Choose Your Own Adventure

The 1970's brought the world many things, but if you do the research, a great deal of them were pretty negative: the Jonestown Massacre, Richard Nixon, and, get this-- a terrible recession. Things were bleak from both an economic and political standpoint.

What's often forgotten by mainstream media though, is the invention of role playing, which then kicked off the "Choose your own Adventure" book franchise, which was written in an entirely second person view, always questioning you, the reader, what your option would be. This style of book, was clearly influenced by Dungeons and Dragons, which originally hit store shelves five years earlier. The theme transitioned quickly from living the adventures of your heroes in 1955's Lord of the Rings trilogy and other low or high fantasy, into actually living it and having your choices affect your ultimate destination.

Dungeon's and Dragon's opened up people's minds, and continues this tradition to this very day.

With the advent of computer games, the role playing genre began to flourish, and the consumer ate it up. Of course there were rudimentary text based adventures and various incarnations of the genre throughout history, but it almost feels like the genus didn't quite hit it's stride until the Final Fantasy series, which spawned several other successful franchise's and imitators in the process. These games, however, were extremely linear and didn't truly allow gamers any real freedom outside of battle. The games worked, and we ate them up for almost two full decades.

Games like Phantasy Star and Final Fantasy helped bring the mainstream's eye to what has now become known as "traditional RPG's."

In the late 90's, both Fallout and Baulder's Gate hit retail shelves, and provided players the first extremely marketable non-linear RPG's. For once we were able to make ground breaking decisions which could alter gameplay and your stories ultimate outcome. You were truly living the game in a truly interactive world. These two franchises are sometimes credited for shifting the once traditionally Asian-held RPG market over to the West. It took a couple of years, but in 2009, it feels like Asian RPG's are redundant and completely exhausted. After all, why watch a 40+ hour "game" when you have the option to tailer the eventual outcome?

Recently, we've been treated to titles such as Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Mass Effect, and Fallout 3, just to name a few. These are all triple 'A' examples of an extremely interactive medium, yet the game which really made me question myself and my options was, humorously, a decidedly mediocre title with an extremely limited story arc. The game being Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2; an interactive journey which steals most of it's plot devices from Marvel's own Civil War story line, which finished it's run in January of 2007. It's still pretty fresh.

Apparently, Venom now looks exactly like Spawn. I mean, they used looked a little bit different at least!

In short, you're forced to pick sides in a civil war among your fellow mutants. You either pick the pro-government registration side, and essentially become a sanctioned civil serving hero with a campaign lead by Iron Man, or jump ship and become the opposing "terrorist" force under the almost ironic leadership of Captain America. Neither side wants ill to come to the opposing forces, but it's clear that tension has boiled so much so, that being civilized just isn't an option anymore.

This has been an experience that (more than any other title with similar options) I've been trying to play as honestly as I would in real life. If I, Adam Roy, were a mutant, which side would I choose? I weighed the pro's and con's, and after much deliberation, chose to battle along Iron Man's side because it seemed they had a more compulsive argument backed with (psychohistory) science. It's wasn't one hundred percent ethical to turn on my comrade's in the way I did, however, I believed the Fantastic Four when they told me things would only get worse if we didn't succumb to what the topic of the decade was.

My decisions in both dialogue trees and the example cited above began to reflect who I truly was, and made me wonder how other people play these games as well? Do you create an entirely new hero for yourself, and answer as best you think this newly created digital fabrication would? Do you use common sense like a Vulcan, or do you aim for the purely ridiculous? Or, like me, do you project your own personal emotional and physical attributes to each and every game hero, imagining that the main space marine is you, the user, and answer as you would in real life-- possibly dwelling over each response much longer than any gamer in this day and age should?

Roll for success.