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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?

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  • Baldur's Gate 3 has a lot of really hard hitting decisions, and I'm in awe at how they're able to make the story work with just how many choices there are.

    • Ehhhh, it has a lot of decisions, yes. But in the end: do any of them matter at all? I feel like 99% of my decisions never made any kind of difference whatsoever at the end.

      I did a whole bunch of stuff with Shadowheart and she wasn't even in my ending at all. Totally missing. I did even more crazy stuff with Karlach, and in the end I was given zero dialog or options or chances to do anything with her, the game forced her to say "I'm getting too hot" and fall down and explode and die. I did by far the most stuff with my primary character Astarion, and in the end I got zero options to do anything with the woman he loved and he ran away to hide in a cave.

      So............ Yes there are lots of options to make decisions one way or another. But none of them matter at all whatsoever in the end. So, don't be too in awe, because the way they make the story work is just totally ignoring anything you ever did.

      • Did you miss the "no spoilers, please" bit in the OP? That's a dick move.

      • You made choices and got the results of those choices. The alternative results are different.

        !There are multiple endings where Karlach survives in different ways. Shadowheart's story has at least three possible outcomes, maybe more that I haven't seen. This goes on and on for each origin character. Even NPCs you encounter in Act 3 are shaped by your choices earlier in the game.!<

        Frankly, based on your description, it sounds like you made a bunch of lame decisions. There's neat endings and then the middling one you got.

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