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I'm trying to write naturalistic choices. What y'all think about arbitrary goodness? I don't favor karma systems since they are rather restrictive. I want players to make decisions based upon their own preferences. I know the prevailing design is to make it easy to play to a morality or to a character's approval but I feel that somehow cheapens the experience if we're just 'sucking up' to characters or values that aren't our own. I would compare it to a party where you're laughing at the bosses horrible jokes despite your disdain. I think in games there has evolved two prevailing systems of design.

Binary Morality Based (Bioware Mass Effect, Fallout, and etc.)
You're either good or evil. Sometimes rarely you benefit from neutral but often you're punished by not getting rewards. Saving or kicking puppies, those are your choices.

Character Approval Based (Dragon Age, Typical VN, and etc.)
You're aiming for character you like, so you side with them in all decisions. You're a consummate liar and hypocrite, you'll nod to character B's ideology, and then nod to character D's opposite ideology. Sometimes if you try to romance two characters you'll get called up on it, maybe.

I'm leaning towards the latter of Character Approval Based as being more natural, however, I feel that has its limits too. Tons of games have tried to copy the decision wheel, because of its ease and it success as a tool. Is this the ultimate model, what's the next model of decision design?

Option C: Fuck stat systems, and fuck good/bad endings. Provide choices which lead to stories worth telling.

If you want to give the reader an option between seeing what a character would do if he either decided to be a sycophant or risk his career by standing on his principles, then present the reader with that choice. The great thing about visual novels is that they are still novels and not really games, so when a player makes a choice, it is not necessarily to say "I would do this" but rather "I want to see what happens if that character makes this choice." That is what the reader is telling you when they make a choice - not what they want to do, but what they want to see. It's the great strength of visual novels and of choose-your-own-adventure stories in general that they permit a single author to present multiple stories and invite readers to select which one they want to see first.

You can't stat nuance. If you find a point in your prose where your story is tearing itself apart in two directions for good reasons, allow it to make that split, and explore each path fully. There is no reason they can't both be worthy tales, and if they are, then you are not limited from telling them both.

There's a good distinction to make when talking about choices in an interactive medium, and the question is whether the choice is a problem (with an optimal or "best" answer for gameplay reasons) or an actual choice. If you can say as the creator of the game that one choice is right and the other is wrong, then it's a calculation, not a choice.

To be fully clear: calculations do have a place in VNs, even ones heavy in story. There can be times when the player is put to the test, to see if they have been paying attention to the world and characters contained therein. Just because an option has an optimal answer doesn't mean it's "bad." Problems are the challenge that you find in some VNs; players who have mastered the mechanics (i.e. learning about the story and predicting outcomes) are rewarded for doing so, with the intent that as time progresses, most players will strive to do so.

If you want a narrative to be explorative, however, then some choices can't be right or wrong. The player has to be allowed to see the consequences of their actions, and the result has to be treated as separate and entirely valid path for the player to pursue. These "real" choices are what increase the size and scope of a game, because the more choices like these you offer, the more alternate paths you have to write.

Each type of choice has a purpose: the former is for challenge, and the latter is for exploration.

Take dating sims for example, or games where there's romanceable characters. One (if not only) true choice would be choosing which character to pursue. There's no right or wrong answer, and since the creator has included material for each possible option, it's an actual choice. But the rest of the choices are calculations - in rote games you usually try to align yourself with the character in question, whereas with more involved experiences you can actually be faced with serious dilemmas that reflect the real world. But since they're there to provide the sense of conflict and eventual accomplishment, they aren't a true choice - they're a problem.

Some people on this forum seem to absolutely detest calculations in their VNs... and while I can see where they're coming from, I don't think all of the hate is warranted. The real problem is when a story offers nothing but problems so predictable and bland that it fails to capture the player's interest. As you can see in the example above, some challenge-based choices can actually be more engaging and realistic than pure choices.

Sword of Akasha wrote:I'm leaning towards the latter of Character Approval Based as being more natural, however, I feel that has its limits too. Tons of games have tried to copy the decision wheel, because of its ease and it success as a tool. Is this the ultimate model, what's the next model of decision design?

I subscribe to the "Imminent and Long-Term Consequence Based" tool, which is a school of choice that I completely made up the name for a few seconds ago. In it, each decision should be weighed in two different ways by the player - the short-term consequences and the long-term ones.

