Players don't want to choose, they want to pick - and only sometimes

So, I have finally gotten around buying myself a 3DS! God, playing Zelda: Ocarina Of Time again sure brings back a lot of memories. And I was lucky enough to find a copy of Fire Emblem - Shadow Dragon (remake of the first fire Emblem).

Now, even though it is my favorite Nintendo IP, Fire Emblem games are not very popular in France, and finding copies more than three months after the release of the game is pretty much impossible.

But when I happily told the few of my friends about my purchase, most of them answered me that they hated this game. Why? Because the only way to get some characters or bonus levels was to kill some of your party members.

Canas from Fire Emblem Blazing Swords

For those of you unfamiliar with these games, there are a few things that you should know before I move on with this article. During each game, you get to recruit 40 - 50 units for your army. Each of these units is unique, with its own and unique personnality (Each new Fire Emblem game brings a whole new load of charismatic, appealing and unforgettable characters (Canas, you remain my all-time favorite). Most of these characters have to be hired through very specific actions, that require the player to pay attention to a lot of small details - for example, if you know one of your characters is looking for his / her long time lost brother / sister, and you run into an ennemy unit that looks a bit like this character, then you have to send him there to unlock a dialog allowing you to hire said brother / sister. Out of these units, you'll only really use 15 - 20 of them during each playthrough, and the other ones will be unused. BUT most Fire Emblem players are very serious about hiring every bonus unit AND making sure they all survive (if one of your units dies, then it's over, you never see it again). Actually, they won't reckon having finished the game if they don't have every unit and every bonus level.

Now, you see where the problem is when the game requires that his players choose between having all the characters OR having all the bonus levels. You can't have both, you must give up one of these to get the other.
And I have to say, this has to be the most meaningful choice a videogame has ever faced me with. I cared enough about the outcome of this choice that it actually took me 5 - 10 minutes to decide myself. And I have to admit, for a little while, I hated this game for imposing me this choice.
Then I started thinking: I, like most gamers, would like to see videogames evolve towards more freedom for the player, especially through branching storylines. I have always wished for choices with real consequences, with less obvious outcomes... Choices that mattered. Then, why was I upset about having to choose this time?

Usually, choices in video games fall into two categories:

He was the best option, anyway

Most gamers consider that the little quality of choices offered are a consequence of the lazyness of game developpers. But even when a game tries to offer a more elaborate choice, such as Fallout: New Vegas and its four factions, I realized that I did not care so much about that choice. No matter which faction I side with, it will win and I will win. Of course, story-wise, each ending is very different, and we can even think that the fate of the whole country (or what's left of it, anyway) is at stake but at the end of the day, I will always be the clear winner of that war. I have seen very vivid debates about which faction was the best for the Wastelands, but they were only coming from a small minority of Fallout fans, while most other players just sided with this guy because he looked cool, or that guy because he was the first one they stumbled upon.

Now, what about a game where not all choices are good? A game where siding with one faction would lead to to defeat while the other faction would lead you to victory? A game where your choices are not always good? Wouldn't it be awesome? No.
Real life is filled with this kind of choices. People have to choose all day, every day. And none of these choices are clear or manichean. Do I go for the low paying but exciting job or the boring but high paying one? With which friend do I side with in this fight? Should I be honnest or protect her / him from the hurtful truth? These are Fire Emblem like choices: you never get everything, you never really win. If you want something, you must sacrifice something else. And your whole life is devoted to finding a right balance between all these choices.
People mostly play video games to rest from how tiring and stressful life is. When playing, you don't want to choose, you want to pick your favorite option. And if games are so relaxing, it's because you know that every choice will lead you to success, and failure comes immediately after a mistake, not ten hours later. Of course, you have some games with bad and good endings, but they only are different kinds of success (the success being the fact that you finished the game, played through every level and got pretty much everything that was to be gotten), and the bad endings are rarely that bad.

To conclude on this point, I would say that obviously, when it comes to storyline choices, you should always make sure that every option leads to success. The player should not give up something to get something else, since it's what they do all day long. The player only wants to pick his favorite way to victory, as nothing is more frustrating than failure. Of course, you can and should make the different options less manichean and the environment more reactive... Only if, of course, this serves the point of the game.

Still my favorite Ganondorf

Halo Reach

One chance