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The Life and Suffering of Sir Brante — Chapter 1&2
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The Life and Suffering of Sir Brante — Chapter 1&2

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Reaper 10 Jan, 2021 @ 5:12am
A Critique of Willpower + Hidden Consequences
I want to preface this that I played the demo with hidden consequences (as I believe it to be the proper way to play the game), and I absolutely loved it, but during my time playing it, I found that the mechanics of willpower and the lack of information from hidden consequences sometimes do not mix well together.

To start, nowhere is it explained for a player starting out with hidden consequences that willpower is a stat that can be regained, not only spent. The in-game description only mentions that willpower is drained when undergoing tough decisions, but not that it can be refilled by sometimes choosing "passive" actions. I myself only discovered that I could regain willpower when I was forced to stare through the kaleidoscope, with this happening solely because I lacked the stats for the other two choices.

Additionally, because of the nature of the willpower stat being akin to a currency, unlike all the other personality stats which can only be gained and not lost, willpower obviously plays a crucial role during gameplay. However, the actions which lead to gaining willpower aren't always telegraphed properly, for example choosing to pour wine for the family along with your mother and Gloria, or choosing to spend the night before your exam with Nathan, for some reason gain willpower, despite them not necessarily being "passive" choices. I would have imagined them to at least be neutral choices, where willpower is neither lost nor gained. This is in stark contrast to other options, such as staring through the kaleidoscope or hiding during Sophia's search. To add to this, there are other options that seem like they would gain willpower through inaction, and yet they don't. Because of this, gaining willpower for someone with hidden consequences becomes a guessing game, and could lead to players making unintended choices, believing it may grant them willpower.

Saying this, I think some sort of indication when the option of gaining willpower is present, or inversely, when there is no choice available that can give willpower, could have a positive impact. A sort of "there are no easy options this time around", either telegraphed via the UI or the text (i.e. like Nathan's spiritual advice, where the text gives a "your choice will influence Nathan's life from there forward" prompt). This will hopefully mitigate the guessing game that becomes trying to balance willpower during a hidden consequences playthrough.

For anyone who might say "oh but that's the point of having hidden consequences, you aren't supposed to know what changes to stats will happen", I should point out that for all other stats, either they can only be increased, so having consequences hidden has no major impact (i.e. personality stats), or a decrease in the stat is already obvious (i.e. relations stats - obviously refusing to help someone will worsen your relation with them).


TL;DR: Willpower is basically guessing if you're playing with hidden consequences. Please add some sort of indication for willpower-gaining actions.
Last edited by Reaper; 10 Jan, 2021 @ 5:19am
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Showing 1-15 of 26 comments
Sigizmund 11 Jan, 2021 @ 10:35am 
Agree. Willpower must be removed from this beautiful game. It kills immersion and freedom of choice.
Last edited by Sigizmund; 11 Jan, 2021 @ 10:36am
#1
Reaper 11 Jan, 2021 @ 2:04pm 
Originally posted by Dikstra:
Agree. Willpower must be removed from this beautiful game. It kills immersion and freedom of choice.

Not necessarily, willpower is a very neat game mechanic, but it does need some slight tweaking.
#2
Sigizmund 11 Jan, 2021 @ 2:14pm 
Originally posted by Reaper:
Originally posted by Dikstra:
Agree. Willpower must be removed from this beautiful game. It kills immersion and freedom of choice.

Not necessarily, willpower is a very neat game mechanic, but it does need some slight tweaking.
I agree, perhaps it should be removed from some actions, and in some it should be left.
#3
Commiesrock 16 Jan, 2021 @ 2:53pm 
I think willpower should be given a bit more generously, tied into more options maybe, or the cost lowered if your stats align with the decision. There's a few situations where you're put into a string of choices with no chance to gain willpower at all so you can miss out on very key decisions without any control. Just feels weird for a choose your own adventure game.
#4
Reaper 16 Jan, 2021 @ 3:07pm 
Originally posted by Commiesrock:
I think willpower should be given a bit more generously, tied into more options maybe, or the cost lowered if your stats align with the decision. There's a few situations where you're put into a string of choices with no chance to gain willpower at all so you can miss out on very key decisions without any control. Just feels weird for a choose your own adventure game.

Fully agree with you. Some choices definitely need a small willpower gain, especially in those dry runs where you end up with no way to gain back willpower.
#5
jaza 18 Jan, 2021 @ 5:44am 
The problem with the mechanic is that you never know what choices are going to come therefor you cant know if you have to save willpower or not
#6
Das Boot 18 Jan, 2021 @ 11:37am 
It's worth noting that hidden consequences are optional and can be deactivated.
#7
Dragon Master 28 Jan, 2021 @ 8:07am 
Originally posted by jaza:
The problem with the mechanic is that you never know what choices are going to come therefor you cant know if you have to save willpower or not

I think that's the entire point. Do we sit out of a moment to store willpower because something may happen that requires we use it later, or is the current situation serious enough for us to use it?

