Plenty of video games use player choice, but very few use it especially well. All too often, the choice is a clear-cut good vs. evil. Choosing the “good” option typically costs the player nothing, and often even results in rewards (e.g Bioshock).
The name of the game should be unspoilered, but please keep the choice inside a spoiler box. I would like this thread to serve as a list of games that adeptly utilize player choice. It can be for any reason you like, as long as you think it stood out from the usual crowd.
I’ll start with one of my own: Spec Ops: The Line
[SPOILER]This game has a bunch of interesting choices, but I’ll focus on one:
At one point, there’s an enraged crowd of civilians that has just lynched one of your squadmates. They’re throwing rocks at you, blocking your exit, dealing damage. It’s obvious that if you stay, they’ll kill you. And the game’s objective is “Get the hell out of here.”
Your squadmate is asking you for an order to open fire on the civilians, and the game is pressing on you. “Come on, do it, they’ll kill you if you don’t.”
So I fired into the air and prayed that it would scare everyone off. It did.
They built a choice into the mechanics and didn’t explicitly tell me it was there. It was one of the most engaging gameplay experiences I’ve ever had.[/SPOILER]
And for good measure, an example of a bad use of player choice: Mass Effect
[SPOILER]This series certainly had some excellent choices, but this wasn’t one of them:
During the finale, the fleet is scrambling to stop Sovereign from opening the relay to Reaper Space so his buddies can come over and wipe out the galaxy. The ship that contains the Council (basically the presidents of the galaxy), is in trouble, and you’re asked whether to reroute forces to save it. This was framed as a Paragon/Renegade choice: Save the ship because you’re a good guy or let them die because you don’t like aliens. I typically play Paragon, but I let them die. I did it because I was trying to play what I would have actually done in that situation.
I knew I was playing a video game and that I could have chosen to save them without losing the game, but from Shepard’s perspective all life in the galaxy hinged on whether they could stop Sovereign. I wasn’t about to risk letting the whole galaxy die just to save a handful of leaders. To me, it’s a bad choice because it’s kind of a false one: you risk nothing by saving them, and the decision to let them die is treated as a devious way of elevating humans in the political stage.
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