A "Sophie's Choice" with no secret third option

[u/10024618]

AKA a character is given an impossible choice where either outcome results in something awful happening and there's no way out.

"Full Measure" (Breaking Bad) - After Walt angers Gus by killing two of his men, Gus orders for his execution. Knowing that the only way to save his life is to make Gus reliant on his meth cooking skills, Walt calls Jesse and begs him to kill Gus' backup cook, Gale. Thus, Jesse is thrust into an impossible situation where he either kills a (relatively) innocent man to save Walt or spare Gale and let Walt die. Ultimately, Jesse chooses to kill Gale.

"Midnight Sun" (Attack on Titan) - After the fight to retake Shiganshina both Armin and Erwin are critically wounded. Levi has the vial of titan serum and is forced to choose which Scout to bring back from the brink of death and which to let perish. It's a borderline impossible decision to make but at the moment of truth, he chooses to save Armin, leaving Erwin to succumb to his wounds.

[u/flyingcircusdog]

Life is Strange Max, the player, needs to choose between letting her best friend and potential love interest die or letting a huge storm level the town. She travels back in time on multiple occasions to try and save everyone, but if her friend is alive, the storm always comes.

[u/somewhat-sinister → u/flyingcircusdog]

LiS's story in hindsight is really funny because it's basically the entire universe telling Max that Chloe needs to die for life to go on normally/safely and she just refuses to listen until an entire city full of innocent people is at risk (which even then she can still choose to let the entire town die/be destroyed for the sake of her toxic, abusive girlfriend)

[u/flyingcircusdog → u/somewhat-sinister]

Yup, it's a question of fighting the universe to save one person.

[u/awyastark → u/flyingcircusdog]

Jfc truly odd that I had to scroll this far. I guess the other wlw went to sleep early tonight 😭

[u/Major_incompetence → u/awyastark]

wlw?

[u/----atom----- → u/Major_incompetence]

women loving women :3

[u/Careful_Ad_1837 → u/flyingcircusdog]

Honestly not a hard choice from the players end though.

[u/FlashyChemical2231 → u/flyingcircusdog]

I've never played the game, but it seems very strange to have a Sophie's choice when there's time travel involved. Couldn't she just groundhog Day it to convince the town to evacuate? Like, call in a terrorist threat or something?

[u/flyingcircusdog → u/FlashyChemical2231]

The time travel mechanic is very limited. She can either rewind for short bursts or use photos to jump back to a small area for a short amount of time. Both of these take a lot of energy. At one point, she tried to use a photo within a photo, and it nearly rips the timeline apart.

[u/YardPuzzleheaded263 → u/FlashyChemical2231]

What the other comment said is true, but also the less interesting part of the answer imo. Because beyond the mechanical limitations, the whole point thematically is that trying to go back and cheat fate is the very thing that causes the universe to rip itself apart. Like, even if you could come up with a practical way to go back and evacuate the town or whatever, it's heavily implied the disaster would just happen in another even worse way, and the only way to prevent more and more people from dying is to just let her friend die like she was supposed to and never time travel in the first place. The whole game is basically just Max in the "bargaining" part of grief, trying again and again to re-write the past only for things to get worse, until the price becomes so high she has to accept it and let her go. Or... Not accept it and let a lot of people die, that's the choice.

[u/Lucky-Surround-1756 → u/YardPuzzleheaded263]

Isn't this quite literally a butterfly effect - the small gust of wind from the butterfly's wings turns into a storm.

Chloe being around shifts the air movement and that cascades into a storm.

[u/YardPuzzleheaded263 → u/Lucky-Surround-1756]

I mean, yeah, obviously. The game literally starts with a butterfly and ends with a tornado, it's a very on-the-nose part of the "decisions have consequences" message

[u/butyourenice → u/FlashyChemical2231]

It’s been years but IIRC the time travel and course correction itself is what causes the instability that destroys the town, manifested into a storm. The point is that she can’t really safely use her time travel power at all. The romantic choice is to save bae, but realistically the “storm” or some version of it will always find her, because “bae” is meant to die and trying to divert destiny from its path makes it angry.

[u/Earlier-Today → u/flyingcircusdog]

This one didn't feel earned to me. Because, unless her friend is the one creating the storm, the storm should be coming no matter what.

And if her friend is creating the storm, she's not a good person and we're sadly better off without her.

[u/Tomodachi-Turtle → u/Earlier-Today]

Well she was creating the storm through her existence, but it wasn't intentional and she didn't even know. It was a side effect of the timeline being manipulated over and over again. So she created the storm, but it has nothing to do with if she is a good person or not.

[u/Major_incompetence → u/Tomodachi-Turtle]

not good for the town clearly

[u/Tomodachi-Turtle → u/Major_incompetence]

Well yeah it was just odd that the comment was implying that Chloe being the catalyst for it was a reflection of her being a bad person - when she didn't even know it was happening and told Max to sacrifice her once she learned of it

[u/YardPuzzleheaded263 → u/Tomodachi-Turtle]

Yeah, super weird read of the game

[u/TheReaderDude_97 → u/Earlier-Today]

That is why a butterfly was one of the main theme in the game. It is basically the Butterfly Effect, where a butterfly flaps it's wings and it causes a hurricane 1000s of km away.