By Jennifer Simpkins

Choice – ain’t it a thing? It feels pretty good to have a say in a given situation. It’s probably why the hypothetical G-unit up in the sky gave us the gift of free will before he followed up with disease, war, famine and unexpected toilet splashback. Video games often jump at the chance to offer us choices, to let us really make our mark. It can be an excellent tool for making a story feel more personal to a player. If you’re the one who’s chosen which basket all the eggs go into, you can’t help but feel responsible for the eventual emotional scramble.

Of course, in this slightly-cracking analogy, the ideal outcome for any player is often a sort of omelette – something that resembles the ingredients we’ve put in along the way. Sometimes power fantasies in video games are the usual fare: shooting big, exciting, improbable guns and wielding superpowers in entirely-unrelatable situations. Sometimes they’re just about the semblance of control over a life. There’s a satisfaction to orchestrating things just as you’d like them, mainly because that’s not how the real world works.

It’d be nice if it did. The real world doesn’t give two shits about things like predictable consequences or your ego, but choice systems in video games really do. In the first three Mass Effect games, for instance, the opportunity to be good Shepard or bad Shepard was offered up on a plate via its morality system. Wanted to be a goody-two-shoes Paragon? Go ahead. Tempted by the nasty allure of the Renegade life? Knock yourself out. Nevermind that the outcomes for each were fairly superficial, the whole affair merely a numbers game — most players would never go through such enormous games twice to find out. At least we had the option.

Like every Telltale game ever, Mass Effect is really giving us the illusion of choice, the suggestion of influence and sway where none really exists. “They will remember that.” Good. It’s what we’re all after: the ability to make an impression, the kind we want to make. That’s why it’s so refreshing – and even a little scary – to see so many recent titles take that power away. Their success, to my mind, proves that games don’t have to create these vast pretenses and pander to your whims to feel personal and immersive. The opposite approach can do it just as effectively, though maybe not as comfortably.

(I’m going to get into the nitty-gritty of how, so – MILD SPOILERS AHOY.)

In struts the narrative platformer-cum-existential crisis Night In The Woods to show everyone how it’s done, with some of the most sensible video game writing out there. I say sensible because – apart from its goofy jokes and jokey goofs about “cups on ears” and the like – Night In The Woods takes a remarkably realistic approach to the idea of player-controlled fate, destiny and consequence by blowing a big, rude, spittle-y raspberry over the lot of it.

At one point, your dialogue choices comes down to “You can always choose,” or “You always have a choice.” Yes, Night In The Woods sees your illusion of choice, and Night In The Woods raises you one laugh. You laugh, too. It was honestly a bit of a shock to the system. College dropout, occasional doer of crimes and all-round terrible catperson Me — sorry, Mae — is not a blank slate of a protagonist. She’s not a means to working through the player's own deep-rooted people-pleasing issues. She’s a horror. Selfish, impulsive, accidentally and purposefully cruel by turns, her dialogue choices make for difficult social navigation. I found myself constantly – naturally – looking for a way not to put foot in mouth, only to realise Night In The Woods delights in force-feeding its player shoe sandwich with no mustard. This game isn't about doing things your way, but doing them the Mae way. And the latter is almost always excruciating.

Being crammed into the ill-fitting clothes of a different personality, chewing on the boots of choices that aren’t yours, certainly isn’t cathartic. It still manages to be immersive, though. The story is true to the character, not tainted by player agenda. It’s still interactive. The themes of ennui, of mental illness and what it means to be human ring true without being made to feel like we’re living through them as ourselves. We’re not here to play god, or virtual version of our own moral selves – just a small, scared, stupid 20-something with whiskers.

For me, it goes just that little bit further than Life Is Strange, the episodic time-travelling feelnomenon that similarly turns the meta-mirror to reflect the ‘illusion of choice’.

(MORE SPOILERS HO. You have been warned.)

“None”? Is “none” a choice? One of your finest none choices, please.

Choosing one of these replies to your teacher-turned-captor Mr. Jefferson during Episode 5’s surreal nightmare sequence is enough to turn your stomach at this point. It’s a sicker joke than Night In The Woods’ tautological choice, especially given that the majority of Max’s adventure impresses upon you the idea of every single tiny choice mattering – whether it’s ignoring a depressed friend’s phone call, signing a petition, or breaking a snowglobe.

Hell, Max’s reverso power is basically a means for her (and you, and me) to obsessively try and try again to obtain the optimal outcome, to make everything okay, to make people like you. Life Is Strange eventually reveals, in as many words, that your overzealous teenage time-rewinding angst is the cause of the tornado ripping up Arcadia Bay. It’s a clever ‘Would You Kindly?’-style moment that says something different to most narrative-choice-based games. Stop people-pleasing, stop micro-managing, stop thinking you can choose. You are not in control.

The game almost immediately follows this up by slapping you across the jaw with a big, fat, binary choice. WHY.

To me, this smacks of hypocrisy. There’s so much grim wisdom in the 'Save Arcadia Bay' ending, a choice that reels Max right back to that fateful bathroom where all the time-twisting began, that forces her to let events run their terrible course and that comments on the nature of destiny and inevitability. But that’s just one of the two endings. The 'Save Chloe' ending is a too-brief copout that sees the pair truck off into the sunset (leaving the rest of the townspeople clutching a one-way ticket to the abyss). It goes against everything that Life Is Strange’s narrative does so subtly and so well – just for the sake of giving players the option.

After such successful meta-commentary on the futility of choice, it’s a shame that the episodic adventure didn't have the stones to resist going for The Big One right at the end. There often is a Big One right at the end of games-with-choices, of course, which is why Night In The Woods’ final act feels so much more mature. The last moments of Mae’s story are spent reassuring players that they don’t have to try and make a meaning out of the shit that’s just gone down in Possum Springs.

The neutral non-conclusion of events treats everything with a gentleness, something I found far more emotionally affecting than having happiness or tragedy stuffed down my throat. It tells you to save your processing, your choice of personal takeaway, for later. It doesn’t demand that your reaction to events falls within the timeline of the game. It feels real, personal and fulfilling – even though we’ve had all illusion of narrative agency ripped from us.

Screw making the right choice, or any choice, says Night In The Woods. What if there isn’t a right answer, or any answer right now? What if things don’t get wrapped up in a neat little bow if you just pick the right wrapping paper? It’s perhaps the most uplifting example of a game I’ve played that’s brave enough to tell it how it is: your choices might not really matter in the grand scheme of things, and it doesn’t make your interactions any less valid if there’s no story payoff.

It’s offering something more relatable and useful than the idea that 'if you put in X, you get back Y'. That's a more thought-provoking message than you get from dooming a planet, and it's encouraging to see videogame narratives moving away from the meaninglessly epic towards something more relatable. Often the marks we’re left with aren’t up to us, and that’s okay. The personal part is deciding – quietly, and in the most analogue sense – how far we let them shape us.