Very interesting and helpful replies here.
In Forgotton Anne (which I say is also a choice game) the major decisions are marked by the fact that there isn’t any single clear choice to be made – there are two or three choices being passionately advocated for. Characters shout conflicting opinions about what they want an outcome of a situation to be.
- These contradictions and contestations can really help you understand as a player that there are multiple outcomes that could happen depending on your choices. (The major decisions are typically high stakes that can result in the deaths of characters.)
Forgotton Anne also makes it more and more ambiguous, as the game progresses towards the end, as to which choices seem “good” or “bad”.
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Sometimes you are actually required to lie in order to stop a death from happening, and sometimes trying to revive someone from death makes things worse by ultimately resulting in another death. You might discover, for example, that trying to be honest didn’t actually stop you from having to potentially kill a friend, an outcome which you didn’t want to happen.
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So that can also make you understand that there are other choices which could have led to the outcome you actually wanted.
So to summarize for both of those:
- have characters argue for different choices, which highlights to the player that there are multiple outcomes that could happen here
- have choices be more ambiguous in relation to the player’s desired outcome, which also highlights to the player that there are multiple ways that a situation could be handled