Living With the Consequences

This one was hard to do.

Many games give you a great deal of liberty. But they rarely give you consequences. In GTA for example, you can mass murder hundreds and if you escape the police, you are good as new. They will not put you in a wanted list, forcing you to be always hiding, moving and changing appearances. Which is a lost opportunity.

Imagine how much more careful you would need to be if you new that adding too many crimes to your record would make your life harder. Not only cops, but bounty hunters could try to find you. Maybe the vengeful father of one of your victims (Liam Neeson would be cool).

Few games deal with the consequences of your acts. Mass Effect and Dragon Age being some of the few (specially Mass Effect) where your actions have long and short terms consequences. Using this kind of mechanic is hard, and could in fact help with storytelling in games.

Well, one can dream.