One narrative branch depicts Eddie on Death Row (Mr. Lenat spends most of the play in an orange jumpsuit, strapped into an electric chair), receiving visitors on the last day of his life.
Likewise, I'm sure many of you reading this have reached a truly painful narrative branch in games series like Mass Effect or The Elder Scrolls, and discussed it to reach a consensus on which choice to make.
Emerald Germs of Ireland (2001), a gory portrait of an Irish serial killer, received an outright critical drubbing: "The tales are maddening in their inconsistencies and alternative narrative branches, boring in their wordy breaks for tension-slackening exegesis, and clichéd even in their looting of genre clichés," the Observer chided.
The tales are maddening in their inconsistencies and alternative narrative branches, boring in their wordy breaks for tension-slackening exegesis, and clichéd even in their looting of genre clichés (including genre clichés that McCabe himself has previously handled to better effect).
Lifelike avatars could even replace actors entirely, at which point narratives could branch in nearly infinite directions.
iPhone / iPad Ryan North's To Be Or Not To Be (£4.49) "William Shakespeare's Hamlet has finally been restored to its original second-person non-linear branching narrative format," chirps the App Store listing for this.
Rather than a branching narrative with options that lead you off on different story paths, the card system lets you build a coherent story with many different ways to explore or experience events.
Ryan North's To Be Or Not To Be Android/iOS (£4.88/£4.49) Shakespeare diehards beware: this game lovingly takes a sledgehammer to the play Hamlet, reimagining it as a "second-person nonlinear branching narrative format".
The StoryNexus system is primarily text based, with images to give a flavour of the events, elements and locations described, but it differs from the standard choose-your-own-adventure style branching narrative in a few ways.
It's all about the branching narrative, too: rather than shepherding you through a single storyline, there are real choices to be made that will affect what you see and do, and how the other characters react to you.
We're going to be the Pixar of branching narrative".
