Warrior of Light: A Mindless Killer

[Cilia]

Spec Ops: The Line is a horrible example. Buy a game. Then be made to feel bad for doing an action you have no choice but to do, or to stop playing. Yeah, that's a deep moral crisis right there.

You do not have "no choice." You always have a choice. That's the entire point. You might not know what you're getting into, but if you find the story that morally objectionable, you will stop playing the game, or at least stop following the story / doing the sidequest. You had a choice. You. Made. Your. Choice. Live with the consequences.

Spec Ops: The Line doesn't get the point across for you? How about Undertale?

Spec Ops the Line is a terrible example. We are not a character in the story, and even if we were, the story stops until we choose the choice or fight the fight that is in line with the devs' idea of the character.

At the end of the day, it is other people that pay of the consequences of the WoL, not the WoL themselves. It will continue to be like this because the devs cannot truly punish the character, they still have to be able to go to gold saucer and pull their sword out in all the cities at the end of that cutscene.

That we are a puppet that does what its told is kind of a failure in their storytelling. There is not enough buy in to the character's decisions, and thus it seems like they are "your character" going with what the script says.

See above.

It's a limitation of MMORPG gameplay. We were able to freely walk the streets of Ul'dah just days after Nanamo's supposed assassination at our hands. That confuses me more than anything, but I know that we need access to the facilities in Ul'dah for various reasons... so I let it slide. The only thing we lost access to was the Rising Stones.

The Warrior of Light is your puppet. Whatever s/he does is a direct consequence of your influence over him/her. If you have that much of an issue with a request someone makes of your character... don't accept it. That's all there is to it. But the consequences are on your shoulders either way.

In the case of the bird nests and killing the birds? You didn't have to talk to the guy. You didn't have to go out to the bird nests. You didn't have to pick through the bird nests. You didn't have to kill the birds (running away is an option). You didn't have to take the stuff back to the guy. You. Chose. To. The same goes for literally every quest in the game, side or no. Accept responsibility for your actions. All video games are Skinner boxes; just as lab rats aren't forced to press the lever for their cheese, you aren't forced to do anything in the game. You. Choose. To.