Games that force you to make hard choices
Games that force you to make hard choices
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?
Disco Elysium is a fantastic one. There are an insane amount of choices that shape how you go about the investigation of the hanged man and ultimately what happens beyond that investigation. Choices of who to side with, how to side (openly or playing multiple sides, etc.), choices that ultimately define what kind of detective you are (by-the-book boring, superstar douchebag, violent tough guy, Sherlock Holmes-esque genius, etc., including my favorite: Twin Peaks Lynchian detective that bases their decisions off of dreams, intuition and imaginary conversations with the dead body), and even how failing or succeeding at something can lead to progress in very different ways. If you fail to hit that person you tried to punch, or miss that shot with your gun, or utterly fail to convince someone to help you, you progress through in very different ways so that failing your way to the truth is just as satisfying and entertaining as succeeding your checks to get there.
And of course Fallout: New Vegas. Whether you choose to support the New California Republic, Caesar's Legion, Mr. House, or a truly independent New Vegas, none of them are perfect. Each succeeds in an ideal society in some ways but completely fails at others, leaving you to decide which imperfect system you feel is the right one for the world instead of shoving an obvious answer in your face.
If you like randomly made stories, you can try Rimworld.
You will quickly find yourself asking very difficult questions. Is taking on the cripple something you can afford to do? Is using medicine on a less valuable colonist smart? Do you let some of your colonists starve, or start a war with friendly neighbors? Cannibalism will make your neighbors hate you and some of your colonists might rebel over it, but that's better than some of them starving... right?
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.
The obvious answer is Pathologic. You play as one of three possible characters in a black plague-infested town in the russian steppe, trying to help people and survive.
As days go by, the situation worsens and, in order to survive, you are forced to make very hard decisions. Can you spare the food for the others? Will you rob someone of their medicines? Will you risk going to the most dangerous parts of the city, where the stench of infection permeates the air?
I'll quote The Nocturnal Rambler's review of the game, which is one of my favourite video game reviewers:
Making it to the end of a day is a genuine accomplishment in this game, considering all the work you have to do to stay alive, and that the game really doesn't care if you live or die. It won't hold your hand to make sure you get through to the end; it's entirely possible to make it through 10 days and then back yourself into a corner where you have absolutely no hope of survival, short of loading a save from a few (in-game) days ago. Or perhaps to save yourself the agony of replaying several hours of the game, you end up in terrifying, desperate scenarios where you have to sell your only weapon for a few scraps of bread, or murder a child for the medicine he's carrying while you're about to die from infection. That's true horror right there.
It's not an easy game and it's not a good game, even. It's old and dated and janky, but it's also full of charm and personality. I wouldn't say it's a game meant to be played, as much as it is an experience worth going through. You won't have fun playing the game. Even if you can overlook its pain points, it's an objectively oppressive game that will make you feel miserable from beginning to end, and increasingly so. I wouldn't say it's for everyone, and I don't mean that in an elitist way. Some people simply won't stand this much bleakness during the time they are supposedly spending to find entertainment.
Life is strange is very close to what you're asking, in the game you can rewind time to a limited degree to try different thing, but sometimes your actions only have consequences much further into the game. Even the things that you can rewind and try different things there's rarely a clear better choice, since all of them are morally ambiguous, do you take a picture of the security guard harassing a student or do you intervene? One is obviously better, but the other gives you proof which you might need later on.
Cyberpunk, and specifically the Phantom Liberty DLC.
I know 2077 has a bad rep for its terrible release, but the game excels in storytelling and mocap above all else. The DLC is accessible at the end of the prologue and requires that you make several hard choices which have a major impact on the dlc's conclusion.
The DLC is also chok full of side quests and contracts that don't affect the overall story but can affect your relationship with various factions, and that are affected by other choices made outside the DLC. The quests also feature various difficult choices. Do you kill the guy you were hired to kill, or do you give them a second chance so they can get treated for the cyberpsychosis that made them lash out in the first place?
