Analyzing How Dispatch and The Hundred Line Handle Narrative Choices (+ A Few Other Games)
Made this post on the r/LastDefenseAcademy subreddit but since I put a good bit of work writing it all up, I thought I might as well post it on here as well. I did write this for the context of people who would browse that subreddit, so I did generally try to explain more for Dispatch, but hopefully this post reads well for anyone (as long as you don’t mind spoilers).
Anyways, recently after watching a playthrough on YouTube, I subsequently played and enjoyed Dispatch. If you don’t know Dispatch, Dispatch’s Steam page describes it as “a superhero workplace comedy where choices matter.” Across 8 episodes, you play as Robert Robertson (AKA Mecha Man) who lands a job dispatching superheroes. The bulk of the game is essentially an interactive show with some strategy gameplay sandwiched inbetween. It’s most comparable to some of Telltale’s biggest games like their adaptation of The Walking Dead (partly because people who have worked at Telltale helped make Dispatch).
While I did enjoy my time with Dispatch, there were several distinct moments I was excited to make my own choice in a playthrough, only to realize it had little result on the actual plot. And given The Hundred Line has been wracking around my brain constantly since I loved played it months ago, I couldn’t help but compare them in my head. Doing that enough has made me want to dump all these thoughts into a post, so here’s my general analysis of how they both handle choices (alongside a few other games when relevant).
To preface some things, first off, I will try to avoid much major spoilers for Dispatch, but there’s some early stuff you might prefer not hearing about. For The Hundred Line, I will be talking about spoilers all over the game so be wary if you haven’t finished all 100 endings yourself. And there’s also a tiny bit of really late Witcher 3 spoilers as well, but just a bit.
Secondly, I must mention that the general scope of each game’s narrative is shaped by the general scopes of their whole games, but comparing both games in their entirety is an “apples to oranges” type of discussion. Like gameplay wise, even if both can vaguely be described as “narrative-based strategy RPGs,” even just the strategy segments of each game differ greatly.
THL does have a significantly larger story in general, but Dispatch is still a good story in its own right and it has its own strong qualities. For example, Dispatch has fully animated cutscenes making up a bulk of the game alongside full voice acting. Point being that even if I do like THL more and I will be criticizing aspects of both games, this isn’t meant to be a full critique of either game.
Additionally, while I have completed THL, I haven’t seen everything in Dispatch. I have watched a full playthrough alongside having done my own, plus I’ve looked up numerous alternate scenes on YouTube, but do keep my limited perspective in mind (I do think I’ve seen a large part of Dispatch at least).
Lastly, if this long winded intro wasn’t enough to clue you in, this is a long post.
The Narrative Before Choices:
In Dispatch, you can make at least some minor choices pretty much right out the gate. The opening scene specifically starts off with 2 relatively minor choices, but they’re still choices. The first singular major choice that stands out to me pops up around 3 hours into the game at the end of Episode 3 (roughly a 1/3rd of the way through an initial playthrough) where you need to choose between cutting either Sonar or Coupé from your team. Overall, it really feels like you can be making many sorts of decisions during your entire playthrough.
The Hundred Line meanwhile, while it does having a fake tutorial choice, there’s really no narrative choices for quite a while. For a game that advertised itself on its choices, it’s quite funny to go in blind and see just how long it takes to have any choices actually pop up (I find the fake choice with Ima specifically around day 50 pretty funny). My initial run through of Route 0 took about 25 hours and after which, there’s the pretty immediate “Kill Eito” choice.
How much you play the game afterwards can vary significantly what percent of the game gives you choices (for example, if you only played 2nd Scenario it’d be roughly half your playthrough didn’t have choices whereas my all-endings playthrough had closer to 15% of my playtime being choice-less Route 0). Regardless, the 20+ hours of Route 0 is still a lot of time to have with the game prior to making a choice.
