EDIT: I have been told that this article has some potential SPOILERS for certain games as it pertains to their endings. Please, if you have not played BioShock or Fallout 3 then you have been warned.
Also fixed some typos. (FireFox spell checker FTW!)
--------------------------------------
I know, I know. What you are about to read is going to be one HUGE ASS article I made while I was bored, but I still felt the need to make it. I stumbled across this phenomenon when I saw yet another interview with a game and the guy claiming that the game will give the player choice.
There is no TL;DR version, if you can't be assed to read all of this then don't bother. I would greatly appreciate feedback. Please try to read all of it, I know it's a long article but don't be afraid of it. It won't bite back.
Oh, and one more thing. I am not Yahtzee. I am not Khell_Sennet. If you came here to read a long rant filled with swearwords and bile to the brim, then don't even bother to read let alone comment on this. This is a well thought out topic meant to bring out my opinion on the subject at hand. I felt there to be no reason to swear and curse in this topic as I felt it would be detrimental to my whole article.
I mention this because my last rant was bashed on because, quote "it didn't have enough bile." Please, if you have the attention span of a 3-year old who can't read 2 sentences without "fuck" or "shit" being in there, then I will kindly ask you to piss off.
Read the article, or don't.
Now, without further adue, I give you my rant.
I'll take the Soup
What does it mean to have choices? Dictionary.com describes choice as "the right, power, or opportunity to choose; option." In other words, you have the choice to pick the soup or salad. You have the choice to pick the Sports Car or the Van. You have the choice to bang the hot-yet-stupid blond chick or the smart-yet-nice brown haired chick.
None of these choices are easy (except if you chose the blond girl, you're a total dick), all of these choices have unexpected consequences with unexpected results. You don't know if that soup will give you one to many calories in the near future, and give you diabetes. You don't know if the Mini Van will break down and land you the best mechanic in the city. You don't know if the brown-haired chick is actually a lesbian trying to get the blond-haired chick to be jealous and like her. That is an essence of life, choosing what you think will land the best results to benefit you. None of these choices are good or bad, only sensible and insensible to your morals that you were brought up by.
In video games...not so much.
Now, what I may be asking in these next few paragraphs are probably nigh impossible in today's standards, and probably will be impossible forever, as no game can ever give you complete freedom to do what you want (unless virtual reality kicks in). This does not mean, however, that games can not at least attempt to give the player more choices and more meaningful decisions.
You see, so many games these days are striving for realism, to give you a first hand experience as if you were there, as if what you did was possible, as if you could do it right now (results may vary). An effect to this race for realism is giving the player choices, as he/she would choose in real life. The problem is; no game has yet to give the players complete and absolute choice over how he/she wants to make the outcome of the game. Oh sure, there are times where a game will fling you the "Save your Mother or Sister?" question, and if you dearly love the characters it may very well be a tough choice. But this isn't about those one-time moments; this is about choice as a whole.
A Choice; Heaven or Hell?
There is no such thing as Good and Evil.
There is only Sensible and Insensible.
The fact is, everyone is raised with different morals, different thoughts of what's right and wrong, different beliefs of how evil or good an act is, different thoughts of how these honors can be obtained. (Forgive me if my history is off in the next few sentences) Do you think Adolph Hitler would have gone to all the trouble of killing thousands of Jews if he didn't believe what he was doing was right? Napoleon would have never conquered much of Europe and removed thousands of Europeans from their homes if he thought for a second that what he was doing was "wrong". Americans did not believe that the Native Americans had any right to their land, after all they needed to expand westward and the Natives don't have any actual "claim" to their land.
The Jews caused everything, the Europeans are on my land, and the Natives have no claim to their land. All of these claims were sensible to the people who said them.
I mention this because, no matter what, every video game tries to incorporate Good and Evil into their game. It is an impossible feat, like I said before, everyone has different visions of right and wrong. And as a result of that, most of the choices given to you are painfully obvious to take because nobody really wants to play the "bad guy" the first time around.
