The Best Choice-Based Titles On Xbox Game Pass

One of the reasons Xbox Game Pass gets so much praise is that it offers its subscribers many different genres of games. The service satisfies survival game fans, RPG players, puzzle admirers, and everything in-between.

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A type of game that spans multiple genres and is also well-represented in Microsoft’s subscription service is the choice-based one. These are titles that continually provide you with decisions to make, and ideally, the things you select and actions you take heavily impact the story or world around you. There are many of these types of adventures on Game Pass, but these are the best.

Updated November 14, 2024, By Ben Jessey: Some of the greatest titles on Game Pass are filled with choices that impact how your adventure plays out. We put the best examples on this list and have now updated it to add a few more.

Wasteland 2: Director’s Cut

From the title alone, you can probably guess that Wasteland 2 doesn’t take place in the happiest of settings. It’s a turn-based RPG set in a post-apocalyptic world. This apocalypse came about due to a nuclear war between the US and the Soviet Union.

The events of the game take place many years after that. You play as a member of the Desert Rangers, who is initially sent to investigate a murder, but things quickly get more complicated. Throughout the adventure, you need to make several difficult decisions that impact how the tale plays out.

Some of the Elder Scrolls RPGs contain a lot of decisions that impact your overall experience. Oblivion doesn’t have quite as many as some of the others, particularly in regard to the story. However, you have to make some big decisions right from the start of the game.

Your choices regarding your character’s race, birthsign, and class impact the rest of the adventure. They don’t affect the story too much, but they do change the way you play. On top of that, there are other choices in the game that impact your experience.

Fable 3

Fable 3

Systems

Released

October 26, 2010

Developer(s)

Lionhead Studios

Publisher(s)

Microsoft Game Studios

Engine

havok

ESRB

M For Mature 17+ Due To Use of Alcohol, Blood, Sexual Content, Violence, Language

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You are royalty in Fable 3, as you start the game as a Prince or Princess. However, the King of Albion is your older brother, and he’s a tyrant. So, you quickly leave the castle, then spend much of the game building up a resistance to overthrow him.

Along the way, you make plenty of promises to the people of Albion. Without going too far into spoilers, you eventually have to decide whether to keep those promises or not, and the fate of the land depends on your actions. These are the most taxing choices you make in this witty RPG.

Football Manager 2024 isn’t the first game you probably think of when it comes to choices. After all, you aren’t forced to make moral decisions, nor is there a story for you to alter. Yet, much of what you do in the game is make choices. You decide what formation your team will play, which players in your team will play, and who you sign or sell.

All of this contributes to how well your team does on the pitch. Get enough of these things wrong, and you will lose plenty of games, which may lead to losing your job.

Pillars Of Eternity: Complete Edition

Pillars of Eternity

Systems

Released

March 26, 2015

Engine

Unity

ESRB

M For Mature 17+ due to Blood, Sexual Themes, Strong Language, Violence

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Pillars of Eternity is an isometric RPG with party-based tactical combat. In terms of presentation and style, it feels like a tribute to role-playing games from an earlier era. It takes place in a fantasy world where you control a hero who has the ability to see and interact with the souls of people. Using that power, you must save the world.

Along the way, you can alter the lengthy adventure through the choices you’re prompted to make. Some are small and only slightly change things, while other decisions impact the game’s ending. As such, there are a few different conclusions to the tale.

Mass Effect: Andromeda

Mass Effect: Andromeda might not be as celebrated as the original games in the series, but it’s still a solid action RPG. The story revolves around the various species in the Milky Way making the long trip to the Andromeda galaxy in an attempt to colonize new worlds.

One of the people on this trip is your customizable protagonist, who is tasked with making the planets in the Andromeda galaxy more habitable. You’re also tasked with making a bunch of decisions. They don’t significantly alter where the story goes, but they do alter individual lives. In fact, your choices can change whether certain characters live or die.