For Dispatch, I think there’s a more immediate positive player experience by being able to engage with choices earlier. Especially if you’re going into either game specifically interested in their branching narratives (like I did), it’s nice to have even small choices show up. It also doesn’t take terribly long to make choices that clearly cause significant changes like that choice between Sonar and Coupé.
Comparatively with THL, it was certainly confusing that I wasn’t given any choices during Route 0. Purposefully restraining a players agency in a game advertised with its massive branching narrative I can see making for a frustrating experience for some to the point where they might bounce off the game completely. Choices do at least come up early enough to still be impactful thanks to the game being very long, but there’s still a lot of time for players to quit the game if they are disappointed by the lack of choices.
On the positive side for THL, by forcing everyone to go through such a set beginning to their journey, it helps invest players significantly in the outcome of choices once they can be made. A direct contrast can be seen when you compare the choices of either cutting Coupé/Sonar vs whether you sacrifice Takemaru, Kyoshika or Tsubasa.
In Dispatch, you’re making that choice about 3 hours into the game. Combine that with the facts that you’re meeting a lot of characters in this timeframe alongside how neither Sonar nor Coupé are met directly upon starting the game, you really are fairly limited in what you know of either character once you make that choice. In terms of time spent with the characters, I think it’s comparable to if you had to sacrifice someone in THL by the end of Day 2 on Route 0.
In the actual THL though, you’ve already met Kyoshika, Takemaru and Tsubasa likely 15+ hours prior so it’s much easier to be invested in the choice. What you’re thinking about for the choice isn’t just the last few sentences of dialogue alongside whatever introductions they had, rather you have plenty of moments sprinkled all across Route 0 which informs you what the best choice is (and that’s not even accounting for players who take dozens of hours after Route 0 to even stumble upon this specific choice). With so much more to take into consideration, it helps make all choices feel more engaging in the moment of making them.
Even if you can’t know all the ramifications of a choice with foresight alone, I still think you will feel informed when making your choices which will make them more engaging. While I think both games do generally try to give you enough information as to not choose blindly regarding most major choices, I prefer THL’s approach.
But having such a bulky intro does setup an issue with expectations, especially with a narrative like THL’s which is full of so many mysteries and twists. Even beyond those twists, things like the genre and themes of the story also have expectations setup by such a bulky intro. This would be fine if THL railroaded its story pretty hard as to make sure any route meets those expectations but as I go into later in the “Important Choices” section, that isn’t the case.
The Hundred line clearly sets up every choice with the characters describing why you should choose any side, then it gives you infinite time to make said choice. Even in the most dire of situations, the game will allow for an unrealistic amount of discussion in order to give the player however much time they want to make a choice.
Dispatch meanwhile is always trying to move you forward. Even in scenarios where you should realistically at least be given a few minutes to think it over (like the Coupé/Sonar choice), the game will always put a clock on your choices. While most major choices will generally have plenty of context beforehand to make sure you choose somewhat wisely, many smaller choices will be presented to you suddenly and it may not be super clear if the choice even is insignificant, so you still feel that stress from time when making the choice.
A significant edge Dispatch gains in its approach is how the narrative never has to break its pace in order to account for a player. This stands out most positively in scenes where some level of urgency would be required in real life. Whether it’s in the middle of a fight or even just to keep a conversation flowing naturally, forcing the player to choose quickly enough helps prevent poor pacing issues and general “gamey” dialogue.
Although not everyone will enjoy it, making a mistake when choosing and having to mitigate the consequences can be fun and the timer on every choice helps create those mistakes. For example, if you’re going for a specific romantic option, having mistakes helps create tension in whether or not you actually end up with who you want. If you reach the end of the game and succeed in getting who you want, then the release of tension makes that moment feel more impactful.
While some lack of enjoyment from such a system comes from people not wanting to make mistakes at all, I think such a “natural” system like a timer counterintuitively exemplifies just how unnatural the act of making choices is in games. Such as what happens when the timer runs out as Dispatch will automatically make a choice for you. Given most choices in Dispatch aren’t to “do nothing” though, this contrasts really hard to what a player is actually doing which can feel frustrating.
