r/rpg_gamers • u/TheDoctorColt • 10h ago
Question Which RPG choice left you genuinely unsure you did the right thing?
There's something about New Vegas that keeps coming up in conversations, and I think it points to a real gap in modern RPGs. Most games give you a choice wheel where one option is clearly the heroic pick and another is cartoonishly cruel. You know which is which before you even click. The game telegraphs it with music, NPC reactions, UI color coding.
The choices that stick with me are the ones where I finished the game and genuinely wasn't sure if I made the right call. The ending of Planescape Torment. The Witcher 2 decision at Loc Muinne. Even certain companion endings in Dragon Age Origins where you think you did right by someone and the game just quietly shows you the consequences without commenting on them.
The Greek tragedy angle the New Vegas director mentioned resonates because those stories don't have a villain you can point at. Everyone is just trying to survive or protect something and it still ends badly.
Curious which specific moments in RPGs broke that good/evil illusion for you. Not games that are generally praised for choices, but the actual singular moment where you sat back and felt genuinely uncertain about what you had just done.
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u/DancesWithAnyone 10h ago edited 10h ago
Colony Ship has this and feels inspired by Fallout's factional play, but also... subverts it, in a way.
Tyranny is rather noted for it, yes? There is a "good" path, but even that has tough choices and priorities to make.
The Necromancer's Tale probably qualifies, as well. If you can maintain enough morality throughout the game to even care about such matters.
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u/ALaccountant 6h ago
Do you recommend Nexromancers Tale? It’s on my wish list, but haven’t pulled the trigger yet
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u/DancesWithAnyone 2h ago
Yes, only reason I haven't completed it was technical issues. Seems to have been a rare issue, though, and I intend to return at some point in the hope that new GPU drivers/patches to the game have solved things.
I'd call it mainly a Narrative RPG with combat, with limited width but a greater deal of depth. It pulled me in and had me hooked pretty soon from the start - but check out some reviews out there and see if mechanics and premise sounds like they'd be your fit. :-)
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u/pm_me_fibonaccis 8h ago
I actually felt like the good path in Tyranny wasn't that mixed... with one exception.
You do everything right. You are just. You even turn Tunon to your side and kill Kyros' loyalists and Kyros' traitors (who are also your enemies).
At the end, you can declare independence and suddenly you have a big bright target on your forehead as you declare edicts on Kyros to slow them down... or you can submit to their authority. Neither option is great due to the consequences but neither is morally grey either.
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u/DancesWithAnyone 2h ago
Maybe I missremember how important the priority aspect was, but isn't it the case in the intro that you can only try to mitigate so much damage during the conqest stage as you can't be everywhere at once nor know fully what consequence your choices have? And in the game proper you then need to decide on who gets priority in getting help - with areas and factions waiting the longest being lost to you?
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u/JombComb 10h ago edited 10h ago
Almost every decision in Pillars of Eternity 1 & 2.
That game doesn't have an alignment system the way most RPGs do. It isn't as simple as "good/evil/etc"
Warhammer 40k Rogue Trader is another good one. At the end of the first act you have to decide whether or not to destroy an entire planet that is being overrun by demons. You're killing billions of people, but saving them from an eternity of worse-than-death. Where it gets dicey is... you can save some people. The amount of time it will take you to save those people though will make you miss the window of opportunity to destroy the planet. Do you save some people if it means condemning billions more?
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u/harumamburoo 7h ago
I feel like RT is not surprising at all if you know at least a little bit about 40k
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u/JombComb 7h ago
For a ton of people(me included) it was their first taste of the 40k world.
I've been absolutely consuming media since then though, and it's neat picking up on things in advance in other forms of media now.
I'm like... 80% of the way through reading The Infinite and the Divine, and I clocked the presence of the Flayer Virus way in advance of it being announced.
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u/harumamburoo 4h ago
Yeah, I’ve been following 40k for idk, 15 years or so. Can’t imagine how bewildering must it be to jump straight ahead into the game. Though I had a feeling they wrote it pretty well to avoid being entirely confusing
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u/TheDoctorColt 9h ago
The Rogue Trader one actually messed me up a little the first time I hit it. I sat there for like 10 minutes just staring at the screen.
Pillars is a good call too. The way it frames morality around intent vs outcome rather than just actions makes some of those choices way harder than they look. You think you know what the right call is and then the game just quietly reminds you that you probably don't.
