Four Times Conversation Choices Really Mattered
Playing Deus Ex last night, I found myself in a weird situation. I was sneaking my way through a technological cult’s compound trying to rescue the daughter of a friend. I had done pretty well knocking out all of the guards and hiding bodies, though occasionally I had to hide out when someone set off an alarm. I eventually found the daughter on the top floor; it turns out [SPOILERS] she wasn’t a hostage, she was in charge. The moment I found her, she was about to download her consciousness into a crazy looking database and let her human body expire. I had the opportunity to talk her out of it but I had to choose my dialogue carefully.[SPOILER OVER] Personally, I really like these moments in games when you have a high pressure conversation with important consequences. Fortunately, this time I had the Social Enhancer mod which made the whole thing pretty easy; in other games, I haven’t always been so lucky. Here are four times conversation choices really mattered. Spoilers below!
Life is Strange – Kate’s Suicide
Life is Strange is an amazing game about a girl investigating some disappearances who develops the ability to time travel. The ability to rewind time makes your investigation much easier. Need to reverse a conversation towards a different outcome? No problem. Need to rewind events to catch up with a suspect? Easy! The power feels very….well, empowering. You can get out of any situation with time reversal giving you complete invulnerability and making each of your choices reversible. Then, the game throws you a curveball: your power suddenly fades on you at the worst possible time. Right as your power glitches out, your friend Kate – whom you’ve probably been ignoring in favor of your mission rather than helping with her distress – decides to take her own life by leaping from the roof of your dorm. You want to stop her, but your power isn’t working anymore. Your only hope is to weave your way through a conversation to pick the right choices that talk her off the roof. If you managed to do so, good on you. If you failed (like me), however, it’s a death that reverberates throughout the rest of the game.
Pick your words carefully (and it helps if you peeked at her email).
The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt – Being a Good Parent to Ciri
There are a lot of important conversations in The Witcher. You haggle your price with each of your employers. You enlist your friends and rivals to aid your cause against a horde of supernatural enemies. You negotiate a delicate, non-traditional relationship between you and two powerful women. You also occasionally have the chance to seduce random women. However, the most important conversations by far come midway through the game and continue until the last act, when you finally get reunited with your adopted daughter and have a chance to help her directly as she faces down the Wild Hunt. Facing the Hunt requires doing a lot of digging into her past and coping with various losses and throughout these experiences, Ciri needs Geralt as a caring, supportive parent. Your actions are important; if you can empower her throughout this process, she’ll survive her own final battle (and you’ll avoid the game’s worst ending). We say this often: there’s a great deal to enjoy about the Witcher, but the fact that it’s a game in which being a good dad to your daughter is the most important thing is what makes this game legendary.
Choose your words to Ciri carefully. Being a good dad to her is the most important thing you do.
Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis: You Go First
Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis is often regarded as the best of the point and click adventures, and it may well be (we’re still fans of Full Throttle). The game is probably the closest we’ll ever get to a true sequel to the original trilogy. You play Raiders-era Indiana Jones as he seeks out relics to lead him to the Lost Continent of Atlantis. Atlantis should be enough of a discovery, but it turns out the Atlanteans had created a God Machine in their spare time. The machine is supposedly capable of giving any creature unlimited, supernatural powers, but – like most treasures in Indiana Jones movies – it’s more likely to simply kill you. In the end of the game, you’re held at gunpoint by a crazed Nazi who insists you attempt to activate the machine. If you do, you die. If you don’t, you also die. The only solution is to convince your enemy to go first instead, which kills him and activates the traditional temple self-destruct mechanism. It’s an interesting choice for a puzzle game, but one that made us really choose our words carefully.
Mass Effect – Talking Saren into Surrendering
One of the most bizarre examples of a high-impact conversation comes at the end of Mass Effect, when you face the evil Saren one last time. Throughout the game, you’ve been chasing this Spectre turncoat as he leads you on a chase across the galaxy. During your pursuit, you begin to understand that Saren is actually being controlled by the Reapers, an ancient race of sentient spaceships that eliminate all life in the galaxy every 50000 years. Knowing this, you have the option during your final confrontation to talk Saren into surrendering (well, taking his own life) by convincing him that he’s under the Reaper’s control. If you’ve built up enough of a reputation as a Vanguard, you can convince him to end the battle early and redeem himself at the last minute. You still have a battle to win afterwards, but at least you get the chance to see Saren regain some of his honor at the last possible minute.
