Hard choices, tough love and happy endings

Not my favorite situations, but I can still accept them as long as they are logically consistent. Meaning that:

  1. 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.

  2. 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.

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I do not have a problem with the selfsacrifice-ending, as long as it is based on a choice and not just shoved in my face, as the only good ending. If I like to sacrifice myself, I want to do it, because my character does not see another way, not because the author wants to kill my MC^^.

With the sacrifice of an RO, if it is about ending the romance because of a decision I or the RO made, thats ok. If I got their village killed, I found it quite reasonable, that they hate me. If a situation like the one in the end of DA2 occurs, thats ok for me (Always killed Anders, because I really did not like his way of handling things, seemed to be quite a terror act and I do not like terrorists).

When the choice occurs to let one of my teammates die to save another, I like it be an easy decision, like when I do like on and not the other, or at least I have an way to form a real decision. (There was this one decision in Tell tales walking dead 1, where you have to decide to help a woman or a guy, that your character knew, but you did not really. And both afterwards complaining that you should have saved the other one. After that I wished for an option to get them both killed right away. ) I hate having to make a difficult decision and then get bitched about what I did.

No really good ending is okay, if the setting is leading towards this, nobody waits for a positive ending, when the setting is lovecraftian^^. And if I am playing a villain(ok I do not do this often) I would be quite disappointed if everyone received a happy ending, because that would mean I failed^^

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late…but better late then never…ahem

this funny enough , came up in the GaaaaaaaMeeeeeee thread . BW is known to throw this choice around…willy-nilly . and thanx to them…I hate this choice ! :sweat_smile:

  1. choose between 2 annoying character ? sure let me sacrifice them both!
  2. choose between 2 characters , one you like…one you hate ? you know who gonna die…right? easy!
    3)choose between 2 character you LOVE ? Ahhhhhhhh massive meltdown…rage-quit…

Honestly , there must be a middle ground somewhere . Where the sacrifice is IMPORTANT…that something happen…and without said sacrifice…ALOT is doomed . On the other hand , I know some peoples don’t like the trope of ‘‘X dead so Y could powerup!’’ , hey still butthurt over Xena ending wich was pretty much that .

Totally nope . Kill my romance…kill my enjoyement . I be done with the game so fast . That and do you know how much I be bawling? So much kleenex…RIP .

cheated and cheapened . If an author want his imperfect BAD ending , fair enough . But I ask for ONE not a zillion but just ONE HAPPY RAINBOW WITH UNICORNS ending . And make a thousand of bad ending if they wish to…My life is a bad ending! I hate bad ending .

on the fence here . The self sacrifice should be the player choice . Thats at least to me , the attraction for sacrificing my character . If the story push me to that…nope . The story should give me opening…but the self sacrifice…should be my decision . And I should be able to go wimp at the last second .

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Just wanted to chime in that the cost of the “best ending” shouldn’t necessarily PC’s sacrifice.

R.I.P. BT-7274 o7

I have little problems with thought choices. Even choosing who die between two friends, I’m going to switch my choice in a subsequent run.

I hate when characters belittle me for the choice, owever. I always have either a “well, next time you do the choice!” or the instinct to trow then out of the airlock.

I quite hate the ROs killing too. I have no problem if is a choice.
But if I choose to save the RO, and they leave my character because of that, I’d restart the game, either not romance them, and/or kill them on purpouse. Petty, I know, but I have no patience for these kind of ungrateful people.
But at this point I may have lost the chance to like the game anyway.

I hate protagonist sacrifice. Is something that is stronger than me, I would feel cheated by the game, and not want to play it. If is just one of many endings, I’m fine. I’ll always take the ending where my character and her RO live, thank you. The world can burn, I don’t care.

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It could be interesting, I think I’ve seen it in other WIPs and I’ve been fine with it (I mean, not fine… you know what I mean).

If the RO leaves because they disagree with the MC, very cool and I approve.

For the other scenario, I do not want to see characters die in a noble sacrifice. I’ll get into it below in the MC sacrifice section.

I’ll need a bittersweet ending at least. I’m not expecting rainbows and puppies but I want to feel like I had a positive impact on the story. Otherwise, why am I bothering?

I hate this trope for personal mental health reasons. I hope if you did include this, you would include a warning on the front page. It’s common in a lot of heroic fiction and I try to avoid it whenever possible.

Perhaps the player gets trapped in another dimension or some other consequence, but no heroic suicide, especially not linked to some kind of narrative reward.

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Oof, this really is a case by case basis for me. In general I guess I like this, but it needs to be handled with a deft hand. If (to use your example) a choice was going to show up in a game to have to choose life and death between two characters, I would greatly prefer there be only one choice like this in the game, and that it have been foreshadowed. Let’s say throughout the game you’ve had two friend characters who are always butting heads over how to proceed, their arguments getting increasingly heated until, at the climax of the game, they are firmly split on how to proceed, and are going to go through with their respective plans regardless of your choice. I don’t mind that sort of situation at all, I’d expect something bad to happen to the one the MC doesn’t go with, and it would feel like a culmination of an arc between the two characters. In general as long as the choice is serving more of a story purpose than just “being a hard choice,” I think I can get behind it.

