Lufia

[KingMike]

I forgot where the old topic was, so I 'll start a new one.

Well, Nightcrawler, you said you'd like if games had variable storylines to make for multiple playthroughs.

Lufia 1's box and ad alleged that "Your actions determine the outcome of the opening story!" (or something similar to that, I don't have the ad out at the moment, but the ad included a box shot, and was more or less a reprint of the box anyways).

Well, I was hoping (maybe too much) that'd I get a different storyline if the Sinistrals won the opening battle, so I let 'em win (which is of course, requires effort). Nope, all that happened is the Water Fairy appears, revives the party (full, as opposed to normally reviving just the leader with 1 HP), and it's back to the entrance for you. Though I think the game timer did reset (but that was awhile ago).

Well, anyone know if this is truth or is it like saying "Your actions determine the outcome of whether you will win the game or not."

[Darkmoon]

Actually, some pretty decent games that actually change depending on what you do are the Avernum games, and GeneForge, both for PC.  You can get demos (pretty big demos too) from www.spiderwebsoftware.com

"old school" games, which are actually pretty good.  I've only played Avernum 3, and Geneforge, but with Avernum 3, depending how long it takes you to do things, entire towns can be destroyed.  The first major town after you start exploring the surface, it took me about 14 in game days to get there (I was taking my time, and such, and when I got to the town, some walls were destroyed, a shop or two was gone, a few monsters were hiding in some of the houses, and such.  While, I started a new game, and ran there as quick as possible, just to check, and the town was perfectly fine.  No ruined walls, all the buildings were still in-tact, etc...  While there's a main goal to accomplish, you are basically free to do what you want.  

While, with Geneforge, you can join certain factions, and people will treat you differently based on things you've said to other people, what faction you join, (if any), and the ending will change based on your choices in the game.  Also, depending on what skills you focus on, there's multiple routes to get to certain areas, some more focused on battle, and others more focused on using diplomacy or mechanics to disarm traps, and get by hostile npcs.  A sequel to the game is due out in a few months.  

Definitely worth checking them out, even if just the demos (which are about 20-25% of the entire games)

[Nightcrawler]

The original Ogre battle had multiple outcomes depending on what you did, however that game was too long and tedius to ever beat multiple times. It was fun the first time through though.

[Hiro]

Tactics Ogre has an extreme amount of variable endings... There are many different "alignment" paths you can take, whether or not you let a certain person die or not has a MAJOR effect, and a lot of little things like which characters join you also affects it. I'm playing through it the second time, but that's only because it's been at least a year since I played it.

Of course... Chrono Trigger...

[D--]

All the Koei strategy games have multiple outcomes

If you've ever been to the Isle of Ishmeria, Jennifer Ornellas (the page maintainer) has found osme incredibly strange stuff to do in their game, Gemfire, including tricks to sacrifice the entire royal family of your lands and end up with a new family line being established in the game. There's over 16 sub families and one who was dummied out of the game (at least so far as anyone knows).

One thing that always puzzled me was how if allowed Ervin to die and Lady Meltina to take over the Tordin line, it would still show a man's picture rescuing princess Aevel at the end of the game :/