I can't recommend this game enough, honestly.
Edit: If you want more details, or have questions, just ask. I don't want to spoil too much.
Every game on Steam that uses the publisher's launcher.
Fallout New Vegas. You get it up and running with the GOG and some decent mods you'll have a great time.
The X-COM series is pretty much these choices all the time, though less in a moral sense and more a strategic risk and reward sense. What do you use your limited time and resources on, how much do you risk when the stakes are high, etc. It’s a little different than the sorts of decisions you’re thinking of, but quite interesting.
I'd recommend Tyranny. Its a CRPG, where you play as an envoy of basically villains that are sweeping through the world, conquering almost everything. Most of the choices are pretty difficult, because from what I remember its usually "bad or different bad", without it being clear what's going to be worse. Because you're an envoy for a dictator with the power to literally wipe an entire continent with a single sentence, you can't just go " fuck this, I'm gonna ignore the orders and do good", and balancing the long term and short term consequences makes every decision pretty difficult.
For example, if you get an order to "capture this fortress within few days or I'll wipe the entire island", any small war-crime now may be the long term good option, if it helps you capture it in time, and helping the soldier asking you to help find his wife nearby may be lost time you can't be sure you can afford.
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Detroit: Become Human has some pretty tough decision trees. Not just in how you have to find the options, but even when you only have a few, it's difficult to choose one because none of them are wrong (or right, for that matter).
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Papers, Please seems incredibly easy, but then you're given a choice like "this person doesn't have a permit but their husband did and they say they will be killed if they have to go back; do you do your job or do you take pity on them?"
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Jeopardy. The newest one I know of is multiple choice and some of the answers are hard.
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MGS5? It's not a choice, but damn do I have to take pause every time I get to the part where you have to put down your entire army while they stand saluting you because they're infected by vocal chord zombie parasites. You never even talked to these people to get to know them and it's still like "fuck man these are my friends..."
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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.
Life is Strange (any of them, favorites are the 1st and True Colors. Both could be played without the other (separate stories)).
Mass Effect (I started with 2nd) is among the best imo.
Detroit Become Human
Heavy Rain - this one had my first immersed quick decision that I was like, "holy shit I just did that" and it made me question if I would've acted that way in real life given the scenario.
Detroit: Become Human generally has big overarching choices that are more obviously good vs bad, or rather pacifist vs violent and deviant vs machine, but a lot of the smaller in-between choices can make a big difference regarding who lives and who dies, and a lot of them aren't obvious, especially in Kara's story line. One in particular that I remember can seem like an obvious "doing the right thing" choice but it actually is a choice that can get several characters killed as a result if you do what seems like the "good person" thing. Getting to the end with everyone still alive can be surprisingly difficult without a guide, and there are a lot of different endings and branching paths depending on a lot of different choices. One character has I think somewhere around 26 separate chances of dying in the story at different points in the game. There's an achievement for getting all of them lol.
Heavy rain is similar to DBH but less obvious about having particular good or bad routes iirc. Like it doesn't do the "pacifist vs violent" or "deviant vs machine" style choices, but there are a lot of different choices that can affect the ending and who survives to the end.
Dragon Age Origins is an oldie but a goody with a ton of endings and decisions that aren't strictly good or bad. The following DA games are good too but the first one fits what you're looking for the most.
Those are ones I can think of off the top of my head.
If you use Steam you can search on the category "Choices Matter" FYI
Deus Ex? The original one
Pyre. The long-term goal is to get you and your boys out of fantasy australia, but there are complications along the way. Namely, who gets their freedom, and who doesn't? Are you really going to let your goofy dog buddy go when he's your best party member? Will you throw the match and let one of your favorite rivals win their freedom instead? Wouldnt it be really funny to let the little goblin loose back in civilization instead of someone who actually wants to go back home to their families? These are the tough questions Pyre asks of you, and they go places.
