LogFAQs > #930254792

Nichtcrawler X posted...

In games like this, you influence the active story, the player is not capable of altering the backstory.

This isn't actually true.

In plenty of games where branching dialogue is allowed to alter plot, there's occasionally an option to influence the character's backstory based on the choices you make. Usually if you're given dialogue options about your past that are mutually exclusive.

As an example, there's a conversation in New Vegas where someone asks you if you know what a fish is, and you can basically answer yes or no, or sort of talk the other person into proving that they know what one is (which implies at least some vague hints as to where you've been in the world if you've seen fish). There's also multiple instances where you can imply you've either been to a specific place or have never been there ("What's a Chicago?"), and Lonesome Road is basically one long string of Ulysses mentioning places he thinks you've been and things he thinks you've done, and you can pretty much straight up say he's completely wrong.

Sure, you could argue that any answer other than the "canon" one is just you lying, but the problem there is a) there really isn't a canon backstory for your character at all, and b) options where you lie almost always have something like [Lie] in front of them, so that you as the player know you're lying when you say it.

No, not every game with branching dialogue does this, but a lot of the time, especially with games where you mostly start out as a bit of a blank slate, you can sort of retroactively fill in some of your pre-game past with dialogue in-game.
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