Example(s);
BioShock
Remember how the creators of BioShock said that killing the Little Sisters would be a morally challenging? They're poor little kids in a rotten hellhole, but you could use them for your own needs. Turns out, they were wrong. BioShock claimed to have choice, a relatively simple one, but it came down to two things; Kill the Little Sisters or don't kill the Little Sisters. I did what any sensible being would do, kill some Little Sisters for their Eden and don't kill some Little Sisters for potential future help. It is right here where they screwed up the morality choices.
Later on, it became apparent to me that if I killed even one Little Sister, I get the bad ending. No exceptions, you commit an obvious evil act you go straight to hell. No middle ground, which makes the whole choice thing completely moot point since most players probably saw the bad ending. Maybe I desperately needed the Adam, after all my survival should be top priority in the hellhole that is Rapture. Many other residents do the same thing I do; only they're stupid and die.
Awww, you're so cute. Now give me just enough Adam to buy that plasmid.
There was no reason to save all the Little Sisters as either way you got Adam. It didn't matter and it didn't give you any instinctive to be a "Good" or "Bad" character as either way you get the same benefits. Maybe on the harder difficulties it did matter what you did, but when it comes to that point it's not a morality choice anymore; it's a gameplay statistic.
BioShock promised to give the player choice, but it just blew itself apart from attempting to make you sympathize with the Little Sisters. This doesn't mean that BioShock isn't a good game, by all means, it's a fantastic game. I'm just giving examples.
Fallout 3
Oh for Pete's sake, Fallout 3 had a whole damn Karma system. While I applaud the fact that Fallout 3 had many dialogue and some moral choices, there's still a huge problem with it incorporating "Good and Evil". All of the dialogue choices you are given are plainly obvious as to which one is the "Good" choice and which one is the "Bad" choice.
Through the first hour or so of me treading through Vault 101 to escape, all of the choices given to me were plainly obvious as to what was the "right" thing to do. It didn't help the fact that they tried to make me hate the Overseer by making him kill that Jonas guy who only showed up for 5 minutes or so. I didn't care that Jonas died since I was barely introduced to him, but it was clearly obvious that I shouldn't pick "You killed Jonas you evil bastard!" because there was absolutely no reason to kill the Overseer in the first place.
Then I stumbled upon Megaton; the place where the developers were pumping so much action. "Save the town... OR BLOW IT UP!!" was the choice, a very big choice for someone who just stepped out of a Vault. But why would I want to blow up Megaton in the first place? It's got everything I could really need, a few stores, a clinic, and necessities to survive the wasteland. Just randomly, Mr. Burke comes up to you and offers you to blow up the town for whatever reason. The only reasons the game gives you to blow up the town is a few dialogue choices like "This place is the scum of the garbage can", but I had no reason to hate the place in the first place.
There was no reason for me to blow up Megaton, especially on the first play through. The only reason why most people blew up Megaton was because they just wanted to see the explosion or they just wanted to get bad karma; no morality conflicted there. Just be a complete jackass for the second play through, blow some stuff up without a care. There's nothing wrong with that of course, I constantly saved and loaded times so I could kill a whole town with no consequences, but the developers give you such an obvious choice with no reason to even consider the other options. Especially so when you can just go to TenPenny Tower (the place you go to blow up the town) for just a couple of Caps.
http://www.acceleratingfuture.com/michael/blog/images/Nuke2.JPG
Supposedly, this is what the explosion looks like if you blow up Megaton. I wouldn't know.
Now, you may argue that "Well, not blowing up Megaton is the sensible thing to do, like you said." and you may be partially right. It's just that the developers pushed a supposed "difficult choice" so early on in the game that it's simply laughable as a "choice" because it's not much of a choice at all.
