Friend or Idol Decisions made in Video Games.
- Happens SEVERAL times in 99 Spirits - somewhere between 3 and 5 times, depending on how loosely you're willing to interpret the trope and whether you count two attempts within seconds of each other ("Oh, you don't care about this woman? Then I'll take this woman hostage instead...") as two separate cases. However, considering that the 'idol' in question is the only weapon capable of hurting the villains, it is perhaps understandable that they're trying everything to AVOID a direct confrontation...
- Alpha Protocol likes these just a bit too much. At least thrice does your opponent put a contact (preferably a Romance Sidequest character) in one room, himself and/or your mission objective in the other room, and then announces this to the player.
- Mostly because it's effective: only one of those times are you able to actually save the contact and complete the mission, and it requires the right skills.
- Amazon: Guardians of Eden: Maya leaves Jason with such a decision. In the end, will he take a precious emerald and leave them with a promise that he'll never reveal their people and mission to the outside world, or will he stay with her as his wife in Eden. Ultimately, Jason chooses to stay with her.
- At the end of the Baldur's Gate series, you can choose: become a god, or stay mortal. This choice is particularly poignant if you have a romance going at the time. (Interestingly, one of your possible romantic partners actually tries to convince you to take godhood when it's offered.)
- The funny thing is, for this certain partner, actually doing as she asks you to do will give her the happier ending than staying with her.
- In Catwoman's storyline sections in Batman: Arkham City, the player is made to make a decision at one point as to whether to escape from the eponymous prison city with her appropriated loot, or to leave it behind and go to save the dying Batman. Canonically, the latter has to happen (as the main storyline has her rescue him at that time), but the player can choose the former for a Non-Standard Game Over if they wish.
- Batman: The Telltale Series employs this as well during the climax of the first game, as the Children of Arkham's leader has Alfred held hostage, giving Batman an ultimatum - reveal his Secret Identity, or Alfred gets blasted with a sonic weapon that can tear apart concrete. Choosing to not reveal your identity results in Batman choosing to Take a Third Option and free Alfred, although he gets injured in the ensuing brawl.
- In Call of Duty: Black Ops II, a mole on the heroes side is forced with this when the Big Bad of the game manages to crash a helicopter and capture a fellow soldier (Your commanding officer in fact) who managed to survive, then giving the mole a gun and forcing him to kill the soldier. You're given the opinion of killing the soldier (which is a requirement to get the Golden Ending, as said mole has to survive for a later part in the story) who even encourages you to do it to maintain your cover. Or try to kill the Big Bad right there which predictably fails and results in the mole getting killed.
- In Cyberpunk 2077, the end of Claire Russell's storyline forces V to choose between winning The Big Race or helping her with her Roaring Rampage of Revenge and preserving their friendship.
- In Phantom Liberty, you have the chance of finally saving yourself... but it requires sacrificing Songbird to the NUSA. This is a notably more sympathetic version than most cases because Songbird has betrayed you multiple times and her motivation is fundamentally the same as V's. They will both do anything to survive.
- In the end of Dino Crisis, Regina must choose between helping her commanding officer Gail, who is severely wounded at that point of the story, in capturing the renegade scientist Dr. Kirk or force Gail to give up the chase and leave the island with her and Rick, allowing Dr. Kirk to escape and ending the mission in failure. Helping Gail capture Dr. Kirk will result in Gail dying from his wounds. However, Regina can also Take a Third Option by leaving Gail with Rick and going after Dr. Kirk by herself, allowing her to complete the mission without Gail dying.
- Dragon Quest:
- Dragon Quest V: A seemingly downplayed one in the wedding arc. Essentially, it appears as though if you want the Legendary Shield, you'll have to give up your Childhood Friend. Ultimately averted in that if you choose Bianca, you get the Shield anyway.