There's no morality meters, so it's different than the first example you gave. And it's distinct from the second example in that Character Approval Based systems only look at the immediate consequences: will this make the girl like you more, will this make the guy feel better, etc. The Imminent and Long-Term Consequence Based™ system actually allows for scenarios where the right option is something that is harmful in the short-term but positive in the long run. Maybe the best course of action is to tell a girl off, making her angry at the time, only for her to gain the resolve to do the right thing later on.

How do you use the Imminent and Long-Term Consequence Based™ (ILTCB) system? There's only three easy steps! Just make sure the player has 1) the proper context, 2) enough relevant information, and 3) a clear set of options. Which is a really fancy way of saying "make sure it's well-written."

...I think somewhere along the way my post went from "academic digression" to "satirical self-parody" for no real reason. Oh well, I'm too lazy to change it. :\

First you need to ask yourself why you have choices in the game. What do you want to do with them (other than tell a branching story) because as you self have said there are different kind of choices and different kind of games.

I am just going to randomly give them names, because I want to and it is easier to illustrate like that.

Obstacle choices:

- These are the kind of choices which are meant to get the player/reader over an obstacle. The story present a problem and the player makes choices to get around the problem.
Sometimes failure means game over, sometimes the player is allowed to fail and sometimes there are varying degrees of succes allowed.

Usually these kind of choices are characterized by there being one optimal path behind through the obstacle course, but some of the more advances have a 'play to you strenght strategy'.

A crude example of 'play through your strenght': You have to solve a murder:

If the player has a high int. stat they can find clues by trying to solve the mystery message the murder left behind, if they have a high charm they have to try and talk to people - either way there is an optimal path.

Now the consequence of this is that there players don't have much freedom in what they choose, the best they can try is playing a different strategy, but there is a clear right and wrong approach. It doesn't mean that this is bad, it can be very funny to clear and obstacle, but the point of the choice is problem solving.

Gotta' get that ending - choices

These are choices where the player aim for a specific ending. Examples is dating sims and games which 'good and bad' endings or factions ending.

These kind of choices are typical culminative and it is usually about getting enough points to get the ending the player wants. For example dating sims where the player tries to get 'the good end' (or what kind of end there is) with the LI of their interest, or game with a binary morality where you get the 'good', the 'evil' and the neutral ending - or perhaps games where you get the ending with a specific faction in game.

Again, the player usually pick the choice for the character or the ending they want and often feels obligated to choose certain choices or risk being thrown off-path (or to a lesser ending). The good thing about these choices is that it is very easy for the player to experience the story they want to, which is not to be underestimated.

Story branching choices:
These are the big ones. The ones which take the story in two (or more if you are crazy) different direction. As Kailoti said if you want all branches to be viable, divorce them as much as possible from obstacles. There shouldn't be an optimal path through here.

It is very difficult to do though. Espically if you have a lot of these.

Roleplaying choices

This is the difficult. Roleplaying choice are choices that helps define the player character. The problem is that a lot of games (such as bioware) and vns make roleplaying choices out of the above kind of choices and thus everything gets mixed together.

There is logic behind it sure. An morality, factions, and approval (of the both love and friendskip kind) certainly helps define a character, just as it is easy to make obstacles there plays to a role's strength, but you run the risk of cluttering the consequence of the choices.

Take the typical dragon age choices. I have to think about 'what will be in charater for the PC', 'What will be the consequence in a meta sense (aka can I influence the story in the direction I want', 'what will the companions think' and 'will there be a stats bonus by taking this choice'?

It's a lot and different players value different aspects. So if you value roleplay choices, really think about how you are going to define the player choices and if the players are going to value roleplay more or if they are going to value something else. (Hint if there are LI's the players are going to make choices the LI likes. You can't get around this).

You don't need roleplay. A VN with a defined character is just as good and it is certainy more easy to write.

There is a lot more complexity to roleplaying choices I have not discussed (including different kinds of roleplay), but the post will be too long.

You may want to take a look at a few games:

-Fallout New Vegas.
It has both the karma meter, which helps with which characters can you make a party, and a faction meter (which is more important plot-wise), where you form your friends and foes during the story, leading to different outcomes.

-Alpha Protocol.
It has a character meter, with a twist: there are a LOT of characters, not all of them can be maxed, but their meter ALWAYS matters in one way or the other (even with people who only appears in one or two scenes), and you'll NEVER know everything about everyone, so the story can get a surprising amount of twists, while keeping consistent and letting you discover a lot of new stuff with every playthrough (choice and plot-wise, I consider this game to be superb).

