The thought of there being a “best timeline” for a game is sort of fucked up, and re-reading the plot and characters of Virtue’s Last Reward kind of made me realize this.
(I can’t stop bringing it up because of the weird overlaps it has with Undertale/Deltarune)
One of the characters, upon finding out that you (and two other characters) are trying to “fix the entire world/timeline” (and has literally gone through this before 45+ years ago) gets UBER pissed and gives you all a dressing down speech about how insane this thought-line is.
First: Does the entire universe run on just one timeline? Wouldn’t all those other timelines be running on their own, parallel to the “correct” one?
Second: How do you even define what the “correct” timeline is? Is that not simply a definition of your own choosing? What if the “broken” timeline IS the correct one?
Third: By establishing a “correct” timeline, aren’t you inherently saying that all the struggles of this one haven’t been worth it unless they benefit the “correcting” of timelines? What about the people who have found genuine happiness and hope in this timeline, despite the massive struggles or because of it? What about the people who can only exist in that timeline?
However, most of this probably is invalidated by the thought that there IS only one timeline or reality only runs on X timeline until you go back and reset it (like undertale) except for the last.
It’s interesting to question if the “golden ending” actually is that and how even bad choices can have good outcomes, despite or because of it.