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.
Or maybe I am some kind of supercop... 🤔
Disco: Elysium really is an absolutely fantastic game. Hard to describe how much it moved the goal post for these games.
The 3 series is the best at this.
The first game in the series is Mass Effect 3, which is followed by Witcher 3 and the sequel to that is Baldur's Gate 3.
Can't wait for the next one, I hear it's gonna be called Half-Life 3.
Wait, what did you just say? So Half Life 3 is confirmed! Yay!
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?
I should play Rimworld one of these days. Always heard good things but just never got around it.
If you're into colony Sims Rimworld is amazing! Biotech and Idology are also great DLC expansions that give you a lot more options. IMO Royalty is the weakest one so if you're just starting out I might recommend passing on it unless you really love the game
Disco elysium. Made me want to start it all over again several times.
And there's a lot of things that are just up to chance too. My friend somehow managed to die to the ceiling fan in 2 separate runs.
It's really easy to do, I died constantly at the beginning
I'm wildly surprised that no one has suggested "Papers, Please" yet.
Papers please is so much fun.
For sure! Fun but also very heavy in its themes.
Mani bet this plays fine on Steam Deck. I am going to fire this up today.
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.
It’s very good, but the tone can be totally broken if you master combat. Killing soldiers doesn’t lower morale, so they are free targets.
Depending on what locations spawn, it is possible to completely ruin the intended vibe. I’ve wiped out the military outpost and ended up with so many supplies I didn’t know what to do with them all.
TWOM is so good. What you say about things going bad fast is very true and the repercussions of something minor are real.
I was a bit aggressive on like my second playthrough and ended up killing a couple people to get their medicine. The guy that killed them was too depressed to scavenge and killed himself. Then another person got depressed because of that and wouldn't do anything. Then she got sick and died shortly after. I was too sad to play for awhile after that one.
I was going to mention this game, +1.
Trying to desperately survive in a world that's upside down, fighting the hopelessness and trying to survive just one more day and slowly realising the you're just one day closer to death...
Man, it's a really great game, but I can't play it again anytime soon.
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.
Interesting are all the points you share. I've never been so convinced to try a game even after being explicitly told it'll not be fun. Give me that sweet pain.
Hope you enjoy it then. Please update us when you get around to it!
From what I heard, Pathologic 2 is basically a 2019 remake of the original, so it should be prettier, less janky but still basically the same game, right?
I have heard very good things about it, but I can't talk for myself, as I haven't played it. My only recommendation is to stay away from the console versions of the game, as I tried it on Xbox One and it was unplayable (heard the same about the PS4 port, too). Maybe it's better on next gen, but I wouldn't risk it.
Two things worth mentioning:
- The remake only has one character, the Haruspex. If you want to play as the Bachelor or the Changeling, you'll need to grab the original game.
- There are difficulty settings in the remake. I would leave them as default, as I think the difficulty of the game, and the conflicting decisions you'll need to undertake because of it, is an integral part of the experience. That being said, if you really like the game and want to see it through, you can tweak the difficulty a bit, and accessibility is always a plus in my book.
- Again, this is just hearsay as I haven't played it, but from what I've gathered, Pathologic 2 is more a retelling than a faithful remake. Same setting and same ending, but a different road, so to speak. You could play either one and then move on to the other if you like it.
I’m a big fan of Tyranny by Obsidian Entertainment. Classic CRPG, isomorphic for the majority of it. The game starts with you making decisions that set the initial state of the world as you lead the army that finishes your evil overlord’s conquest of the world. Then the game truly starts and goes on to be one of my favourite CRPGs of all time.
The word you're looking for there is 'isometric.'
One of the few games where I gravitated towards the lawful evil route because it just felt so natural. It's such a shame we will probably never see a sequel.
Popped in to mention Tyranny, saw it was the first comment.
Absolutely LOVE Tyranny, its got so many morally questionable choices to make! I really, really hope Obsidian makes a sequel!
