What A Wicked (Narrative) Web We Weave

by David Gallaher

When I was eight years old, my parents handed me a book that cracked my skull open like a crowbar to a locked door. The Forbidden Castle. A Choose Your Own Adventure , but what it really was—a magic trick. A labyrinth. A fever dream of paths not taken. One moment, I was on solid ground. The next, I was swallowed whole by a bad decision, lost in the ink-black corridors of a castle that didn’t care if I lived or died.

Then came Trumpet of Terror, an Asgardian adventure where Thor, Loki, and their wretched pantheon felt more like cellmates than gods. It wasn’t just a book. It was a lesson. A whisper in my young bones: Your choices mean something. And they have teeth. A step to the left, a whisper to the wrong ear, and suddenly, everything is different. The world turns on the axis of a moment you can’t take back.

Fast-forward decades. I’m standing at another crossroads, this time armed with a keyboard instead of a paperback. The old way—linear storytelling, destiny on rails. Or the road less traveled—branching narratives, the shattered-mirror maze of what-ifs and consequences.

I made my choice.

The Story with No Rails: The Rise of Branching Narratives

Storytelling has always been a war over control. Who wields it, who surrenders to it. Traditional storytelling? That’s a freight train—one track, one destination, no exits. It’s comforting, in the way that handcuffs are comforting. But branching narratives? That’s a storm! That’s the Bifrost cracking open under your feet, scattering players across a thousand fractured realities where their own decisions cut deeper than any blade.

Video games, interactive films, VR—they took this idea and ran. No, they bled for it.

In The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, you don’t just swing a sword. You carry regret. You watch choices fester, rot, turn into ghosts that never stop following you. Life is Strange doesn’t just make you choose—it makes you feel every heartbeat of it, every terrible, wonderful road not taken.

Even film has dipped its hands in the fire. Netflix’s Bandersnatch turned its audience into gods only to mock them with the futility of free will. Virtual reality? That’s another beast entirely. It doesn’t just ask you to choose. It pulls you into the storm, makes you wear the weight of the world you break with your own hands.

And people love it. Because life isn’t a straight road—it’s a wreckage of near-misses, wrong turns, second chances, and dead ends.

The Case for Multiple Endings

Some people say life is linear. They’re wrong.

Life is choices... a patchwork quit of small, sharp decisions—some you see coming, some you don’t. And that’s why branching narratives hit so hard. They tap into something primal, something buried deep in our bones:

• Agency. We don’t just watch the story unfold—we live it. We take that impossible step forward, even when the ground might not hold.
• A social dimension. The best stories don’t die when the credits roll. They spill into late-night arguments, coffee shop debates, furious Reddit posts dissecting every ending like battle scars. (Telltale’s The Walking Dead did this better than almost anything—making morality a game of inches and gut punches.)
• Replayability. A good branching story isn’t something you just experience. It’s something you chase. Again and again. Hunting down the roads not taken.

And that hunger? It’s not going away.

The Eternal Debate: Branching vs. Linear

So where do we go from here?

The demand for branching narratives isn’t a phase. It’s a reckoning. Game studios, screenwriters, storytellers—they’re scrambling to meet it. But there’s no right answer. Just different weapons for different wars.

Linear stories? They hit like a bullet. Precise. Controlled. Devastating. The Last of Us proves that when every beat is hand-crafted, it can break you.

Branching narratives? They let the player set fire to their own world. And that’s the beauty of it. The best ones don’t just let you choose. They make you care. They make you sweat through every mistake, every bitter consequence.

So, storyteller, game designer, world-builder—what kind of god do you want to be?

The kind who scripts every moment, who carves destiny in stone?

Or the kind who hands their creation the keys… and lets them drive straight into the storm?