Hey all!
I’d like to request recommendations (spoiler free!) for games where you need to make choices, take sides, kill or not kill someone, follow or do not follow orders, but where the consequences actually matter - and most importantly, where the choices aren’t “obviously good choice vs obviously bad choice”.
Give me games where I can choose to side with one kingdom or another, but there’s no clear moral high ground, or where I need to decide to save someone dear to me at the cost of innocent lives. I do not want things like “save all the children and get the happy ending and make flowers grow” versus “kill everybody and everything blows up and the world gets all its water replaced by acid”.
What games fit this requirement?
You must log in or register to comment.
My wife tells me that Rogue Trader has a lot of difficult and unclear decisions like this.
The X-COM series is pretty much these choices all the time, though less in a moral sense and more a strategic risk and reward sense. What do you use your limited time and resources on, how much do you risk when the stakes are high, etc. It’s a little different than the sorts of decisions you’re thinking of, but quite interesting.
I would second Xcom and add: unlike other strategy games, where each character is a nameless unit, Xcom names your units. Not a big deal, but it is a big enough change where you start to create your own stories, even in your head, for the characters. Playing the game in a not easy game mode, causes you to lose soldier from time to time. This really heightens tension when certain characters die, whom you remember, and when some miraculously live. Its a very small, yet somehow meaningful addition to what would otherwise be an endless sea of soldiers.
Frostpunk
SO STRESSFUL!
I love this game so much. I have to constantly walk away from the stress lol.
I’m a big fan of Tyranny by Obsidian Entertainment. Classic CRPG, isomorphic for the majority of it. The game starts with you making decisions that set the initial state of the world as you lead the army that finishes your evil overlord’s conquest of the world. Then the game truly starts and goes on to be one of my favourite CRPGs of all time.
One of the few games where I gravitated towards the lawful evil route because it just felt so natural. It’s such a shame we will probably never see a sequel.
Popped in to mention Tyranny, saw it was the first comment.
Absolutely LOVE Tyranny, its got so many morally questionable choices to make! I really, really hope Obsidian makes a sequel!
The word you’re looking for there is ‘isometric.’
Baldur’s Gate 3 has a lot of really hard hitting decisions, and I’m in awe at how they’re able to make the story work with just how many choices there are.
Ehhhh, it has a lot of decisions, yes. But in the end: do any of them matter at all? I feel like 99% of my decisions never made any kind of difference whatsoever at the end.
I did a whole bunch of stuff with Shadowheart and she wasn’t even in my ending at all. Totally missing. I did even more crazy stuff with Karlach, and in the end I was given zero dialog or options or chances to do anything with her, the game forced her to say “I’m getting too hot” and fall down and explode and die. I did by far the most stuff with my primary character Astarion, and in the end I got zero options to do anything with the woman he loved and he ran away to hide in a cave.
So… Yes there are lots of options to make decisions one way or another. But none of them matter at all whatsoever in the end. So, don’t be too in awe, because the way they make the story work is just totally ignoring anything you ever did.
Did you miss the “no spoilers, please” bit in the OP? That’s a dick move.
You made choices and got the results of those choices. The alternative results are different.
!There are multiple endings where Karlach survives in different ways. Shadowheart’s story has at least three possible outcomes, maybe more that I haven’t seen. This goes on and on for each origin character. Even NPCs you encounter in Act 3 are shaped by your choices earlier in the game.!<
Frankly, based on your description, it sounds like you made a bunch of lame decisions. That’s neat endings and then the middling one you got.
Civ Beyond Earth has the neat approach that it replaces the old “build a spaceship to alpha Centauri” with three different technological endings each with different moral implications. The game is about human transcendence so any ending is going to be about changing humanity.
The problem is that the game itself is not one of the better entries in the Civ series otherwise.
Ah please tell me you’ve played Alpha Centauri.
Yes, many many many years ago. Beyond Earth is the palest of pale imitation.
Dishonored franchise. The world goes from bright to nightmarish depending on your choices
The Banner Saga 1-3 has you leading an army and offers many difficult narrative decisions that don’t necessarily affect the story outcome but absolutely can make or break your next battle or just generally make you feel bad. Battles are turn-bases tactical style.
Just answer our increasingly difficult questions.
Trolley problem: One track is one person, the other is 10
Next level
Okay well now the one person is your mom, and the 10 are 1 year olds you don’t know
Next level
Okay the one person is your best friends mom and the 10 are young kids from your immediate or extended family
Next level
Okay the one person would cure cancer tomorrow, and the 10 are friends or family
…
Or, y’know, go with the original version of the trolley problem, where you start with the classic formulation (do you pull the lever?), then move to a new scenario;
“You’re a doctor, working in a hospital that has been cut off from outside resources by a disaster. You have five patients, one in need of a liver, one a heart, one a pair of kidneys, one a set of lungs, and one a pancreas. You have no suitable organs available, and all five patients will die without transplants, but there is a healthy young janitor working in the hospital who, by a stroke of extreme luck, is a compatible donor for all five patients. You could kill the janitor, harvest their organs, and save five people. Should you do it?”
Fascinatingly, almost everyone opts to pull the lever in the first part, but refuses to kill the janitor in the second, even though they are, from a deeply utilitarian perspective, the same choice. Unravelling why we see them as different is where things get really interesting.
Deus Ex? The original one
A good chunk of comments have spoilers, so if you read this first beware. I guess people like to brag about game knowledge more than they like having other people experiencing stuff.
The 3 series is the best at this.
The first game in the series is Mass Effect 3, which is followed by Witcher 3 and the sequel to that is Baldur’s Gate 3.
Can’t wait for the next one, I hear it’s gonna be called Half-Life 3.
Spec Ops: The Line is a pretty decent pick when it comes to having “morally ambiguous choices”. the game itself states that there are no “real good choices” and thus, you must pick between the two evils.
I saved your post to try out the game. Sadly, it appears that it’s being erased from the Internet.
“Spec Ops: The Line … has been delisted from Steam, with other online stores to follow.”
that’s very unfortunate, curse you, licensing shenanigans!
Citizen Sleeper. It’s a short game about precarity and human connection. There are a few off ramps out of the current, desperate situation you’re in that are usually weighed against letting someone go or leaving things behind. It’s unique in games with difficult choices for so rarely about being given compelling reasons to do bad things, just choices that are hard for their emotional consequences.
i’m gonna blatantly disregard your “but where the consequences actually matter” and recommend most of telltale’s games (The Walking Dead and The Wolf Among Us are the better ones).
besides them and the suggestion of others i would also recommend Tyranny. great CRPG made by Obsidian.
