****WARNING: this post contains SPOILERS for the Comtessa storyline in Echo Bazaar, found in Ladybones Road at Watchful 25+. READ NO FURTHER if you don't want to know what happens. SRSLY.****
The other day, EBZ's writing team sat down over breakfast in a posh central London hotel spent a day or two creating one of those multicoloured email 'conversations' in order to have another look at the Comtessa storyline. It's a popular story and its conclusion, especially, has been the subject of quite a bit of player feedback. Alexis thought it was worth thinking the ending through again. (He was right. As we add new content and tease out ideas about exactly why people play EBZ/what they get out of it/what we want to put in it/&c, we need to go back to some of the old stuff and see how and if it's all still fitting together (in the loosest possible sense of 'fitting' and 'together', of course).)
The last storylet in the Comtessa arc presents the player with a stark choice. You've been hired by her father to find the Comtessa; you've followed the trail she's left behind and found her down in the Clay Quarters. You are now confronted by her Clay Man lover, who explains that he's in the process of turning her into stone, so they can be together always. The important information you get is a/ that the process is irreversible and b/ that you can see her frightened green eyes looking out from her half-made statue. And you have just two options. Smash the statue; or turn and leave.
If you've read Alexis' post on decisions, you'll know we define the resolution to the Comtessa's story as a reflective choice. That is to say, it's a choice you make based entirely on how you view your character, and what you think your character's priorities are. To make the decision, you first have to decide what kind of decision you want to see it as. Do you see it as a moral choice? (What would be the right thing to do? Do I want to do the right thing?) Or a pragmatic one? (You're here because her father paid you, after all. What's the sensible thing to do?) Or is it purely an internal choice? Do you want to be kind or cruel? (and is this because you've defined your character that way and you want to remain in character, even if you don't like doing it?) Or is it a (possibly conflicting) combination of any/all of the above? We don't want to tell you. We want you-the-player to have the freedom and the space to be able to make these decisions in the way that you prefer to make them.
We started talking about the fact that there was a problem with this concluding storylet. The problem was that if you chose to leave the Comtessa and her lover be, you got a quality bump for Heartless. This struck people as unfair, because it could just as easily be seen as a kindness, just as it could be heartless to smash her to smithereens or it could be the humane option. We don't know whether her fear is of becoming stone, or of being dragged back to her father, after all.
And the basis of the player's decision is not, (or, at least, I think it can't be) anything the game has already said about high society ladies or Clay Men or Victorian morals or mixed marriages or true love or cruelty or kindness or rewards or deceit or just deserts. There is no judgement here, because in making the choice, you bring to bear everything you think about these things. (Or everything you've decided your character thinks - the subject of the overlap between player and character is one for another post or several). This storylet invites the player to play God for a moment. And that's why I think the two choices work: because either one of them could be humane or cruel or lazy or greedy or spiteful or generous or whatever you feel, and what the player does is decide their motivation and then pick the option they think fits it. There is no 'right' or 'wrong' and there is no 'correct' or 'incorrect' either.
Anyway. What we discussed over freshly baked pains au chocolat and delicious grapefruit juice email was a/ whether or not to remove the Heartless bump from the 'leave her be' branch and b/ whether to add a third branch, in which the player can decide to accept the Clay Man's bribe (jewels stolen from Daddy Comte, naturally) to turn a blind eye to the situation. A/ was pretty easily agreed on - as discussed, it could be a heartless move, but it isn't necessarily. Bump removed.
B/ was trickier and took some discussion. It was argued that a third way might allow the player to act more 'naturally' - to avoid, in other words, making the difficult decision. And this is perfectly plausible - what if you've decided your character doesn't care one way or the other, but is as mercenary as they come and just wants to take the cash?
Alexis mentioned poetry at this point. Poetry and game design would give us different answers, he said. And again, he was right. (He usually is). My 2p worth was that I think there's a pseudo-tragic thing going on here in that both choices, kill her or leave her, are nasty, both feel extreme and both feel like sacrifice. I argued that allowing the player to say 'none of my business' diluted that - if you don't know what you'd do, you just take the easy way out. You're not forced to define your own motivation. And maybe that's OK, at other times. But as Paul pointed out, the ambiguity here and the bleakness of the choice is what makes the story memorable. So - no third way, not this time. The game won't tell you your motivation - but you need to have one.