Am I supposed to feel bad?

[babinro]

I have no emotional attachment to my choices. I'm excited about the opportunity to push boundaries when you know what you're doing is completely and utterly wrong. Bioshock's evil option for little sisters is a good example that never made me think twice. I actually thought it was awesome you could do something like that in a video game and being able to repeatedly do so enhanced my enjoyment of it.

Of course, for me, gaming is true escapism...I don't tend to think of myself in that situation simply because I'd never have gotten into a situation that a game suggests to begin with. I tend to play evil characters second in games though because they are always the most fun playthrough. The story is seldom better as the villain, but the gameplay tends to be more fun.

 

[sheah1]

I think the new Deus Ex does this best as it transcends the set pieces, for example, despite being a good guy, I never have trouble breaking into a house and stealing stuff, but while reading a dude's emails I found out he was some kid who had just moved in and his brother had offered him help, I suddenly felt shit about stealing his credits, especially since I have a similar relationship.

 

[GundamSentinel]

I very rarely play the 'bad guy' in games like inFamous, Fable, Fallout of The Elder Scrolls.

It's very hard for me to break my hardwired 'be a good guy' attitude.

The only one I have no problem with is playing a renegade in Mass Effect, mostly because renegade Shepard is still a good guy, but his methods are just ethically questionable.

Same here. In the past I still had the feeling that my inability to be evil was a consequence of game writers making evil choices too blatant and, frankly, stupid. The evil path was often just not as interesting or rewarding as the good path. I noticed this in games like KotOR and Neverwinter Nights.
But later I came to realize that even with newer games and more complex moral choices I just couldn't bring myself to be evil. I think I just empathize a lot with fictional characters. And I don't think that's a bad thing.

Mass Effect is indeed an exception. Renegade isn't exactly evil, it's just callous.

 

[Bran1470]

Many games these days seem to be implementing some sort of moral choice system into them and I have always taken the good path because that's my own choice but whenever I want to do a "evil" option or I'm forced to do one, I always feel bad and/or end up caving in.

The best example for me was in Fallout 3 because I killed the ghoul, Roy Phillips, with a pocket grenade like the gameplay demo without even thinking about it. However, later on when I found his followers, I had no choice but to kill them since I couldn't do their side of the quest. I just felt horrible and depressed and decided that killing when they were asleep was the best way to do it but it was quite difficult especially after talking to the woman ghoul who had faith in Roy and his plan and was generally pretty nice.

Are we, as the the players, meant to feel sadness or remorse even though that is the choice we want to happen or are forced to commit something immoral; or does it just come you as a somewhat disturbing trait?

By the way, share some of your experiences, don't just mention the Roy Phillips example above.

No that's normal that just means that the game is doing a good job on making you care about what your doing thus making you feel like your part of that world.

 

[Da Orky Man]

I usually play as a Machiavellian good guy, meaning that I'll gladly take the evil option if it's benefits more than it harms. Though most games seem to make it so that the evil option is ALWAYS self-serving.

Spoiler

I re-wrote the Geth because they would be useful in the final battles. It may be morally ambiguous, but it was necessary. I also saved to council because it would be a lot easier to gain allies knowing I has the trust of the most politically powerful people in the galaxy.

 

[Woodsey]

The designers want you to feel bad, they want you to get an emotional connection with the game. It's part of the reason why games are so great!
I know in the new Deus Ex I...

Spoiler: This is a big ol' spoiler

Felt really bad for Faridah when she dies, she was just an awesome character!

Spoiler

Just saved her on my second playthrough - felt pretty Boss.

OT: Not much point in a morality system if it doesn't make you feel anything.

 

[phantasmalWordsmith]

I never take the bad route because it just seems to be a lot easier to be good. Fallout 3, Fable, InFamous, whatever; it pays more to be good. People like good people

 

[Quantum Star]

I think the new Deus Ex does this best as it transcends the set pieces, for example, despite being a good guy, I never have trouble breaking into a house and stealing stuff, but while reading a dude's emails I found out he was some kid who had just moved in and his brother had offered him help, I suddenly felt shit about stealing his credits, especially since I have a similar relationship.

Speaking of the new Deus Ex, the one part that got to me was when you return to Detroit after Hengsha, and if you took stuff like credits from peoples offices before you left for China, you find e-mails on some of the computers talking about the Office Bandit, someone who went around stealing things from peoples offices. The e-mails talk about one girl who was repeatedly blamed for the thefts and how nobody felt secure in their own workspace anymore. And after the incident at Sarif in the beginning of the game and how people were still terrified just to be working there, it REALLY made me feel like a dick.

 

[Jaime_Wolf]

That depends on the game.

When games give you "paragon of virtue" and "evil reprehensible bastard" options, I don't really think so. In this case, I think for most people it's more about the fantasy and novelty of being one of the bad guys for once.

The best moral games are the ones where you have choices that are actually hard and have consequences that lead you to do unpleasant things (ideally, foreseeable consequences, making a game's morality system Nintendo hard is dumb (though the consequences might be still be DIFFICULT to predict while still being POSSIBLE to predict)). In these cases, the game actually gets you to concede that the seemingly reprehensible action is the best option on the table and these are the times I end up most affected.