Hm, I don’t want to say flat out, “No, I’d never be okay with this,” but it would need to be done really well, and again, serve more of a purpose than to be just a gut punch at the end. If the game is going to have it where any person you romance is the one who has to be sacrificed, there better be a way for me to avoid that while also not like damning thousands of people to die or anything (personal preference). If its only one member of the cast who ends up in the sacrifice situation, and you can romance them, I might be more accepting of a ‘you can’t have it both ways’ sort of ending, but again, only if the sacrifice is foreshadowed throughout and plays into the characters story arc. I would have a very hard time accepting this as an out of nowhere blindside choice right at the end of the game.

Depends on a lot of things, but out of all the choices you’ve brought up, this is the one I’m most readily accepting of. Once again, this depends a lot on how much the game has been implying this is going to be the case. If the game’s setting and tone are darker or more bleak, I wouldn’t expect it to have an ending where everyone is happy. I don’t need an ending where my choices have made the world universally happy, but I do need an ending that, on some level, I could see coming when I made the choice.

Here's an example of what I mean

Lets say at some point in a game you have to decide between giving the throne of a kingdom to the nice, but somewhat ineffectual heir or their ambitious, intelligent cousin, if you help the heir, the game ends with the kingdom going through a period of stagnation and economic turmoil, but the people always know their king is trying his best, and are relatively satisfied with their meager means. If you side with the cousin, the kingdom prospers and becomes a powerhouse on the national stage, but the people are scared of the monarch, who enforces their rule with an iron fist and is quick to put down any dissent. Neither ending for the kingdom is ‘good’, with no one ending up perfectly happy, but as long as the game clearly showed you what kind of people the two you are choosing between are so that you could have a feeling for how the kingdom might end up under them, that’d be fine with me.

I don’t like this as the only choice for succeeding, and as others have said, I wouldn’t view an ending where my character died as the ‘best’ ending. Others have pointed to Dragon Age Origins as an example for how to do this well, player sacrifice is an option, but not the only one. Broken record time but, once again, I need the choice to sacrifice yourself or not to not ambush me if I am to have anything more than a “wow cheap move” response.

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I am in favor of all of it. Hard choices, losing a love interest, endings that can never be perfect. I am 100% in for them all.

The one thing that you need to be careful with is the player sacrifice ending. If the story is good, and engaging by the time I reach the ending the line between me and my character is well blurred. So much so, that experiencing part of the story after my character is dead is going to feel weird, and any emotional impact of things that happen after “I’m” dead will be lessened.

The game that dealt with my character’s death the best just ended, black screen, roll credits when she died, but even that wasn’t perfect. It’s a tricky problem, and I don’t honestly have a good solution.

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I feel like HAVING to sacrifice a RO, especially in the middle of a game, or when you’re reaching the ending, can feel cheap and frustrating. We have to bear in mind that players actually pay for these games and the goal is to have fun. It doesn’t mean you can’t make it difficult for the player and their RO to be together, but impossible can ruin the whole experience, and make it feel like the jorney wasn’t worth it. Of course, there’s always an exception, it’s not an exact science and each story needs its own flavor. I believe the golden rule is: make it fun and worth it. Make it worth it any pain, frustration or overall feelings of failure. Give the player some sort of reward, even in a seemingly bad ending.

Hard choices, choosing between two evils, I believe it adds something invaluable to the game. It feels more like real life than it would otherwise, because sometimes you just can’t make a perfect choice. You’re no superhero, no matter how powerful you are, and this makes your character not only relatable, but also “human” - even if their an alien. There’s a difference though, between feeling powerless sometimes and being always powerless. The player has to be able to feel like their actions have consequences, because it’s a CHOICE game. They don’t have to be good consequences all the time, nor they have to always be the intended ones. I’m a fan of butterfly effect. In short: do it, but do it well enough that the player don’t feel forced to choose between bad options. They have to feel it’s an impossible situation they’ve got themselves in.

Happy endings are not necessary. I think, though, they have to be at least bittersweet, which in my opnion is the best sort of ending: just like in real life, you can have good things, but not all of them. Which means having only sad and forcefully tragic endings makes everybody regret their choices, maybe even regret buying such a story to begin with.

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All of them can be done poorly, but I like them all when done well.

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To answer the questions with how I theorize people will react:

Typically, these don’t always go over well. People like to get rewarded for making certain choices and usually complain about getting screwed over or the game punishing them for making a certain choice.

I’ve never seen anything similar to this, so I can’t give a full evaluation of how people would react, but I suspect this wouldn’t go over well, and on this site in particular I suspect most people would rather save the RO.

I’ve never really seen this go over well. I like them though.

I’m not a huge fan of this but it does seem to be pretty popular.

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@Wiwyums

(Attempt at comment two, slightly less Aussie edition)

I think you should do them if you want to do them.

I personally like it when your choices have real noticeable consequences so I would support your choice to do sacrificial shit.