Spec Ops: The Line is a pretty decent pick when it comes to having "morally ambiguous choices". the game itself states that there are no "real good choices" and thus, you must pick between the two evils.
That was what I was going to recommend as well!
The right choice is to just stop, but this is a phenomenal game that should be experienced by more people. Just don't let kids play it, it's very much an adult game.
I scrolled too much to see this one.
I saved your post to try out the game. Sadly, it appears that it's being erased from the Internet.
"Spec Ops: The Line ... has been delisted from Steam, with other online stores to follow."
that's very unfortunate, curse you, licensing shenanigans!
Baldur's Gate 3! The amount of ways the game can play out is extremely impressive. There are a lot of tough choices to make that can greatly affect your party and even the world as a whole
I'd disagree tbh, so far most of the decisions seem pretty clear cut
e.g save village vs side with hoblinss goblins to kill everyone (vague enough to not be spoiler hopefully)
Pokémon. You get to choose from Charmander, Bulbasaur, and Squirtle for your starter. And everyone you know will judge you for which starter you picked.
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.
Amazed I had to scroll this far to see LiS mentioned.
There's a decision in the first game that legitimately made me get up from the computer and walk away. Absolutely fucking brutal game.
I know exactly the part you mean and same. Amazing moment. I also LOVED the sequel. Criminal that it didn't do as well as they wanted because I want them to make an even bigger version next. True Colours was pretty good though
Frostpunk
+1 for Frostpunk. Great city builder where the choices you make are often between the lesser of two evils. Very difficult, expect to lose your first few runs!
SO STRESSFUL!
I love this game so much. I have to constantly walk away from the stress lol.
Every game on Steam that uses the publisher's launcher.
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.
Oh man that choice was hard, I legit paused.
I paused a lot on quests like these.
If you don't have the tech skills, you don't know what the right way to fix the guy who thinks he's someone else. Who knows what happens if you choose wrong. What do you do with the guy who stole that eye implant?
Also... Minor spoilers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BuWPaWluAUQ
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 would second Xcom and add: unlike other strategy games, where each character is a nameless unit, Xcom names your units. Not a big deal, but it is a big enough change where you start to create your own stories, even in your head, for the characters. Playing the game in a not easy game mode, causes you to lose soldier from time to time. This really heightens tension when certain characters die, whom you remember, and when some miraculously live. Its a very small, yet somehow meaningful addition to what would otherwise be an endless sea of soldiers.
Are names unusual? The only other tactical game like that that I've played is Final Fantasy Tactics and they all have names.
But I agree. In XCom you just accept that you'll have losses. But they still hurt. My first run-in with Chryssalids was especially brutal. I escaped with two of my men and a failed mission. The rest were one-shotted or eaten by their own.
And on a similar note, Massive Chalice is a Kingdom under attack from an otherworldly source. Do you choose to defend point A and let point B and C receive corruption points? Do you take your party of developed, well leveled but older than dirt characters into the fight to guarantee success, ensuring they die of old age while your young upstarts grow old and feeble from lack of combat experience?
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.
Tyranny is so good, and I prefer it to the first Pillars of Eternity. Shame the ending is so abrupt.
If you want more cinematic games, the Quantic Dream portfolio has a couple. Heavy Rain and Detroit: Become Human are both notable examples. I remember having some serious anxiety playing Heavy Rain, in the best way.
I can't speak for the other games mentioned in this thread, but in the case of Heavy Rain it was very enjoyable that often you had to make quick decisions or the game would choose for you
Yes. I was just gonna suggest Heavy Rain.
I actually liked Beyond 2 Souls, too. Didn't age well at all especially with the naked model allegations and all, but playing it at the time there were some intense moments in there.
Also, I think it’s important to note that we don’t talk about Fahrenheit/Indigo “Super Saiyan zombie fight against the internet” Prophecy.
I considered calling that one out but I never got very far in it so I couldn’t speak for the decision making depth. But thanks for the input!
The Walking Dead by Telltale.
All 4 of them, really. Those games are made of hard decisions. Also QTEs, but mostly hard decisions.