When you lack the stress of a timer though like THL, it allows players be more thoughtful about their choices, thereby letting players choose with less worry that they chose incorrectly. And since there isn’t so much stress from a timer, it allows the choices themselves to bear more tension by being more complex.
While THL doesn’t actually do this, having no time limit on a choice also makes it far more possible to have a long list of choices to pick from rather than just 2~3. Dispatch meanwhile can’t push this system much more without either causing immense player frustration with too short of a timer, causing the timer to feel pointless by extending it too long or just removing the timer completely.
For a more direct comparison of what each game actually does, good examples of both formats are whether you kill Eito in THL and Dispatch Episode 1’s late choice of whether or not to kiss Blonde Blazer.
With infinite time, that lets you grapple with plenty of both ethical and practical reasons on whether you should kill Eito. Does he really deserve it when he’s just killing a robot in that moment? How much does he deserve to be punished for his past he told you about in Route 0? Do you even believe in the death penalty at all? How much of a danger could he be when imprisoned? What will your friends think of you if you have killed Eito, especially since they barely know you at this point? Could you ever get him to have a change of heart and have a chance at a good life? Is there any chance that a Yaoi route with Eito actually exists? Really, there’s so much you can as yourself which is allowed thanks to the limitless time.
For the choice to kiss Blonde Blazer in Dispatch, this only works as well as it does since there’s a timer. If you had infinite time to make the choice, I think most people could come to the conclusion that kissing Blonde Blazer isn’t a great idea considering the drunken state of both characters and the fact that her mind is elsewhere in that moment.
The game certainly does try to set the mood to make kissing feel correct however. The lighting, music and cinematography all point to it being such a lovely kiss ready to happen. By giving the player a time limit, it helps the player fill Robert’s shoes by potentially making the hasty decision of kissing a woman you barely know while you’re both drunk despite her being there to offer you a job, not a date.
Ultimately, it’s a small mistake that depending on your choices, either might not feel that much like a mistake anyways if you decide to date Blonde Blazer or if you decide different, you can still move past it. Being able to make a mistake like that at all to see its repercussions helps make for an interesting and ultimately more fun playthrough which the timer ultimately incentivizes.
Importance of Important Choices:
In Dispatch, there are some important choices, but singular “important” options are relatively few and far between. Some that come to mind are (again) whether you cut Sonar or Coupé from the team and whether you choose to add Waterboy or Phenomaman to your team.
Additionally, rather than one singular big choice, a few important decisions are made via an accumulation of many smaller choices (at least that’s my understanding of it when looking it up). The one that comes most immediately to mind is who Robert romantically ends up with by the end of the game.
Overall though, plenty of the overarching story will remain the same regardless of your input. A moment that stuck out most to me in my playthrough of an unimportant choice I thought was important is in episode 6 where during a party with your team, your characters consider some shoddy plan to acquire a MacGuffin.
The playthrough I had watched prior to my own chose to not go through with the plan which seemingly caused a chain reaction of events where character A went through with the plan anyways by themselves, fucked things up, character B saved their ass and got hurt in the process and eventually character C gave up their superpowers to help character B.
So with some hindsight on the situation, I decided in my own playthrough to actually go through with it. I thought that while something would probably go poorly regardless, I at least wanted to see what might’ve been different. Unfortunately, regardless of whether you want to go through with the plan or not, the team overall doesn’t want to go through with the plan regardless and Robert concedes, so the same chain of events happens.
While that was disappointing for me, there still are some important choices that I think are cool. Like going back to choosing between Coupé or Sonar, even if it doesn’t warp the game’s narrative, there’s still plenty of moments with both of them that make the choice feel significant
Meanwhile, I think The Hundred Line stands out over a lot of games with narrative branching due to how important its choices are. Combined with how there isn’t any way to “correct” a path (outside of going back in time to undo a choice), it helps make choices actually feel important in delivering a unique experience.
