How The Witcher 3 Perfected Non-Linear Storytelling

Jake will never forget the first time he visited Virmire in Mass Effect. After a gripping face-off with Saren, still one of the best villains in gaming, Commander Shepard is left with a choice: You must leave one of two squadmates behind to arm a bomb and detonate it. He remember sitting at that screen for minutes flipping back and forth between the options. The Mass Effect trilogy was littered with hundreds of decisions, big and small, but this was easily one of the toughest he had to make during my journey. Not only did it affect the story for the next two games, but the game did not tell you which decision was good and which was bad. Up until this point, it was easy to distinguish between the paragon and renegade options. In some cases the options were labeled red and blue, and then you could track how good or bad you were through an arbitrary scale in the options menu.