9 Things NO Video Game Can Get Right

6. Player Choice

When player choice really came on the scene across the 2000s - in genres other than RPGs, anyway - we all rejoiced. Now we'd have so much more agency in the actions on screen. Maybe we'd get to take out a story-critical character, and the remaining narrative would have to bend and contort to our whim.

David Cage made his fortune off the back of this idea, and even GTA IV got in on the action, giving you a handful of 50/50 points across the story where Niko could spare or kill characters. It got as overblown as The Witcher 2, where - and props to them for such an idea - CD Projekt RED practically coded two completely different games, then gave you a choice at the beginning as to which one you wanted to see.

Now, maybe all this seems impressive, but for me, choices never work in games because of three clashing ideologies:

Do I make a decision based on what the character would do, what *I* would do morally, or what I want to see, gameplay or cutscene-wise?

It's why something like GTA 4's choice to kill Dwayne or Playboy X will never be as powerful as the illusion of choice given at the close of The Last of Us, where Joel takes over, kills the surgeons and saves Ellie anyway.

The fact we're forced to reconcile with his actions cements the character and the agency of the player simultaneously, but at least for me, any game with a literal "This, or this?" choice, never truly works.