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Original post by LessBread Anatomy of a difficult choice? Million Dollar Baby, Sophie's Choice, Godfather II, Apocalypse Now, Blade Runner, The Bridge On The River Kwai, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, On The Waterfront, Schindler's List, To Kill A Mockingbird, Double Indemnity, High Noon, ...

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Original post by Wavinator Great movie list. But I think to apply this to games you either need to make it a fixed story choice or figure out what the elements of the choice are made of. Take Blade Runner. Both Deckard and Roy Batty have a struggle with empathy. This seems to be at the core of what it means to be human. Batty's choice is very interesting because he's a combat model. In a game, to me, Batty's choice would have to be framed like this: Forced missions of killing, with high risk and lots of meaningless death. More than any character I can think of, we'd have to represent Batty's humanity somehow, so that we as players can see the effects of all of our killing. Then we have to open the door to escape. Then we have to inevitably force Batty (as the player) against Deckard, a foe that, on the surface, requires killing. The hard choice would be that killing Deckard would have to represent the last shred of Batty's humanity. So the epic difficult choice: Kill Deckard and end the game as an empty shell; or show mercy, which will inevitably lead to your death, but the salvation of your soul. Or something like that. It's a noir choice, which I don't think many gamers are yet ready to stomach...

The movie list was meant to show that there are a lot of ways to frame difficult choices. War, Greed, Honor, Insanity, Empathy (and so on). Each of those movies provides "an anatomy of a difficult choice". How to adapt any of those stories into game form is the heart of the question. It may make for a useful exercise. I doubt such a thing as an anatomy of difficult choices can be drawn.

In regard to Batty, I think one question would be whether it was meaningless death that lead him to rebel, or if those deaths weren't meaningless at all. That is, for Batty they carried profound meaning as tragic losses that compelled his rebellion, even if only as negative examples, ie. he didn't want to meet that same fate. The raises the question of whether his rebellion was about survival or if it was about something more. The movie plays it as survival, but unfolds it as something more and takes that to the merciful conclusion.

The common spin taken with a character like Batty is that he doesn't know he's a machine. Part of the genious of Blade Runner is how it plays with that trope. Deckard also has difficult choices to make, whether to turn in his new girlfriend or not. I'm thinking of the original release not the director's cut. And then there is the question of Deckard's humanity, which in turn recasts Batty's choice in a new light.

As for the "noir choice", I think it might be more popular than expected. Perhaps the box office for "Sin City" will show that.

scenario:
A ruthless ruffian killed your father when you are young. For 20 years you've been tracking down this killer. Through out the years, you have gathered information about this killer, most of them tells you how cold-blooded and dispecable this killer is - which even harden your will to ge revenge even more. Finally, you managed to confront this killer. Eventhough he has aged, he is still no easy opponent. This is a tough fight, a long battle. Finally, seeing an oppotunity while he is trying to catch his breath, you wiftly step forward and lunged you sword deep in to his chest. Sweetness of revenge flow through your blood. Just when you are about to turn away from the dying man, a little girl rushed out from behind a tree and crying "Father!!" to the dying man. You realized that the killer has a daughter. She is just about the same age as you were when your father died.

Heres the choice:
1) Kill her. This will ensure she will not be seeking revenge on you 20 years later. However this will make you even more vile and cold-blooded than the man just died in your hand. Though seeking revenge, you have always walking on the path of rightousness, you will forever in guilt if you killed this innocent girl.

2) Leave her alone. Her chance of survival in this woods is slim. This will eliminate the possibility of her seeking revenge on you, and you may be able to survive the guilt of leaving her to die in the forest. But what if she survied? You already have a wife and she is pregnant, so will your child be seeing you died in a women's hand 10 or 20 years later, and let the cycle of mobeus continue?

3) Take her with you. Maybe you could hope through years of caring and confessing, you may redeem your deed, but judging on the flame of hatred in her eyes, this will not be easy. Will you want to raise her, and surrender your live when she decides to kill you, hoping that out of empathy, she will give up on seeking revenge?

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Original post by webbit scenario: A ruthless ruffian killed your father when you are young. For 20 years you've been tracking down this killer. Through out the years, you have gathered information about this killer, most of them tells you how cold-blooded and dispecable this killer is - which even harden your will to ge revenge even more. Finally, you managed to confront this killer. Eventhough he has aged, he is still no easy opponent. This is a tough fight, a long battle. Finally, seeing an oppotunity while he is trying to catch his breath, you wiftly step forward and lunged you sword deep in to his chest. Sweetness of revenge flow through your blood. Just when you are about to turn away from the dying man, a little girl rushed out from behind a tree and crying "Father!!" to the dying man. You realized that the killer has a daughter. She is just about the same age as you were when your father died. Heres the choice: 1) Kill her. This will ensure she will not be seeking revenge on you 20 years later. However this will make you even more vile and cold-blooded than the man just died in your hand. Though seeking revenge, you have always walking on the path of rightousness, you will forever in guilt if you killed this innocent girl. 2) Leave her alone. Her chance of survival in this woods is slim. This will eliminate the possibility of her seeking revenge on you, and you may be able to survive the guilt of leaving her to die in the forest. But what if she survied? You already have a wife and she is pregnant, so will your child be seeing you died in a women's hand 10 or 20 years later, and let the cycle of mobeus continue? 3) Take her with you. Maybe you could hope through years of caring and confessing, you may redeem your deed, but judging on the flame of hatred in her eyes, this will not be easy. Will you want to raise her, and surrender your live when she decides to kill you, hoping that out of empathy, she will give up on seeking revenge?

easy, kill her. It's the only way to stop a perpetual cycle.

