Basic Trope: An early choice has a massive impact on the game's entire plot.
- Straight: In the prologue of Heir to Troperia, the Heroic Bastard Robert must ally himself with one of the three top contenders in the Troperian Succession Crisis: the dowager Queen Anna, the young Crown Prince Charles, or the wise Duke David of Earlington. Depending on the player's choice, Robert receives largely different main story missions throughout the entire game.
- Exaggerated:
- When starting Heir to Troperia for the first time, you are asked to select Robert's future allegiance, and the "unnecessary" content from all other campaigns is deleted from your hard drive.
- Depending on your starting choice, the game's genre changes completely! For example: Queen Anna's campaign turns it into a Real-Time Strategy game, Crown Prince Charles' into a Fighting Game, and Duke David of Earlington's into an Interactive Fiction.
- Downplayed: The prologue choice is brought up repeatedly throughout the game, but the story remains mostly the same.
- Justified: All participants in the succession crisis are at each others' throats and have different thoughts on how to secure their place on the throne, so it is obvious that Robert would end up in different areas depending on who he chose.
- Inverted: Heir to Troperia is perfectly linear until the the end, where Robert must make a decision whether to support any contender or take the throne for himself.
- Subverted:
- Robert is repeatedly warned by all interested parties about the consequences of his choice in the prologue but it ultimately doesn't affect anything in the later game.
- Robert makes a big decision, but it only affects the order that events are played out in.
- Double Subverted: Regardless of whom Robert supports in the prologue, they choose to keep it secret and the first half the game stays mostly the same; however, the choice has massive impact on the second half, where Robert's real allegiance is revealed.
- Parodied: The impact of the choice should be nil but for some inadequately explained reason, the difference between choosing bran flakes, corn flakes, or shredded wheat for breakfast cereal has massive importance.
- Zig Zagged: Robert must choose a side to fight on in the start, but is free to change sides at any point, which marks him as a traitor, affecting other things in the game.
- Averted:
- The game has no story.
- The game has an intricate storyline, but it is linear with no choices that affect it.
- Enforced:
- Two games are welded into one, making this necessary.
- The creator wanted to make a game featuring separate protagonists doing separate things in the same universe, but did not have the time or funds to implement three separate protagonists and merged them into one.
- Lampshaded: Robert reflects how things might have been different if he made a different choice early on.
- Invoked: Robert is given a choice of the path of wisdom, honor, or power, which will determine his role, and let him focus on what he is most conferrable with.
- Exploited: Robert's enemies find out that Robert's entire political campaign during the game hinged on one choice he made, and denounce him publicly for only showing conviction for his cause when forced to.
- Defied: Robert is given a way to go on the other path, but it isn't easy.
- Deconstructed:
- Robert realizes that Duke David is a far better ruler than the others under any path, but he made the wrong choice because he had to choose so abruptly without knowing how each one would be as a ruler, and now he is trapped where he is.
- The writers and programmers have to keep track of several different storylines and mechanics on top of the usual stress factors of creating a game. When the game is released, audiences find one storyline better written than the others but still rushed, leading to worse reception than if they had focused on polishing one single route.
- Reconstructed:
- It turns out that the Duke route is canon, and that the other routes are What If? scenarios. Alternatively, Robert's realisation serves as a Sequel Hook for the game where you help the Duke gain power several years after the fact.
- Even if the game's initial reception suffers from two "superfluous" routes, the programmers and writers use audience feedback to improve them. After some patches, most reviews start praising the game for how it tackles all three possible scenarios, giving the game a Cult Classic status.
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: ???
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