- Dragon Quest VII offers a brutal Deconstruction in the village of Greenthumb Gardens. Carraway and his family work as gardeners for the richest man in town, Burdock. He's also in love with Lavender, who has inherited her parents' debts; however, Burdock has agreed to clear said debt if she agrees to an Arranged Marriage with his son Dill. Lavender wants Carraway to fight for her love, heedless of how this might drag his family into the crossfire; should he throw caution to the wind for her sake, or stay silent and watch her marry another man, having to spend the rest of his life walking on eggshells around the already paranoid Dill? Ultimately, Carraway chooses to Take a Third Option and leave home, believing this will be the best option for all involved. But it isn't; Lavender ends up in a loveless marriage, abandoning her son and leaving him with his father once Dill turns abusive.
- The ending of Dubloon. You can either save the True Companions you formed throughout the game or the Chest you have been racing for the entire game.
- In The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim:
- The only way to gain all fifteen Daedric artifacts for the "Oblivion Walker" achievement involves stabbing your ally in the back in most of their associated quests, or else losing the chance to gain the artifact involved. Understandable, since the Daedric Princes are, for the most part, a collection of Jerkass Gods. The most brutal decision is probably the one in the quest for Vaermina, the Daedric Prince of Nightmares. If you want her artifact and the achievement, you must kill Erandur, an Ensemble Dark Horse companion and one of the few followers in the game to actually level up with you. By saving this as the last Daedric quest you do, you can, through Save Scumming, get the achievement and keep Erandur alive, but you lose out on the artifact.
- The quest for Clavicus Vile is a particularly dark example of the trope, because Vile himself tells you to use the Rueful Axe and kill Barbas, the talking Big Friendly Dog who has accompanied you on the quest. Doing this is the wrong move, because the Rueful Axe is not his true artifact. Instead, you have to replace the Rueful Axe in the statue, enabling Barbas to return to his rightful place as Vile's conscience. You are then rewarded with the true artifact, the Masque of Clavicus Vile.
- Pops up in Final Fantasy VI. At one point, an NPC thief and a moogle are left hanging over a ledge, and the group can choose to save one. Saving the thief nets them a Golden Hairpin, a rare, but by no means unique, relic that halves MP consumption when equipped. This causes the moogle to plummet to his (apparent) doom. Saving the moogle nets the party Mog, an optional party member with fairly useful abilities and arguably the best character-specific relic in the game, which eliminates random encounters. He can be recruited later in the game regardless of choice, but choosing the Gold Hairpin will make Mog unable to learn his Water Rondo dance. (The remake for the Game Boy Advance allows the possibility for Mog to learn the dance after the critical point, but the encounter is one-time, and if Mog is not present for it, it's Permanently Missable.)
- Fire Emblem: Three Houses:
- In Catherine's support conversations with Ashe, she reveals that the reason why she turned in Christophe over to the Church was because he was involved in an assassination plot to kill Lady Rhea, and he asked her to join him. She sided with Rhea, because in another support conversation with Seteth, she explains that she was ambushed by a group of monsters, and Rhea nursed her back to health after she barely survived. Despite that, the decision still haunts her in the present, and she says that if there was a way to convince Christophe to back down, she would have taken it.
- Byleth must make this decision in the Holy Tomb mission if they chose to lead the Black Eagle students and attended Edelgard's coronation. The Friend decisionnote leads to the Crimson Flower route where the Adrestian Empire reunites the continent of Fódlan. The Idol decisionnote leads to the Silver Snow route, where the Church of Seiros forms a resistance movement against the Adrestian Empire.
- In inFAMOUS, Cole is forced to choose between saving Trish and a bus filled with medical professionals who can help the whole city. No matter which choice you make, Trish will die, but how it happens differs:
- Should you choose the "Good" decision, Cole saves the bus, but watches as Trish falls. He jumps down to her, and she forgives him tearfully as she dies, resulting in Cole feeling both relieved and incredibly angry that this situation even happened.
- Should you choose the "Evil" decision, Cole saves Trish, only to find out it's not Trish, but a girl wearing similar clothing. Cole then sees Trish was actually on the bus, which falls and kills everyone on board, save Trish, who is gravely injured. When Cole jumps down to her, she chastises him for being willing to forsake the city for his own personal satisfaction, and then dies.
