Now imagine that you get to play a RPG where you need to make these kind of choices. The impact of the choice can't be made clear right away, and for sure, in the example Sophie has no way of knowing if she chose right. Nonetheless, I find that just reading the question can occupy me for an entire evening, thinking about it.
I think this is rather an exception... it's a very personal case and extreme, too. Sure, in a game this would be very disturbing but how many such personal decisions can you bring up? What I think is this: Most players - including myself in many cases - don't really get immersed as much as you would need to cause reactions like that to simpler decisions. That's because it's really hard to get immersed very well. If you could manage to make this better in your next RPG (gosh, we hate that title <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/winkwink.gif" alt="" />) so that players don't need necessarily "holocaustic" decisions to stop for a minute and REALLY think of what they do not only in game matters but rather generally, I would applaud you. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/up.gif" alt="" />
What is interesting for me: Let's assume there is indeed such a decision in the game... and you decide for the son. What effects will there be? Will you have constant nightmares? Will you have the desperate and pathologic desire for another daughter? Will you hate your son? Will you hate yourself? How does that change the gameplay? What if you decide to let your son die? What if you can't decide and both die? What if you decide to let your daughter die and in some way both survive?
I think the decision is quite obvious... but how to implement all the consequences into the game... that's the most interesting and also most difficult part I guess.
Nigel Powers: "There are only two things I can't stand in this world. People who are intolerant of other people's cultures... and the Dutch!"
