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?

  • odium@programming.dev
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    8 months ago

    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.

    • Julian@lemm.ee
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      8 months ago

      Can’t wait for the next one, I hear it’s gonna be called Half-Life 3.

  • DeepFriedDresden@kbin.social
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    8 months ago

    This War of Mine. Honestly can’t believe nobody else has mentioned it.

    You play as a group of civilians in a war torn country. By day you craft things needed for survival like a stove for cooking, guns for protection, barricades to prevent raiders. At night you send one person with a backpack to scavenge an area of your choice for things like food, medicine, supplies etc. The others will either sleep or guard the property. Things you do while scavenging have real effects on your characters. Decided to rob an elderly couple? Your characters will react based on their personality.

    Things become grim fast if you decide to start robbing supplies or get attacked. Your players get sick, become depressed, starve, get hurt etc. I’ve never made it to the end.

    It’s a great way to understand the struggles of being a civilian in a war. The Polish government actually recommends it for educational purposes and the devs have donated a lot of proceeds to charities serving people impacted by war, including Ukraine most recently.

  • soli@infosec.pub
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    8 months ago

    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.

  • germtm.@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    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.

  • dsemy@lemm.ee
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    8 months ago

    Fallout New Vegas - You can literally help a gang take over the starting town like 5 minutes into the game.

    Souls games - The games constantly autosave in the background and (sometimes out of nowhere) present you with some very unclear choices. In Sekiro you have a choice around two thirds into the game which causes the game to end immediately (with a very bad ending); since the game autosaves all the time, once you make that choice you have to start the entire game over and get to that point again to make a different choice.

    Most CRPGs I played had meaningful choices (sometimes having extreme effects on the game world):

    Planescape: Torment - Best CRPG ever IMO.

    Tyranny, Pillars of Eternity - Modern CRPGs by Obsidian, both amazing. I haven’t played Pillars of Eternity 2 yet.

    • Shurimal@kbin.social
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      8 months ago

      In Sekiro you have a choice around two thirds into the game which causes the game to end immediately (with a very bad ending); since the game autosaves all the time, once you make that choice you have to start the entire game over and get to that point again to make a different choice.

      Yeah, that’s bad game design IMO unless the game is an hour or two long. The player should be able to roll back when they fuck up that much. In fact, only one save file and no way to roll back if it gets corrupted or you realize how badly you have fucked up is always a bad design.

      • dsemy@lemm.ee
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        8 months ago

        No

        The fact you can’t rollback means every choice really matters.

        Edit: Also there are multiple endings and New Game+ so you are encouraged to play the game again anyway.

        I beat Sekiro like 5 times at this point

  • Carsonian@lemmy.ca
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    8 months ago

    My favorite of all time for exactly this is Spec Ops: The Line. Its a third person shooter and really fun, but its main selling point is making super tough morally gray decisions. Still one of my favorite game stories ever. You can usually get it really cheap and its just perfect for what tou described.

    • keyez@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      Was also going to mention this! Love that game and have played it twice. I even remember two set pieces in the game like a movie and sometimes recant them to friends as if it were from a movie cuz they probably wouldn’t understand.

  • RHOPKINS13@kbin.social
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    8 months ago

    Pokémon. You get to choose from Charmander, Bulbasaur, and Squirtle for your starter. And everyone you know will judge you for which starter you picked.