The Quarry

In The Quarry, you control a group of counselors running a summer camp. Well, you don’t really run anything, as it’s already the last day once the prologue is over. So, the kids have already gone home. But you all have to stay one more night due to an issue with your car. That sounds like a good reason to have one last party. However, the night quickly takes a turn when you discover you aren’t alone at the camp.

The game is all about making decisions. Some choices are small and don’t mean much, while others impact the entire narrative. None of the playable characters are guaranteed to make it to the credits, as you’re directly responsible for their fates.

Medieval Dynasty

Medieval Dynasty is a survival and simulation game set in the Middle Ages. You’re tasked with building and managing a town from scratch. From scratch” isn’t hyperbole, either, as at the beginning of the game, you will be manually cutting down trees and collecting resources.

Once you’ve built up your town a bit, it becomes more of a town management game. As with any management sim, you have to make decisions in order to make the place the best it can be. Also, at the start of every season, an event will occur, which sometimes prompts you to make a choice that can impact your people and town.

Assassin’s Creed Valhalla

Valhalla is set during 873 CE, and you play as a Viking named Eivor who wants to travel to England and start a new settlement. You do so with your long-time brother, Sigurd.

While in the new country, you make alliances and build up your community. Also, as this is an Assassin’s Creed game, you do a bit of sneaking around, climbing, and participating in some third-person fights. Plus, you make a bunch of choices. Some are small and only affect the outcomes of specific quests. Yet, others have a large impact on your relationship with Sigurd and the ending of the game.

This War Of Mine: Final Cut

This War of Mine: Final Cut

Systems

Released

May 10, 2022

Developer(s)

11 Bit Studios

Publisher(s)

11 Bit Studios

Engine

Proprietary Engine

ESRB

M For Mature 17+ Due To War Of Mine

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The most common choices you have to make in games revolve around your relationships with different factions, allies, or even romantic interests. Things are a bit more serious in This War of Mine, though.

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This is a strategy game set during wartime. However, instead of being out on the battlefield organizing soldiers, you’re looking after civilians who are trying to stay away from the bloodshed. You have to make sure they all remain alive until the fighting stops. This means keeping them fed and healthy. Unfortunately, to accomplish that, you must make many tough moral decisions.

Crusader Kings 3

Crusader Kings 3 is all about ruling and building up a nation. Naturally, you can’t do those things without having to make a bunch of big decisions. In fact, it’s pretty much the main job of a ruler. The first one you make in the game is selecting which leader and nation to play as.

Then, you make many, many more decisions throughout the game in an effort to increase your standing in the world. These aren’t good or evil decisions. It’s more complicated than that. These are tricky politics you’re dealing with. So, it’s more about being smart and strategic than honorable.

Dragon Age: Inquisition

In Dragon Age Inquisition, your customizable character has a very important job. You’re the Inquisitor, meaning you’re the head of the Inquisition that has been created to fight back against the evil Corypheus and his dark forces.

As you’d expect for this sort of job, you’re forced to make a litany of big decisions. Some don’t mean much, while others impact your whole playthrough. Your choices also affect your relationships with the people around you. In the case of one character, you heavily influence the sort of person she becomes. So, think before you act.

Starfield

Systems

Released

September 6, 2023

Engine

proprietary engine

ESRB

M For Mature 17+ Due To Blood, Suggestive Themes, Use of Drugs, Strong Language, Violence

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Starfield is a sci-fi RPG set in a time when humanity has made great strides when it comes to space exploration, as they have reached beyond the Milky Way. In fact, humans are now spacefaring people. One of those folks is the character you create.

You get to choose what they look like and their background. Then you’re off to explore the universe. During this exploration, you meet many different people and embark on many different quests. Along the way, you’re forced to make plenty of choices that significantly impact your adventure.

Lies Of P

Lies of P is a soulslike game and will feel very familiar to fans of Dark Souls and Bloodborne. It does put a bit of its own spin on things, mainly by including a tale based on the story of Pinocchio.

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When you hear that, your mind might immediately go to Disney’s Pinocchio. But it’s actually based on the original novel by Carlo Collodi and is more serious than the animated feature. The main thing it takes from Pinocchio is the concept of lying. There are many moments in the game where you can choose to tell the truth or lie. This affects things later in the story.

