The What If format is as simple as it sounds. What if something else happened instead of what actually happened? Almost anything in a What If is considered as an alternate timeline and thus rarely is added within the official canon of a story. It takes the age-old habit of asking "but what if" to make more and more possibilities in different media, and video games are no exception.
Many choice-based games are full of these questions, stories that take place at the same time with different characters and remakes can also allow extra possibilities. That being said, there are still plenty of ways in which a game can really play with the concept of the timeless question going forward to create some interesting new experiences.
10 Adding In More Choice-Based Consequences
Choice-based games make multiple possibilities relatively easy, so that lends to providing great What If stories. However, in order for it to work, the choices have to be littered with some that are actually consequential, unlike many games where their choices have little bearing over the overarching plot.
Choices the player makes that have actual consequences past a Game Over screen has them naturally asking the question, with many replaying the game to find out how things would have otherwise shaken out and thus extending the game's replayability. It also could naturally show different What If style endings and is just a perfect choice to make that sort of thing happen.
9 Alternate Universe Hopping
In long-running franchises, developers are often hit with a multitude of problems when making them all link together. They have to answer how it fits into the world, universe, and timeline.
So a solid way to add some What If flare to a series would be to allow for alternate universes to canonically exist and have the players bounce around different timelines. It would even be relatively easy to do, adding doors, pools, portals, or other things the player can get into and explore how things would be different outside of a primary canon.
8 Critical Character Deaths Don't Happen
Sometimes there is a critical moment in a game where a player character has to experience a critical character death in order to put them on the right track. Oftentimes these happen in cutscenes or in unbeatable boss fights which are then followed by a cutscene.
A What If could easily diverge the storyline at these critical moments, perhaps in a New Game+ or if a player actually manages to defeat the so-called "unbeatable" boss with a lot of prior skill, knowledge, or a ton of early grinding. Critical character deaths being avoided would shake up teams, require different calls to action, and may lead the story down wildly different routes.
7 A Different Big Bad Takes The Scene
Some games are masters at making it hard to tell who is the real villain in the story, while others present a world where there are multiple villains and the game forces you to handle only the worst of the bunch.
However, a What If sort of game could make it so the player has to either handle all of them or pick one, and if they don't pick the intended canon baddie, a different one steps up to the plate. Another option for remakes in those games where the final boss was evil just for the sake of evil is to what if their way into a reason behind their maddness and offering an even worse villain to tackle afterward.
6 Having A Chance To Lose
Almost every game has one of two options for how the story is going to play out. Either the player succeeds and is the hero, or they fail and are met with a Game Over screen. However, even after that screen, the player is almost always prompted to start over from scratch or from their most recent save file.
Instead of a proper game over, the game could continue after critical moments to show the player how them failing in those moments changed the course of the story. Give the player the chance to fail, and the What If writes itself.
5 No One Is Safe
Often times in Open World games, there are certain NPCs that are flagged essential and thus cannot be killed. This way, players that diverge from a story cannot have any accidents preventing them from being able to complete a mission. Others let the player ruin their games, forcing them to use console commands to fix their mistakes or play more carefully.
Instead of having specific character deaths, scenes, and actions forcing how the story unfolds, having it be so that no one, not even the protagonist, is exempt from danger while still having those sorts of events drive the plot would be an easy way to pick up a What If and run with it numerous times in the same game.
4 Redeemable Villains Changing The Course Of The Game
A modern trend in all media is to make their villains tragic, misunderstood, and sometimes even redeemable. Gone are the days where a villain was evil just for the sake of being evil.
Instead of just fixing everything with the power of love and friendship, going through the effort of redeeming a video game villain when it would have otherwise led to an end-all scenario should really have more effects than just a happy ending. Perhaps having them on the player's side makes an even bigger boss easier to handle, unlocks unique abilities or items, explains lore, or actually turns the player into being a villain themselves.
3 Reordering Of The Timeline
Remakes and remasters are becoming more popular and that is only going to continue. In order to keep these games fresh, sometimes developers add or subtract events, places, and even entire characters.
One simple way to plunge into a What If for one of these games would be to reorder critical events and finding out how that would have altered the course of the initial story.
2 Response To The Big Bad Is Just A Little Faster
Either through speedrunning, glitch usage, avoiding missions they don't like, or some other means, players can make it through a game in far less time than the developers intended. So if their response to the game's major villain is quick, many lore-related questions arise.
Things wouldn't always go back to normal depending on the story at hand, and so a video game could really play with the concept if a player manages to exceed expectations and reward them with a What If style post-event.
1 Someone Else Is The Protagonist
A favorite of spin-off games in any gaming series is changing which character's point of view the action is from to differentiate between the main story and side stories. Oftentimes, these games are even considered not canon or taking place at the same time.
A What If could throw that on its head and show how things would have shaken out differently if only someone else had taken the stage instead and tried to make it through the events at hand.
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