Why not have them both be “right,” according to their own value systems anyway, and then have the end-game slideshow in both branches tell the player the story of what they did from the perspective of the other side?
You don’t have to make both branches equivalent. Both of them could feel “right” from inside, but only one of them could contain an information which makes the other one wrong.
In one ending, the hero only has limited information, and based on that limited information, the hero thinks they made the right choice. Sure, some things went wrong, but the hero considers that a necessary evil.
On another ending, the hero has more information, and now it is obvious that this choice was right, and all the good feelings from the other branch are merely lack of information or reasoning.
This way, if you only saw the first ending, you would think it is the good one, but if you saw both of them, it would be obvious the second one is the good one.
I like this idea but it seems hard to differentiate between “You did what you thought was right but you need to be more careful about what you believe” and “you got the bad ending because you missed this little thing”, which is something many games have done before.
An example is Iji where the game plays out significantly differently if you make a moral decision not to kill, but if you take the default path it doesn’t let you know you could’ve chosen to be peaceful the whole time. It involves an active decision rather than a secret thing you can miss, but it also doesn’t frame it as a “MORAL CHOICE TIME GO”
This would ruin the point I’m trying to make.
You don’t have to make both branches equivalent. Both of them could feel “right” from inside, but only one of them could contain an information which makes the other one wrong.
In one ending, the hero only has limited information, and based on that limited information, the hero thinks they made the right choice. Sure, some things went wrong, but the hero considers that a necessary evil.
On another ending, the hero has more information, and now it is obvious that this choice was right, and all the good feelings from the other branch are merely lack of information or reasoning.
This way, if you only saw the first ending, you would think it is the good one, but if you saw both of them, it would be obvious the second one is the good one.
I like this idea but it seems hard to differentiate between “You did what you thought was right but you need to be more careful about what you believe” and “you got the bad ending because you missed this little thing”, which is something many games have done before.
An example is Iji where the game plays out significantly differently if you make a moral decision not to kill, but if you take the default path it doesn’t let you know you could’ve chosen to be peaceful the whole time. It involves an active decision rather than a secret thing you can miss, but it also doesn’t frame it as a “MORAL CHOICE TIME GO”