It raises the tension, and the consequences, of our choices.

Most games that come out talk about important choices, but more often than not they are illusion of choices. Having a mechanic that can block us from making choices, or make us think twice about making them, actually does make the choices matter far more than many AAA games do.
#8
Reaper 28 Jan, 2021 @ 3:54pm 
Originally posted by Dragon Master:
Originally posted by jaza:
The problem with the mechanic is that you never know what choices are going to come therefor you cant know if you have to save willpower or not

I think that's the entire point. Do we sit out of a moment to store willpower because something may happen that requires we use it later, or is the current situation serious enough for us to use it?

It raises the tension, and the consequences, of our choices.

Most games that come out talk about important choices, but more often than not they are illusion of choices. Having a mechanic that can block us from making choices, or make us think twice about making them, actually does make the choices matter far more than many AAA games do.

And that's where the issue with hidden consequences arises. Even if you decide you want to sit out a choice to gain back willpower, you cannot know which of the other choices gain willpower, or even if there is such a choice at all.

It ends up defeating the whole system of "do now or wait until later".
Last edited by Reaper; 28 Jan, 2021 @ 3:54pm
#9
Dragon Master 28 Jan, 2021 @ 4:06pm 
Originally posted by Reaper:
Originally posted by Dragon Master:

I think that's the entire point. Do we sit out of a moment to store willpower because something may happen that requires we use it later, or is the current situation serious enough for us to use it?

It raises the tension, and the consequences, of our choices.

Most games that come out talk about important choices, but more often than not they are illusion of choices. Having a mechanic that can block us from making choices, or make us think twice about making them, actually does make the choices matter far more than many AAA games do.

And that's where the issue with hidden consequences arises. Even if you decide you want to sit out a choice to gain back willpower, you cannot know which of the other choices gain willpower, or even if there is such a choice at all.

It ends up defeating the whole system of "do now or wait until later".

Well, the game recommendations outright say it's recommended to have the consequences shown.

I understand that some people would prefer not to have it, but even the first two choices offer willpower.
#10
HolyCrab 3 Feb, 2021 @ 6:17am 
I need a potion of will, seriously, I need it.

Originally posted by Reaper:

I finished 1. chapter and did not like any +Will option at all. It feels like answering "how do you want to die, hang or behead?" question.
Last edited by HolyCrab; 3 Feb, 2021 @ 6:52am
#11
Fly_Squirrell 16 Feb, 2021 @ 5:33pm 
now that I think about this I do believe that willpower should be minimized, but not gotten rid of, the reason being is because if you didn't you would always chose the choice with the best outcome. So important life changing choices such as (spoiler) kissing the noble's sword should still have require willpower. But say fighting someone in a boxing match should not.
#12
Dragon Master 16 Feb, 2021 @ 5:50pm 
Originally posted by Flying Squirrell:
now that I think about this I do believe that willpower should be minimized, but not gotten rid of, the reason being is because if you didn't you would always chose the choice with the best outcome. So important life changing choices such as (spoiler) kissing the noble's sword should still have require willpower. But say fighting someone in a boxing match should not.

Choosing to fight still will since fighting is the lot of the nobles. Commoners are just not allowed to do so. There's a reason that Tommas and Brante could get flogged if they're caught fighting.
Last edited by Dragon Master; 16 Feb, 2021 @ 5:50pm
#13
Tsar & Soviet 19 Feb, 2021 @ 11:18pm 
I think there should be more choice in how much you want willpower to affect your game since I, for example, am here just for the story I do not like my actions to be limited due to willpower but I do understand there are those who enjoy this mechanic so in my opinion, the best option would be to enable players to choose how much willpower affects your game even a bare-bones option to have it enabled or disabled would be amazing.

Even if they don't add something like that, it is not very difficult to edit your save files, so you can just give yourself an unlimited supply, and if you wanna go balls-deep into cheating, I have given myself max stats so I can do just about anything.
#14
Dragon Master 20 Feb, 2021 @ 8:53am 
The thing about game design is is that there is no right way to do something, only trade-offs.

By having the willpower mechanic work as it does it really does make every single choice in the game matter, and that is something most games with choice/consequence mechanics try to achieve but most usually only give the illusion of choice.

The trade-off for willpower is that it really is limiting. Players will be prevented from making choices they want to make and for some players that sense of limitation gives them a feeling that their choices are being taken from them, as well as the fact that players just don't know how much willpower they will want to save up, or when the next opportunity to get some more will happen, and if it does happen if it is accompanied by a choice that the players want to make.

There is no right way to say which is the better game design because that would be subjective from player to player.

I just happen to like having to think long and hard about my choices because I know every single one of them matter, whether if it's improving my stats, getting willpower, helping a family member, or potentially having life-experiences that may be absolutely beneficial to Brante as their life progresses, like the vision from the tree or potentially training with the sword with father.
#15
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Date Posted: 10 Jan, 2021 @ 5:12am
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