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?
If you’re looking for more like this, check out the Telltale games. In particular, I’m a fan of The Wolf Among Us. It’s based on a comic book series (called Fables, if you wanted to google it,) where fairy tale creatures are real and live hidden among humans; It’s a good old fashioned murder mystery where the lead detective is the Big Bad Wolf. I won’t spoil anything here, but there are a lot of decisions which can have a major impact further down the line.
The Batman telltale game is very similar; It’s less focused on “Batman the asskicker” and more focused on “Batman the world’s greatest detective” where you’re trying to uncover a plot by an unknown villain.
The Walking Dead is what put the game studio on the map for most people, but it’s ironically the game I like the least. Your choices do matter, so you may end up enjoying it. But I personally enjoyed the mysteries from the two latter games more than I enjoyed the interpersonal relationships in The Walking Dead. But maybe that’s just my autism talking.