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Tuesday’s Trope: Schroedinger’s Gun

[Tuesday's Trope is a weekly department highlighting an amusing video game trope from TVTropes. Aggrogate is not affiliated with TVTropes.org in any way. All trope examples come from TVTropes and are shared via the Creative Commons license.]

Chekov's Gun is a narrative tool in which an object is displayed early in a story and then used in an important event later in the story. When you have a completely controlled narrative, like a novel or a movie, it's very easy to do. When you put control of the story in the hands of a player in a video game, however, it can get tricky. Free will can really throw a wrench in a story, unless it simply doesn't matter. If you pull the trigger, the chamber is empty. If you don't fire, there was a bullet in the gun. Whether you choose the right door or the left door, that's the one with the ambush. Until the choice is made, the outcome is in a state of flux.

This is Schroedinger's Gun, a tool that keeps the story of a game on-track, regardless of the player's choices. Not only does the direct outcome change due to a choice, but the very nature of the world changes. You don't know what's going to happen until you make the choice, and neither does the game. In a way, this is a much more subtle, powerful version of But Thou Must.

Examples of Schroedinger's Gun include:

• Sierra Adventure Games. If the programmers can't kill your character off with something because you noticed it, they may not bother with it at all. Your car only has a fault if you don't perform the safety inspection. (Police Quest 1). The policeman's only there if you're indecent. (Leisure Suit Larry). There's only a car coming if you don't look at the street. (The Dagger of Amon Ra). The biggest example is in the latter: giving the wrong item to a speakeasy doorman would make the game Unwinnable, so it also causes a completely random person to walk in from offscreen and stab the protagonist to death. The game then quotes knife crime statistics.
• Used extensively in Illusion Of Gaia, due to Will's ability to guess any question correctly. It is demonstrated at the beginning of the game, where Will is asked to pick a card. No matter what the player picks, it is the right one. It resurfaces much later for a Wire Dilemma, where the player simply has to remember that Will is psychic and make a decision quickly. Amazingly, used at the end of the game to win a game of Russian Roulette.
• In Tactics Ogre, there's a Road Cone at the end of the first chapter of the game. You have to choose whether to kill a group of prisoners in order to frame the Big Bad. (It's complicated and political). If you choose to kill the prisoners, your best friend will reveal himself to be incredibly noble and oppose you and all governments, and throughout the game form La Resistance until you become The Atoner. If you choose not to kill the prisoners, your best friend will reveal himself to be the biggest asshole ever and side with the killers just to gain power.
• In Knights of the Old Republic II, you can answer various questions about past events, such as Revan's fate in the first game and the color of the lightsaber the Jedi Council took away from you, and the answers retroactively determine what happened.
• The "It's War" chapter of Conkers Bad Fur Day has a pair of levers near a soldier strapped to an electric chair. The first level Conker pulls will electrocute the soldier. The second lever he pulls opens a door.
• In Cave Story, choosing to avoid speaking to an injured old man A) determines whether or not his injuries are fatal (they are only fatal if you talk to him) and also B) determines whether or not there is a vitally important rope among the junk on the floor of a room entered later, which appears to have been sealed for many years. (The rope is only there if you didn't talk to the old man.)
• Apparently one puzzle in Space Quest 4 is about finding the two halves of a code and inputting them. Whichever order you first use to combine them is the wrong one. There's no detriment or danger, the programmers just hate you.
• Baldur's Gate II has a sidequest where one of your companions returns home to find his sister has been murdered, and an investigation is still in progress. His father is convinced it was a hit from a rival and tells you to kill him in revenge. If you kill the rival, you later find out that he was innocent; if you spare him, he was guilty all along.
• An experience while playing Deja Vu seemed like a literal Schrodinger's Gun: trying to shoot the gun-toting mugger resulted in him firing first for a game over. Restarting and giving in to his demands the next time around let him escape while claiming that the gun wasn't even loaded.
• inFamous employs this to make its Sadistic Choice even worse. Your girlfriend Trish is always on the tower you didn't save, regardless of what the Big Bad says.
• In the beginning of Mass Effect 2, you are asked whether Udina or Anderson became Councilor as part of a 'memory test' since you've been in a coma for 2 years. Whoever became Councilor (and hence, who you can meet later) depends solely on your answer.