Feels really nice when the game actually lets you change how everything flows, almost like you're in control even more whether it's just a decision to choose soup or salad for dinner or whether you wanna let your best friend suffer while saving her dad's life or let her dad die so your friend will live normally but gets into tons of bad crowds... Dammit, Chloe! (Life is Strange).
I'm never a fan of complex story, when the story is too serious, I can't be arsed to keep so much stuff in mind. When the story is shallow and all jokes, I might still get a few chuckles out of it but it'll certainly put me to sleep, this is why gameplay and story of a game kinda becomes the deciding factor of whether I wanna play the game and invest my valuable life which I could spend on socializing with new people and studying new things or leave the game and bitch about stuff on the internet.
Video game developers have always been trying to achieve absolute immersion for the players or just wanna get some money, a man's gotta eat, but I digress. Some games actually let you actively choose what you wanna do, but everything always comes down a linear outcome, I know making a video game isn't easy, you need to choose between quantity or quality... or balanced. You want to make the gameplay varied but you can only make the game so long or you can make the game super long but consists of the same gameplay. You either get bored for being dragged out or have a unique experience but unsatisfied...
Gotta make sure I'm not starting to describe my love life... that is if I've ever had one
Anyway, the balanced way is the best, you stay entertained with unique stuff and it doesn't drag out for too long.
Some games like Infamous or Spider-Man Web of Shadows clearly shows which path is for heroes and which is for douchebags, but games like Heavy Rain, Mass Effect, Life is Strange and plenty of Telltale's titles really dwell around the grey area a little too long like a windowless white van around a kiddy playground. Games like Bioshock Infinite doesn't show much choices actually toys with the mentality of choices and actually makes us learn the hard way that you're not supposed to fuck with fate, no matter how much control you think you have, it's just what you think.
Since I've been playing Life is Strange, I'm currently most familiar with it, but I still remember my first ever choice in a game, to give Emerl to Shadow or not early in Sonic Battle. If I say no, Shadow will fight Sonic, but if I choose yes, Sonic would say "There's no way I'd just say yes!" and starts to fight anyway. At the time it felt awesome because it was a first for me, to change the dialogue even by a little bit. Now, it's just a bullshit choice because there's no point of putting one there, or maybe there is, I never finished the game, but I do know Emerl goes berserk at the end, maybe that's when Emerl starts to look back whether Sonic handed him over easily or protected him, but Sonic has never really been famous for story.
When I play a story-based game, I tend to not replay it because usually I'll get bored, I already know the story, I know how it'll play out, maybe if the gameplay is fun I get some extra kicks out of replaying but when the gameplay is pretty meh, I always let cutscenes and story moments play out while I search for some wank materials which really takes away the immersion. But for games with branchy storylines, I always play at least twice, the first one being what I wanna do, the second play is the opposite, I might do another for goofing off and looking for other changes but by then I my attention would've gone to the screaming cat noises outside my window.
Same goes for survival horror games like Resident Evil, RE4 is a great game, I get why some people get some kick out of replaying, but it just doesn't interest me anymore. DmC: Devil May Cry, the reboot which gets shit all over for making a new take on the franchise has quite a meh story, but to this day I still get a kick out of replaying it from time to time. I've never played Metal Gear Solid, I've played the spin off, Metal Gear Rising, the story pales in comparison to MGS for how deep and complicated it is, but again, the gameplay is the strong point. While I do acknowledge that MGS's story is indeed amazing, that still goes under the too complicated list in my book, I prefer it to be a movie rather than a game.
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