In short, games that make you willingly do evil things when you didn't come in with the intention of doing evil things are the best.

 

[Thespian]

If I ever do a "Be a jerk" run on a video game, it immediately feels "fake" to me. I just detach myself from the game and usually only get to about the halfway point before getting bored.
My "canon" playthroughs always see me being nice and charitable. I mean, in the new Deus Ex, I actually

Spoiler

Sold my Rocket Launcher to pay for a woman's debts instead of beating her up to take it offer her. Yeah, I sacrificed blowing shit up in a video game for doing the right thing.

 

[hensethe1]

Feels so good being bad and theres no way I'm turning back

 

[gCrusher]

Games can be therapeutic, experiencing the effects and consequences of making decisions that may be largely considered Eeeevil. That being said, it can grate on me if I decide to take the easy way out of a situation on the shoulders (or corpses) of others who didn't deserve the decision I made through my character, regardless of being just a fake/digital life.

 

[Biosophilogical]

I very rarely play the 'bad guy' in games like inFamous, Fable, Fallout or The Elder Scrolls.

It's very hard for me to break my hardwired 'be a good guy' attitude.

The only one I have no problem with is playing a renegade in Mass Effect, mostly because renegade Shepard is still a good guy, but his methods are just ethically questionable.

I crossed out those two because I can be an evil SoaB in the first, and I haven't played the second.

OT: I have trouble being an arse in character-creation games (like Dragon Age), because it feels more like I'm being an arse, as opposed to InFamous/Fable, where it feels like I'm just playing an arse.

 

[Wardi Boi]

If I ever do a "Be a jerk" run on a video game, it immediately feels "fake" to me. I just detach myself from the game and usually only get to about the halfway point before getting bored.

I know what you mean, most "evil" decisions end up being stupid or something that makes no logical sense whatsoever; kind of like how Yahtzee explained it in his review of Infamous 2.

 

[SextusMaximus]

I accidently killed someone with a fridge in Deus Ex: HR and felt really bad, cause I was only trying to knock him out to collect cash he owed people.

From then on I started killing more and more civilians. But that got boring so I started playing Deus Ex again.

[sub][sub]ba-dum-chhhh[/sub][/sub]

 

[Bacontastic]

It speaks volumes when a game makes you feel bad when you do something that you feel is wrong. I'm someone who normally goes the merciful route. Recently playing Dues Ex I had many moments when I just crumbled emotionally when an action I did lead to something bad. We are at a time when some games can break you down emotionally and also show you what your morality is. When a game can make you feel those emotions that means that this medium is transgressing just being fun and becoming more.

An example from Infamous 2:

Spoiler

The Zeke confrontation in infamous 2's bad ending broke me down, and I had to walk away from my PS3 for a few minutes to collect myself. The thing that made that moment so heart breaking is it wasn't a cut scene killing him it was you pulling the trigger on the controller, and every time you hit him he kept trying to get back up and stop you. God damn just remembering that hurts!

 

[Avaloner]

Its hard for me to do the "bad" things in video games, I don't know why, but even when I try to play bad I just can't do it, its like a barrier I can't break, however in some games I go towards the "evil" side once or twice or should I call it "Nemesis" side, when I bring down the hammer on people that deserve to die, being renegade a few times in ME2 and in Bioshock 2 I ram my drill so deep into Pooles head he would have wished that he never met my poor little Eleanor.

Furthermore the ending of Ac2:Brotherhood just felt so wrong I actually didn't push anything for over a minute, simply because I thought there might be a way out of it, maybe the connection breaks or something, those few steps..those few button pushes just were so hard.

 

[Avaloner]

~damm double post~

 

[AlternatePFG]

Major spoilers involving that part of the quest in Fallout, cause I know people will jump down my throat otherwise.

Spoiler

That part of the game made me feel bad simply because it's set up so stupid, and the people of Tenpenny are portrayed as being evil just for not letting the armed crazy man inside their building. Sure, I guess they're racist, but even if you do convince them to let the ghouls in, they wipe out everybody down to the last person. Yet somehow killing Roy before the slaughter is an evil option, and Three Dog chews you out for it over the radio.

Bethesda can't really do interesting moral choices effectively at all. They tried it in The Pitt and they failed then too.

I never really felt bad for killing an NPC before in the game, maybe except for the Think Tank at the end of Old World Blues, as even though they were definitely going to do something very, very bad, they didn't fight back and they try to run away from you. And they were funny too, and not all of them were complete monsters. (Dala seemed to be the most reasonable of all of them.)

 

[TheScientificIssole]

If it makes you feel better, Roy totally had it coming.

True that, I killed Ten Penny early and had to load back a few levels to do the quest, so when I completed it and felt screwed over, I went back the fuck in time back to my first try and massacred every living thing there because I'd choose turning the torso of a fictional dick bag into a mangled, Bottlecap Mine propelled rocket over exp any day.
OT: I did lots of short sighted "good choices" on Fallout 3, that made me feel bad later on. Sometimes the limits to a game's karma choices make the choice depth way more dramatic and realistic.