Larian Studios - Choice and Consequence

In a decent RPG choices should have consequences or at the very least give you the feeling your choices matter and something in the world is changing because of them. Swen "Lar" Vincke talks about how choice and consequece is being implemented in Dragon Commander and also in Project E. Besides that he also promises more new stuff from Dragon Commander to be released this month.

Our idea is to market Dragon Commander as a game that gives you over 300 choice & consequence situations, with plenty of examples that clearly differentiate it from the rest of the pack. Of course we’re cheating a bit, because we’ve created the entire gameplay around this choice & consequence mechanic, but nonetheless, I’ll consider it quite a feat when we succeed in this.

In Dragon Commander the entire concept is built around a bunch of possible protagonists/antagonists, each having their own story trees that impact the story trees of the the other main characters, with the player being the one that decides in which direction the plot navigates by making a series of decisions. Several of these decisions affect relationship parameters, and once these go over a certain value, the story branches.