CYOA
I tend to be a very visually oriented person and seeing breakdown of these choose your own adventure books was rather fascinating and raised good questions about their video/digital counter parts. Some of these novels were meant to be read and find the ultimate ending, the best outcome. Like many video games today, there is a lot of dying and sub par plots, but there is always a time when you know you made it all the way. The question it raised for me was, If you found the “best” ending, woud you go back knowing that no conclusion you found now would beat it? I liked the authors last example from UFO 54-40 where the true ending has no connection to the choices you make. It is the ultimate loop hole to keep a reader interested and frustrated. However, I came to wonder if this is even possible in a video game? It works as a physical novel because the Ultima ending and the rest of the story exist in a universe where you can step out of it at any time and scramble the story to reveal new information. I believe this is a unique trait to these CYOA novels. In a video game everything the player does directly effects the character and environment. There is no way besides hacking the program to shift the story so much as to find a hidden conclusion that the game designers intended. If it is possible, I am having a tough time imagining what the experience of that game would be like. There are plenty of frustrating main stream games, but none designed well enough to provoke the player to delve deeper into their own thoughts and search for an unexpected conclusion.