Like if you Kill Eito, while there are still a handful of relatively positive endings you can get, it’s impossible to direct things to a route like 2nd Scenario. I believe outside of Comedy (which has its own can of worms), you will also have to deal with some sort of additional threat killing people if you killed Eito. This of course has massive ramifications on the story as it’s pretty hard to focus on a ton else when your friends are dying.
And before purchasing the game, this structure to endings was a huge selling point to me. Reading articles like this certainly gave me some lofty expectations. To be exact, here’s a passage that stood out to me (do note this article translates and paraphrases a developer blog so none of the quotes are exact):
“It seems Kodaka had some ‘extreme’ conditions when it came to designing all these alternative endings, as Uchikoshi details the following instructions he received:
The 100 endings have to have meaning
They must not read like bonus scenarios or spin-offs
Avoid ‘easy’ bad endings (for example, the player chooses “right” and this results in an ending like ‘you got caught in a trap and died. Ending No. XY’)
In fact, you do not even have to consider the main route the ‘true route’ – all routes should be dense enough to be considered ‘true routes’”
It wasn’t just the sheer variety in its endings that stood out to me though. I’ve played games like The Stanley Parable and Slay the Princess after all. While both those games are great and certainly do have wildly branching narratives, both games also have relatively short routes. That alongside the general way their narratives are structured, you really are meant to soak in many playthroughs of either game to really “experience” either game properly.
Meanwhile for THL, I was also seeing articles like ‘I’m 55 hours in with only 3 endings.’ The idea that any game could truly be so long, so different across so many endings and somehow it’s good really all just blew me away even trying to conceptualize.
And ultimately, these lofty goals really are the core causes to THL’s best and worst aspects. On one hand, some routes and endings are absolutely amazing and the fact that there is such big and vastly different stories all packed into one game has made me love The Hundred Line a ton. On the other, it also has some of the worst aspects possible of a choose-your-own-adventure game with some almost meaningless choices, absolutely drab storylines that drag far too long, wildly unsatisfying endings and so much more.
To go more in-depth, I want to bring back my earlier point of expectations set by Route 0. There is a lot for players to expect from THL after those 30ish hours and the ways THL plays with these expectations leads to very unique experiences, such as with tone.
In terms of tone, Route 0 is a pretty bitter route. It really feels like there’s a lot Takumi could’ve done better which I think works as a great motivator for both him and the player to continue on and try to get a better ending.
Some routes I think ease a player into a different tone well. 2nd scenario for example, although it’s a much worse state of affairs compared to Route 0, the overall story feels bittersweet rather than outright bitter. Alternatively, I’ve seen a lot of people prefer Coming of Age which I think is in large part due to its overall much more positive tone (at least in the “Bittersweet Youth” ending which I know is ironically named given why I’m highlighting it). I personally prefer 2nd Scenario’s tone, but I think it’s great that such variance is in the game at all.
On the bad end however, I think some routes just have too harsh of tone shifts to feel like a proper ending to Route 0. Comedy comes to mind as while Route 0 has plenty of funny moments, it’s hardly a full-blown comedy in the way Comedy actually is.
This might work out fine if it handled these routes in a similar way to a game like Silent Hill 2. Although I haven’t played SH2, from my understating, most endings fit tonally fairly well except for a few clear joke endings which take a lot of extra work to get (to the point of requiring you to have at least beaten the game once). Comedy meanwhile is as accessible as any other ending and I don’t think the choices needed to reach Comedy are particularly absurd for a player to choose. Comedy also isn’t the only example of this as many routes can instead feel excessively dark such as Slasher, BoC or CoT.
And it’s not just tone that stands out. A ton of endings will either have very out of left field plot details and/or they’ll fail to explore plenty of plot threads that should realistically be explored.