Also, you may be interested on reading about Jade Empire's "karma" meter. It's not about being good or evil, but about following one of two different philosophies, which aren't wrong or ideal themselves, and has simply different points of view.

(I tell you to read about it, but... don't bother playing the game for that, though: the quests were horribly written in that regard, and it was an extremely obvious black and white morality system. The game itself is very good, though).

As far as morality-based choices are concerned, I like the approaches taken by The Wolf Among Us or The Walking Dead, or This War of Mine: Choices where you’re placed in a situation where the “right” thing to do isn’t immediately obvious, or where you’re forced to choose between the lesser of two evils, or make choices that are downright cruel when taken out of context (the Villains Wiki lists roughly…85% of the main cast as villains for this precise reason) but seem perfectly justified and less cruel than the “kind” option in context. Even if you make a decision that FELT like the right one at the time, it can still leave you feeling bad about it later—both the character and the player. Rather than simply making a character pure good or pure evil as shaped by their choices, simply make them a complex human being who’s in a messed-up situation where they have to step back and think about their decisions with no time to make a list of “pros and cons”, and not just blindly guess in the dark, or go off morality they were taught in a civilized setting that had no real need for a major conflict up until now.

To provide a good example of this in, say, season two of The Walking Dead (SPOILERS for episode four):
That’s another thing: Don’t cheat and take a “third option”. Have actual CONSEQUENCES to your player’s decisions no matter what. Don’t provide “an easy way out”. That’s cheating, and robbing the player of the experience. If you want the player to “shape their own morality”, show that their actions in-game have consequences, and make them THINK about WHY they made the decision they made, and if it was worth it or not. And if other characters in-game are going to react and provide you with their two cents, I don't think there should be universal popularity or universal scorn either--some will either go “you did the right thing” or “you fucking ASSHOLE”. The Wolf Among Us comes to mind with this. Not all of the decisions you make as Bigby will win everyone over, some decisions can and will piss off a lot of people and yet also make others very happy. But the point is not to win a popularity contest, of course. It’s to make you think about why you’re making these decisions, and why you want the character to develop this way. (Slightly off-topic, but THAT is what makes The Wolf Among Us mature, NOT the fact that it has mature content /rant over)

That said, however, a common criticism I see of TellTale games is that your choices actually don’t matter in the long run—all they change is just dialogue, and that’s it. Rather than actually giving the player agency and choice, they give you the illusion of choice. As much as I like season two of The Walking Dead, I do have to admit that’s where this criticism can be applied to the strongest. (spoilers for all of s2 of TellTales’ The Walking Dead)
Part of it may be because I’ve just been spoiled by numerous VN’s where the choices you made actually DID impact the story later on (like, for example, Long Live the Queen—that’s an excellent example of where you need to tread carefully when dealing with other royals, or else one, tiny misstep could and does sneak up on you later on), but when you sell a game on the premise of making tough moral decisions, it’s a better pay-off to see different consequences to said decision rather than the same one framed in a different manner. There’s at least one area of this where not changing much can have an impact: It doesn’t change the story, but it does make you step back and consider why you made the decision you did. From that angle, it can be really powerful. But it would be nice to have a bit more agency, too.

tl;dr: Rather than have a binary “good or evil” moral based decision system, or a passive/malleable one, try having morally complex decisions where the “right” thing to do isn’t immediately obvious and you have no way of knowing the long-term consequences of said decision until later on, but also give the player more agency than just having a moral decision impact the dialogue and not much else.

I quite like obstable/calculation choices when done well (this is not related to True Endings in my mind at all). My favorite VN sereies Cause of Death (sadly now cancelled) used those choices excellently.

Anyway, I wanted to pop up to say that I think people are not recognizing the greater nuance that Bioware injected into their games after Obsidian did it when working on their property Knights of the Old Republic 2.

