In role-playing games, letting players make choices that can change the direction of the game is a tricky task.For games that want to tell a specific story and want players to feel that they have a certain say in determining the direction of the story development, balancing these two completely different directions is undoubtedly a huge challenge.Unfortunately, these choices tend to appear unnatural in nature due to this challenge, and many games are almost forcing players to take specific routes to maintain plot coherence.And this is exactly the problem that Limiar Studios' upcoming fantasy role-playing game "BlackThorne Keep" wants to avoid. The game has designed its own dilemma system to make the choice more gray, rather than black or white.

At Gamescom Latam, Roberto Garcia, creator of BlackThorne Keep, was interviewed to learn about the game's choice-driven features and what players can expect.In the interview, Garcia made it clear that the BlackThorne Keep dilemma system will not be as distinct as some choice-driven role-playing games, and it will keep players guessing all the time.

Thanks to the dilemma system of BlackThorne Keep, the game will also offer a variety of endings and branch routes.However, unlike many games that adopt this design, BlackThorne Keep’s story structure is not just for the sake of complexity.Limiyal Studios has taken a more modest approach, prioritizing meaningful choices rather than simply pursuing quantity.According to Garcia, their goal has never been to create a grand epic, but to create a purposeful story—a story that feels intimate and complete, and does not take too much time for the player.As he said in the interview:

"One of the ideas we want to convey in the game is that players have different routes to choose from, but we also don't want this to be a game that takes 200 hours to play. We want to tell a story where a player can start and finish and feel like they understand the full meaning of it. So, there are three different endings in this game, depending on the different decisions you make. The game also provides you with different routes that allow you to go to those endings."

This more compact narrative cycle actually ends up making the choice in BlackThorne Keep more influential.Players don't choose between irrelevant results or ultimately meaningless optional side content.Instead, every major decision affects the direction of the story and how the characters react to the world around them.This ensures that players understand the importance of every critical moment, while not being able to guess exactly where these decisions will lead them.This unpredictability is the core principle of BlackThorne Keep's dilemma system, and it is also the difference between it and choice-driven role-playing games that prefer binary frameworks.Regarding the dilemma system, Garcia explained:

"We have a dilemma system in the game. At some point, the game will put you in a dilemma, and it's never black or white, good or bad. There's no absolute good or bad here. The core purpose of this game is to show how difficult it is to make the right decision. Most of the time, you don't know what is the best decision. So, the reality is that when you play the game, you make some decisions about these dilems, and these decisions will take you into different routes and situations, and your character will grow as a result."

In a game genre where the moral system is often reduced to obvious choices of “good” or “evil”, BlackThorne Keep seems to be trying something more subtle.By allowing players to struggle with uncertainty and endure the consequences of their own limited perception, the game digs deeper into the gray areas that many choice-based role-playing games tend to avoid.In this way, BlackThorne Keep may bring the most refreshing and realistic experience of player autonomy to the game genre for a period of time.

BlackThorne Keep is currently being developed by Limiyal Studios.