One of the best aspects of video games is how titles often provide players with multiple choices and avenues in which to explore worlds and impact narratives, often resulting in positive or chaotic outcomes.
Linear structured games tend to limit player choice, especially in single-player campaigns, but there are a fair number of first-person shooter games that allow players to make significant choices that can impact character relationships, fates, events, and even the ending of the titles themselves.
Here’s a list of eight FPS games where every choice made by players matters, resulting in drastically different scenarios on certain playthroughs and eventful conclusions to the games’ stories.
8
Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy
The Fate of Kyle Katarn’s Apprentices
There’s a few Star Wars games out there that do feature pivotal choices, such as those found in Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and Star Wars: The Force Unleashed series, but in terms of FPS titles, one SW game that features choices that matter is Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy.
Technically both an FPS and a third-person action-adventure game, Jedi Academy has players embody Jaden Korr, an apprentice to the legendary Stormtrooper turned Jedi Knight Kyle Katarn, as they learn to become a Jedi alongside fellow padawan Rosh Penin before eventually going to fight Imperial remnants.
About halfway through the game, players can choose to turn to the dark side and kill Rosh before abandoning the New Jedi Order, killing Tavion Axmis, defeating Katarn in combat, and stealing the Scepter of Ragnos, or they can remain in the NJO, sparing Rosh and Tavion, and ultimately defeat the spirit of Marka Ragnos.
7
Singularity
Manipulating the Fabric of Time
Raven Software is best known today as a Call of Duty support studio, but back in the 2000s, they actually made some fairly impressive games that featured a good amount of player input, such as the aforementioned Jedi Academy and their underrated 2010 sci-fi FPS Singularity.
Split between 2010 and 1955 on the Soviet Union island of Kartoga-12, Singularity is a game centered around time travel, with U.S. Recon Marine Captain Nathaniel Renko mysteriously traveling back and forth in time, often resulting in Renko changing history, altering events, and causing monstrous mutants to appear on the island.
Singularity‘s story is all centered around the player’s initial choice to help a man from a fire early on in the game, but toward the game’s end, players can make multiple choices impacting reality, with one resulting in Renko never going to the island in the first place, another seeing the Soviet Union take over the world, and yet another seeing Renko become a global conqueror.
6
BioShock
The Future of Rapture
One of the more famous FPS games to feature choices that matter is undoubtedly 2K’s atmospheric storytelling masterpiece, BioShock.
Set in 1960, BioShock sees a man named Jack mysteriously survive a plane crash in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, only to stumble upon a lighthouse that leads to an underwater, 1940s-built city called Rapture which has since fallen into chaos filled with ADAM-affected people called Splicers.
Much of BioShock‘s choices are tied to the fates of the ADAM-implanted Little Sisters, with players being able to steal their ADAM or save the Little Sisters after defeating their protective Big Daddies, resulting in endings that depict Jack either adopting the Little Sisters or using their ADAM to take over Rapture and eventually attack the surface.
5
Metro 2033
Influence of the Dark Ones
One of the best FPS games to feature choices that matter isn’t one based on an original concept but rather one that was based on a hit novel, with that game being 4A Games’ Metro 2033.
Set in an alternate Russia, Metro 2033 has players embody a young man named Artyom, one of the many survivors living in Moscow’s Metro tunnels, as they set out to journey through the tunnels’ many societies in an effort to find a way to confront seeming attacks from psychic Dark Ones.
Throughout interactions with the tunnels’ people, Artyom can obtain positive moral points, resulting in the game ending with Artyom striving to make peace with the Dark Ones, but if Artyom fails to gain positive moral points and acts harshly towards people, Artyom will destroy most of the Dark One population with missile strikes.
4
Prey
Who is Morgan Yu?
Among all of the game development studios who regularly work on FPS titles, Arkane Studios is one of the most creative. Several of their games not only feature multiple choices that impact their narratives in various ways, but feature FPS gameplay in unconventional and thought-provoking ways. as seen in 2017’s Prey.
A reboot of the Prey series, 2017’s Prey has people play as Morgan Yu, a researcher on the Talos I space station, as they strive to recover lost memories and help clear the station from an alien Typhon outbreak which killed most staff on the station (thanks to the aliens’ shapeshifting abilities).
Early on, players can complete a rorschach test, but those choices don’t really impact the game at all, with other choices such as choosing to save or kill every survivor on Talos I or choosing to save or destroy the station, resulting in vastly different and surprising endings.
3
Call of Duty: Black Ops II
The Many Futures of 2025
The Call of Duty franchise isn’t particularly well-known for featuring player choice in its titles, but there are a few entries that actually feature choices in critical yet easily overlooked ways, as seen in games like Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War and Call of Duty: Black Ops II.
Black Ops II remains the most malleable COD title to date, with the game featuring multiple instances both in the 1980s and the fictional 2025 in which players can directly impact the game’s ending and the fate of multiple characters seen throughout the game in various ways.
For example, if players complete all the Strike Force missions, capture Raul Menendez, and save Chloe Lynch, Lynch will thwart Menendez’ cyberattack and China and the United States will become allies. If Menendez is spared and Lynch dies, though, his cyberattack will free him from prison and lead him to murder a retired Frank Woods.
2
Dishonored
Corvo’s Impact on Dunwall
As mentioned before, Arkane Studios has crafted several masterful FPS games that deviate from conventional, action-packed titles, with one of their best games being 2012’s Dishonored.
Practically every action taken in Dishonored will impact the state of the game’s city of Dunwall, as well as the fate of its most important characters and the city itself. The most notable choices are whether to kill or spare hostiles, as if players kill as many people as possible and cause chaos the city will be ravaged by a rat plague.
Alternatively, if players try to acquire the Clean Hands achievement/trophy, they can complete the game without killing anyone, resulting in Dunwall overcoming the plague and beginning a new hopeful age for the city.
1
Fallout: New Vegas
Determining the Future of the Mojave Wasteland
Being an RPG series, the Fallout franchise has always endeavored to allow its players to live in the post-apocalyptic United States as they see fit, with each game being full of butterfly effect choices that can either help people living in the radioactive wasteland or help the wasteland become far more treacherous.
In terms of the modern, first-person Fallout titles, I would argue that Fallout: New Vegas is the best in the series in terms of being chock-full of choices that matter. Every decision in the game will impact the player’s survivability, reputation with factions and the fate of the greater Mojave wasteland, as the NCR, Caesar’s Legion, and Mr. House vie for control of the Hoover Dam.
This vast number of choices is one reason why New Vegas is not only a great RPG, but one that is full of near limitless replay value. In one run, people could play like a mere powerhouse who sides with Yes Man, while another run could see a strategic player side with the NCR and have Enclave remnants aid them in the Second Battle of Hoover Dam.
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