For example, the morality system in the later Mass Effects isn't Good/Evil, but Renegade/Paragon, and there are times when Renegade choices are 'good' choices, and times when Paragon choices aren't 'good' choices.
And as for the character choices, the idea that all you do is tell the characters what they want to hear and it all works out...that actually didn't work out well in Dragon Age 2. Dragon Age actually uses both "morality" choices and character choices. The moralities, as far as I could tell, were: Diplomatic/Pacifistic, Agressive, and Joker. My first play through I played almost exclusively diplomatic...and I told all my party members what they wanted to hear to max out friendship. It was a good playthrough...some bad things happened to some people...but I had supposed that is just how the story went. Then I played through again more aggressive and decided not to enable the bad behavior of some of the party members. Guess what? Some of the bad things that happened in my first playthrough didn't happen in the second. It was a revelation to me whtn this really terrible thing that happened to one party member who I had maxed out friendship with didn't happen when I maxed out rivalry.
Dragon Age 2 did a great job of not making it so that it was good/evil or that the thing you always wanted to do was do whatever you could to max out friendship. So I think more nuanced things are already happening, even in big games like the Bioware games.

Regarding the critique that some of the choices of the Telltale Games don't matter becuase they don't change the plot...I don't think choices have to change the plot to matter...they can change the character, or the chracter relationships and be very meaning ful even if they don't change the plot.

Ultimatley, I like a wide variety of choices in my games...which actually is why I liked Dragon Age 2 so much, there were NPC relationship choices, morality choice, plot choices, choices to help define who the PC was...combat was basically the obstacle choices. I like having lots different sorts of choices in my games.

One thing I like best, which Mass Effect 3 did really well (too well actually--I'll get to that in a second), is delayed consequences for choices...and not being obvious about it. Many people complained that the game had no difference in the ending except the color of the light...so it was all pointless. But I read this really interesting article about all the differences in the game that happened based on the choices you had built up over the three games. There were so many differences! I didn't even know how many of the things I had experienced had been tailored consequences for my earlier actions. I thought that was really awesome. Sadly, they didn't have an icon show up in the corner telegraphing to players, so people thought there was no difference. Cinders got around this by just showing the icon in the corner to say "this is the result of an earlier choice." It makes me sad that they needed to do that.

Anyway, tl;dr: A wide variety of choices, and a wide variety of consequnces (delayed as well as immediate).

One thing I find frustrating with karma meters is that a lot of these games mechanically push you to choose a side early on and hammer that point repeatedly without ever deviating. It's that whole "neutrality is for losers" thing. There may be Paragon and Renegade instead of Good or Evil, but if you're not ALL paragon or ALL renegade you lose a bunch of benefits and options. (note: I'm just using Paragon and Renegade because they were the moral stances most recently mentioned. I haven't actually played ME3.)

Someone who approves of it would call it "rewarding consistency". Done badly, however, it can get you to the point where the only real choice you get to make in a game is the first one, and after that, either you choose 'correctly' to stick with your initial choice, or you change your mind, and end up losing. That really waters down any later decisions.

This isn't necessarily a cry for more 'third option' choices, third options that make everything better are a weak way out unless you had to do some extra work to achieve that balance. I'm more making a complaint against simple binaries. Being Socially Conservative and Fiscally Liberal doesn't have to mean that those two things balance out to make you true neutral. You can have both scales separately!

One thing that was so great about Obsidian's Knights of the Old Republic 2, was that while you had the Light Side and the Dark Side scale, you could be Neutral and that didn't make you lose. There were options unique to neutral people as well.

Regarding Papillon's comment: "I'm more making a complaint against simble binaries. Being Socially Conservative and Fiscally Liberal doesn't have to mean that those two things balance out to make you true neutral. You can have both scales separately!"

I think there are two (or more?) different issues imbedden in this comment. One, I think is not actually about simple binaries (since most of these are theoretically continua) but that the poles of the spectrum make no sense. Why are Paragon and Renegage the two poles? Do they make sense at opposed poles? In Papillon's example, Socially Conservative and Fiscally Liberal are not good choices to the poles anchoring a spectrum. I think Paprillon is right that two many games create poles that don't really make a lot of sense as anchors. So...more thoughtful poles of the spectrum is good.

Second would be to have more spectrum. I'm pretty sure Fable does this, which a bunch of differnt spectrum your character exists upon...I think there are few other RPGs that do this as well.

And a third thing...which is also part of Papillon's post...when games tell you they are giving you a spectrum but they only code for the poles....meaning it really is only a binary.

So...actually having spectrums rather than binaries disguised as spectrums. Having spectrums whose poles actually make sense as anchors of a dialectic, and having more than one spectrum.

Now doing these things (except #2) increase the complexity of the code...but I think it is still a good thing to do!