New Vegas fits this bill, even quests with "happy" endings leave a sour taste in your mouth, or you putting everyone equally in a shitty situation because you abstained from choosing who to favor. Outer Worlds from the same devs has some quests like this, but the main quest itself is very obviously good people vs evil mega corp.
Pathologic 2 - Stress Simulator, decide what to do with dwindling resources. Notoriously difficult.
Orwell: Keeping an Eye On You - The information you pass on, is going to really affect the story. A couple of times, I really felt conflicted about the decision.
This War of Mine - Do you rob innocent at the cost of your humanity or fight those bandits who are looting at the cost of your life
Frostpunk. That game gave me anxiety with the tough choices sometimes.
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.
My wife tells me that Rogue Trader has a lot of difficult and unclear decisions like this.
Civ Beyond Earth has the neat approach that it replaces the old "build a spaceship to alpha Centauri" with three different technological endings each with different moral implications. The game is about human transcendence so any ending is going to be about changing humanity.
The problem is that the game itself is not one of the better entries in the Civ series otherwise.
The Banner Saga 1-3 has you leading an army and offers many difficult narrative decisions that don't necessarily affect the story outcome but absolutely can make or break your next battle or just generally make you feel bad. Battles are turn-bases tactical style.
I haven't seen Morrowind's mentioned, but some of its side quests are very grey in their morality, in ways that later Bethesda games aren't. Definitely recommend if you want to make choices that keep you wondering if you actually did the right thing, and whether it was in character with your character.
But then again, that goes for the whole story. There's just enough hints and mentions throughout to make you wonder if you actually are the chosen one or just someone stumbling their way through the game, luckily having events line up with a prophecy.
It's hard to imagine Bethesda ever attempting something so ambiguous again.
A bit of an obscure one is Roadwarden. If I remember correctly, it was made by a single person. The grafics are pixelated style, which is usually a bit of a turn off for me (I don't need hyperrealistic, just don't like big pixels), but the gameplay is amazing. It is a combination of a graphical novel and an RPG where choices matter. It does not have spicy real-time combat or a leveling system, but your choices in the story and of your class matter.
To give a quick introduction to the story: You start as a roadwarden, someone tasked with keeping the roads safe. You are tasked by the elite in a rich city to assess the trading prospects with a poor province up north; assess its people, infrastructure, and resources that they offer. You have a limited time to complete your task, as autumn and winter are closing in, and the nights are too dangerous to venture on the roads.
In this game, you cannot help everyone. Helping one group can condemn another, and actions that may be noble in spirit may fail spectacularly. I've had a lot of fun playing through this, and it is my recommendation if you don't really care for real-time combat.
Dishonored franchise. The world goes from bright to nightmarish depending on your choices
I find games that have genuine path branching to be most satisfying for me in the "choices matter" department. Some games that come to mind for this are Tactics Ogre Reborn (or the PSP version), The Witcher 2, Triangle Strategy, and Baldur's Gate 3.
There are others that have interesting decisions (especially ending/late-game ones) like Deus Ex, The Witcher 3, and Life is Strange, but I'm not sure if those quite have the scope you're looking for.
Mass Effect was pretty great with this and really paved the way for games now. i still don’t know another set of trilogies where the game can be affected from the choices you made years before in an earlier game. I think they went so ambitious that it really tied up their hands with a lot of things for ME3.
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.
ShadowRun: Dragonfall
Its an isometric tactics style game that plays like the tabletop RPG it is designed around. It's a lot of reading, so if you're not into that stay away, but man... I remember when I beat it I was like "Fuck... Did I fuck up? I think I may have made some wrong decisions. I feel awful now"
I also love the setting it takes place in. For some reason fantasy always takes place in the past. Medieval elves, and dwarves, and Orcs etc. ShadowRun is a dystopian/cyberpunk future where all of these races exist. As if the fantasy world didn't stop existing after the medieval era.
Wasteland 3 has a number of mutually incompatible outcomes that force you to decide how things will end up.