Though personally when I get choices of
“Sacrifice this one good goon you know or everyone dies”
I go
“Lol yeah nah”
Proceeds to let everyone else die as I live on with my Bro

But yeah you should do it if you want to do it, I personally don’t tend to really care about sacrificing Randoms or party members/love interests im not targeting in a certain run. Since necessary casualties and what not. Im sure they know its for the greater good.

Though having a required sacrifice would definitely be annoying if done poorly, like a “Yeah your love interest? I’ll be taking that now” scenario where you can’t do anything about it would be annoying unless done well like giving them a really good send out or making their death gain you something.

Also the self sacrifice thing would be definitely cool, only if done well though. Unlike how Fallout 3 did it which was shit in my opinion, the option of sacrificing some random lady I just met or killing myself… MORAL DILEMA INTENSIFIES

If self sacrifice was a running theme as well that would be cool, I know of an RPG where to save certain party members you would have to actually lose limbs and therefore take permanent debuffs, if you implemented something like that it would be cool as.

In conclusion, do whatever the hell you want.
If people don’t like hard choices that can ruin in game characters lives then your story ain’t for them, simple as that. May as well focus on the audience who will appreciate it, which will be the sick bastards like me who enjoy watching the world burn.

Hope this was slightly helpful but I am currently burning to death so I can’t think good or even remotely coherently at the moment. Most of my bodies water content is outside of me currently.

Personally — games in which massive personal sacrifice, extreme moral dilemmas, and the like are required; tend to be my favorites, even at the cost of a “good” ending.

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Wow! So many thoughtful responses to this. Really helpful for my WIP and hopefully a useful discussion for lots of other people too.

If I were the sort of fool who liked to condense pages of nuanced discourse into a trite one-line summary (but of course I’m not :wink: ), 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.

Interesting that tragic and sacrificial resolutions can often seem cheap and cursory. I wonder if this is an issue specific to IF? In films and novels, I more often feel this way about happy endings (“Ugh, they tacked that on to please a mainstream audience” etc) but I’m only realising now that I shouldn’t write IF with a view simply to what will make a satisfying narrative arc. It’s also essential to consider player intent and most players (myself included) will generally want a positive ending for the character they’ve created. To paraphrase a previous comment, I may not want to spend ages customising and increasingly identifying with a character just to have them jump into a volcano at the end of the story.

Players/readers of IF are active participants who themselves shoulder some of the storytelling duties so to spring unmerited twists, sacrifices and dilemmas on them can seem almost like an act of aggression by the author! That isn’t to say that you can’t do these things, just that they need to chime with the player’s own idea of the sort of story you’re collaboratively telling. For a passive audience willing to put themselves entirely in the author’s (film, books), I guess this isn’t likely to be such an issue.

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Not a ro situation, but I’m guessing you hated The Last of Us? Or any other situation of saving someone against their will for what they believe to be good?

Never finished The Last Of Us. (I was in a very sad moment of my life, I still somehow am, but getting better) so, I don’t know. Still, is not a game with choice, if I remember right, and with preimposted characters.

In a non choice game, is like a movie. Not my story, I just watch. If is a game with choices, I want positive outcomes there too, alongside bad ones.

And anyway, yes, I quite hate those kind of characters anyway. I hated Yuna for most of FFX, for example.

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Sacrifice of Prodigal in Hero Rise may be a theme of impossible to reconcile with her moral stance… the plot was well written and capture imagination of many…
What i hate is we are not given choice to forgive her and save her in the end, her death is fix with a moral stance … i would love to have an option to save Prodigal and then disappear together with her after saving the world…

Just let everyone keep guessing our love hate relationship when MC and Prodigal escape to a paradice like Jason Bourne and his companion

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Personally, I don’t know if it something specific to IF, but it might be, considering this is a topic that comes up fairly often in gaming and rpgs. When you are watching a film or reading a novel, you are only passively participating as the audience. The protagonist isn’t your character… you are along for the ride, as the writer envisions the narrative. They are telling you a story.

But in IF, you are actively participating in shaping the story and creating that protagonist. Readers will tend to feel more attached to a character they have helped create, and may even be inserting themselves in the characters shoes. So these types of big choices, if they are unavoidable, can feel like the player agency is being stripped away for the sake of drama, or shock value…and that feels cheap in a way it wouldn’t in a movie.

So yeah pretty much. I think you are on the right track. IF is different because it is more of a collaborative experience. Any of these types of difficult choices can work…provided they leave some room for player agency. The “best” ending, therefore is one where we feel like our choices mattered and made an impact. Personally that’s what makes a IF ending satisfying to me…that it feels tailored to how I played the game.

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I imagine that making too many hard choices would lessen the impact of them as a whole to be perfectly honest. You lose shock value and the reader may become jaded toward the various characters avoiding attachment knowing its a set up for a tragic fall.

While they can be a nice tool like any other writing tactic but something used too often will eventually wear out.

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And here I thought you were excited for the sequel.

So I’m guessing in 2 she was ok, and somewhere past the marriage sequence.

I would like to say, I have done that. I was prepared for Me3. Sometimes Da:o. And AOT:2 In games here I usually don’t have a fear because many times there isn’t a bad ending for me to get, or the choices leading up to them are obvious. I remember being pleasantly surprised at some endings in TLH3