Blog entry week 4 the wolf among us

Do the choices made in the game result in branching narrative paths? If so, how? If not, how are the choices meaningful?

This week I chose to play "The Wolf Among Us" an interactive mystery, drama adventure game made by telltale games. The game itself is based on Bill Willingham's Fable comic book series and follows prior to the comics events. You play as Bigby wolf that was formerly the big bad wolf being a fable himself. Now working as the sheriff of the small community and helps hide the fables from the humans in the world. You start off the game entering a house where a disturbance is called and you quickly meet Mr Toad where you're told your first interactive scene, which shows that you can be generally nice or being a total jerk, with everything you say is remembered by the characters you interact with. We soon meet the Woodsman a fable from The Little Red Riding Hood and engage him in a quick time scene full of action choices like hitting him against different objects like a sink. after saving the prostitute she thanks you then leaves. However once you arrive back in the  place where you live. You are soon woken up and informed by Snow White that something's outside, which you soon find out that its the same girl you saved earlier. From here the story begins. Wolf among us is a very interesting game that i honestly enjoyed playing and its choice based dialogue is very influential in the progression of the narrative. The choices you make give you an impression that what you did is important to your first run, as you can choose some serious moments like ripping a person's arm off was something really surprising. Later the choices of taking another character's life you really feel this heavy burden of choices, along with your choices influences other character's outlook on you.

I can completely agree with this, as your choices can make you feared, hated, liked or respected, which can form smaller branches of the game's progression and this makes your choices feel much more personal and meaningful as you are making what are your personal influence into a character that you're using to act as your own persona. This gives the story to give more interesting options later on as you can choose good or bad cop. Which can be exampled in Perdue, 2011 - Ethical dilemmas and dominant moral strategies in games File is a good example of this in his section "no easy solutions" that moral choices aren't ever easy and won't be, thus giving more emphasis on decision making on the player's behalf. In paragraph 8 of "Two Roads Diverged"  Perdue explains that in another game.  Players have to make several choices that end up having far reaching consequences further into the game which can change the outcome of certain events happening, Without changing the whole game while keeping it to a static plot. However this only works very well on the player's first run and that their practically blind when their doing their run, otherwise you'll kind lose that sense of meaningful input into the game as you will probably know that this character will die anyways and so on. which also in the end lose the immersion in the first playthrough of the game. Otherwise like said before the first run always feels more immersive and meaningful in choice when a linear branching narrative is being used, like in The Wolf Among Us.