let the reader know that there are many different paths a story can take. To be honest, and this isn’t just a plug for the site, I like how we handle reviews here at 4PC because I believe that for games with branching narratives, it is interesting to hear about a group of people’s experience. This way, if one reviewer plays a game and gets the story branch that is the most well-crafted and enjoys it, the other reviewers can expose branches that may not be as good. Then again, if each reviewer had a different experience and each loved it, then you know that it is a quality title.
I urge you readers to take caution when looking at reviews for games that you know have different story outcomes. Without reviewers dumping hours upon hours into a game, you are still taking a risk even if the review is positive. Hopefully, developers will begin to take it upon themselves to make sure that every aspect of the story is well polished instead of just the one that they want you to see. In the same light, it would be nice to see reviewers be more open about their play experiences and acknowledge that theirs may not be the same as yours. Once these two things come together, we can finally start reading reviews for these types of games with complete trust.