Another instance, late in the game this time, the "President" of the USA gave me a virus to put into the lake so that anything with a mutation (Super Mutants, ghouls, etc...) would die upon drinking it. Now, this made sense to me, that way we could kill off many of societies problems even if a few innocent souls would be sacrificed in the process, saving humanity and ridding problems would be more than worth it (of course, this was what I was told). It turns out, though, that's baaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhdddddddd. It clearly shows you that if you put that virus in the lake, the virus that can kill off Super Mutants for god's sake, it's a bad, bad thing to do. Go ahead and let the Super Mutants and feral Ghouls live for whatever reason.
It gets even better. When you complete the game, you get a monologue from the narrator of the whole thing. What he says depends on your Karma level and what you did. If you were all nice and goody, he praises you saying "The wasteland did not deter him/her...he/she stayed true to his/her quest to find his/her father and helped so many people along the way." If you were a dastardly-bastardy evil dude (complete with Mustache), he scolds you.
He fucking scolds you like a puppy.
It seems that Fallout 3 completely punished you for being bad, which is how it should be. "Evil" is generally scolded upon. But "evil" has it's own rewards. In Fallout 3, however, it gives you the naughty finger for pretty much not playing the game right. If you play as a bad character, you get the "wrong" ending but if you play a good character you get the "correct" ending. Why would I play a bad character in the first place if the game discourages me from being a bad person and taking the benefits from it? After all, the wasteland is a treacherous place, and we all have to survive one way or another.
Again, there is no such thing as "Good and Evil". I thought it was completely sensible to kill off a traitor scientist of Doctor Li's, yet I got bad karma. I thought it was evil that I was killing helpless scientists who couldn't defend themselves, but apparently it didn't matter one way because they were working for the enemy.
Apparently, I might as well have killed everyone regardless.
InFamous
Yes, I know, InFamous is not out yet, but let me explain.
Take a look at this gameplay video,
http://g4tv.com/xplay/previews/35652/Hands-On-Preview-Infamous.html
The gameplay overall looks fantastic (to me at least), but there's one itsy-bitsy thing that puts InFamous on this list. Go on try to find it. Look real closely...try your best to find out what it is...
.
.
.
Do you need a hint?
How about this;
(sorry for the quality)
What. The Hell. Is this?
In case you still don't know, this is your Karma level, right in plain sight. It clearly shows what you are doing at the moment is good or bad. InFamous is one of the many games that is claiming to have choice, it's screaming on the rooftops "Use your powers for good or evil!" But this simple design decision completely breaks the whole point of "Good and Evil". You don't know if what you are doing is good or evil, that's why choices exist with unknown consequences.
Now, instead of choosing the option that sounds good to you, you're choosing the option that will raise or lower the bar. This doesn't make the gamer question his/her morality; it's just a gameplay statistic now. All it will do is discourage the player from being bad, or force the player into playing the game a specific way so his karma level won't drop (or raise for that matter).
It doesn't help that the two choices are so completely separate, not even a 10-mile valley would show how separate they are. In the same video, I believe, the man states that if you're really good there will be Pro-Cole (the pro/antagonist) poster everywhere and the citizens might even help you fight off people. If you're Evil, however, eventually there could be Anti-Cole propaganda and the citizens will resent you and throw rocks at you.
Now, that is sensible enough, after all "Evil" is frowned upon. But yet again I come to the point of they're being no such thing as "Good and Evil". "Evil" has it's own rewards and merits, but this is exactly what Fallout 3 did where it scolded you for being a bad character. A better design choice for this would be that if you're "Evil" then most of the citizens would run away from you regardless, making unnecessary casualties less risky (hopefully this is the case, but I have yet to encounter it).
These are all moot points until the game actually comes out and I play it for myself. I pray to god that I will be proven wrong, that InFamous will actually do what it's claiming to do. But it better be damn good, because the title itself is indicating that you are going to have choices.
Sensibility and Insensibility
Let's recap for a second.
There is no good and bad, only what a person thinks is sensible and insensible.
Games always try to make these choices good vs. bad, and most people play what they would do in the situation themselves, which most of the time makes them a "Good" character.
