The Third Option

[Tale]

The bad guy has given you the typical sadistic choice. Save the woman you love or a bus full of doctors. You only have time to save one! What do you choose?

 

You've seen this kind of thing in lots of games, with or without the third choice. inFamous had the first two. Alpha Protocol occasionally had all three (I only saw the first two, but was told that Veteran allows a third sometime). Mask of the Betrayer could be looked at as a game built around the idea with the Soul Eater mechanic.

 

 

 

Don't the first two seem kind of stupid in light of the third, though? Here's the thing I've never seen a game address, if you choose to save both groups, you run the risk of losing everything. They both might die. Given that games love doing the third choice and that people still have a love for the dark and edgy, why don't we see this idea of risking everything more often?

 

[Atreides]

What if she's a doctor on the bus?

[Niten_Ryu]

Poll needs Chaotic Stupid

[Starwars]

I thought Alpha Protocol did it well since the Veteran options there are for, well... a special playthrough and those particular choices didn't affect things that much at any rate if I remember correctly.

 

But generally speaking I prefer it if the third "ultimate" option is not present unless it has very special pre-requisites that you'd only fulfill by making sacrifices elsewhere.

[Calax]

Honestly, I found the infamous choice to be overall meaningless.

 

 

If you pick the girl, it's not the girl, it's a random female, and your love is actually one of the doctors strung up. If you pick the doctors, the girl is your love and STILL dies with the doctors. So basically they give you an ultimately meaningless choice as you can never win, and thus it feels like a horrible choice overall to everyone I've talked to. And understandibly the choice is rendered moot because of the fact that in order for the story to progress she HAS to die.

 

 

Probably the best way to have done the third option was to set a timer that you had to climb up to one side, and then snipe the bomb or cutting mechanism that would kill the other side and make the timer fairly tight that you COULD do it, but you'd be down to 1 or 2 seconds by the time you finished.

[Purkake]

This needs more context and/or background. A few pages at least.

 

Also, where's the option to do neither and put the moral blame on the villain?

 

 

Plus, each option needs a long and tragic aftermath scenario, where no one is happy and/or someone possibly drinks themselves to death. Possible sequel confirmed?

 

Edited October 7, 2010 by Purkake

[Tale]

This needs more context and/or background. A few pages at least.

 

Also, where's the option to do neither and put the moral blame on the villain?

The actual purpose of the thread is in the spoiler.

[Purkake]

As for the spoiler part, it's because you aren't risking anything in a game, you either succeed or reload.

[HoonDing]

This is like that time Gwen Stacy died.

[Tale]

That's not even trying. You can succeed and still fail. Like, you save the woman and the bus full of doctors, but it turns out that there was also a bus full of orphans and kittens set to explode near that farm everyone's parents tell them that the family dog was sent to when it got old. And you were never told about it, it was a secret fallback plan.

 

IMAGINATION

Edited October 7, 2010 by Tale

[Purkake]

Didn't you learn anything from Wargames?

 

The only way to win is not to play. Plus the sadistic choice is way too overused and melodramatic anyway.

[Tale]

It is overused. Which means its due for a deconstruction, I should think.

[Majek]

That's too much lifelike. That doesn't belong in games. In games you get everything on the silver platter. :D What you don't get or see, does not exist.

Edited October 7, 2010 by Majek

[Purkake]

It is overused. Which means its due for a deconstruction, I should think.

Has been done, probably more than just in AP.

 

In the end it comes down to being selfless/selfish anyway.

 

There are better tropes to deconstruct.

[Tale]

How did AP deconstruct it?

[Purkake]

 

If you chose Madison in the museum thing, she would ditch you because she can't bear the guilt of all the other people dying. Didn't try the other option, so I don't know if that had any special stuff attached to it.

 

 

That's how I saw it anyway.

[Tale]

If that's a deconstruction, it deconstructs the sadistic choice. It's not a deconstruction of take a third option, which is what I'm talking about.

[Purkake]

Umm, ok.

 

I guess deconstructing that would be ending up with neither or everyone still losing something important or possibly avoiding the choice through some clever machinations.

 

The thing with no-win situations is that if you still win, it's unrealistic.

[Tale]

The thing with no-win situations is that if you still win, it's unrealistic.

Which would be the entire point of deconstructing the winning third option response to the no-win.

 

Wrath of Khan did it well.

[Purkake]

Which makes for a good short story or a sad movie, but not a very good game. Especially with everyone probably reloading their game after that.

[Wrath of Dagon]

Why would anyone save a busful of doctors? The only thing worse would be saving a busful of lawyers.

[Calax]

Why would anyone save a busful of doctors? The only thing worse would be saving a busful of lawyers.

Because they want to give you the black plague and watch you die slowly while everyone around you, who is infected, gets treatment and survives?

[Kaftan Barlast]

Alpha protocol would have just done it

 

 

A) Save the woman, and be a douchebag sexist

B) Save the doctors, and be a sarcastic jerk about it (the ugly stupid kind of sarcasm, not the elegant sort)

C) Save everyone, and be a complete and utter **** to everyone invovled afterwards.

 

 

 

...I hear Obsidian is working on a DLC for AP where you play Mike Thornton as a depressed middleaged man dying alone in a trailerpark because he got fired from every job he had and abandoned by everyone he ever knew because everyone hates his guts.

[Starwars]

Then he gets a job driving the waaaaaambulance?

[Zoraptor]

I thought Alpha Protocol did it well since the Veteran options there are for, well... a special playthrough and those particular choices didn't affect things that much at any rate if I remember correctly.

The technician background gets you the same option (for the choice at Brayko's, at least) so you could do it in your first playthrough.

 

Though I'd guess most of the people here played recruit first time.