- Jurassic Park: The Game ends on Nima having to choose whether to save Jess from the T-Rex or the can of dinosaur embryos she can sell for enough money to get herself and her daughter out of poverty for good. The will lead the player to different endings. In a subversion, if Nima chooses the can, she's the one who dies.
- In Marvel Ultimate Alliance, you enter Mephisto's lair, where he has Nightcrawler and Phoenix held hostage and rescuing one or the other alters the game's end: rescuing Nightcrawler means Phoenix dies, but she comes back as the Dark Phoenix, looking for revenge. Rescuing Phoenix has Mystique killing Professor X in revenge for Nightcrawler's death which causes the X-Men to disband.
- Employed in the first Overlord game where you face the dilemma of either rescuing the last surviving females of the elven race, thus ensuring the race continues... or getting a dwarven king's stockpile of gold. Needless to say, with the game's overall theme you're encouraged to pursue the latter option.
- In Master Detective Archives: Rain Code, the Sadistic Choice provided to Yuma by the main antagonist and the Hidden Villain the detectives are pursuing is whether to expose Kanai Ward's truth to the world (Kanai Ward's residents are UV-allergic homunculi that need human flesh to sustain themselves) in order to make people happy according to his mission, or to sacrifice himself in order to keep the truth concealed. After Shinigami motivates him to stand by his own beliefs as Number One of the WDO, he ultimately decides to defeat Makoto and expose the truth with the chance that it'll be more beneficial for the residents. Makoto agrees with this solution and works to atone for his crimes, as well as his three years worth of deception.
- In Quest for Glory III, during the Fighter and Paladin storyline the player undergoes the Rite of Passage for a local tribe, which is a competition with only one winner. Near the end of the race, your friend and competitor Yesufu has gotten his foot caught in a hole, and the player can either help him out or go ahead and win the race. However, rescuing Yesufu is the only right choice: a true warrior would never abandon a friend, so if you help him the chief bends the rules and declares you both winners, while ignoring him nets you a Non-Standard Game Over.
- In Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction, Emperor Percival Tachyon gives Ratchet (the Lombax protagonist) the option to either go to the new homeworld that the Lombaxes have created and discover the mysteries of his origins or stay and attempt to save the Polaris galaxy from him. Ratchet sees this as a Morton's Fork, citing that if he leaves, Tachyon would use the Dimensionator to finish off the Lombaxes in a genocide attack anyway. And as long as Tachyon holds it and continues to summon Cragmites, reality itself is in danger. Ratchet opts to stay, making a vow to destroy the Dimensionator and kill Tachyon to save The Multiverse from his fascist tyranny.
- Played with in Red Dead Redemption 2. After rescuing Abigail Roberts from Andrew Milton, Arthur Morgan says he needs to go back to Beaver Hollow to deal with Micah Bell and Dutch van der Linde and the others, and she hands Arthur the key, telling him to use it to open the chest of money hidden away in the camp. Once he returns to the camp, however, John Marston recovers from his Disney Death, and he and the others are attacked by the Pinkertons led by Agent Edgar Ross, who force Arthur and John to flee to the mountains. Once John learns that his family is safe at Copperhead Landing, he wants Arthur to protect him; Arthur, however, wants to return to the camp to get the money to spite Dutch and Micah, but John says that he might be killed by the Pinkertons if he heads back to his family alone. Here, the player is faced with two options: "Go with John" or "Go for the loot". If Arthur decides to go with John, he'll have to fight off the Pinkertons a bit while escorting John before stopping, saying he can't go any further due to his now-advanced tuberculosis, before handing John his hat and satchel. On the other hand, if Arthur decides to go for the money, he will part ways with John and hand him his hat and satchel, making sure that John will survive. However, when Arthur returns to Beaver Hollow and takes the money from Dutch's chest, Micah knifes him in the side, critically wounding him; and depending on what you do with his honor, he takes the money from Arthur either before the latter succumbs to his TB and his wounds or after Micah kills him.
- The ending of the adventure game Return to Mysterious Island 2: The player character discovers that her deactivation of the shield surrounding the island as part of her aborted escape attempt in the ending of the previous game has caused the island's ecosystem to start dying from foreign microorganisms. She then must choose between escaping and causing the entire island to die or reactivating the shield, saving the island but trapping her there for the rest of her life.