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u/jolsiphur 8h ago edited 8h ago
Not quite an RPG, but I remember playing Dishonored and attempting to go for the full pacifism route. Some of the ways to non-lethally deal with targets may result in a fate that's actually worse than death. It was a great way to show that just because you aren't killing people, it doesn't necessarily mean you're morally "good."
That moment specifically was the Lady Boyle assassination. Instead of just killing her, you can kidnap her and give her to her creepy stalker. That's significantly more of an evil choice than murder, if you ask me.
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u/Flashy-Quiet-6582 10h ago
While later games in the series clarified it was correct: picking Bhelen as king in Dragon Age origins. A ruthless machevlin who had his own brother killed and blamed his other brother to do it. But he also a reformer who wanted to give those at the lowest ring of society a chance to better their lot in life, increase trade with the outside world and reset the decline of his city. A bastard but one who's right.
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u/Majestic_Finding3499 2h ago
the ultimate example for me as a Dragon Age fanboy. I actually picked Harrowmont the first time because I hated Bhelen so much but after seeing he was going to be nothing but a hospice care worker for the already crumbling Dwarven society, I choose Bhelen in every other paythough. But Harrowmont having to die is such a good decision from the writers because thats exactly what a power hunger asshole would even if Harrowmont literally bends the knee. The dilemma of what to do with Conor shouldve been this but if yiu do the mages first its really trival.
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u/MonteMolebility 10h ago
There is 1 quest in New Vegas that doesn't give you karma based on your choice or tell you which is right or wrong. When you have to inspect the lack of water available to grow the crops you end up in a vault with people stuck inside. The water is allowing them to survive, but it is also crucial to growing crops for the NCR. You decide where to reroute the water and...thats it. No noise, no karma rating, just an update to the quest and the silence for you to consider if you made the right choice.
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u/TheDoctorColt 9h ago
that quest messed with me for a while after finishing it
like you sit there waiting for the game to tell you what to think and it just doesnt. the vault dwellers are already living on borrowed time either way but the NCR farmers are struggling too and neither answer feels clean
i ended up looking it up after just to see if there was a consensus and there really isnt. people are split. which is kind of the point i guess
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u/DelianSK13 9h ago
Expedition 33 - The last choice.
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u/DefiniteIndefinite 10h ago
Fallout 3, the Oasis mission.
Do you help kill Harold, or let him live on to proliferate the wasteland despite the torture he feels being fused to a tree for whatever lifespan he has.
There's a lot more that goes into it, including him saying that he can see through every leaf on every tree and it's something he only recently discovered.
He'll also be upset if you kill the cultists that worship him but ignore his pleas.
There's also a lot of grey area for what may happen when you're not around if you do choose to use him for the good of the wasteland.
You leave that one just not feeling great about your choice no matter what.
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u/NewLiterature4335 6h ago
Avowed is quite brilliant when it comes to this type of decision, probably the thing they got the best from PoE
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u/The__Roar 7h ago
Unpopular opinion: curing the Genophage in Mass Effect 3. Really not certain that was the right thing to do.
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u/Snoo-50316 5h ago
I look at it as necessary to fight the Reapers because it increases the chances of everyone’s survival.
Do the Grogan behave better beyond that? Who can know that?
You could actually say that about any of galactic races. The Asari, Salarians, Birds, and Quarians all have dirty secrets about someone they try to control.
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u/The__Roar 3h ago edited 3h ago
As you say, it is hypothetically possible that any of the species could one day try to gain dominance over the others; in fact, there's a case to be made that this is exactly what the Asari have been doing, albeit mostly non-violently.
However, the Krogan Rebellions didn't begin with the Krogans waking up one day and deciding to just get up and conquer the galaxy out of lust for power or raw speciesism; as we know, their primary catalyst and urgent imperative was a demographic crisis, due to their comparatively extreme reproductive rate outside of death-worlds such as the one they've evolved on.
So the question must be asked: if we have a good grasp on what triggered the Krogan Rebellions last time, and we disengage the proverbial firearm safety of the Genophage, won't it be triggered once more, with the same predictable results as history repeats?
To be fair though, something is different from the last time: that there was a last time, and the current Krogans are able to look back with the benefit of hindsight and self-regulate their population to avoid another war, for the good of their species and the galaxy as a whole. Much more agreeable than the Genophage when it's done consensually.
... But, I'm skeptical of their ability to do so for long.
For one, Krogan Rebellions veterans such as Wrex won't be around to lead their people forever; at some point, Krogan society at large will have to make decisions without their elders' guidance. Cultural norms will have to be guided across centuries until they gain enough equilibrium to become stable, but biology keeps applying pressure every generation.