This is a bad approach to it.
But that doesn't mean that there can't be anything done about it.
In fact, there's a (hopeful) solution just along the horizon.
Heavy Rain
The Salad. The "correct" approach. The "correct" choice
What sets Heavy Rain apart from the rest of the examples shown above? It still gives the player choice between good and bad after all, doesn't it?
Ah, but that is where you are wrong young Padawan. Heavy Rain doesn't give the players the choice to be "good or evil", it gives players the choice to chose. It's as simple as that.
(The following few paragraphs are based on this video;
http://www.gametrailers.com/player/38636.html )
In Heavy Rain, you are chasing a person known as the "Origami Killer". The first mission has you walking upon an empty house and going inside it. There is no "good" choice of knocking, there is no "bad" choice of breaking in through the window, and there is no "neutral choice" in going in from the back. All there is for you to decide is how to get into the house and how to proceed with investigating.
None of these choices are good or bad. They all have separate benefits and separate consequences. It may vary from decision to decision, but that's not the point. The point is that Heavy Rain questions you on what you would do in that particular situation. If you were there, investigating the house, would you check the refrigerator first or the cupboard? Maybe you should go upstairs first, and hurry up, as the owner could come any second. Or take your time; maybe you want to investigate more closely so you won't miss anything crucial. If the owner comes, what do you do? Do you try to sneak out? Do you confront him? Do you call the police? Do you try to kill him yourself? Maybe you've found enough evidence to enforce that. Maybe you don't want to risk killing an innocent being.
The beautiful thing about this is that none of these choices are good or bad. The game doesn't punish you for killing him; it doesn't praise you for calling the cops. It leaves all the decisions, small and large, up to you. There is no Karma system, no Karma bar that goes up and down and ultimately deciding if you are being naughty or nice.
http://www.myps3.com.au/img/game/Heavy-Rain-1.jpg
Maybe you should incapacitate her. Maybe you should sweet-talk her to put down the gun instead. Or maybe you're the one pointing the gun...
This game is now without it's own setbacks. Because of all the little details and different choices, the whole game has a <URL=http://ps3.ign.com/articles/937/937800p1.html>2,000 page script (20 movies), had 170 days of Mo-Cap work, 70 different actors, and over 30,000 unique animations to those people.
As you can see, Quantic Dream are putting a huge amount of effort into making this as believable as possible. What these people are doing with Heavy Rain, especially choice-wise, is exactly the way choices in games should be. Will it be easy to replicate/improve on this? Hell no! But if Heavy Rain turns out to be a revolution with morality and choices in gaming, it's going to be a huge step in the right direction.
Of course, all of this is moot point if the game completely sucks donkey balls. But I pray to the great Gaming Gods of Gaming, I bow down to the Video Vixens of Videos, I hope to the Consumers, that this game will succeed in what it's trying to do.
I should have chosen the Cake
Now, let this be known that I'm not saying that Heavy Rain's approach to choices is the end-of-all methods. There can definitely be games with Karma systems like InFamous and Fallout 3. These games, however, (especially InFamous, but I'll wait for the full game) are claiming that they give the player choice and that they will conflict with the player's morality. That is not the case as it just boils down to "Don't kill them for good points, or kill them for no reason and get bad points."
This is a call to end world hunger stop this bullshit with developers claiming that they give you choice. They give you preemptive results, the obvious is almost always obvious to choose and the consequences and results are near predictable.
There is no such thing as good and evil. Only sensible and insensible. The day developers start realizing this is the day where the choices aren't always obvious. The day developers start realizing this is when choices won't always be half-assed into the game. The day developers start realizing this is when they finally realize that we gamers want fulfilling games and not just BANG BANG SHOOTY SHOOTY ones.
I am Jumplion, and if you read through all of this I greatly appreciate it and don't forget to leave a comment by.
