I know she’s supposed to turn good (maybe?) in sequels, but, hey, you’ve got to sacrifice someone at the end of 1, because cheap emotional engagement trick.

Yeah but that's the other thing, that's how you get gamers to let somebody from their group go: You force an obvious "One or the other"-pick. I can totally see how we as consumers can more readily accept that than we can accept the very understandable part of Karlach leaving as that was not presented right in the moment you made the choice. It didn't feel like there should not be any Option C at all.

[–] brsrklf@jlai.lu 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

That made me think about the most arbitrary and broken player "moral choice" I know : the end of Fable 2.

spoiler

Bad guy enslaves lots of people for years for his project, killing many of them. Then kills your family and your cute puppy because fuck you.

After you beat bad guy, magic ascended girl appears, rewards you with one of three wishes for post-game : revive everyone enslaved by bad guy, revive your family and cute puppy, or give you lots of useless monies.

The player is not really responsible for the slave deaths. The ability to "fix" ten years of history by magically erasing all the deaths is weird and undermines the impact of the whole story a lot.

Also, and perhaps more importantly on the player's side of things, the dog is a freaking gameplay mechanic, not having it prevents some actions and blocks a few minor quests.

Well, sorry, nameless, faceless theoretical people who died years ago, I really need my cute puppy.

Really, the game never even establishes why that very specifically determined choice has to be made. It feels very rushed, very cheap and the whole thing is over in 5 minutes.