Fallout 3

You start Fallout 3 as a child growing up inside a vault, which keeps you safe from the world outside that has been severely damaged by nuclear weapons. Yet, you soon have to venture into that dangerous wasteland to find your father.

It’s at this point where the RPG really begins. As a result, it’s also the moment where you start being forced to make all sorts of difficult decisions, both in the main questline and optional content. Your choices impact people’s lives, towns, and the entire wasteland.

Assassin’s Creed Odyssey

Odyssey begins with a big one, as you have to decide between playing as Alexios or Kassandra. Either way, your character is a mercenary operating in Ancient Greece during the Peloponnesian War.

While you play a part in that significant conflict, your main objective is to defeat the mysterious Cult Of Kosmos and bring your family back together. To do that, you need to participate in plenty of close-quarters fights and climb a lot of buildings. Plus, you need to make a flurry of decisions that make a big difference in how the overall story plays out.

Tell Me Why

Systems

Released

August 27, 2020

Developer(s)

Dontnod Entertainment

Engine

Unreal Engine 4

ESRB

M For Mature 17+ due to Drug Reference, Mild Blood, Strong Language, Violence

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Tell Me Why is a narrative adventure that puts you into the shoes of two siblings. They’re young adults during the main events of the game, but both of them are still dealing with a traumatic event that happened during their childhood. To truly move past it, they need to figure out what really happened that night.

Throughout the story, you make several important decisions that impact the relationship between the brother and sister. How close they are by the end of the narrative affects which ending you get.

Pentiment

In Pentiment, you play as a 16th-century man called Andreas Maler. He is primarily an artist, but he serves as an investigator throughout the game as he looks into a few murders. This means plenty of gathering evidence and talking to people. When it comes to the latter, choice plays a big factor since you have to make a lot of dialogue decisions.

What options you have to say depend partially on another set of decisions you make at the start of the narrative game. This is because, early on, you make choices regarding Andreas’ personality and background. Your selections impact your future choices.

Wasteland 3

Systems

Released

August 28, 2020

Developer(s)

inXile entertainment

Engine

Unity

ESRB

m

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Wasteland 3 is a turn-based RPG with a significant focus on player choice. You play as a Ranger Team from Arizona, who find themselves in a post-apocalyptic Colorado, which is essentially a frozen wasteland.

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While roaming the terrible place, you interact with a bunch of people. During these moments, you’re forced to make big decisions. Your choices can heavily impact your relationships with these people and the story as a whole. What’s nice is that, unlike some choice-based games, even noble decisions in this one can lead to disaster and regret.

Dishonored 2

Systems

Released

November 11, 2016

Engine

Void

ESRB

M for Mature: Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Strong Language, Suggestive Themes

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Right at the start of Dishonored 2, you must decide between playing as Corvo or Emily. The character you don’t choose is then turned to stone by the witch Delilah Copperspoon, who also takes over the entire city of Dunwall. Your goal is to stop her and save the other potential protagonist.

Selecting a playable character isn’t the only choice in the game. In fact, pretty much everything you do is a decision, as the action-adventure game allows you to play how you want. And there are consequences for your choice of playstyle. After all, the amount of chaos you create during your playthrough directly impacts the world and story. You also make decisions regarding the fates of several characters throughout the adventure.

The Walking Dead: The Complete First Season

Several seasons of Telltale’s The Walking Dead are on Game Pass, including the first season, which is arguably the best of the bunch. It is a point-and-click adventure title filled with quick-time events, dialog choices, and many decisions.

You do all these things as a man called Lee, who meets a little girl named Clementine at the start of the game. Alongside the few friends they meet along the way, the main duo attempts to survive the undead horde that has taken over Georgia. It makes for a very exciting adventure.

As Dusk Falls

As Dusk Falls is a game all about choice. After all, it’s an interactive story where the gameplay is solely about you making decisions and partaking in the occasional quick-time event. Your actions completely alter the way the tale unfolds.

