Hi.
I'm u/Askin_real_Questions and I'm chronically indecisive.
It's fucked me up in every single aspect of my life over the past 32 years. I've walked away from opportunities rather than having to make a choice in my personal, professional and lovelife due to to this indecisiveness.
This even reflected how I played vidogames. In thousands of hours of skyrim, I not once went with the imperials because if I dont know what im missing then its not that bad. In thousands of hours of Fallout 4, Not once did I fully side with a single faction and eliminated the rest. I fucking hated having to make those kinds of decisions in videogames.
I recently picked up the witcher and witcher 2 from the summer sale, because I wanted to experience the full story. What I wasn't ready for, was how the game forces you to make a HUGE decision, which would Drastically impact the next 30 – 50 hours of how you finish the game, as well as the witcher 2 because your save carries over. Now, normally I'd choose the bitch way out and look up in depth guides on what exactly are the consequences, pros and cons of each decision.
Not this time though.
Because of the pacing of this game, and with the help of a good couple of beers while playing through this section, Over the course of 6 to 10 hours of game time, you are met with MULTIPLE NPCs (scroll to 5:07:17 if it doesnt start there) literally telling you that you have to take a stand and that you cannot keep being indecisive (or in a nicer way "Neutral"). You are forced to take note of what is happening around you. The link I posted was just one of many.
Eventually I decided that for once in my life I'm gonna make the choice. Yes, some shit happened that I wasn't expecting that made me go "damn, I chose wrong". But a lot of other stuff happened that was awesome and I would have missed out on if I didn't make this choice. And you know what? I realized that if I were given a third, neutral "Indecisive" option, I would have missed out on both of these awesome paths! Because sometimes you need to make a big decision if you want to see big results. If shit goes your way, great! if it doesn't, it is what it is.
I repeat. It is what it is. I've had to make peace with not always being able to control the outcome of things, sometimes that means regret, other times it doesn't. And that's the hardest part I had to learn.
If you've made it this far past this wall of text, I thank you for hearing me out. And if you didn't, that's cool too. I just needed to get this out into the world.
TLDR: Spent my whole life missing out on opportunities because of my own indecisiveness. In the end, no bold revelation, or even grand epiphany pulled me out of it. But some very basic 16/17 year old videogame.
Edit just for fun: As a testament to my indecisiveness, Witcher 1 doesn't overwrite your quicksaves, it created a new one each time. I logged a total of around 1400 quicksaves throughout the whole of witcher 1 enhanced edition. Most of them for freaking dialogue options. The game would come close to lagging out when I tried to load a save, so I had to delete them in batches when they came close to 300.
1 Comment
Best part of gaming: It’s a medium where philosophy isn’t just discussed, but the person must be included. When we watch movies we don’t say “I made this decision in the movie” because inherently, we have no control over the film. However, in video gaming we find ourselves positioned to say “I made this choice,” even if we’re playing a character we did not make in a world we did not craft.
If music, books, and film can be influential on a personal level then of course gaming can be, and arguably more so than more traditional forms of entertainment.
Disco Elysium takes themes and your choices, and puts them on plate for you to digest. The game tells you that “you made these choices,” and delves further into the why. Absolute 10/10 as it purposefully takes a non-apolitical and non-apologetic approach to making the player think.