It's very disappointing that Telltale went down. The Wolf Among Us by Telltale is also great, and, over a decade later, it's finally getting a sequel some time this year.
Mass Effect 3.
Choosing between the 3 primary colors was the toughest choice of my life.
God damnit.
I’d completely forgotten about that shit. What a let down after a years long multi game play through.
Every choice made in every game led to none of it mattering.
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.
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.
Yeah, that's bad game design IMO unless the game is an hour or two long. The player should be able to roll back when they fuck up that much. In fact, only one save file and no way to roll back if it gets corrupted or you realize how badly you have fucked up is always a bad design.
Minesweeper and a bit of LARP.
This and chess, both games fulfill most of op requirements
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.
I'd also add Beyond: Two Souls to the list
Life is Strange hit me so hard. A content warning for people unfamiliar, but a core theme of the game is suicide. It comes at the topic a few times with different contexts that had me crying more than once. Highly recommended.
I love me some Mass Effect, but it's less "choices matter" and more "illusion of choice".
I made some shit ass choices on my first playthrough of ME2, during the final mission. Precious Tali took a bullet to the face because of it. I forced myself to live with it and made more sensible choices the next time around. I don't believe I lost anyone the next time, but when it came to the Kaiden (accidentally called him Carth there for a moment) vs. Ashley, I definitely let Ashley go boom on that second playthrough and every consecutive time afterward as well. Kaiden is moody and a little annoying to have around, but at least he's not a fucking dickhead like Ashley.
Fallout: New Vegas. Hell, Fallout 2. In 2 early on, you only have time to one of two quests and people die when you can't help them. You can't save everyone.
Very different from later games where time doesn't matter and the whole world waits for you.
FO3 as well - Megaton specifically lives or dies by your decision.
That and Tenpenny Tower are the only instances that stand out in fo3 though.
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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..."
Including Jeopardy in a list of games like this is the kind of awkward "technically correct" dissonance I've come to expect from AI. What a weird inclusion.
AI with a sense of humor?
I didn't sleep the night after I played that part in MGS5. "We live and die by your orders, Boss" while morosely humming the Peace Walker theme -- it's like Kojima was trying to make the player share Snake's PTSD.
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A good chunk of comments have spoilers, so if you read this first beware. I guess people like to brag about game knowledge more than they like having other people experiencing stuff.
Annnnnd now I close this post.
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’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.
If you use Steam you can search on the category "Choices Matter" FYI
Frostpunk. That game gave me anxiety with the tough choices sometimes.
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.
I know Pyre is probably Supergiant's worst game, but it was still damn good and very overlooked. Everyone should check it out, the story was really good. Also Epic gave it away for free once or twice, so check your library.
Man to me it's their best, I loved every single part of it, I connected to the story and it's relation to gameplay more than any of their other titles
Deus Ex? The original one
Prey.
Prey gives you the choices up front, tells you they don't matter, then gives you a really good game to play.
plot twist
The way you play is entirely up to you, but that's the point. Are you who you say you are? It's easy to say whether you'll flip a switch or push a person when you're answering questions at a desk, but it's suddenly much harder when you're actually faced with the problem. What will you choose?
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
I'll second This War of Mine. It draws from the experiences of civilians during the Siege of Sarajevo in the 90s. The choices are hard, and they have real consequence, and what you pick will haunt your dreams.
this war of mine is gold, Jerry gold even.
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.
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.
Was also going to mention this! Love that game and have played it twice. I even remember two set pieces in the game like a movie and sometimes recant them to friends as if it were from a movie cuz they probably wouldn't understand.
LISA, definitely.
Is Terry’s life worth it?
This time?
That game was something!
It was a bit too painful to play for me to finish it, so I had to look up discussions and videos on it.
That's not a complaint. "LISA the painful" did its job perfectly. I just didn't have the stamina to handle it at the time.
It's an ugly little masterpiece that emotionally abuses you
Wasteland 3 without looking up any guides poses some difficult choices, usually in the form of being forced to side with a certain faction at the expense of another, with no option to skip the choice once it’s presented.
