Player agency under constraint: a pilot study on the forced-choice effect in narrative game design

Narrative games increasingly rely on player agency to support immersive, expressive play. Yet little empirical work explores how difficulty design interacts with agency. In this pilot study, five participants completed 75 gameplay attempts across two boss encounters in Elden Ring, using embedded support mechanics introduced through gameplay and narrative framing. We hypothesised that providing affordances for agency under pressure would help sustain immersion. Instead, we observed convergence toward dominant strategies—what we describe as a forced-choice effect—with variation in how players interpreted them. While some preserved an interpretive sense of acting in character, others shifted attention toward the mechanics themselves, pulling players out of the character’s perspective and weakening perceived agency. These findings raise questions about how agency is shaped not just by design, but by interpretation. We flag this not as conclusions, but as timely concerns in an under-explored space of narrative game design.