When choice might not be the top desideratum

[oursin]

I liked David Mitchell's column in The Observer New Review section yesterday: Choose my own Netflix adventure? No thanks.

Apart from the point he makes that, actually, what one wants is to sit down and have somebody tell you a story -

- it also strikes me that in this particular allotrope of interactive narrative, presumably it is a case (as with the choices made by The Dice Man) that these are not entirely free and random choices but already set up by whoever's producing the thing.

So it's unlikely that you get the option to turn a grimdark noir narrative into an all-singing all-dancing extravaganza, or that you have the choice of observing that the ferocious monster has a thorn in its foot, the poor thing and, rather than fighting it or running away, you remove the thorn and you and the monster become besties 4evah.

So the choices are already made for you and the idea that the viewer is choosing their own adventure except within existing parameters is spurious.

Okay, I have sometimes read a book/watched a movie and thought things like, there ought to be a whole lot more of the snarky sidekick, or, get rid of that annoying child, but I'm pretty sure that the Choose Your Own Path thing would rest entirely on plot cruxes which might take the narrative in different directions.

The significant choice that one makes when reading/watching/listening is made before one starts, and has picked a noir thriller/screwball comedy/all-singing all-dancing extravaganza.

Comments

[slemslempike]

I would hate a choose your own path. For one thing, I have pretty terrible critical faculties when it comes to TV! I need programme makers to save me from my worst desires. Also, then you would feel some guilt when it went bad instead of being able to sit back in enjoyable grumpiness.

[rymenhild]

The missing concept here is video gaming. I'm not a gamer myself, but I understand that there are lots of immersive games out there where the player's choices affect the next steps in the plot. Interactive narrative is certainly already out there, although again, there, the programmers have made the choices.

[oursin]

Mitchell mentions video games in the article; but I presume that they are their own kind of experience?

[movingfinger]

This is why I fail at D&D and have always been disappointed in interactives. There are so many interesting choices left out.

For entertainment, I desire the author to take a position and present it. My daily life is stuffed with narrative choices already, of greater and lesser significance. A compressed-time narrative of someone else's choices is relaxing, instead of another set of consequences to weight, another damned decision to make.

[white_hart]

I recently acquired a choose-your-own-adventure version of Hamlet. Which conclusively proved that I am not cut out to be s tragic hero, being instead a generally sensible and level-headed person who tends to make choices which will result in reasonable outcomes which everyone is more or less OK with, and which do not lead to people getting stabbed in arrases, poisoned or killed in duels. This is good for real life, but does not make for great tragedy.

[conuly]

You acquired a what now!?

[white_hart]

This one. It's fun, though a bit dull if played/read by someone as risk-averse as me!

[castiron]

If I really want a choose-what-happens story...well, that's basically writing it myself. Sure, I can only do that in text rather than as a movie, but if I really want the story to go the way *I* like, why *not* write it?

[lamentables]

The purpose of all art (and travel, too), imo, is to present me with choices I would not have made. I want my mind and my comfort zone expanding.

[antisoppist]

This is my feeling about video games. Look, real life is like exploring new worlds in which you are constantly working out what the rules are *now* and trying to make the right choices and navigate so that it doesn't suddenly all collapse on your head and people don't die. It's interesting. I quite enjoy it and I'm quite good at it. Explaining different cultures to each other is what I do for a living. But why would I want to do that in my spare time? I play city-building sims in which just for once I get to bloody design the whole thing the way I want it.