Someday I'd like to see a morality metre that doesn't range from Good to Evil but from Kant to Bentham.

Kailoto wrote:There's a good distinction to make when talking about choices in an interactive medium, and the question is whether the choice is a problem (with an optimal or "best" answer for gameplay reasons) or an actual choice. If you can say as the creator of the game that one choice is right and the other is wrong, then it's a calculation, not a choice.

Joseph Weizenbaum wrote a bit about this in his 1976 book Computer Power and Human Reason, although not in the context of visual novels or video games, obviously. He called what you call a calculation a decision (Wikipedia has a short summary, you might find it interesting). I really wish that VN and game developers would adopt a terminology on this, like you do, since I think it's an important distinction to make.

truefaiterman wrote:-Alpha Protocol.
It has a character meter, with a twist: there are a LOT of characters, not all of them can be maxed, but their meter ALWAYS matters in one way or the other (even with people who only appears in one or two scenes), and you'll NEVER know everything about everyone, so the story can get a surprising amount of twists, while keeping consistent and letting you discover a lot of new stuff with every playthrough (choice and plot-wise, I consider this game to be superb).

Another thing that ought to be mentioned about Alpha Protocol was that sometimes it was in your best interests that people had a low opinion of you. There is, for example, one character who runs away after the boss fight you have with him, only to show up later for another fight. If, however, you've been a complete tosser to him beforehand, he'll be so angry with you that he fights to the death and you don't have to battle him again. What also helps is that Alpha Protocol is, in many ways, always composed of the same set pieces, and so the writers were more or less forced to write an equal amount of content for people when they dislike you -- which leads to a few scenes that are much, much more enjoyable than the positive ones.

One feature which I feel is sorely lacking in decision-based games is the ability to do one thing and say another. In many RPGs, verbally committing to something is basically the same thing as doing it, which is a pretty drastic break from reality where people can lie and verbally commit to things without actually doing them.

Incidentally, Persona 4 Golden did a good job of letting you say one thing while doing another with regard to one thing: fidelity in romantic relationships. You could romance one character, tell her "you're the only one for me," and then turn around and do the same thing with a different girl the next week. It really all comes full circle toward the end of the game when One of the games I'm working on right now is a simulation game where you run a business and interact with employees, and one of the things that I'm working to do is separate the things you say from the things you do. The interactions you have with employees are separated from the business decisions you make from behind your manager desk, so you get to pay lip service to employees and say "Oh yeah, that's a totally reasonable request, we'll absolutely do that," and then actually do nothing about it, which may or may not come back to bite you. One of the points of the game is to figure out which issues are faux-important and can be dealt with simply by paying lip service, while there are others where people will actually call you out when your walk doesn't match your talk. The personalities of individual employees also factor in, so you can sometimes get away with more shenanigans when dealing with meek employees who are too deferential to challenge you. I've actually had a lot of fun working on this project, and I wish more games existed that had mechanisms that allow you to constantly be lying and manipulative (with the potential for negative consequences when you get caught, of course).

Somewhat off-topic for this thread, but on the subject of "saying one thing while doing another," one of the things I loved about This War of Mine (which Caveat Lector also brought up) is that sometimes NPCs will behave in ways that are "inconsistent" but completely realistic. For example, there was one occasion when I had one of my characters enter an unknown house. As it turned out, this house was the residence of a stranger, who immediately began yelling threats, making statements to the effect of, "I've got a gun, get the hell out of my house unless you want to get shot." I had no weapon, but I ignored his threat and walked into his house and took some of his food, all while he continued to threaten to shoot me without actually doing it. As it turned out, he was all bark and no bite. That feels very different from a normal video game, where if you trespass and then get spotted by a guard with a gun, you immediately start getting shot at. But that experience felt very realistic: how many normal people, when confronted with an unarmed looter who was taking their stuff, could actually point a gun at them and muster the willpower to pull the trigger? That NPC actually felt like a person, rather than a generic entity run by video game logic. I think the greatest strength of This War of Mine is the powerful way in which it connects gameplay mechanics with storytelling.

I can't remember which game it was, but there was one I played that included lying. It might have been choice of romance? Anyway, it had choiced like:

"I love you forever," he said.
How do you reply?
-"I love you, too."
-[Lie] "I love you, too."
-"Oh...but I don't love you."