For example, developing your relationship with Shion is obviously a goal Takumi should be working towards after Route 0. While it does come up in a good few routes or at least there’s plausible enough limitations in the route to prevent Takumi from working towards that goal, there’s also routes where that plot point just isn’t explored. Like Boxes of Blessings just drops Shion IIRC (it’s been a while since I played BoB though so I might just genuinely not remember).
Even when there is a reasonable excuse for plot points to not be explored though, the way plot elements can completely warp the plot can lead to an unsatisfying conclusion to what Route 0 introduced. Such as with Casual, being mind controlled makes for a reasonable explanation as to why you don’t get closer to Shion, but it still leads to a very unsatisfying end since so little else happens beyond exploring what it’s like to be mind controlled.
Overall, I was actually fairly disappointed by how lackluster most endings felt as actual ends to the game. While I did go into the game understanding that not every ending was going to be good, I thought most of them would at least structurally feel like a complete story.
However, it’s shortsighted to look at endings only as how they work as an end to Route 0. While I don’t think such critiques should be entirely dismissed, writing off any ending as “bad” I think is short sighted when they can be paired to other ending to be vastly improved. Even though I think less than half the routes are good as singular follow-ups to Route 0, plenty of routes work really well if you look at them as pieces to a whole.
Goodbye Eito specifically comes to mind. If you were to play only it and no other endings, it would be unsatisfying as it’s such a late POV switch that leaves you in the dark about what everyone else’s end was like. While I don’t think ambiguous endings are necessarily bad, this ending is only ambiguous due to the fairly random POV switch which overall makes for a very lousy ending on its own, regardless of how good Eito’s POV is.
If you play it alongside 2nd Scenario though, then you already have your answer of what broadly would probably happen to everyone else in Goodbye Eito. There is still some mystery to it since we can’t know for certain how much Eito’s presence influences everyone’s fates for better or worse, but there is so much more to work with that the ambiguity left I think is interesting.
Of course that’s only part of Goodbye Eito. Really the bulk of that route is to give perspective on Eito’s character which I think it does so brilliantly. I love this route, I think it does such a good job at making us empathize with someone who often comes off as comically evil otherwise. To ignore what good this Route though on the assumption that every ending should “properly end” Route 0’s story I think is foolish.
Unfortunately, viewing routes through that lens doesn’t save every route. As this game demands so much writing, it’s not particularly surprising that some routes just aren’t that well written such as Boxes of Blessings.
Because routes tend to default to being so long though, it can really exemplify a route like BoB which doesn’t warrant such length. Especially when doing multiple endings, BoB stretches the “let’s look for boxes today” gimmick really thin quite quickly despite how much you have to do it. It’s really the type of absurdly long, monotonous content one would reasonably be worried about when hearing about a long game with 100 unique endings.
Anyways, even with that perspective, I still think there’s extra enjoyment to be had in a route if it does cap off Route 0 well. Ideally, I’d love for every route to wrap up Route 0 neatly while still allowing for the insane flexibility of stories THL currently offers. As ideas like “what if the SDU fought zombies” clearly come into great conflict with integrating Route 0’s plot though, I get why most routes feel like choosing between feeling a crazy plot or a followup to Route 0.
Even with some routes being duds, I think THL manages to impress with just how much it pull off competently. For the most part, routes tend to be at least somewhat enjoyable if not great to the point where I certainly don’t regret doing all 100 endings.
To sum things up, Dispatch offers a much narrower set of impactful decisions, guaranteeing a quality of storytelling and type of story regardless of your choices. This makes an initial playthrough generally fairly good, although really discourages much repeat playthroughs. Whereas The Hundred Line allows for much more impactful choices, often leading to very different routes with a lot more hit-or-miss quality. The sheer variance of routes though combined with a general good enough quality across the board really incentives numerous playthroughs which can vastly improve your experience with THL.