Kill a 10 years old innocent child?

Hmm....now I know why God was flooding the world.

Personally, I'd choose 3.

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Original post by webbit Kill a 10 years old innocent child? Hmm....now I know why God was flooding the world. Personally, I'd choose 3.

hey, murdering someone out of revenge is still wrong. If you want to talk about theology here, God says "vengence is Mine" in which case this person has already committed some major sins. What's one more to add to the list, kill the girl, if only out of mercy.

What if I, the player, would never have chosen to track someone for 20 years in the first place? Sort of alienated me from the very beginning, haven't you?

Creating a debate in the player

To create a challenging and interesting choice is to create a debate among the choices from the player's perspective. In order to do this, the player must know enough to argue for and against each option. This means that the cost of each option must be observable, the effect of each option must meaningful and distinct, and the options put together must be comparable in their costs and effects.

Since the choices are interpreted from the player's perspective, the designer must answer these questions:

1) What kinds of costs/effects are readily meaningful to the player?
2) How do I make a cost/effect meaningful to the player?
3) How do I make a cost/effect observable to the player without disclosing vital surprises?


Webbit's scenario:

- If the choice occurs at the beginning of the game, the effects of the choices are so consequential that the player is unlikely to believe a real choice is being presented. The player is not likely to believe that the consequences of the choices are balanced. The player may see two of the options to be traps, since the costs and effects are not readily observable. The effect of the choices are delayed, and the player is forced in to thinking, "geeze, the designer is probably trying to make me play it all over again from this beginning choosing a different option."

- If the choice occurs in the last part of the game, the costs of the choices goes to zero if the player is allowed to save and load. On the other hand, endings of a story should be rewards, not options. It seems rather absurd that a single choice at the end is going to determine the ending of the story. As if you thought of three endings, and you are just letting the player view each one of them one by one. During your investigation, you must have already known that the little girl exists. If you want to make the ending more meaningful, you should have presented the dilemma throughout the game. The game should have enough information to determine what action the PC will take. This way, after the revenge is done, the 'kind' player will be rewarded with the 'kind' ending, and the 'cold' player the cold ending.

hmm, maybe I'll make an expension pack and the beginning of the expack will base on the chioce you made before the end of the orignal story...

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Original post by Estok - If the choice occurs at the beginning of the game, the effects of the choices are so consequential that the player is unlikely to believe a real choice is being presented. The player is not likely to believe that the consequences of the choices are balanced. The player may see two of the options to be traps, since the costs and effects are not readily observable. The effect of the choices are delayed, and the player is forced in to thinking, "geeze, the designer is probably trying to make me play it all over again from this beginning choosing a different option."

There's always a risk that the player may see any and all options as being traps. And being asked to play a game through twice is not a bad thing if the choice makes the game sufficiently different that it increases the replay value. In this case the initial choice should also be of a type that the player will consider more than one option to be valid choices (not an ethical or philosophical choice where the player would feel untrue to themselves to answer in a different way.) If you want the player to replay the game you want the game to be significantly different on the second play-through that the player isn't bored, but having them make a different choice at the beginning of the game is not necessarily the best way to do this, because the player might just make the same choice again.

(OT - Estok, I'm trying to get around to replying to your Cryo thread but it's a lot of reading and I've been really busy recently.)



Webbit - If you are thinking of having an expansion work off a saved game file from after the player completes the original game, that won't work very well. Players don't generally save after finishing a game, but you could automate that, but if there are months of delay before the expansion pack is released players may have deleted the file in the meantime.


A thing which hasn't been mentioned yet are choices which have no in-game consequences. These can be done really badly, for example when you must answer 'yes' to advance the plot, and choosing 'no' just results in the game asking again or forcing you to choose 'yes'. But consequenceless choices can also be used to make the game feel more alive and personal to the player. If you think about it, in a story-based game while some data is stored within the game, to cause different consequences when this data is checked later, a very important portion of the 'data' about the part of the game which has already been played is stored in the player's mind. This can't affect what happens in the game, but it can definitely affect how the player interprets what happens in the game.

Separate them into subjective and objective choices. Do I save my life? (Yes, done to the max in a lot of games) Do I take a life? (Yes or No, done a bunch in a lot of games). After that, you can start with the more emotional, jucier stuff, like, Do I save that person's life or destroy the NPC about to take my friendly NPC out? Do I heal this person or not? Do I advise this person or not? Do I supply this team or not?

As you can see, genre (and the circumstance they plausibly imply) will be a guide as to what will be a dramatic decision or no decision. Also, the character biography will be a guide to how the character will react because of their makup, views and attitudes. As the character arc progresses according to your design, changing views, behaviors and attitudes can be presented or compelled upon the player by challenge design, and, other characters, sufficiently influential upon the player, can also help them make choices. There is an old screenwriting axiom that says, "Think of the damsel in distress, tied to the railroad tracks. The clock is ticking. She is a bitch and you owe Snidely Whiplash your life and he has you in his drop dead sights." That is the pressure level a good character choice for a high impact emotional state choice must be under for it to move the audience.

HTH,
Adventuredesign