~Jumplion
Jumplion constantly tries to get the maximum Karma level in real life, but for some reason St. Peter doesn't seem to agree with what he does.
Also fixed some typos. (FireFox spell checker FTW!)
--------------------------------------
I know, I know. What you are about to read is going to be one HUGE ASS article I made while I was bored, but I still felt the need to make it. I stumbled across this phenomenon when I saw yet another interview with a game and the guy claiming that the game will give the player choice.
There is no TL;DR version, if you can't be assed to read all of this then don't bother. I would greatly appreciate feedback. Please try to read all of it, I know it's a long article but don't be afraid of it. It won't bite back.
Oh, and one more thing. I am not Yahtzee. I am not Khell_Sennet. If you came here to read a long rant filled with swearwords and bile to the brim, then don't even bother to read let alone comment on this. This is a well thought out topic meant to bring out my opinion on the subject at hand. I felt there to be no reason to swear and curse in this topic as I felt it would be detrimental to my whole article.
I mention this because my last rant was bashed on because, quote "it didn't have enough bile." Please, if you have the attention span of a 3-year old who can't read 2 sentences without "fuck" or "shit" being in there, then I will kindly ask you to piss off.
Read the article, or don't.
Now, without further adue, I give you my rant.
I'll take the Soup
What does it mean to have choices? Dictionary.com describes choice as "the right, power, or opportunity to choose; option." In other words, you have the choice to pick the soup or salad. You have the choice to pick the Sports Car or the Van. You have the choice to bang the hot-yet-stupid blond chick or the smart-yet-nice brown haired chick.
None of these choices are easy (except if you chose the blond girl, you're a total dick), all of these choices have unexpected consequences with unexpected results. You don't know if that soup will give you one to many calories in the near future, and give you diabetes. You don't know if the Mini Van will break down and land you the best mechanic in the city. You don't know if the brown-haired chick is actually a lesbian trying to get the blond-haired chick to be jealous and like her. That is an essence of life, choosing what you think will land the best results to benefit you. None of these choices are good or bad, only sensible and insensible to your morals that you were brought up by.
In video games...not so much.
Now, what I may be asking in these next few paragraphs are probably nigh impossible in today's standards, and probably will be impossible forever, as no game can ever give you complete freedom to do what you want (unless virtual reality kicks in). This does not mean, however, that games can not at least attempt to give the player more choices and more meaningful decisions.
You see, so many games these days are striving for realism, to give you a first hand experience as if you were there, as if what you did was possible, as if you could do it right now (results may vary). An effect to this race for realism is giving the player choices, as he/she would choose in real life. The problem is; no game has yet to give the players complete and absolute choice over how he/she wants to make the outcome of the game. Oh sure, there are times where a game will fling you the "Save your Mother or Sister?" question, and if you dearly love the characters it may very well be a tough choice. But this isn't about those one-time moments; this is about choice as a whole.
A Choice; Heaven or Hell?
There is no such thing as Good and Evil.
There is only Sensible and Insensible.
The fact is, everyone is raised with different morals, different thoughts of what's right and wrong, different beliefs of how evil or good an act is, different thoughts of how these honors can be obtained. (Forgive me if my history is off in the next few sentences) Do you think Adolph Hitler would have gone to all the trouble of killing thousands of Jews if he didn't believe what he was doing was right? Napoleon would have never conquered much of Europe and removed thousands of Europeans from their homes if he thought for a second that what he was doing was "wrong". Americans did not believe that the Native Americans had any right to their land, after all they needed to expand westward and the Natives don't have any actual "claim" to their land.
The Jews caused everything, the Europeans are on my land, and the Natives have no claim to their land. All of these claims were sensible to the people who said them.
I mention this because, no matter what, every video game tries to incorporate Good and Evil into their game. It is an impossible feat, like I said before, everyone has different visions of right and wrong. And as a result of that, most of the choices given to you are painfully obvious to take because nobody really wants to play the "bad guy" the first time around.
