If there is one outcome, remove the guise of control. Have my character speak for me. I don’t fucking care. I’d rather feel like my character is doing or saying something I wouldn’t personally do than for me to be given a fucking pop-up that means nothing and is just there to reinforce a self-insert facade. At least make a bit out of it if you’re gonna do it. It’s genuinely one of the worst pieces of game design outside of legitimately predatory behavior.
That's pretty much the thing that made The Witcher 3 stand out, that there were just constantly little choices to make with no indication what would just be irrelevant because you'd just leave and never see anyone involved again and what would matter to the story later.
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Other way around. Being overbearing and controlling towards Ciri leads to a bad end, while compassion in general leads to narratively better results like when you're literally put on trial for being a monster hunter only to have all the magical creatures you helped show up to speak to your defense.
Like it consistently strongly favors non-violent resolution whenever possible except in one particular case, even when violence is the appropriate reaction (IIRC you lock one storyline into a bad end if you break the sleazy spymaster's leg), and generally casts Geralts natural detachment and alienation as bad things.
I have a hard time even calling it particularly lib-brained because pretty much any other game comparable to it does it worse. It was made by a bunch of polish libs who have plenty of bad takes, but seemingly fewer brainworms than their American techbro counterparts.
Helps that they weren't living in the most propangandized country on Earth.
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I think that's from the first game? Where there are some elven guerilla fighters smuggling supplies into the city, and if you help them they later assassinate someone else you're on good terms with (because they're fighting a protracted people's war against the human authorities)? I'm fuzzy on the details because I didn't get that far in that one. But there were a lot of problems with that game.
I can't think of any case like that from the third game. I know there are some "somebody in this situation is getting screwed over no matter what" choices but in general it's narratively better to be merciful and generous than vengeful and self-serving.
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