Importance of Unimportant Choices:
THL is pretty devoid of unimportant narrative choices outside of free time, general gameplay choices and maybe a few routes like Conspiracy where some choices are genuinely low-impact (although I think any branch to a different ending in THL counts as an “important choice,” even many of the shittier choices).
The fact you can see stuff like Bonding Events or Free Time encounters on pretty much any route (as long as the character is there on the route) and the game doesn’t respond to these interactions at all outside of the moment of doing so makes all those interactions feel disconnected from the main plot to the point where they don’t feel like important choices (Eito’s Free Time events really stand out to me as I did them on S.F. so I got to see Eito randomly flip between being a maniacal asshole and a brainwashed sweetheart). Not to say that stuff doesn’t matter at all, but they don’t feel anymore like choices than the “choice” of making progress in Route 0.
The only choices in THL that feel both like a choice but are relatively unimportant are the few times routes will give you a few days to gather enough items during exploration segments. You can rush to do it all as soon as possible to get free time for the remaining days or you can take your time to pace yourself. I think there might be a tiny bit of unique dialogue when you do something like that, but it’s still so unimportant that I think many would forget that it even happens at all.
For Dispatch, the game is full of low-stakes choices. Stuff like whether you throw Toxic off a roof at the start of the game or what donut you tell Invisigal is your favorite, those plot points coming back ever (even in the small ways they do) helps make your playthrough feel more personalized. It’s also nice to be able to engage with choices without much of any fear about making the “wrong choice” given how low-stakes some choices are.
The main issue with having these types of choices though is when it’s difficult to differentiate between them and the genuinely important ones. Like the choice I mentioned earlier regarding whether or not to go through with a plan in Episode 6. While it is actually somewhat important as it influences your relationships slightly with certain characters, it’s still far less important than I personally realized which was disappointing.
Alternatively, making a potentially devastating choice just because you thought little about a choice you thought was unimportant can be quite frustrating. There thankfully isn’t a situation that comes to mind like that in Dispatch though (at least in my experience).
A game that actually had a choice like that for me though was The Witcher 3. Specifically, there’s a point where you (Geralt) can bring your adoptive kid Ciri to meet her bio dad and once there, he offers to reward you with payment. Specifically in regard to whether you choose to receive the payment or not, that is one of 5 choices which influences Ciri’s fate at the end of the game. I made the choice to accept the money as I thought little of the choice, only for Geralt to hold out his hand with such a stupid grin on his face in such a comical fashion. Ultimately, I did just reload a save to correct my mistake and I looked up what the deal was so I didn’t feel too bad about it, but it doesn’t ever feel particularly fun to feel the need to do that.
Overall, I do enjoy the inclusion of low-stakes choices though. THL benefits by never having a player feel tricked that a choice was far more important than realized, plus there’s choices like Comedy Route’s “Meat or Fish” choice that I think really benefit by how clearly impactful THL’s choices are. Plus, while I don’t think stuff like Bonding Events should really be considered as a choice in the same way the low-stakes Dispatch choices are, they do still fill a similar role in the narrative of giving a bit extra to the story that isn’t truly necessary. A lot of that stuff feels disjointed in THL, whereas Dispatch manages to integrate such moments into the wider narrative which I appreciate.
Static vs Dynamic Protaginist:
In this context, what I mean more specifically is whether the protagonist is a character who’s relatively unchanged and distinct, regardless of any player input vs a protagonist who relies almost entirely on player input for their characterization. I feel like there is a better term for this than “static vs dynamic protagonist, but I can’t recall what that term might be so I’ll be using those terms for now.
This is something that THL and Dispatch are actually relatively equal in as both Takumi and Robert are mostly static protagonists. They of course do change to some extent based on player input given the nature of their games, but they’re unique enough as characters separate from the player that neither would feel out of place in something linear like a television show.
The alternative of dynamic protagonists I think is shown well in a lot of RPG’s that really focus on their “role-play” aspect specifically. Games such as the Fallout and Baldur’s Gate series come to mind as you have plenty of control over stuff like how your character even dresses alongside how they go about facing tons of different missions in their respective worlds.
