Not my favorite situations, but I can still accept them as long as they are logically consistent. Meaning that:
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The characters have all acted as intelligently and competently as they are in-universe, and every available ‘take a third option’ pathway have already been considered and integrated into the choices.
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The dilemma has naturally risen out of the situation and the characters’ actions, instead of being heavy-handedly enforced by authorial intent.
I hate it when a game/author manually implements a ‘hard choice’ for its own sake.
Lesser Evil: I feel like ‘save A or B’ can’t really be called a ‘lesser of two evils choice’, its just asking who you like better. Better examples would be choices when you have to choose between opposing values.
Example: in DAO you get the chance to decide who becomes the next King of Orzammar. There are two candidates. One is upright and honorable and generally a good person, but is deeply mired in the place’s backwards traditionalism and isolationism. The other shows every sign of about to become a tyrant and dictator, but for the sake of his own power he will implement social reform and give you the military support you desperately need.
Sacrifice of ROs: when you say
impossible to reconcile a particular moral stance and a relationship with an RO
Are they being sent/volunteering for on a suicide mission for some greater good, or do they object to one of my choices so much that they will only allow it over their dead body? I can respect any of those, as long as the sacrifice is actually made necessary/ideal by the situation, and not solely an attempt to tug our heartstrings.
I haven’t actually seen that many RO vs greater good choices offered to the player, though there have been some encounters with companions dying for their greater good.
I have always been annoyed at Thane’s last fight in ME3. It happened in a cutscene, of which the MC and her squadmates were noticeably absent from. Are we to believe that they she just stood around gawking like a spectator when her friend was fighting for his life? It wasn’t even over that quickly, they had plenty of opportunities to intervene. Yes, the aftermath was heart-wrenching, but that doesn’t excuse the contrived manner in which it went down.
In contrast, I respected Legion’s death a lot more. (Though he isn’t an RO). He was uniquely qualified, and it was actually the best option available at the time. There was a greater good/sacrifice choice, but it wasn’t the PC’s to make; Legion made it himself, in accordance to his beliefs.
No perfect endings: I don’t like them, but I acknowledge they can be done right.
Have you by any chance played Tides of Numenera? It has a crushing array of endings. You learn that your entire species cause suffering just by the nature of your existence, and that the eldritch abomination hunting your people to extinction is actually trying to uphold the greater good. The only way to get it to stop is to destroy it, which would effective break the mind of anyone that’s not a member of your species. (Including some of your companions). Alternatively, you could sacrifice your entire species (also including some of your companions), or maintain the status quo and doom your people to a slow genocide.
I hated the situation and can’t bear to go through a replay, but I thought it made sense. It was a crappy dilemma to start with. The PC did the uttermost best they could with the cards they were dealt, but it wasn’t enough to fix the problem, so something had to be sacrificed.
If I can see a potential ‘perfect ending’ that looks achievable in-universe by my PC, but the game itself arbitrarily breaks it by choosing one group or another to ‘suffer unfairly’, then I will feel quite cheated.
Player character sacrifices:
As above. Preferable preventable, but acceptable if there is truly no better way to get the desired tradeoff.
Also, I would prefer to choose for myself what is and isn’t ‘my cause’.
Instead of designating a “best” ending, just tell me what the consequences are for the sacrifice, and what the consequences are for not doing the sacrifice, and I’ll decide for myself if it’s worth it.
Example that I liked:
The ending of Enderal, a skyrim storymod. At the end, there is a superweapon on the ground that is progressively eradicating everyone on the planet. You are the only person resistant enough to get to ground zero before dying; you are also one of the last people who knows how it works. You can get to the core mechanism and pause it’s firing, sacrificing yourself and the knowledge you carry, in the hopes that the survivors will find a permanent fix on their own. Or, you can take your RO and escape to space, letting this civilization die and use the additional time to ensure the next civilization avoids the same fate.
There is an argument to be made for either choice, they were both beautifully done, and the life or death of the PC is but one of the factors to consider.
On the other hand, example that was infamously ridiculous: Fallout 3. The ending asked the PC to enter a lethally irradiated control room, despite the fact some of their companions were immune to radiation. Before the addon, these companions would actually refuse to go, claiming something along the lines of ‘this is your story’, forcing the PC to make a completely unnecessary and idiotic sacrifice. Even after the addon, the player was snobbed for asking the irradiation immune companions to go in instead of throwing their life away.
), I’d say that my general take-away from this thread would be that all these things can work but only if they have purpose within the story and provided the player isn’t coerced into them against their will. That was already my own inclination so it’s very useful to have it confirmed.