Should choices be omitted when there are no POV characters?

[vorgbardo]

My current project is at a point where I need to decide whether it will be pure kinetic novel, or have some choices that affect some aspects of the story. There can't be many of them, and/or they can't be major simply to keep the scope manageable, but the reason I'm thinking it could be best to omit them altogether is the way the story is told.

There are no POV characters. The narrative proceeds like a movie, simply showing what is happening. If there were choices, who would be the one making them? The watcher? Wouldn't that break the flow and immersion? Or would the choice be interpreted as momentarily visiting the head of one of the characters at a moment when they make a decision? I'd be very interesting to hear your view on this.

[Jackkel Dragon]

If there is no need for branching paths or alternate endings, I'd say don't force them. From my experience, people WILL complain about the lack of choices, but it's not worth diluting your focus if you have no ideas or reasons for other routes.

As for the actual question, I'd say you don't need a fixed point of view character to include choices. It may depend on the story or themes how you want to present choices, but it could be any number of things. It could be just the player picking what they want to happen, or it could be a silent omniscient narrator, or you could tie it in with other aspects of the story (such as your example of having choices be from POV scenes). Something that comes to mind for me is the MCU version of Marvel's "What if...?" series, where most episodes start with the narrator explaining what caused the divergence from the expected storyline.

Short version would be "you can always include choices", with the details being the important thing to consider. It's hard to give specific advice without more information.

[vorgbardo]

Thank you for the very astute reply! From story telling perspective the choices are not at all essential in this case. They would just add more interactivity and (hopefully) feeling of involvement, which could make the story more interesting to the reader.

I know it's hard to give a detailed answer to a question lacking specific story details, but this was already helpful advice. In this story the choices would concern what the characters say/do in specific situations (which in part would affect the actions of others in the future). It is almost impossible to establish this without linking the choices to the characters, but there shouldn't appear to be an (in-game) external control over their choices. Just letting the player choose what will happen at certain points instead of building it via interactive character interactions could perhaps work, although then the choices would probably feel much more superficial.

I'm starting to realize that I should probably implement both ways (interactive and non-interactive) for a part of a story and find out which works best via play testing.

[Jackkel Dragon]

One option for allowing choices while keeping a limited number of actual story consequences could be to have mostly cosmetic choices like in the games by the old Telltale Games (before they went bankrupt and the name was acquired by another company). In particular, their Game of Thrones game follows multiple viewpoint characters, so that could be a reference point to look into.

The tricky thing is that this method seems to encourage repeat playthroughs, since players want to see what different choices do, but the story is ultimately railroaded into a limited number of routes. So people who actually do replay the game will start to see through the illusion, which may be off-putting to certain players. It also requires careful work to make sure choices are recognized (even if just with minor callouts) while still all making sense with the set plot.

An example from Telltale's The Walking Dead (with most spoilers left out): There is a chance in an early episode to steal from a set of supplies. However, other characters do so even if the player refuses, causing an unavoidable story beat later in the season. That same story beat involves a character calling out the player for their choices, always negatively but also acknowledging what the player actually picked. So while it's a railroaded storyline, the player still feels like they had an impact.

Hopefully some of that rambling helped. Basically, do what you think will work, but be careful. Certain design choices give specific expectations, so you want to be aware of those expectations to make the decisions that best fit your intended story and gameplay.