I was looking for this in the list. There are not many win-win scenarios, which is what a post apocalyptic world likely be.
Believe or not, Cyberpunk 2077. There are a few very hard ethical and moral dilemmas.
My playthrough of cyberpunk I found that they had these choices, but the effect was identical regardless of what you chose (except the very end of the base game, and the DLC) I enjoyed the game, but that was my biggest annoyance
My wife tells me that Rogue Trader has a lot of difficult and unclear decisions like this.
Telltales walking dead
There it is! I was looking for this one
fate/ stay night and other visual novels fit this category. steins gate is also a notable one.
somnium files have a lighter version in terms of gravity of decisions.
you can kill people in morrowind and oblivion.
a good bethesda-like game that comes to mind is kingdom come: deliverance
I love Steins Gate, but the choices you make are so wildly disconnected from the consequences that I don't think it really counts. It's such a strange system.
I agree the consequences can be baffling, but sometimes it can be straight up funny overblown too.
I think the inspiration to this is the butterfly effect and how the main's decision can cause (huge) side effects but somewhat not to what he wanted.
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.
Ah please tell me you’ve played Alpha Centauri.
Yes, many many many years ago. Beyond Earth is the palest of pale imitation.
Dishonored franchise. The world goes from bright to nightmarish depending on your choices
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.
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.
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.
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.
Witcher 3
I think Witcher 1 actually did it better.
The gameplay is a tough sell though.
That's why I'm waiting for the remake!
The ending choice of the Yennefer romance is underrated. You get to decide the meaning of their long, tumultuous story. Both the heart break and the happily ever after are cathartic, satisfying conclusions.
Though maybe you need to read the books for the full weight of it to land, especially for the heart break option.
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.
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
I'm surprised that no one has mentioned Life is Strange 2, there are some tough choices and the outcome is not obvious at all.
I'm a bit sad that the game didn't resonate with the public. It was a very emotional journey and I liked it more than the first one, but every time the LiS series is brought up, people treat it as the black sheep and mostly mention it only to recommend to stay away from it and try the others instead.
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.
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.
I really need to replay Dragonfall and Hong Kong. Never finished either just due to unfortunate circumstance outside the game but thought highly of both.
Returns and Hong Kong were good, but Dragonfall rocked my tits right off. Had to have them surgically reattached.
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.
2077 cyberpunk only plays out badly
The saddest ending is the one where you win.
technically on par for a dystopian game
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.
Kenshi
Also does anyone think Morrowind counts?
Witcher 3, Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous, Nationstates.net , all are excellent options along this line.
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?
Banner Saga
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.
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.
Yes, your grace, is a great short game
"Passage" is a very short one. But the choices matter.
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.
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
...
Or, y'know, go with the original version of the trolley problem, where you start with the classic formulation (do you pull the lever?), then move to a new scenario;
"You're a doctor, working in a hospital that has been cut off from outside resources by a disaster. You have five patients, one in need of a liver, one a heart, one a pair of kidneys, one a set of lungs, and one a pancreas. You have no suitable organs available, and all five patients will die without transplants, but there is a healthy young janitor working in the hospital who, by a stroke of extreme luck, is a compatible donor for all five patients. You could kill the janitor, harvest their organs, and save five people. Should you do it?"
Fascinatingly, almost everyone opts to pull the lever in the first part, but refuses to kill the janitor in the second, even though they are, from a deeply utilitarian perspective, the same choice. Unravelling why we see them as different is where things get really interesting.
The trolley problem is easy all of these questions are easy
Level 1 - one person Level 2 - the kids Level 3 - best friend's mom Level 4 - cancer cure guy
None of it matters in the long run anyway, so might as well pick the choices that affect you directly. Toughest one in this is the best friend's mom definitely.
I made the choice in GTA that let me continue the free roam unhindered despite it not being what was best in game.
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
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.
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.
Dragon Age, the original first one. Definitely no really happy endings there...
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.
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.
[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.
Sounds pretty much exactly like real life