Forced Dichotomies and Pressure
In any game where the player makes decisions, sooner or later there’s going to be a great big important dichotomy thrown your way; generally this is in the form of "choose whose side you’re on." In playing through The Witcher, I’ve recently been through two of them in close succession, so I’ve spent a bit of time meditating on the design principles behind them (that’s +1 hour for those interested, just like buying talents or brewing potions).
I’ve concluded that the forced dichotomy is only a fun mechanic when it’s in a pressure situation. You need to be in a position where you don’t have time to consider, negotiate or explore alternatives; otherwise, you’ll just come out of it wondering "hey, why couldn’t I do it this other way?"
I’m not enjoying explaining this in the abstract, so I’m going to give specific examples of Witchery. This will involve heavy spoilers, so they’ll be after the jump. Don’t follow it if you don’t want to get spoiled.
The first situation is when I’m attempting to defend the bank from the terrorists who are robbing it. I get down to the vault with my plan to negotiate with the leader, but he’s not hearing it — as far as he’s concerned, I’m either with him or I’m against him. He says this flat-out: either I join them and agree to help their cause, or they’ll consider me an enemy and, hey, I’m outnumbered, so they’re not going to be shy about attacking. The dichotomy works in this situation because of the element of urgency; there’s no time for careful consideration and exploration of options, and the other party involved in the decision has made clear that neutrality is not an option. Whether I like it or not, he will consider me an enemy unless I agree to join him.
This is fun. This is a weighty choice, one the game has been building up to for a while through introducing me to both the terrorists and the knights, and one for which I understand why there is not any other option. It does seem like I’m doing something important, and I don’t feel arbitrarily rushed or constrained.
In contrast is the next choice I had to make, effectively between two women who both want me to stay with them. But the choice is complicated because it also involves this orphan called Alvin who has latent magical abilities, and both women want me to bring the child to them for different reasons. This choice is just as absolute, just as binary, and just as significant, but doesn’t seem to make any sense; I’m looking for a "let’s all four of us get together and work this out" option, but I don’t get one, and I don’t understand why. The first question I have is: why the fuck am I being asked to decide who gets custody of this orphan boy? How is that even slightly my business? So I choose to send him to Shani, and then what I’d like to do is go to Triss and say "okay, he’s at Shani’s; come with me and we’ll talk about this," only I can’t. My only option is "I think he’s better off with Shani."
Now that’s just frustrating. Here I feel constrained not by time and the expectations of others, but by the unwillingness of the designers to give me the appropriate options. Unlike in the first situation, there’s no reason this has to be decided forever right this minute, and therefore it isn’t fun to have to choose. Thus I reach my conclusion that the forced dichotomy is only fun when it appears necessary; there really should seem to be no other way.
This is, of course, a problem to some extent with all CRPGs, since the designers will never be able to predict in advance everything the players will try to do. This is just probably the most obvious manifestation of this problem.
