#gah how to tag this. this is inspired by FF14 and FGO but is more about games in general

[picaroroboto]

In an early story quest in FFXIV's 2nd expac, Stormblood, an NPC asks your character why you've chosen to help fight in this revolution. There's a number of cool, heroic-sounding dialogue options, but also the option to say "Frankly, this isn't my fight." Choosing this option doesn't really change anything - the NPC has a dissapointed reaction, but says they'll wait for you in case you change your mind. The rest of the quest proceeds the same as if you'd chosen one of the other options.

It was a very small moment but it stuck with me because I kept thinking of it in a meta way - in roleplaying games we have varying levels of control over our character's choices, but we can always choose why they do what the game makes them do and how they feel about that. You can't just not Stormblood because it's part of the story the game wants to tell, but because you have no choice but to do this quest you have to choose why you do it.

So even if your character doesn't want to fight this war, you still want to keep playing the game, so you show up to the next quest, and the next, and so on and so forth until the very end of the story.

Similarly, in the way I roleplay/write my FFXIV character, he had a mental breakdown after the 1st expac, Heavensward, and wanted to quit being a hero. I sort of simulated this by taking a break from advancing the main story for a while, instead doing a bunch of side content, hoping their stories might inspire a reason for my character to keep doing hero stuff.

I didn't find that reason. I just got bored of not advancing. I wanted to see the rest of the story, so I was basically dragging my unwilling character along. Someday I want to make a comic of this idea of tension between "the player character, who wants to Quit" versus "the player, who wants to Continue"

Wait where was I going here. Ah right something about the choice/lack of choice in games but when it gets down to it the only real choice, the only one that truly matters, is "Quit" or "Continue".

Because players, unless they hate the game their playing, are always going to want to see the story through to the end. Giving up partway through isn't really an "Ending" - you've just halted the progress of the story until such time as you pick it up again, which might be never, leaving the story in perpetual limbo. I think this often leads to player characters being described as determined types, because the way the player constantly moves forward through the story reflects through the character. Even if you put the player character in a truly desperate, hopeless situation (I'm thinking of the fake Bad End from Fate/Extra CCC, or the whole Ultima Thule sequence in FFXIV Endwalker), so long as there remains a way for the player to continue interacting with the game world - still NPCs to talk to, still able to move their character, they will use it, and keep using it, until they meet an ending that meets their satisfaction.