But what you do before does impact which options are available to you here. It's not just one scene because what you've done before impacts what can happen on the rooftop.
For me, that's very true
The endings are heavily impacted by player choices.
Not with the common way, by simply answer some questions (choose the right dialogue lines) or doing some actions, but by the choice of doing or not the side quests.
Examples : If you ignore Panam quest line, you will never have the Star ending. If you ignore johnny and skip all his dialogues, you can't have Fear the Reaper.
They may not be impacted the way many expect, but they are
Yes the guys in the video also make this point, but that is not really about making choices as much as it is to simply missing content. To me if that should have a meaning in regards to branching storylines, ignoring Silverhand and Panam should have consequences for you during the game and not simply which endings are available to you by removing certain options in the end.
Obviously it should impact this as well, but lets imagine that a certain gig, gave you the option for another secret ending, but that you never did it, because you didn't know about it, but whether or not you did it, it would never play a role in the game in any other way except in the ending, then its not really a branching story or player choices, rather its you not being aware or flagging this ending as a possibility.
The only way "choices matter" in a game, is if there are consequences to what you, as a player chooses during the game and to see how it reacts to you and the world and that it helps define your character in some way.
If you take the lifepath system, you could equally argue that this matters as well, because if you don't choose a specific lifepath, certain quests won't be available to you and therefore choice matters here as well. While it is technical true, it does nothing in regards to the roleplaying aspect of your character or the game as a whole.
As mentioned in another post, regarding how they could have made interesting choices and where they actually are very close at making good use of it. Is if you take Dexter and Evelyn in the beginning of the game. You are presented with the option to "backstab" Dexter or you can chose to be loyal to him.
Knowing the background of how Mercs operate through fixers, this at first seem like an excellent way to make the player have to choose what type of character they are, will you be the loyal one? or will you be the one that shit on the rules?
But this could have resulted in a lot of interesting branching of the story. Just like the preparation with Dexter, T-bug and Jackie, you have the option to come clean to Dexter, which again are choices that are interesting to make, because when you first play the game, you don't know if Dexter have you figured out or not, so lying to him might be a very bad idea.
Obviously whatever you choose here, doesn't matter at all, because you end up the same place anyway, but the illusion of choice is really good, just sad it goes no where.
Also had, they made it so Jackie weren't killed as he was, but later during a set up done by either Dexter or Evelyn had they been alive, because one of them had sold you out to Arasaka, a lot of interesting twists and turns could have been added here, giving the player the option to trying to figure out which of these were to be trusted and not, how to deal with them, who killed Jackie etc.
Another example of a more minor thing which could have been interesting, is when that guy in the bar, ask you to do some work on the side, without including the fixer, which V tells him is not how they operate, again you can choose to do it and it has absolutely no impact in the game at all.
But here, V could have called over the Fixer and told them what this guy were trying by pass the rules, which could lead to some nasty thing happening to him or you could chose to do it, which (had there been a reputation system) could impact this, it could have been a loyalty test made by the fixer to check if the Mercs a following the rules, a lot of different things could have branched off from a simple thing like this.
But do you see the difference between the player having to choose what to do in these situations, compared to simply not doing something and therefore not given a certain option in the end?
This to me, is why CP story works best in the beginning, the Maelstrom quest, the whole Dexter thing, these are choices that initially give the impression that they will impact the story based on your choices and will help to define V as a character, but they never take it anywhere.
And since CP doesn't have a reputation system, the fixers, the gangs and pretty much anyone you meet in the game, are hardly affected by how you as player choose to do things. And therefore you are never really evolving as a character, but pretty much stays a blank slate throughout the whole game. Imagine you could align with certain gangs, fixers, the corpos etc. then two playthroughs could be highly different, because the game is govern by your actions and these reputations.
I struggle to see how it's less linear than Witcher 3. It's MUCH more linear.
Its so long since I played TW3, so wouldn't comment on this. But my initial thoughts were exactly the same. I found TW3 to have a lot more options in regards to how to deal with stuff.
But again, I think its important to remember that in TW3, you are playing a well defined character. So you are not especially choosing whether Geralt should be the evil person or the good one, but rather how he should handle different situations.
Being able to completely ignore everything in Westbrook, and get extremely in depth in Heywood, is a non linear game design.
Yes, but as mentioned above to some of the others, simply missing content is not what makes a RPG good or meaningful.
(If you didn't read the answer to the others in this post, it will explain it a bit better I think, just don't want to repeat it here.)