I quite like that. I believe that game also would ask you after you made certain choices of you were sincere or not.

trooper6 wrote:I can't remember which game it was, but there was one I played that included lying. It might have been choice of romance? Anyway, it had choiced like:

"I love you forever," he said.
How do you reply?
-"I love you, too."
-[Lie] "I love you, too."
-"Oh...but I don't love you."

I quite like that. I believe that game also would ask you after you made certain choices of you were sincere or not.

A lot of the Choice Of games do that. It's a useful mechanic, but I personally don't like it that much as it's too overtly meta-gamey for my taste. To be clear, I like that you have the ability to lie, but the page asking if you were sincere or not (and why) just throw me.

Choice Of games tend to be super upfront about the meta-game aspects (as you mentioned there's the "(lie)" mechanism or also descriptions of choices that are basically "There are two ways to approach this. A would depend on X stat, and B would depend on Y stat" except in very thinly veiled language), which isn't per se bad, but does tend to throw me out of a sense of immersion. I also understand that it's somewhat necessary, to be honest, because Choice Of games don't let you save midway through the game (also making me waaaay less likely to replay).

Somewhat tangentially related (to what papillon was discussing as well) is that the way most Choice of Games are set up, you have three to five stats and you basically have to minmax (or at least the game makes you feel you have to) to "solve" the "problems" the game throws at you. So while "do you want to play as a stealthy fighter or a brawler" is an initial choice, the subsequent choices are all calculations since once you commit to a particular path, it makes no sense to pick the brawler choice when your stats are all in stealth.

ETA: sometimes metagaming is the point -- there's at least one person who's talked about openly acknowledging that dating sims are manipulation sims, and one of the ways they achieved that was having (+5 affection) or (-5 kindness) shown with the choices. That's an interesting experiment, and I can appreciate it as such, but in the run of the mill Choice Of game, I don't think that's what they're going for.

Carassaurat wrote:Someday I'd like to see a morality metre that doesn't range from Good to Evil but from Kant to Bentham.

I would actually argue that most morality meters are closer to that than Good and Evil. For instance, Paragon/Renegade in ME has elements of traditional good/evil morality, but the focus is actually more on "I'm doing this because it's right" vs. "The end (= saving the galaxy) justifies the means." Basically, Shepard always has to save the galaxy, it's just a matter of how she does it, and whether or not she's an asshole to people around her as she does it. In that vein, it's actually kind of difficult to find a traditional RPG that actually has "evil" protagonists -- because the devs generally aren't writing "So our hero decided to join the Reapers instead." It's also not common in VN or other interactive story mediums, as far as I can tell, presumably because it's very difficult to write two diametrically opposed stories.

philat wrote:

Carassaurat wrote:Someday I'd like to see a morality metre that doesn't range from Good to Evil but from Kant to Bentham.

I would actually argue that most morality meters are closer to that than Good and Evil. For instance, Paragon/Renegade in ME has elements of traditional good/evil morality, but the focus is actually more on "I'm doing this because it's right" vs. "The end (= saving the galaxy) justifies the means." Basically, Shepard always has to save the galaxy, it's just a matter of how she does it, and whether or not she's an asshole to people around her as she does it. In that vein, it's actually kind of difficult to find a traditional RPG that actually has "evil" protagonists -- because the devs generally aren't writing "So our hero decided to join the Reapers instead." It's also not common in VN or other interactive story mediums, as far as I can tell, presumably because it's very difficult to write two diametrically opposed stories.

I think one of the few that did that was KotOR 1. And I really did not enjoy my evil playthrough. Not because it was poorly written, it was well written...but because I just did not enjoy being evil. After it was over, I felt empty and hollow. I appreciated the game could make me feel that way, but it wasn't enjoyable.

But up to your earlier point about immersion. I don't find "(Lie) Of course I love you" choices break my immersion...because in character I am lying. Actually, I don't find anything that indicates tone, intention, or other in-character elements break my immersion. I sometimes find not having the option to lie...or to not get into a relationship with so-and-so can break my immersion.

On the other hand, things that indicate things that are not in-character (relationship points, AC bonuses, etc)...that does tend to break my immersion. If stats and the numerical results of choices are only available in screens that you only see when you have paused the game...that is fine for me--because menus like that I see as an out of character space. But...I'd prefer not to have pop-ups like "so-and-so will remember that choice" or "+5 Reltionship points" while I'm in the game.