I was around twelve when I first heard about a game where you could choose to be good or evil.  Your choices affected not only how your character looked but also the gameplay and interactions with other characters in the game. In Fable, I was set on being good. Even though I could see the appeal of picking the evil side when looking at the armour sets available, I still didn’t even consider it. I took up the quests that led me down the good path and I was quite accomplished being recognized almost as a saint by the townsfolk late in the game.

There was no role playing involved. I wasn’t making choices to be good because I was playing the role of a good character. I was making them because I wanted myself to be good, hoping they would shape me into the ideal person I aspired to be. It seemed natural that making the good choices would lead me to be a good person, but it also helped that the golden armour set looked incredible.

Growing older and coming in contact with more games that dealt with moral alignment I came across a different point of view regarding good or evil choices. What if it was the other way around? What if who I am dictates the choices I’ll make rather than my choices determining who I am? It’s a subtle difference, almost only a shift in perspective, but one that drastically jumbled my sense of identity.

In Bioshock, good and evil choices affect only the endings you can get. The gameplay is barely affected and the storyline even less so. Unaware of how my decisions impacted it, I ended up getting a bad ending and I felt so disappointed in myself at the time. The fear of making a bad decision hindered my gameplay to the point I’d check online for most decisions in the games I played before committing to them. Eventually it became exhausting and playing to get the “good” endings felt like a chore. It didn’t even feel like it was me playing the games. By relinquishing my decision making in the game the endings felt like someone else’s accomplishments. I realized I was taking the joy out of games just to avoid the regret of making the wrong choice.

These days I like to take a different approach. I’m excited to see where my decisions will take me. Sometimes I can tell it will throw me on the “bad” ending track for a game, but that’s totally fine. I’m much happier bearing the responsibility and consequences of my own choices than to have no weight on my back from decisions I didn’t make. The endings I reach are my true endings not because they are the best ones, but because they are mine.

There are no right or wrong endings.

Only the path I choose to follow.