The said tale involves two families whose lives change on one fateful night inside a motel in Arizona. The story is a mature one that’s filled with tragedy and heartbreak. The serious themes are handled well, due in part to the stellar writing and excellent voice-acting.

The Outer Worlds

4.0/5

The Outer Worlds

Released

October 25, 2019

Publisher(s)

Private Division

Engine

Unreal Engine 4

ESRB

M for Mature: Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Strong Language

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In this action RPG, the human race has colonized a new star system. Yet, some people are still in cryo sleep, so you need to find the resources required to wake them up.

During your mission, you visit many places and meet a litany of different people. Their opinions of you are constantly changing based on the decisions you make throughout the game. You can side with certain groups or individuals and ruin the ones you don’t like. In the end, the newly colonized world will have been shaped by your actions.

Fable Anniversary

There are plenty of great fantasy RPG titles, but few are as popular as the Fable series. And the original game (or the Anniversary remake) is arguably Fable at its best. In it, you start as a kid who’s raised to be a hero.

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However, the word ‘hero’ doesn’t necessarily mean a good person in this world, as your choices dictate how noble you are. If you want, you could go around brutally killing those who stand in your way. Or you could show mercy to many people, even the ones who’ve personally wronged you. These moral choices play a big role in how your story plays out.

Dragon Age: Origins

Xbox Game Pass is kind enough to include all of the main Dragon Age titles. The first one, however, is arguably the series’ finest. In the original game, you join the Grey Wardens and become a key figure in the war against the Darkspawn and the Archdemon.

Naturally, when going into a major conflict like that, you have to make a plethora of tough choices. Yet, the decisions aren’t just a part of the main story. There are many choices to make in the side quests, too. And pretty much every one of them impacts how your own companions view you.

Big decisions are thrown at you early in Skyrim, as it’s one of those open-world games that include a deep character creator. Once you sort out what you’re going to look like, you can set off on your adventure in which you need to stop a dragon that is going to destroy the world.

Along the way, you have to make a litany of other decisions, both during the main story and within the game’s litany of side quests. You can even choose things like where to live and who to marry. Therefore, choice plays a large part in the overall experience.

Prey (2017)

In the FPS title known as Prey, you’re in a nightmare situation. You’re one of the last remaining humans on a space station filled with a dangerous alien species named Typhon.

Once you figure out your predicament, you quickly realize that you can’t let the gooey beasts get to Earth or any other planet. So, you must deal with them by any means necessary. This isn’t a simple process, as you have to do many things before you can get rid of the Typhon. Along the way, you meet several different survivors, and your actions and choices regarding them directly impact the ending of the story.

Frostpunk

Most choice-based games are narrative-focused adventures, but this isn’t the case with Frostpunk. This title is a city-building simulation game without much story content. There is a backstory, though, to set the game up.

In this version of the 19th century, there was a volcanic winter that froze much of the world. Naturally, this caused significant damage to human civilization. You aren’t in charge of saving everyone, but you need to build and look after one city that can be a safe haven for survivors. Along the way, you must make a whole host of difficult decisions. Not every choice you make will be popular with everyone, but it may keep your people alive.

Fallout: New Vegas

The story of Fallout New Vegas starts with a simple revenge plot. You want to get your hands on the man who left you for dead and retrieve what he took from you. However, you end up amid a conflict over who runs New Vegas and the surrounding Wasteland.

As you’d expect from a choice-based RPG, you have a large say in how everything concludes. Much of it depends on your interactions with the various factions that inhabit the Wasteland. You start on neutral terms with all of them, but ultimately, you must decide which are your friends and which are foes.

Mass Effect Legendary Edition

The Mass Effect Legendary Edition includes the series’ original trilogy of games. Together they tell a long story about Commander Shepard and the rest of the galaxy’s war against a race of machines called The Reapers.

The world is shaped by you as you make all sorts of decisions that impact the universe. For instance, you can make an entire race extinct or decide the fate of several key characters. This is the sort of power you have. Not every decision is as big as those, though. You also get to select things like your romantic partner and who you take on missions.

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