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[TaintedFork]

In creating a story for a game, what's a good way to avoid But Thou Must?

But Thou Must is when the game gives you only one choice (or fake options where you can only choose between "yeah" and "yes" and "definitely!"). Also, games that create a loop until you say the proper answer are also guilty of this.

What's a good way to make your story go the way you want it to, but still give the player a sense that they have control over their choices?

A problem I have is that, in attempting to do this, the options just become more vague or ambiguous.

How would you avoid this type of writing? Obviously it's going to happen at some point, but minimizing the number of instances of this makes for better story and a better experience, in my opinion.

[eiyukabe]

The obvious solution is to make it so the player doesn't "have" to do anything, but that leads to story branching out the wazoo. So the second best thing I find that works if you need to force the player's hand is to use classical narrative techniques to make the player 'agree' with the choice through emotions. Don't just tell the player that their PC must get revenge on the person that murdered their parents, show the parents being murdered by an evil-looking, grinning murderer and then tell the player where the murderer lives. Have it crop up in random dialogs from time to time for flavor, emotional reinforcement, and player guidance. If the player is emotionally engaged, they won't even bother to question their lack of choices.

[DavidCaruso]

Most games have But Thou Must; it's not really an issue IMO unless you actually make the player think he has a choice when he actually doesn't, by giving a Yes/No prompt which just leads to "You have to, now go do it!" or even worse a Game Over. Of course the ideal in a CRPG would be many branching paths and storylines depending on the player's choices, but I can see why you wouldn't want to program that. If you can execute what eiyukabe said well (e.g. without shoehorning it in at completely random times, without forcing the player to go through cutscenes of the "player character's" whiny emotional breakdowns or something, keeping narrative scenes terse and to a minimum, etc.) then go with that.

[s0]

The easiest way to avoid it would be to not include fake choices in the first place. There's nothing wrong with a game that's linear and honest about it imo.

[William Broom]

I think in general players are fairly willing to go along with whatever plot you provide them. If you say "hey this is the villain" they won't have a problem with going to his evil castle and killing him.
The problem arises when the player's expectations of the story diverge from what you're forcing them to do. The most common example is when you have an NPC who is really obviously going to betray the player, but the player has to follow them and do as they say - up to a certain point when the already-realised truth is revealed.

I found it really weird in Portal 2 when there was that sequence where you have to walk past all these signs saying 'STOP! GO BACK!' and then open a big door with 'FORBIDDEN! DO NOT OPEN!' written on it... simply because there was no other path you could take.
I wouldn't have minded if, say, there was some forbidden weapon in there that I needed to defeat the bad guy. But there wasn't. I had no motivation other than "Welp, there's walls in every other direction, so - forbidden chamber it is."

[Xion]

The easiest way to avoid it would be to not include fake choices in the first place. There's nothing wrong with a game that's linear and honest about it imo.

agree

failing that, you could let them start on their chosen path - the one you don't want them on - and then through some event have them fall back into doing what you wanted them to do in the first place. Perhaps by forcing them through circumstance to require what the story desires.
"will you help me break this curse by shattering the wizard Jardon's crystal cube?" "no"

---shortly thereafter---

"Alas, I have been cursed by the wizard Jardon. I will need to smash his crystal cube." "Great! Come with me!"

and then the story converges again.

[Gainsworthy]

The easiest way to avoid it would be to not include fake choices in the first place. There's nothing wrong with a game that's linear and honest about it imo.

I agree. If you're worried about your audience breaking the Illusion of Choice, don't conjure the illusion. If you include choices, make them meaningful - I was just reading Michal Marcinkowski's rather excellent article (as seen on the Front Page) about what he feels is critical to making a game click. One of the three elements  he lists is Anton's (Chekov's) Gun - one could extrapolate that it applies as much to dialogue and interactions as it does to physical objects in the world.

A question: If choice is useless to your game, and your game isn't dealing with themes such as the illusion of free will, why on earth are you including a "But Thou Must" scenario at all?