Your choices affect the lives of the people you interact with. How well you do your job and what you're willing to do to make an extra buck will affect your ability to provide for your family.
My first playthrough was a disaster. I was thorough in my job at the expense of speed. Each day, you only have so many hours in the day, and it's in your best interest to go fast to process as many people as possible. You get more money the more people you process, but if you go too fast, you're going to start making mistakes. Make too many mistakes, and they'll penalize you with fines, and you might let a dangerous person through unwittingly.
My slow ass didn't make enough money to pay for heat AND food, so my family was cold and hungry and eventually sick. I had to spend what little I made on medicine, but without food and warmth, assholes still died. Eventually, wife DEAD, son DEAD, uncle DEAD, mother in law DEAD. Since I couldn't take care of my family, they assumed I couldn't be trusted to perform my work duties, so I got fired. Whoops...
The second time, I realized how important it was to make as much money as possible in order to keep my family alive, so I whored myself out at any opportunity. Detain people to get a bonus? SURE. Advertise jobs to all engineers you meet? SURE. Accept mystery money you have no idea where it came from? SURE. This was an interesting departure from my normal game playing M-O. In all games, I try to make the "right" moral decision. I'm the good guy, but here, I chose to do things that weren't very moral in order to help my family. The one I felt the worst about involved a guy trying to bribe me to let him through. He placed some money and a nice watch on the counter. I had him detained and still took his shit. WHAT HAVE I BECOME?!
That particular strategy did not serve we well in the end. That mystery money got me thrown in jail, and who the hell knows what happened to my family.
This game required you to make tough decisions. Most times I needed all the money I could get. On one occasion a woman begged me not to let a certain person through that was waiting in line after her. She feared he was going to sell her into slavery. When he came to the window, all his papers checked out. Do you deny him entry and take the hit to your paycheck, risk getting fined, and lose that money you need to buy medicine for your dying son, risking his life...or do you let the guy through and endanger this frightened woman? These types of debacles are an interesting balancing act, and you'll have to make these decisions frequently.
To add moral dilemma on top of moral dilemma, this game makes you feel kind of icky about the whole process. On occasion, the potential immigrant will have a discrepancy where their gender on their ID doesn't seem to match. This requires a search, and when the nude photos that were taken pop up, it's pretty horrifying. Sometimes searches are also required if the person's weight doesn't match. Sometimes that reveals nothing. Dude probably just ate too many cheeseburgers. Other times that will reveal motherfuckers with grenades strapped to their thighs. I can't be sure and therefore I must check.
Prior to playing this game, I had never thought too much about either party involved in this kind of situation, but after playing, you can't help but look with some compassion to both sides. Things are not always black and white. There's a shit ton of grey.
Whether or not I "won" was even hanging out in this grey zone. My gauge for success was that I wasn't in jail, wasn't executed, my 5 family members that depended on me were still alive, and I get to keep working a horrible job that barely supports me. #thisshitisreallife
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