And this is constantly underlined every time the main character goes down the whole guilt thing. I was taken away from the narrative because my character did not do what I wanted them to. Incidentally, Spec:Ops the line does this brilliantly, as well as occasionally convincing you that you never had a choice… when you actually did.īut I had no choice here. It takes REAL skill to make a player guilty for a choice they never really had. Having them decide to revolt like that takes me out of the narrative and shatters any illusions I have about actually being able to have any control over the game.Ĥ) The main character constantly goes on about what a jerk he is because he didn’t kill the demon.Ī really good choice makes you doubt over your decisions, but the only decision I doubted was buying the damned game. They are the viewpoint character, how I control the game. The character is, at heart, an Avatar for the player. I would at least blame the GAME for not carrying out my orders, instead of the character. It would be understandable if my character was physically incapable of taking out the demon, or some bizarre contrivance had kept my character from carrying out my instructions.
This is the real sore point of the choice. So why did this one piss me off more than the usual false choices other games present?ġ) My decision was immediately negated by the gameĢ) The game touted itself as having big important decisions.ģ) It was my CHARACTER who negated the decision Needless to say, I expect significantly better writing from games that come out 25+ years later, particularly ones that purport to have player choices make a big deal in the storyline. It’s no more of a choice than Dragon Quest’s infamous “BUT THOU MUST” from the NES era of the late 80’s/early 90’s. It’s seriously hard to express how much this pissed me off. The problem is what happens when you elect to kill him: your character decides he can’t do it, and the bad guy escapes and ends up killing an Angel as he escapes, which your character guilt trips over. Nor am I angry at the lack of a middle: the narrative establishes that the Angels are really strapped. A game can only have so many decisions to pick from. Now, I’m not decrying the binary nature of this choice. Your options are, “let him go” and “kill him”. The Angels are losing the war and don’t have the resources to take prisoners. You go through his head with magic to find out if he knows anything, but he doesn’t have valuable intel. You managed to capture the demon commander. Demons attacked (and slaughtered many of) the angels. The background: you are a typical Japanese student who’s been turned into a deadly weapon for angels, because reasons. Most JRPG’s aren’t really big on offering players significant divergent choices.
This is an easy sell to me: I LOVE games like this, where there are different branching paths that give you tough choices.
The implication was that these would be kind of a big deal. Ultimatum makes somewhat of a big deal about how player choices effect the storyline.