- In the last mission of Saints Row: The Third, the Boss has to decide between finishing off Killbane before he escapes Steelport or save Shaundi, Viola, and Mayor Reynolds from getting blown up along with a regional monument. The latter is the more ethical choice and is canon according to Saints Row IV.
- Sogetsu Kazama is faced with such a dilemma at the end of Samurai Shodown IV; either disobey a direct order from his clan, risking banishment and/or death (Friend), or execute his own brother for desertion to remain in their good graces (Idol). To satisfy everyone, he strikes down Kazuki non-lethally, allowing him to get away after Sogetsu passes him off as dead.
- At the end of Shovel Knight: King of Cards, the Enchantress offers to grant King Knight the authority and respect he wants. All he has to do is betray all the friends who helped him get there. He takes the offer.
- Spelunky has this in the endgame areas: When a level is generated with the "I hear prayers to Kali!" feeling, the player will be presented with a damsel and a solid-gold Idol suspended over a pit filled with traps and a lava pool at the bottom. Of course, canny players can rescue both.
- Only one of them actually triggers it anyway.
- In Spider-Man (PS4), Spider-Man has a sample of the cure to the Devil's Breath virus and learns that they need the entire sample to create more, which puts him in a conundrum as one of the first victims is his beloved Aunt May. In a moment of emotion, Peter prepares to jab the antidote sample into May's IV patch, but stops himself and grieves as he decides on The Needs of the Many, allowing Aunt May to die so others can live.
- In the finale of Splinter Cell: Double Agent, Sam (having infiltrated a terrorist group as one of their members) is given the choice of either shooting his NSA boss (a series regular, who's been captured by the terrorists) to maintain his cover, or shooting the terrorist standing guard over them (which instantly blows his cover and causes everyone in the base to come and try to kill him).
- In Star Trek Online, Enterprise-F captain Va'Kel Shon finds himself in an conundrum: either destroy the recently activated Iconian gateway to spare everyone anything that could waltz through and lose the friendship of the Romulan Republic or leave it and allow anything to get through. The discovery of Omega molecules takes it out of their hands.
- Tales from the Borderlands is rife with these, but only when you're playing as Rhys.
- An interesting subversion at the end of episode 2: Rhys has choose who to trust to save your friends Vaughn and Sasha who are being held at gunpoint: Fiona, who has a plan that's mostly just winging it, or Handsome Jack, who has a definite plan, but will lead to him gaining control of your body and likely causing causing chaos and bloodshed just for the fun of it.
- Episode 4 ends with the choice and ramifications of a deal that Jack proposes to Rhys: become the CEO of Hyperion, which has been his dream since he was a kid, once Jack leaves Rhys' head and takes control of the Helios space station, or reject the deal to stay with his friends Fiona, Vaughn, and Sasha. Your choice leads to the episode ending in very different ways.
- In Tales of Symphonia, after breaking all the seals and thinking you finished the game you get a Your Princess Is in Another Castle! moment at the Tower of Salvation when you find out the purpose of the Worldregeneration Journey is for the Chosen to die. During that scene Idiot Hero Lloyd gets asked if he'd rather have the entire world die than sacrifice one life to save it. He doesn't answer, but shortly afterward you learn in a skit that for a moment he chose to save the world rather than the Chosen.
- In a somewhat gruesome example, in Twisted Metal: Black, Dollface is offered the key to her mask, but taking it will close her former boss (who put the damn thing on her in the first place) in an Iron Maiden. She takes it, then decides that she didn't really want it anyway.
- Needles "Sweet Tooth" Kane is given a cure for his curse (an eternally burning skull), but is told it will only work as long as he never kills again. He decides he likes killing too much, and decapitates Calypso, deciding to just live with the constant agony.
- At the end of Ultima VII: The Black Gate, the Avatar can choose between entering the titular Moongate, returning to Earth but leaving Britannia in the clutches of Big Bad the Guardian, or destroy it but forever be prevented from returning. The choice is the player's, but the next game in the series naturally assumes the Avatar made the Friend choice.
