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Viliam_Bur comments on Open Thread, November 1 - 7, 2013 - Less Wrong Discussion

5 Post author: witzvo 02 November 2013 04:37PM

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Comment author: Viliam_Bur 05 November 2013 09:19:48AM 3 points [-]

You don't have to make both branches equivalent. Both of them could feel "right" from inside, but only one of them could contain an information which makes the other one wrong.

In one ending, the hero only has limited information, and based on that limited information, the hero thinks they made the right choice. Sure, some things went wrong, but the hero considers that a necessary evil.

On another ending, the hero has more information, and now it is obvious that this choice was right, and all the good feelings from the other branch are merely lack of information or reasoning.

This way, if you only saw the first ending, you would think it is the good one, but if you saw both of them, it would be obvious the second one is the good one.

Comment author: drethelin 06 November 2013 07:54:04PM 3 points [-]

I like this idea but it seems hard to differentiate between "You did what you thought was right but you need to be more careful about what you believe" and "you got the bad ending because you missed this little thing", which is something many games have done before.

An example is Iji where the game plays out significantly differently if you make a moral decision not to kill, but if you take the default path it doesn't let you know you could've chosen to be peaceful the whole time. It involves an active decision rather than a secret thing you can miss, but it also doesn't frame it as a "MORAL CHOICE TIME GO"