Sarah Chen has spent the last decade crafting some of interactive fiction's most emotionally resonant experiences. Best known for "Fractured Memories" and "The Weight of Choices," her work consistently demonstrates how meaningful player agency can deepen narrative impact rather than dilute it.
When we caught up with Chen at her San Francisco studio, she was knee-deep in pre-production for her next project, but graciously took time to discuss the art of building emotional stakes in choice-driven narratives.
Pick Legends: What initially drew you to interactive storytelling over traditional narrative forms?
Sarah Chen: I was working in film for years before transitioning to games, and I kept hitting this wall where I wanted audiences to feel genuine responsibility for story outcomes. In traditional media, you can make people care about characters, but you can't make them feel accountable for what happens to those characters. Interactive fiction bridges that gap.
The moment I realized the power of this medium was during early testing for "Fractured Memories." Players would literally pause the game before major decisions, not because they didn't know what they wanted to do, but because they understood their choice would have real weight. That hesitation — that's pure emotional engagement you can't manufacture in passive media.
How do you approach designing choices that feel meaningful rather than superficial?
Chen: The key is consequence design. Every choice needs to ripple outward in ways that feel logical but not predictable. I spend more time mapping consequence networks than I do writing initial dialogue options.
Take a simple example: choosing whether to trust a suspicious character early in the story. The obvious consequence is whether they betray you later. But meaningful choice design goes deeper. Maybe trusting them changes how other characters perceive your judgment. Maybe it affects your own character's confidence in future situations. The choice echoes through multiple narrative layers.
How do you balance player freedom with maintaining narrative coherence?
Chen: This is the eternal tension in interactive narrative. I think about it like jazz improvisation — there's a underlying structure that keeps everything coherent, but within that structure, there's tremendous freedom for variation.
In "Fractured Memories," the core emotional arc — dealing with loss and the unreliability of memory — remains consistent regardless of player choices. But how characters navigate that arc, what specific losses they experience, and how they ultimately cope with unreliable memories can vary dramatically based on player decisions.
Speaking of "Fractured Memories," that game is known for its emotionally devastating choices. How did you approach building those stakes?
Chen: The title itself was the key insight. Memory is inherently unreliable, which gave us narrative permission to make players question their own choices retroactively. You make what seems like a good decision early on, but as you learn more about the situation — or as your character's memory reveals different details — you start to doubt whether you chose correctly.
That uncertainty amplifies emotional stakes because players can't rely on traditional moral frameworks. The game forces you to make decisions with incomplete information, then slowly reveals how incomplete that information really was. It mirrors how real moral decisions often work.
What advice would you give to aspiring narrative designers who want to create emotionally impactful interactive stories?
Chen: Start small and focus on consequence density. Don't try to create branching narratives with fifty different endings. Instead, create three or four choices that each generate multiple layers of consequence. Quality over quantity, always.
Also, playtest early and often, but pay attention to what players don't say. Watch their body language during choice moments. If they're leaning forward, hesitating, or discussing options with friends, you're on the right track. If they're clicking through quickly, something's wrong with your stakes.
Most importantly, remember that interactive narrative isn't about giving players what they want — it's about making them care deeply about what they choose. Those are very different design goals.
Throughout our conversation, Chen's passion for the medium remained evident. She sees interactive fiction not as a novelty or gimmick, but as narrative storytelling's next evolutionary step — one that demands both technical precision and emotional intelligence from its creators.
As our interview concluded and she returned to her current project, it was clear that Chen's commitment to emotionally meaningful choice will continue pushing the boundaries of what interactive narratives can achieve. For players seeking stories that genuinely matter, that's promising news indeed.