Unfortunately, I haven’t played any games quite like those (besides 30 minutes of Fallout 4 a decade ago), so I’m limited on my perspective regarding this subject. From what I can tell though, these games can of course benefit greatly by giving players much more freedom across the whole playthrough without as many moments where a player goes “I would never make that choice, what the hell?!”
For games like THL, you will have to deal with a character who makes incredibly different choices from you considerably more often which can be frustrating when you’re trying to see yourself in said character (or even just see what different things can happen). One really pronounced situation of this in THL is when you need to choose between saving either the LDA or 2LDA, Takumi will go out of his way to save Nozomi regardless (which specifically in Retsnom, that choice to save Nozomi is a huge point of conflict for the plot of that route).
This has the obvious downside of being pretty directly in conflict with a player’s agency which can be frustrating. I think by being so obvert about it however, games like THL or Dispatch can get away with a lot of these types of choices. That specific example regarding Retsnom I haven’t ever seen someone directly complain about which I think is because it isn’t actually too hard to buy into a player character being distinct from the player themselves. Or at the very least with THL, it’s pretty difficult to be invested enough in the game as to even get to your first choice without having already accepted that Takumi is somewhat separate from the player.
In terms of benefits from this approach, I think these events can work as incredibly strong character moments to an extent that a linear story can’t pull off as strongly. That Retsnom bit specifically I really appreciate as I think it gives a really good bit of characterization for Takumi alongside setting up engaging conflict that the rest of Retsnom explores well.
Contrasting this (and to use games I’ve actually played before), Pokémon games do a lot to make your player character really feel like who you want to play as. In Scarlet & Violet specifically, you can name them, customize their appearance significantly, choose what missions to do when you want and of course you create whatever team of 6 Pokémon you want.
Whenever you do hit a point where you’re not allowed to make a choice (even if the given option is what you would’ve chosen anyways), it can be extra frustrating since the game has otherwise been saying “you’re in control of this character.” For example, I wasn’t a particularly big fan of Penny or her quest line but if you want to progress the main story, you have to engage with that quest so I begrudgingly did it all as late as possible.
However as mentioned prior, these situations where a choice (or lack thereof one) don’t align with what a player might want/expect are less common in games with such flexible protagonists because of their protagonist. Pokémon specifically isn’t a great example of this, but in newer Pokémon game, you at least don’t have to dress like bumfuck Takumi wearing the same exact t-shirt + sweater combo for 100+ days straight. Instead, you can wear something you’d actually enjoy in real life. Or you could just rock a similar getup to Takumi anyways, having the choice at all helps make the choice of dressing like Takumi does feel more impactful.
Anyways, I do want to try out a game like Baldur’s Gate 3 someday as a game with such a dynamic protagonist seems pretty cool. Given my overall lack of experiences with those game though, I don’t think it’s fair to say I really prefer either approach. I get the impression though that static protagonists are generally more consistently good, but dynamic protagonists have unique potential that is difficult to replicate in other mediums.
In any games with a branching narrative, it’s not uncommon for players to make a choice they later regret and want to go back on. Whether you had a lapse in judgement, the game did a poor job at guiding your decision or maybe you just misclicked, I think most players want to have the option to go back in time to redo decisions just in case.
For the most part, I think both Dispatch and The Hundred Line do make redoing decisions fairly quick and easy. Having done so multiple times for my initial playthroughs in both games, I’m sure I never took more than a few minutes to catch up my progress. I also wasn’t having to save constantly just in case I wanted to save scum any choice as both games have ways to redo choices without having to rely on manual saves.
Both games also generally do a good job at making choices feel immediately impactful. While you could technically go down a route for a long time and thereby make early choices cumbersome to redo, I think both games tell you enough about your choices right after you make them that you won’t accidentally do this to yourself.
