Video game decision points where there are no good choices

[StaceyPowers]

What are some situations you can remember from games you have played where you were forced to choose between multiple negative alternatives?

[Withywarlock]

I'd like to point out immediately that any games here will automatically be spoiled by virtue of mention, and there's one game on this list I don't recommend you look personally look at because I know you've currently got an interest in this series.

The first game is Spec Ops: The Line, with its inconsistent 'no heroes' narrative. What was supposed to be an ordinary recon mission in an ordinary third person cover shooter turns out to be much more complicated when orders are ignored and communication breaks down. You're sometimes paused by the game to resolve moral dilemmas such as choosing between two criminals to execute because your soldiers' lives are on the line, or dispersing a crowd. And sometimes you're given no choice. See the infamous white phospherous mission. It's essentially misery porn, and not particularly good misery porn when compared to Heart of Darkness and The Congo Diaries and its inspirations.

Another is Mass Effect 3. Between the three endings of control, destroy and assimilate, only two of these can begin to be considered good. If you control the Reapers you're just doing what Cerberus tried to achieve for the past two games, and worked against them. If you assimilate, combinging synthetics with organics for eternal utopian (more on that soon), you're doing what Saren wanted to achieve in the first game. If you destroy them, which you set out to do all along, there's still the risk that people will not have learnt about the mistakes of AI and will make Reapers 2.0. Naturally I chose what I thought was the good ending: assimilation, but Lorerunner's excellent - and not uncharacteristic - analysis tells us it's more dystopian. That yes, there's peace, but at the cost of everyone being.... well, robots. Machines. Reapers. It's presented as happy-go-lucky and I was satisfied by the ending, but I can't help but shake the feeling it was the worst choice. But then it subscribes to the term I coin, Roberts' Trident: when a video game offers a choice, the third one is always the cop-out / the easy one.

[m76]

Mass Effect 3's ending doesn't have a good choice because it's simply badly written and goes against everything that came before.

The only way I can reconcile ME3's ending is by the indoctrination theory. As in if you choose Control that means Shepard has been indoctrinated like the IM and the reapers win. If you choose synthesis you give up your humanity and become like the geth, sorry, I'd rather be dead than that so that is the worst ending for me. The only option remains is destroy, if you choose that, that means you defied the reaper's attempts at indoctrination.  That's how I look at it.

[m76]

Splinter Cell: Double Agent

 

It was an absolute unfinished bugfest of a game when it came out, so you know releasing unfinished games is nothing new, but I digress. There was one really hard choice in that game that stuck with me. You basically have to either let a bomb go off killing innocents, or frame a friend who have saved you previously, who in turn gets killed if you choose that.  What would you chose? 

Edited February 13, 2021 by m76

[Reality vs Adventure]

It's always hard having to choose who dies or how many. I remember taking an ethics class in college and from what I remember, you should make a decision based on what causes the least amount of suffering. It's hard because what may seem like the best decision in the the current situation, may have effects in the long run that could cause even more deaths or suffering. Do you kill 5 now and let one man go who would kill 100 later? Do you save an injured person and put a bunch of other's lives at risk? 

Remember Saving Private Ryan? Is one man's life worth 10? Would that one life in return save 100 lives or be a bum on the street? We never know. I was watching an episode of 24 last night. Should you let a nerve gas be released into a mall so you can track a terrorist to other potential attacks using the nerve gas? Let 1,000 die so you could try to save 100,000? 

Should you let one young person live in excruciating pain and use the last cure for an old person who would have certain death? Or kill the old person and cure the young one?

The weight of morality is hard to balance sometimes. This kind of stuff in games, they should teach in ethics classes. Instead of boring textbooks. It would be very interactive and timed in your response instead of reading and thinking about it for a week before writing a paper over it. 1st reactions would be very interesting to study in people using video games for ethical decisions. Just a quick dialogue or something, not the whole game of course. 

[Heatman]

On 2/12/2021 at 9:45 PM, StaceyPowers said:

What are some situations you can remember from games you have played where you were forced to choose between multiple negative alternatives?

Mine happens to be in Final Fantasy XV where Noctis had to sacrifice himself in order to stop the antagonist Ardyn from destroying the world. 

[Shole]

On 2/13/2021 at 9:44 AM, m76 said:

Mass Effect 3's ending doesn't have a good choice because it's simply badly written and goes against everything that came before.

The only way I can reconcile ME3's ending is by the indoctrination theory. As in if you choose Control that means Shepard has been indoctrinated like the IM and the reapers win. If you choose synthesis you give up your humanity and become like the geth, sorry, I'd rather be dead than that so that is the worst ending for me. The only option remains is destroy, if you choose that, that means you defied the reaper's attempts at indoctrination.  That's how I look at it.

This changed my perspective about the game ending a bit.

When it comes to the topic at hand I think Warcraft 3 had some bad choices or worse choices moments, where no matter what you do in the end Arthas kills his own father, Illidan never gets to be the good guy he tried to be, and chaos always comes.

[Heatman]

35 minutes ago, Shole said:

This changed my perspective about the game ending a bit.

When it comes to the topic at hand I think Warcraft 3 had some bad choices or worse choices moments, where no matter what you do in the end Arthas kills his own father, Illidan never gets to be the good guy he tried to be, and chaos always comes.

I actually felt like they were confused themselves in the end with what they really wanted to achieve or how they wanted the game to end.