Example(s);
BioShock
Remember how the creators of BioShock said that killing the Little Sisters would be a morally challenging? They're poor little kids in a rotten hellhole, but you could use them for your own needs. Turns out, they were wrong. BioShock claimed to have choice, a relatively simple one, but it came down to two things; Kill the Little Sisters or don't kill the Little Sisters. I did what any sensible being would do, kill some Little Sisters for their Eden and don't kill some Little Sisters for potential future help. It is right here where they screwed up the morality choices.
Later on, it became apparent to me that if I killed even one Little Sister, I get the bad ending. No exceptions, you commit an obvious evil act you go straight to hell. No middle ground, which makes the whole choice thing completely moot point since most players probably saw the bad ending. Maybe I desperately needed the Adam, after all my survival should be top priority in the hellhole that is Rapture. Many other residents do the same thing I do; only they're stupid and die.
Awww, you're so cute. Now give me just enough Adam to buy that plasmid.
There was no reason to save all the Little Sisters as either way you got Adam. It didn't matter and it didn't give you any instinctive to be a "Good" or "Bad" character as either way you get the same benefits. Maybe on the harder difficulties it did matter what you did, but when it comes to that point it's not a morality choice anymore; it's a gameplay statistic.
BioShock promised to give the player choice, but it just blew itself apart from attempting to make you sympathize with the Little Sisters. This doesn't mean that BioShock isn't a good game, by all means, it's a fantastic game. I'm just giving examples.
Fallout 3
Oh for Pete's sake, Fallout 3 had a whole damn Karma system. While I applaud the fact that Fallout 3 had many dialogue and some moral choices, there's still a huge problem with it incorporating "Good and Evil". All of the dialogue choices you are given are plainly obvious as to which one is the "Good" choice and which one is the "Bad" choice.
Through the first hour or so of me treading through Vault 101 to escape, all of the choices given to me were plainly obvious as to what was the "right" thing to do. It didn't help the fact that they tried to make me hate the Overseer by making him kill that Jonas guy who only showed up for 5 minutes or so. I didn't care that Jonas died since I was barely introduced to him, but it was clearly obvious that I shouldn't pick "You killed Jonas you evil bastard!" because there was absolutely no reason to kill the Overseer in the first place.
Then I stumbled upon Megaton; the place where the developers were pumping so much action. "Save the town... OR BLOW IT UP!!" was the choice, a very big choice for someone who just stepped out of a Vault. But why would I want to blow up Megaton in the first place? It's got everything I could really need, a few stores, a clinic, and necessities to survive the wasteland. Just randomly, Mr. Burke comes up to you and offers you to blow up the town for whatever reason. The only reasons the game gives you to blow up the town is a few dialogue choices like "This place is the scum of the garbage can", but I had no reason to hate the place in the first place.
There was no reason for me to blow up Megaton, especially on the first play through. The only reason why most people blew up Megaton was because they just wanted to see the explosion or they just wanted to get bad karma; no morality conflicted there. Just be a complete jackass for the second play through, blow some stuff up without a care. There's nothing wrong with that of course, I constantly saved and loaded times so I could kill a whole town with no consequences, but the developers give you such an obvious choice with no reason to even consider the other options. Especially so when you can just go to TenPenny Tower (the place you go to blow up the town) for just a couple of Caps.
http://www.acceleratingfuture.com/michael/blog/images/Nuke2.JPG
Supposedly, this is what the explosion looks like if you blow up Megaton. I wouldn't know.
Now, you may argue that "Well, not blowing up Megaton is the sensible thing to do, like you said." and you may be partially right. It's just that the developers pushed a supposed "difficult choice" so early on in the game that it's simply laughable as a "choice" because it's not much of a choice at all.