On the flip side, a game with more cumbersome options to redo choices is The Witcher 3. If you’re afraid of screwing up a choice, you will have to manually save constantly. If you forgot to save (or didn’t even know to save) shortly before making a major choice, then your only options are to either suck it up and live with your failure or you reload an old save and try to rush back to where you were.
In my personal experience, I’m pretty sure there was at least one occasion where I had to spend 30+ minutes retreading the same stuff just to redo a choice as I had forgotten to save for a while which sucked. Even if I wasn’t actually going back on many choices though, it still was bothersome just how much time I spent making and managing manual saves “just in case.”
And not every option necessarily has clear immediate ramifications in The Wither 3 such as the choices that determine whether Ciri lives or dies at the end of the game. While those aren’t portrayed as unimportant choices, Ciri potentially dying due to your actions I don’t think is reasonably foreseeable as they’re all choices determining whether or not Ciri likes Geralt (you). Given you likely won’t see the ramifications of your choices for hours, it’s likely you won’t even have a save to go back to and even if you do, it would be so cumbersome that you might just not want to even bother.
The benefit to making it so cumbersome though is to further incentivize living with your mistakes. As mentioned previously regarding Dispatch’s timed decision making, making mistakes and living with them can lead to a more enjoyable experience.
Additionally, I want to point out that not every game has such forgiving manual saves like The Witcher 3. A striking example can be found in the flash game One Chance which is purposely built to prevent replaying the game at all (you can get around this if you know what you’re doing, but it’s still far more cumbersome than most video games to reset). By making it seemingly impossible to play outside of your “one chance,” the game really exemplifies the tragedy of its narrative even though it’s an otherwise very simple game.
Overall though, I think games that really try to force you to live through your choices will generally suffer for it. As even if most of the writing is spot on, any choice that doesn’t feel exceptionally well written will feel immensely frustrating for players. Then even if every choice felt “fair,” players making mistakes like misclicking a choice or accidentally skipping a crucial piece of dialogue will still lead to immense frustration. So while I respect the efforts some games attempt to make you push through your own poor choices, I think most games with such significant choices should let you easily redo choices.
To reiterate, I don’t think either game has a necessarily “correct” way of doing things. I do prefer THL for the most part, but there’s plenty to enjoy about Dispatch as well. THL has a level of variaty, length and quality in its storylines that makes it uniquely enjoyable for me, whereas Dispatch feels like a smaller, yet fairly consistently good ride.
I’m still not the biggest fan of how little Dispatch seems to change with choices, but “I want more from this” isn’t the worst issue to have with a game. As it is, I think the branching elements of Dispatch are still beneficial overall. It might not add a lot for me, but the game is still enough on its own that I enjoyed Dispatch.
For THL, I’m really glad this game has such an expansive narrative structure. While I would’ve probably still enjoyed the game plenty if it were just Route 0 + 2nd Scenario, the other 99 endings add a ton I love to the game. It is certainly very hit or miss in some ways but overall, the “100 endings” selling point this game is advertised with feels very justified to me.
Also, while I touched on this a bit, I do want to emphasize that the practicality of making games is a huge reason as to why most games realistically wouldn’t even bother trying to make something like THL. It’s hard enough to write one good ending after all so making a game as complex narratively as Dispatch is already quite a feat even if it amounts to feeling only somewhat different across multiple playthroughs. The fact that THL came out as good as it did is astonishes me.
Anyways, I hope you enjoyed reading my thoughts on these games. I think branching narratives in general are just such a neat concept so I’m glad to explore a lot of games with them. There’s plenty still to explore regarding the topic whether it’s a deeper analysis of any game I mentioned here or even seeing what other games bring to the table.
I’m pretty beat writing all this up though as I had it sitting around half-written for 3 months alongside 5 other random writing projects (maybe now I’ll get around to actually publishing a fanfic soon). But at least I got it through my system now. Plus this post had to be edited down a bit to be under the 40k character limit on Reddit so I’ll stop here.
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