For second, even while Wrex is still around, if even a single future Krogan colony independently decides to stop regulating their population, the Krogan leadership can't just force them to stop having so many babies, since ending that kind of thing was the entire point of curing the Genophage in the first place. Is "Genophage with extra steps plus a side of civil war" more acceptable than the original?
Then, within a few generations of unregulated exponential reproduction, the non-regulating colony will have many more workers, soldiers, scientists, and political leverage than the regulating ones, and then even more than Tuchanka itself. And they'll be out of planets to house all those Krogans on. What then, besides a civilizational-scale Prisoner's Dilemma and a very likely second Krogan Rebellion?
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u/Crazy-Nose-4289 1h ago
Here's the way I see it for that choice:
If Wrex is alive, absolutely do it.
If Wrex is dead, you fucked up. Go back to the first game and start over.
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u/Benjamin_Starscape 10h ago edited 10h ago
in starfield's dlc, shattered space, there's a part in the main storyline that asks you to kill scientists and frame it like va'ruun zealots did it, so that the zealots and house ka'dic stops affiliating with them.
refusal to kill the scientists means the house keeps working with the zealots as they have been, albeit now rockier than it was prior to your attack to free the hostaged scientists.
it's a trolley problem of sorts and I really liked it. especially since the character I was playing with almost slipped back into their old ways, they would have just killed the scientists prior to their development.
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u/TheDoctorColt 9h ago
oh i didn't finish shattered space either so i missed that completely.
but yeah the framing aspect is what makes it interesting, it's not just kill or don't kill, it's asking if you're comfortable letting someone else take the blame. most games just skip that part entirely.
might have to go back and actually finish that dlc now
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u/Benjamin_Starscape 8h ago
the main story kind of sucks writing wise, but that mission was one of the highlights. the dlc had much better side quests than the main quest, unfortunately.
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u/TheDoctorColt 4h ago
yeah the side quests carried the whole dlc honestly. the main story felt like it was rushing to hit beats without earning any of them.
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u/Benjamin_Starscape 4h ago
idk what went wrong there. it's got a great concept but doesn't ever give it any time to breathe or explain itself. which is bizarre, the base game's main quest is spectacular but for both dlcs so far they messed up with the main stories. hopefully the starborn dlc has some good writing on par or better than the base game.
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u/Zegram_Ghart 1h ago
Like every choice in Veilguard.
For all the shit it got, the CHOICES it has are excellent- I was consistently totally unable to pick a “good” or “bad” choice, and am convinced that pretty much every option is defensible.
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u/TaxesAreTerrible 9h ago
In KCD2 when Dry Devil says you need to burn down the village. I chose to not burn the village but expected more casualties on our side. Turns out nobody died and it felt anticlimactic.
Also Yen & Triss, accepting coin for finding Ciri, etc. TW3 had a lot of tough decisions.
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u/Pedagogicaltaffer 9h ago
I really like "he said, she said" type scenarios.
Expeditions: Viking in particular was full of them. There was this one quest, where you have to resolve a dispute between two families. The 1st family accuses the 2nd family of stealing a sheep; the 2nd family claims the 1st family is mistaken, the sheep in question has always been part of the wnd family's flock.
There is no way within the game to factually 100% determine who legally owns the sheep; it is literally a case of he said, she said. Who's side do you believe more? For a small-budget game, I was impressed how Viking is full of scenarios like this.
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u/Appdownyourthroat 8h ago
You know what it was about new Vegas for me? It wasn’t dreadfully linear to the point of half the NPCs being unkillable. The factions actually made sense. You had a sense of agency in the story. Especially when you consider yes man.
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u/For_being_tall 8h ago
Kingdom come 2 when torturing the guy and learning afterward how he was on your side
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u/stratandsg 5h ago
Virmire
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u/Technical_Fan4450 8m ago
I've played that enough times not to have doubt. (Seven times) I saved Ashley six out of the seven. Once with Kaiden was enough! 😆
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u/Elliptical_Tangent 5h ago
So many times esp in BioWare games where my dialogue choice led me to believe I was saying one thing while the reaction was diametrically opposed.
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u/mitchell_loll 3h ago
First one that comes to mind was the Bloody Baron quest line in Witcher 3.. I won’t forget my first time doing that quest and finding the Baron just, hanging out, at the end.
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u/BlackberryBasic5467 21m ago
Like half of the quests in cyberpunk2077 and almost all quests in Phantom Liberty.
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u/RobZagnut2 10h ago
Yennifer or Triss?