Actually, I am. I still have intention of finishing the first game before the second one is out. I just have to get past my emotional block with it.
I liked her in X2 quite a bit. I was never able to get the good ending there, tho. I’ll may try again with a guide.
Yes. I love angst. I love hard-choices. I love ‘your actions have consequences’. There are so many games where you can save everyone if you try hard enough, if your stats are high enough, if you’re careful enough. Life is Strange, Dragon Age, and more recently Detroit: Become Human have prepared me well. I clearly enjoy being emotionally gutted via story-telling from time to time.
I enjoyed the “Ultimate Sacrifice” ending of DAO, and one of my all-time favorite games is Long Live the Queen, in which even the ‘good’ endings require giving something up. As a fan of the game, I can see down sides to all of my favorite endings, and I would hesitate to label any of them ‘best’. Other players might feel differently.
For me, it isn’t about realism, ‘tough love’, or punishing the player. It is all about communicating to the player early on what the tone of the game is, and what success or failure looks like.
I think that some things that I’ll say might have already been said by other users but I haven’t read all other posts…
For me, this is in theory quite good, trying to decide between two “bad choices” seems like a good way of creating some replay value as it might make you curious to see how it plays out in a different playthrough. If it’s just guessing the right choice… Once you do it, you’re done. I mean it’s not the only way of creating replay value but it can raise interest quite easily.
However, some particular choices can really annoy some people. The particular example you mentioned… personally I think it has become quite a cliche and often I find it a little bit forced.
Killing a RO is something that usually makes people feel a little bit cheated. I don’t think this is the case as long as the death of the RO has some kind of correlation with particular decisions that you made either to obtain or progress with the relationship itself. Like if you lie to them and that makes them get into trouble; or maybe is thematic relevant… as if you have a way to help the RO to become a better person but you instead choose options that will make them like you more… that sort of thing.
Personally, I don’t mind if a particular character needs to die for the plot… but I know that this is a big no-no for a lot of players.
For me, the worst thing an ending can be is underwhelming. Whether it is happy, tragic or bittersweet the ending is supposed to give a sense of conclusion and feel like natural way of wrapping up the story. You don’t need to make players happy… but you should probably make them satisfied.
I kinda like this trope… but I’m not sure if it fits the formula of most CS games since they’re often told from the MC perspective and often, the game ends as soon as you die… The good part of this sort of ending is being aware that in fact your sacrifice has good consequences… so I think that you would have to “break the rules” a little bit and pull away from The MC perspective and give some sort of an… epilogue or something like that.
Recently, I was reminded of what happened at the end of Far Cry 5, or one of the endings and I wanted to touch on this. In the Resist ending many players felt cheated that that it what their 20 to 30 hours ended up like that. While Far Cry 5 isn’t an IF, it is an interactive medium that players had to grind through with all the side missions and blah blah blah.
What it basically did was give the illusion of choice during the points that didn’t matter but took away that choice during the parts that did matter. I think it was Jacob’s section of the map, but the Junior Deputy is always captured no matter where you are - if you inside the heart of your base with more than a handful of your gun toting companions - and armed to the teeth and are fully capable of clearing out bases full of enemies on your own or with just one other side companion.
The Resist Ending was a kick in the teeth since it invalidated all of the player’s previous efforts and just boiled the Deputy’s fate to ‘do you want the bad ending or do you want the really bad ending?’. The illusion of choice has been revealed, all your efforts were for nothing, and your Deputy is ultimately the victim of cutscene incompetence like they throughout the entire game despite all the evidence to the contrary.
Basically, don’t take away the reader’s choices. If there are bad endings then it should be the player’s fault for getting those bad endings. Mass Effect 2 pulled this off pretty well with the Suicide Mission and how it forces you to pick between going after the Collectors ASAP or delaying going after them at the cost of your crew where you get to see one of your crew characters die in a brutal fashion.
Basically, the reason tragic or sacrificial resolutions feel cheap is because they ignore the player’s previous choices for just two seemingly binary choice. If you want to avoid your tragic or sacrificial ending seem cheap then you have to make it the player’s fault for netting the bad ending and not because the author said so.
Yes to difficult choices, yes to sacrificial endings, yes to RO being able to die.
After all this time choice of robots is still my favourite and this has all of these things and more.
Its a stupidly complex game where you can die before reaching the end. At least 2 of the RO can die, or even kill you. 1 can even save your life.
Due to how wildly the story branches based on your choices none of these are forced.