Another instance, late in the game this time, the "President" of the USA gave me a virus to put into the lake so that anything with a mutation (Super Mutants, ghouls, etc...) would die upon drinking it. Now, this made sense to me, that way we could kill off many of societies problems even if a few innocent souls would be sacrificed in the process, saving humanity and ridding problems would be more than worth it (of course, this was what I was told). It turns out, though, that's baaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhdddddddd. It clearly shows you that if you put that virus in the lake, the virus that can kill off Super Mutants for god's sake, it's a bad, bad thing to do. Go ahead and let the Super Mutants and feral Ghouls live for whatever reason.
It gets even better. When you complete the game, you get a monologue from the narrator of the whole thing. What he says depends on your Karma level and what you did. If you were all nice and goody, he praises you saying "The wasteland did not deter him/her...he/she stayed true to his/her quest to find his/her father and helped so many people along the way." If you were a dastardly-bastardy evil dude (complete with Mustache), he scolds you.
He fucking scolds you like a puppy.
It seems that Fallout 3 completely punished you for being bad, which is how it should be. "Evil" is generally scolded upon. But "evil" has it's own rewards. In Fallout 3, however, it gives you the naughty finger for pretty much not playing the game right. If you play as a bad character, you get the "wrong" ending but if you play a good character you get the "correct" ending. Why would I play a bad character in the first place if the game discourages me from being a bad person and taking the benefits from it? After all, the wasteland is a treacherous place, and we all have to survive one way or another.
Again, there is no such thing as "Good and Evil". I thought it was completely sensible to kill off a traitor scientist of Doctor Li's, yet I got bad karma. I thought it was evil that I was killing helpless scientists who couldn't defend themselves, but apparently it didn't matter one way because they were working for the enemy.
Apparently, I might as well have killed everyone regardless.
InFamous
Yes, I know, InFamous is not out yet, but let me explain.
Take a look at this gameplay video,
http://g4tv.com/xplay/previews/35652/Hands-On-Preview-Infamous.html
The gameplay overall looks fantastic (to me at least), but there's one itsy-bitsy thing that puts InFamous on this list. Go on try to find it. Look real closely...try your best to find out what it is...
.
.
.
Do you need a hint?
How about this;
(sorry for the quality)
What. The Hell. Is this?
In case you still don't know, this is your Karma level, right in plain sight. It clearly shows what you are doing at the moment is good or bad. InFamous is one of the many games that is claiming to have choice, it's screaming on the rooftops "Use your powers for good or evil!" But this simple design decision completely breaks the whole point of "Good and Evil". You don't know if what you are doing is good or evil, that's why choices exist with unknown consequences.
Now, instead of choosing the option that sounds good to you, you're choosing the option that will raise or lower the bar. This doesn't make the gamer question his/her morality; it's just a gameplay statistic now. All it will do is discourage the player from being bad, or force the player into playing the game a specific way so his karma level won't drop (or raise for that matter).
It doesn't help that the two choices are so completely separate, not even a 10-mile valley would show how separate they are. In the same video, I believe, the man states that if you're really good there will be Pro-Cole (the pro/antagonist) poster everywhere and the citizens might even help you fight off people. If you're Evil, however, eventually there could be Anti-Cole propaganda and the citizens will resent you and throw rocks at you.
Now, that is sensible enough, after all "Evil" is frowned upon. But yet again I come to the point of they're being no such thing as "Good and Evil". "Evil" has it's own rewards and merits, but this is exactly what Fallout 3 did where it scolded you for being a bad character. A better design choice for this would be that if you're "Evil" then most of the citizens would run away from you regardless, making unnecessary casualties less risky (hopefully this is the case, but I have yet to encounter it).
These are all moot points until the game actually comes out and I play it for myself. I pray to god that I will be proven wrong, that InFamous will actually do what it's claiming to do. But it better be damn good, because the title itself is indicating that you are going to have choices.
Sensibility and Insensibility
Let's recap for a second.
There is no good and bad, only what a person thinks is sensible and insensible.
Games always try to make these choices good vs. bad, and most people play what they would do in the situation themselves, which most of the time makes them a "Good" character.
This is a bad approach to it.
