Left or right?

A month or so ago I saw a feature on the BBC claiming that the future of TV was choose your adventure style programmes. Here’s the link (think a pretty simple Bandersnatch). This prompted me to consider whether this type of entertainment really was going to be the future?

In the attempt to provide myself an answer to this question, I immediately thought about a game I started playing a while ago called Detroit : Become Human on the PS4, the game itself is similar in concept to a choose your own story, where the actions you perform can affect the rest of the story. It is based in the future where you as the player, controls multiple Android characters who break their programming and as the title suggests, become more human.

Now, in the past there have been many games that I haven’t particularly enjoyed, but still completed them just to either see the ending or to just get something off my to-do list. However, for Detroit, a game that I have thoroughly enjoyed I am still yet to complete it more than a year after starting it. So why would this be the case?

After some thought, I came to the revelation that I don’t want to make the wrong decision in the story (which so far is going pretty well) and therefore potentially get a less than desirable ending, either for a character or the game itself. This reluctance or possibly even fear is something that makes continuing and subsequently finishing it harder for me than a standard single ending game or by extension a TV programme/film.

However, as the original question revolved around the future, I then considered what could be possible then, and whether technological advancement could change this stance. Therefore, as undoubtedly the best source of future technology, I considered Star Trek.

Within the various Star Trek series, the use of a holodeck is seen. This is a holographic environment that appears to provide true representations of any environment imaginable where the players an fully interact with their surroundings. Within the various series, one use that is shown is for individuals to partake in a story, where they each control one of the characters. This in my mind is a progression of the choose your own story, however on the basis that this would be one day technologically possible, would it still replace the concept of merely observing a story unfold, as it mostly has in Star Trek?

Personally, the ability to simply turn something on and enjoy the journey safe in the knowledge that a happy ending is an almost certainty is a relaxing activity that doesn’t require too much thought after a busy day at work.

Therefore to answer my question, choose your own style adventures will for me at least, not entirely replace observation only entertainment. Whilst it is a thoroughly enjoyable and engrossing experience, for the reasons above I believe that sometimes having too much control over the outcome of a story can actually discourage it’s completion. Further to this, by focussing on the choices a player makes, rather than the overall moral, it actually detracts from the story being told.

For now however, I will push myself to complete Detroit, after all, I guess I can just play it again.

Update: 17/08/2020

Finally completed, it was awesome. Thankfully got the best ending so don’t have to replay it and have the difficult decisions again!