RPG "Whoops!" Moments

[Castle]

So choices matter in your role playing games, or so I've been told. The best role playing games allow you to make decisions that affect individual characters and even entire nations and, of course, the world.

But sometimes we're going along our adventurous lives and unwittingly make a decision that ends up making something happen we didn't expect.

Obvious SPOILERS to follow.

1.) Eternal Damnation
So in Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines there is an early extremely memorable mission given to you by Vampire boss Therese Voerman to retrieve an item of personal value to a spirit who is haunting the abandoned Ocean House Hotel so the property can be exorcised and development efforts can get underway. There was a brutal fire and massacre here years ago and the place has been haunted ever since. Turns out this hotel is extremely haunted, and after being scared senseless in one of the most freaky and super effective horror levels you'll ever witness, you nab the amulet and return to Therese only to find her totally bonkers sister Jeanette waiting for you instead. She asks for the amulet, and it's a simple enough gesture to just give it to her (even if you're well acquainted with her motivations by this point)

Spoiler

Whoops! Not only does Jeanette throw the amulet in the ocean to spite her sister, thus failing the quest, but the hotel is now hopelessly haunted and you just doomed a woman's spirit to an eternity of being terrorized by the ghost of her psycho killer husband and reliving her vicious murder for all eternity

2.) Anomen's fall from grace

In Baldur's Gate 2 friendly companion Anomen is facing his trials to enter into his holy order. He request your assistance in completing his trails, which somehow involve him overcoming his daddy issues. His dad's a real prick, and so much as a single dialog choice can swing the outcome of this quest one way or the other.

Spoiler

Urging Anomen to seek vengeance on his father will see him expelled from his order, upon which he will blame you and charge headlong into a murderous frenzy. And thus concludes the sad sorry pathetic tale of Anomen the almost cleric (not to mention the better part of an hour of your life you will never get back.)

3.) The Wraith in the Tower

In Witcher 3 sorceress squeeze Keira Metz tasks Geralt with helping her rid the tower on Fyke Island of the wraithe that's been haunting it. There you uncover the story of the bloody massacre that took place there, and encounter the ghost of the woman who died.

Spoiler

In case you haven't figured it out yet, the woman is the wraithe and if you just do what she says she'll be let loose on the Velen region to spread a plague that runs rampant through the already devastated war torn region, killing peasant, refugee and soldier alike.

 

[Musicfan]

Getting pushed off right as soon as you beet a boss.

 

[Dio]

Witcher 3
My mistake was letting Keira Metz go and do her own thing. Letting her make decisions for herself was apparently not the right choice.

Spoiler

Found her impaled on a stake for it later on.

 

[Spirit]

I dont know how i did it but i played about 10 hours of FFX then decided to give the sphere grid a go and screwed it royal. Had to entirely restart. So i never finished that game.

 

[Cfrock]

But sometimes we're going along our adventurous lives and unwittingly make a decision that ends up making something happen we didn't expect.

I first played Morrowind because a friend urged me for weeks. When I finally relented, he tried to explain the basics which resulted ina winding, tortuous jumble of esoteric information that I struggled to take in. What I got was that my race would be an important factor in my adventure so I better pick right.

I read through the manual, trying to decide what race I was going to be. With no clue what the game was about or what it involved beyond "anything and everything" (thanks, Jim) I gave up any notion of picking what would be good for me, and went with Argonian because one of thier abilities was "water breathing" which I understood and seemed useful.

The game starts, Juib tells me to shut up, I waddle off the boat, collect my papers, try to ignore my friend who's trying to tell me to "Steal that platter, but drop it as soon as you do," when I don't even know how my menus and inventory work, and then step into the wide world. I can do anything I want. I want to try out my water breathing.

I hook a sharp right and waddle over to the water and faceplant in (Acrobatics 10) swimming down so I can admire my amphibious nature. I wait. And wait. After a little while the edges of my screen start flashing red and my guy (creatively named Chris) is grunting a lot. Then he dies. Game over. What?

Turns out "water breathing" is a spell in Morrowind. You have to cast it and then you can breate underwater for about thirty seconds or so. It's not a passive ability, which is what I had assumed because why wouldn't I? So the very first decision I made the very first time I played an Elder Scrolls game was to immediately drown myself after being released from prison.

GG.

 

[the8thark]

Breath of the Wild - Getting the camera after you've done like 60+ shrines. Sure you told me I had to visit that village right after I jumped off the plateau, but it's an open world game, I didn't follow those instructions till ages later. I wish the camera was something you had to get before the open world part of the game kicked in.

 

[Cfrock]

The Bard's Tale
Started this yesterday and already done a bad.

A little potato-goat in the woods promised to teach me a song if I get his buddy out of jail. So I go, find the jail, and there are three remarkably ugly blokes in the one communal cell pulling a Spartacus act in an effort to get free. Whatever, letting them all out won't hurt, which leads me to the issue of how to release them.

There are three levers in this room and they have to be pulled in a specific sequence to open the cell. The blokes say they've been watching and know the order, so I now approach a lever and ask if it's the right one. Three cheers of "Yes! Pull that one!" and I do. But then things get... tricky. Asking about which to pull next is met with far less unanimous excitement. I have to pull the levers six times in total, and every time after the first, there's no agreement on which lever is the right one. So I figure I'll go with whichever levers at least two people sound reasonably confident in. I pull the fifth, I pull the sixth, and...

A bunch of twisted spikes spring up from the floor and skewer one of the blokes where he stands. Instant RIP. Whoops.

Ok. I monged it up. But with only two bokes left there's one fewer doubting voice, right? It'll be easier to get the right order this time, right?

Nope. More spikes, the idiot on the far right of the cell gets impaled this time.

With one bloke left I tell myself that I'll either get it right this time, or get it wrong, but since I'm following his instructions, it'll be entirely his fault if he dies. So let's go. He guides me quite confidently and when I pull the sixth lever the cell door slides open.

And then it hits me. This one bloke is the only one who never lacked confidence at any time. He never said things like "Hmm, might be that one," or "Yes that one! Wait, no." If I had ignored the two now-dead boys and focused on this dude's unwavering tone of certainty I could have saved all three.

This is why it's important to listen to people. It only took the unnecessary sacrifice of two peasants to remind me.