By Josh Cotts
For a series like GreedFall, choice and consequence are everything. When Spiders set out to make the first game, the developer's intention was to capture the magic of old-school RPGs, where players once felt like they were truly in control of the experience, from their character to the story. In GreedFall: The Dying World, a prequel to the first game, Spiders has taken that philosophy to the next level by having an even deeper choice system than its predecessor, to the point that not even the game's creative director can say how many endings there are because of how much the player's choices up to that point matter.
GameRant recently interviewed GreedFall: The Dying World creative director Jehanne Rousseau ahead of the game's 1.0 release on March 12, 2026, around a year and a half after it began its Steam Early Access journey. Once the game finally launches, players will get to experience its story in full and see just how much their choices are taken into account, but for now, Rousseau has shed some light on what it will all look like, teasing what could be one of the more player-focused choice-and-consequence systems in recent memory.
GreedFall: The Dying World's Endings Are So Nuanced, They're Hard to Count
There are numerous RPGs out there that allow players to shape the outcome of a narrative through the choices they make, but many of those titles have been known to either limit any story-altering decisions to only a handful of major events or merely present players with a single crossroads in the game's final moments. GreedFall: The Dying World, on the other hand, truly seems to want its players to feel like they are in the driver's seat throughout the whole story, even if they don't realize they are when the time comes to choose. When asked whether the prequel took the concept of choice and consequence even further than the first game, Rousseau gave a rather extensive breakdown of what lengths GreedFall: The Dying World goes to regarding the player's decisions:
"Yes, a lot of them are hidden consequences. So, not something that will appear immediately as soon as you're doing something, but something that will seem at the beginning like a small choice, and then hours later, you will encounter this character again, and they will remember what you've done. And for us, while designing it, the idea was really to create new ways to complete the main quest. So, a small event that seems completely unrelated to what is happening in the main story will probably bring you some new ways to solve things in the main quest a few hours later. I can't even call them quests because there are really some moments when you can interact with people, they will call you for help or something, but you will have to make a decision there, and it will have an impact later because the characters will remember."
The original GreedFall already took player choice seriously, particularly through its faction reputation system, companion relationships, and multiple endings. Throughout the game, players had to navigate the competing interests of several factions, and building strong relationships with them could determine whether they would support players later in the story. Choices made during faction quests, companion storylines, and key political decisions could influence alliances, change how characters reacted to the player, and ultimately change the epilogue that played out after the final confrontation. Even the ending itself wasn't entirely isolated from the rest of the journey, as factors like faction reputation, companion loyalty, and earlier quest decisions could alter how the world responded to the player's actions.
GreedFall: The Dying World Makes Even the Smallest Decisions Matter
GreedFall: The Dying World, however, appears to take that philosophy a step further by integrating consequences into the moment-to-moment flow of the story rather than saving them mostly for major quests or the game's ending. Instead of reserving noticeable outcomes for major narrative decisions, the prequel ensures even the smallest interactions can mean something, with characters potentially reappearing later and changing their behavior based on the choices the player made. In some cases, those choices can even open entirely new ways to approach the main quest, turning what initially seem like small, almost incidental moments into big opportunities.
But GreedFall: The Dying World still isn't without plenty of major choices for players to make, as it has been known for some time now that multiple companions can die in the game based on those decisions—a fact that Rousseau doubled down on during the interview. However, what's fascinating is how she seemed to indicate that even these choices might seem small at first, only to show up later in an explosive way.
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This article originally appeared on GameRant and is republished here with permission.