Vampyr Deus EX -not the square ones Wasteland modern sequels
Detroit: Become Human fits the bill perfectly! It's a great game with some of the hardest choices you'll ever make in a game period.
Terra Invicta may be too high-level for the emotional impact, but it could fit. You are playing on the geopolitical stage, preventing (or steering) an exctinction-level war between humans and aliens. Stage a coup to overthrow a democratically elected government, make it as corrupt as possible to drive it to poverty so that the faction that wants to surrender to the aliens can't win the space race?
The Last Federation where you play as the last member of an alien race that everyone tried to destroy, and your last act is to prevent them all from killing each other. Maybe you will harass them all to make them ally against you and become friends? Maybe convince 4 of them to gang up on the 5th?
2077 cyberpunk only plays out badly
An indie game called OneShot from the Undertale knockoff genre has only one choice that matters, but god damn what a horrible choice, particularly since a child has to make it. And by the way, the game is called OneShot because it's designed to be played exactly once. If you want to play again, you have to mess with some files to do so.
Triangle Strategy. I hit a number of points where I had to think hard to make my decision and even then I wasn't sure if it was what I should've gone with. Trying to save and reload to pick something else is futile since I'd just run into another tough decision down the line which modifies things further and it'd take too long to play through multiple key points. It's an amazing strategy game as well.
Witcher 3, Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous, Nationstates.net , all are excellent options along this line.
Just answer our increasingly difficult questions.
Trolley problem: One track is one person, the other is 10
Next level
Okay well now the one person is your mom, and the 10 are 1 year olds you don't know
Next level
Okay the one person is your best friends mom and the 10 are young kids from your immediate or extended family
Next level
Okay the one person would cure cancer tomorrow, and the 10 are friends or family
...
Depends on the kind of games you enjoy.
While not particularly about consequences of decisions, I highly recommend Frostpunk. It always feels like any decision is about trying to choose the less horrible one, but without ever knowing if it will work out or not. The atmosphere of that game is just superb.
Banner Saga
Yes, your grace, is a great short game
War hospital puts you in charge of a WW1 medical camp trying to allocate limited surgeons, nurses, medical supplies as people come in injured from the front line.
I’m not sure I’ve seen it posted here, a little older, but the TellTale Walking Dead games are killer. You make full choices that affect your game later. Tons of fun, not a ton of action gameplay but the stories told are next level IMO
i'm gonna blatantly disregard your "but where the consequences actually matter" and recommend most of telltale's games (The Walking Dead and The Wolf Among Us are the better ones).
besides them and the suggestion of others i would also recommend Tyranny. great CRPG made by Obsidian.
"Passage" is a very short one. But the choices matter.
Dragon Age, the original first one. Definitely no really happy endings there...
Sounds pretty much exactly like real life
Pathologic 2 - it's a really stressful game, but I think it'd be perfect for the criteria. The choices matter aspect are intertwined in both how you spend your time (it's limited and you can't be everywhere at once), and in quests (the more traditional choices, like pick A or B or C). Don't want to spoil any more but it's amazing, you don't need to play the original.
Besides it, I've also heard good things from Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous, though I haven't played it personally.
Sometimes Always Monsters
I'm going to go a little against the grain and recommend Fuga: Melodies of Steel and its sequel. It's not exactly what you described, but the game is very adept on forcing extremely difficult and impactful choices on you naturally through its gameplay.
I thought Thromebreaker: The Witcher Tales had some extremely tough ones. They also heavily effect your gameplay in that many times they add or remove a character from your party. I had built a deck in that game that relied heavily on a character. That character then did something morally reprehensible and I decided to banish them. That removed them from my deck, too, so I had to come up with a new strategy after that.
Fun game if you can get into it. Almost every choice is extremely morally gray and often feels like there is no good choice at all.
[off topic]
Daemon by Daniel Suarez. A persistent computer virus develops a game where the only way to win is to kill off your team mates. The people who show the greatest willingness to backstab are recruited for missions in the real world.