Panzer General had a pretty nifty campaign mode where battles ended in either Major Victory or Minory Victory. A Defeat would automatically end the campaign and require restoring a savegame (or starting over) but while PG was quite guilty of the savegame hell scenario whereby a player would reload a single turn over and over to ensure a desired outcome (usually high experience units not being wiped out), turning a Minor Victory into a Major Victory would require replaying much or all of a particular battle. A player would often just accept the Minor Victory outcome and move down that particular story branch.

Quote:

Original post by Alpha_ProgDes I've never considered that! That would take the game and story in a new direction. But do I only introduce this revenge-optional character if I kill the enemy? The story tree would be huge! But fun!

It doesn't need to be a single tree - it can be several semi-autonomous trees that influence each other.

Couldn't your ships have ejection seats or life pods or something? A computer detects incoming fire and ejects the ace pilot just before his ship is destroyed. Then next mission he comes back at you with a vengence for destroying his beloved vessel.

Yes, I've considered that solution.

Quote:

Original post by Katie There's a cheat way to make interactive storylines; you just make a linear twin track, and flick people between them depending on the outcomes.

I wouldn't call it a cheat when you've committed yourself to creating almost twice as much content as the typical player will see. In fact I'd say it's worryingly inefficient from a development point of view.

If I were working on such a game I'd be looking for ways in which I could reuse the same content even though the plot had taken a different route. An example might be changing some textures within a map or altering dialogue trees, as these are much cheaper ways of depicting alternate realities.