But that doesn't mean that there can't be anything done about it.
In fact, there's a (hopeful) solution just along the horizon.
Heavy Rain
The Salad. The "correct" approach. The "correct" choice
What sets Heavy Rain apart from the rest of the examples shown above? It still gives the player choice between good and bad after all, doesn't it?
Ah, but that is where you are wrong young Padawan. Heavy Rain doesn't give the players the choice to be "good or evil", it gives players the choice to chose. It's as simple as that.
(The following few paragraphs are based on this video;
http://www.gametrailers.com/player/38636.html )
In Heavy Rain, you are chasing a person known as the "Origami Killer". The first mission has you walking upon an empty house and going inside it. There is no "good" choice of knocking, there is no "bad" choice of breaking in through the window, and there is no "neutral choice" in going in from the back. All there is for you to decide is how to get into the house and how to proceed with investigating.
None of these choices are good or bad. They all have separate benefits and separate consequences. It may vary from decision to decision, but that's not the point. The point is that Heavy Rain questions you on what you would do in that particular situation. If you were there, investigating the house, would you check the refrigerator first or the cupboard? Maybe you should go upstairs first, and hurry up, as the owner could come any second. Or take your time; maybe you want to investigate more closely so you won't miss anything crucial. If the owner comes, what do you do? Do you try to sneak out? Do you confront him? Do you call the police? Do you try to kill him yourself? Maybe you've found enough evidence to enforce that. Maybe you don't want to risk killing an innocent being.
The beautiful thing about this is that none of these choices are good or bad. The game doesn't punish you for killing him; it doesn't praise you for calling the cops. It leaves all the decisions, small and large, up to you. There is no Karma system, no Karma bar that goes up and down and ultimately deciding if you are being naughty or nice.
http://www.myps3.com.au/img/game/Heavy-Rain-1.jpg
Maybe you should incapacitate her. Maybe you should sweet-talk her to put down the gun instead. Or maybe you're the one pointing the gun...
This game is now without it's own setbacks. Because of all the little details and different choices, the whole game has a <URL=http://ps3.ign.com/articles/937/937800p1.html>2,000 page script (20 movies), had 170 days of Mo-Cap work, 70 different actors, and over 30,000 unique animations to those people.
As you can see, Quantic Dream are putting a huge amount of effort into making this as believable as possible. What these people are doing with Heavy Rain, especially choice-wise, is exactly the way choices in games should be. Will it be easy to replicate/improve on this? Hell no! But if Heavy Rain turns out to be a revolution with morality and choices in gaming, it's going to be a huge step in the right direction.
Of course, all of this is moot point if the game completely sucks donkey balls. But I pray to the great Gaming Gods of Gaming, I bow down to the Video Vixens of Videos, I hope to the Consumers, that this game will succeed in what it's trying to do.
I should have chosen the Cake
Now, let this be known that I'm not saying that Heavy Rain's approach to choices is the end-of-all methods. There can definitely be games with Karma systems like InFamous and Fallout 3. These games, however, (especially InFamous, but I'll wait for the full game) are claiming that they give the player choice and that they will conflict with the player's morality. That is not the case as it just boils down to "Don't kill them for good points, or kill them for no reason and get bad points."
This is a call to end world hunger stop this bullshit with developers claiming that they give you choice. They give you preemptive results, the obvious is almost always obvious to choose and the consequences and results are near predictable.
There is no such thing as good and evil. Only sensible and insensible. The day developers start realizing this is the day where the choices aren't always obvious. The day developers start realizing this is when choices won't always be half-assed into the game. The day developers start realizing this is when they finally realize that we gamers want fulfilling games and not just BANG BANG SHOOTY SHOOTY ones.
I am Jumplion, and if you read through all of this I greatly appreciate it and don't forget to leave a comment by.
~Jumplion
Jumplion constantly tries to get the maximum Karma level in real life, but for some reason St. Peter doesn't seem to agree with what he does.
