player choice
Interactive narrative branching
Player choice refers to decisions a video game allows the player to make that affect gameplay, narrative, or outcomes.
Games emphasizing player choice let you shape the story through dialogue options, moral decisions, or branching paths: The game's player choice system means your decisions actually matter.
The term often appears in discussions of RPGs and narrative-driven games where meaningful agency is a selling point.
- decisionSettled course of action
- agencyPower to act
- freedomAbsence of constraint
- branchingSplitting into separate directions
- consequenceResult of an action
path · option · dialogue · dialogue tree · morality · moral compass · narrative · multiple endings · good ending · bad ending · control · sandbox · open world · ending · karma · fate · interactive · roleplay
- RPG designgame balance, worldbuilding, house rules, homebrew, session zero
- gamingvideo games, buff, games, PlayStation 4, gameplay
- sandbox gamesMinecraft, building, No Man's Sky, Roblox, creative mode
- game designmechanics, level design, game balance, balancing, playtesting
- game narrativestory, narrative, plot, storyline, dialogue tree
- story gamesinteractive fiction, visual novels, text adventures, gamebooks, multiple endings
player choicelinear narrative
Story following chronological order
railroading · linear progression · cutscene · cinematic storytelling · hand-holding
player, choice, play, choose, plays, played, playing, playable, replay