It's often said that it's very difficult for AAA games to take risks. There are strict budgets, shareholders to please, and legions of furious fans to try to please. This can sometimes result in quite conventional releases that play it extremely safely.
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Indie developers, however, have much more freedom in this regard. They can pursue an entirely original, outlandish idea, and the risk often pays off when the creativity strikes a chord with fans. Indie RPGs, in particular, haven't been afraid to take their storytelling into curious, experimental directions, and they're all the better for it. These excellent titles have given their plots enormous impact for that very reason.
Disco Elysium
Twists And Turns Of The Player's Own Making
In a lot of RPGs, the player is tasked with making significant decisions at key points in the narrative, then dealing with whatever the consequences may be. Disco Elysium's storytelling is far more creative than that. As detective Harry du Bois, they choose who they interact with, the dialogue choices they make, whether they want to embrace karaoke or not, and how the narrative unfolds as a result. Depending on the skills you've invested in, different options will be available (or far more likely to succeed/fail in Dungeons & Dragons-esque skill checks), which will then completely shape the progress of the plot.
If the player has invested in the Inland Empire, for instance, they will be attuned to supernatural influences, thereby allowing them to perceive secret routes or creatures they'd otherwise have been unaware of. It even allows Du Bois' reclaimed tie to speak to him, and it has some fantastic dialogue of its own. In this ingenious title, a character build can completely change the whole direction of the story, and this is why fans will typically play all the way through the game multiple times. It can be a completely different experience, as there's essentially no way of hitting every single sidestory in one playthrough.
Bastion
The Narrator Watches The Kid's Every Move
Bastion, the first title from Supergiant Games of Hades and Hades 2 fame, immediately defined the studio as a creator of unique and wonderful games. In their 2011 debut, Supergiant presents the story of the Kid, a young man who awakes in a world ravaged by the Calamity. A safe haven known as the Bastion can be the key to survivors' salvation if the Kid is able to gather the pieces he needs to get it up and running again.
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In this doomed world, he soon meets the Narrator of the game, who players eventually learn is actually named Rucks. He remains at the hub of the Bastion throughout most of the game's events, but continues to narrate (in the dulcet tones of Logan Cunningham). He doesn't miss a trick, either. So many of the Kid's actions become part of the evolving story directly. If, for instance, fans pause in a level to smash some destructible scenery in search of hidden loot, the narrator will remark "the Kid stops to let off some steam," or similar. When choosing a weapon loadout, he'll comment on particular combinations; perhaps noting that the Kid seems to have a fondness for explosives is weapons chosen have that property. It's quite subtle, but it does wonders for immersion, encourages players to experiment, and is a testament to the developer's incredible attention to detail.
Undertale
An Unforgettable Story, However You Choose To Approach It
Undertale is one of the most creative RPGs of recent years, and a wonderful exploration of what a lone developer can achieve. It's not a 100+ hour epic on the scale of Persona 5 Royal, perhaps, but nor should it be expected to be. What it is, though, is a title that will surprise at every turn, that will test players and allow them to experiment and transform the narrative in their own way.
Typically, in RPGs, the battles are a core part of leveling characters and so on, but the likes of random battles don't have an influence on the story itself. Here, though, the plot and its ultimate outcome are intrinsically linked to the player's approach to battles. Famously, you can opt to slay every foe you see or spare them all, and the evolution of those encounters, as well as the game's ending, will completely change as a result. Much like Disco Elysium, fans have unprecedented control over the storytelling and will surely want to jump straight back in, taking a different approach to see the many ways in which it differs. Fantastic pixel art, too.
Citizen Sleeper
A Roll Of The Dice Shapes Your Destiny
As Dungeons & Dragons players will know all too well, the fate of an adventure can entirely depend on a simple dice roll. It might cause an otherwise-fatal attack to entirely miss a party member, for instance, thereby saving a quest at a pivotal moment. The addition of this element of chance isn't popular with everyone, but it certainly adds excitement and tension. In a different parallel to Disco Elysium, Citizen Sleeper also embraces the dice-rolling mechanic. It's a unique anachronism in this futuristic, cyberpunk world, but it works super well.
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Player agency is at the forefront of this 2022 title, in which the narrative threads introduced and explored depend heavily on decisions made and activities invested in. The life of a Sleeper is an unimaginably challenging one, and it's shaped by the player's choices. Through the Clock, they can also monitor (among lots of other things) the progress of certain friendships and the effects they might have on the overarching story. What's so gripping about this game is the sheer level of influence fans can have on proceedings, but it's always tempered by the chance element of the dice roll.
Hylics
What's Really Happening? You Decide
Sometimes, the less straightforward and linear a game's narrative, the more players find themselves becoming invested in it. Soulsborne games, for instance, leave an awful lot to interpretation, telling their tales largely through brief cutscenes and rather obscure notes left around the environments. As a result, fans continue to enjoy sharing new insights and theories, keeping such games in the discourse. Hylics is a lesser-appreciated example of this concept, but one certainly worthy of exploration.
Mason Lindroth's 2015 adventure Hylics is so conventional in some ways, yet completely unique in others. NPC speech allows us to glean almost nothing, and so it's all about context clues and determining whatever possible about the bizarre world in which the player finds themselves. Artistically, there's nothing quite like Hylics, and though the basics of its storytelling revolve around the party's battle against Gibby, an entity that is apparently the King of the Moon, further context is hard to come by. This makes the experience all the more intriguing, as it embraces turn-based battles, vehicle travel between areas, and other classic RPG mainstays while carving its own unique narrative niche.
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