Bioshock and Moral Choices in Gaming Generally
- Thread starter The Blue Mongoose
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True, it was originaly meant to be about saving brain-washed people from a cult I think, but right up to the end they were bigging up the choices the player would have to make.
Kill more people.The Blue Mongoose said:
Steal everything. Even if you drop it immediately after.
It'd be nice if the choices weren't so black and white (although after reading the Fallout posts it looks like not all games are like that). My only experience
of this sort of thing is Bioshock, the bad ending was kind of disappointing after all the hours put in but the good ending was sickly-sweet shmaltz and made me actually prefer the bad one.
What I never got was how much it was played up that the moral choice would be so hard, the first time I played not once did I find it hard to harvest the little sisters. Says something about me I suppose haha!
of this sort of thing is Bioshock, the bad ending was kind of disappointing after all the hours put in but the good ending was sickly-sweet shmaltz and made me actually prefer the bad one.
What I never got was how much it was played up that the moral choice would be so hard, the first time I played not once did I find it hard to harvest the little sisters. Says something about me I suppose haha!
Yeah.Abedeus said:
If you have good Charm or Intimidate, or if you did his Family Armor quest you can save him. Or you can shoot him in the face. Or have Ashely shoot him.
No. Limited amount of moral choice does not explain why those choices are limited to kindergarten, saint/slightly selfish/puppykicker morality.Crazie_Guy said:
That is a strawman. The issue is not that games do not "feel real", it's that developers are not giving you anywhere near as much choice as they could.
Observe how many different choices you have to obtain stuff from a shop in Nethack:
http://nethack.wikia.com/wiki/Stealing_from_shops
You can pay, murder the shopkeeper, steal, anything. And the game is older than dirt. Today's games with *massive* budgets could easily give you an equivalent array of ways to handle situations.
Abedeus said:
No, you can't die. Ashely attacks when you signal here to, and Wrex never fires first.
This an interesting topic, in Bioshock I was a "good guy" and I always played games, that, when given the choice, I'd do the right thing. However after playing what seams like an endless number of games the past few years, and getting bored of "will you save me i have nothing to give you blah blah blah" and me going "of course young maiden i will take an hour out of whatever im doing for NO apparent benefit" Im now saying "No, I'd rather stab you in the face and rob all your belongings!" Take Fallout3 first time i played it i didn't blow up megaton because I didn't want to kill a load of innocent people, second time, I blew the f***ers up, and was rewarded with a wonderful explosion and *goodies* from Mr.Burke 
happy days.
happy days.I find an inherent problem with "moral choices" in videogames in general, and its their relation to the plot. Choices are given to you to either move the plot forward, or have an effect on the NPCs around you. These choices are boiled down to the point of they are nothing more than a text block that chooses cutscenes, or they make NPCs occasionally gasp around you and close or open quests. The choices themselves are irrelevent as the end result of the choice is more important for both enjoyment and immersiveness of the game then the actual "choice" your making.
It seems to me that the "moral choice" fad in games is like the idea of a "free-roaming" game. The idea is great, and every once in a while it hits, but the theory contradicts years of practice, videogames with no driven forward progress tend to fall apart, as the "free-roaming" turns into exactly that, the ability to roam the map, as much as you want whenever, or they try to fill it up with so much crap that you lose focus. The reason there are more than 1 game released every month is because they are different, if every game had to be played 5 times to get a real feel for how good it is, the market would fall apart. Instead what were left is are empty balloons of ideas like moral choice and free-roaming, where developers either overspend trying to base the game around it and make everything else suck, ignore it and make it a an annoyance, or just make it 10 hours long.
It seems to me that the "moral choice" fad in games is like the idea of a "free-roaming" game. The idea is great, and every once in a while it hits, but the theory contradicts years of practice, videogames with no driven forward progress tend to fall apart, as the "free-roaming" turns into exactly that, the ability to roam the map, as much as you want whenever, or they try to fill it up with so much crap that you lose focus. The reason there are more than 1 game released every month is because they are different, if every game had to be played 5 times to get a real feel for how good it is, the market would fall apart. Instead what were left is are empty balloons of ideas like moral choice and free-roaming, where developers either overspend trying to base the game around it and make everything else suck, ignore it and make it a an annoyance, or just make it 10 hours long.
If a game were to make a realistic moral choice system, then each moral action would have to drastically alter the course of the game. That would be cool, but hard to make.
For Bioshock, the return for less adam is exclusive plasmids that you cant get otherwise.
In general, I think that whether I am nice to a game character depends on whether I like them and whether they deserve what Im about to do to them. I just cant harvest little sisters, I mean yeah they are creepy but do you really need to kill them? Conversely, I can kill every drunkard or whatever the hell they are from Assassins Creed and not lose a wink of sleep. Its all relative, there are some things you can kill and some you cant.
In general, I think that whether I am nice to a game character depends on whether I like them and whether they deserve what Im about to do to them. I just cant harvest little sisters, I mean yeah they are creepy but do you really need to kill them? Conversely, I can kill every drunkard or whatever the hell they are from Assassins Creed and not lose a wink of sleep. Its all relative, there are some things you can kill and some you cant.
Interesting point... it is true that euthanasia would not be considered 'good' by many people, and I too was surprised when i recieved good karma for the act. It should have been a neurtal choice wiht no effect on your karma.Rajin Cajun said:
Also, the killing of 'evil' characters gave you good karma at times and was rewarded by the supposed 'good' characters (regulators). I know a lot of people believe that killing is a bad moral choice whether or not the person you kill is evil. Especially when it's someone like that annoying doctor whose only crime as i can see was to create androids and refuse to belive they had feelings... bad maybe but not deserving of a shotgun blast to the face...
It wasn't so much the euthanasia part of it as much as the reason why I did it because I thought it would be hysterical. So therefore my motivation was evil because I did it because it was funny not because I was thinking about saving people. Though I do agree with your post I just don't happen to believe killing is always 100% evil I believe there are always justifiable reasons to shed blood.miracleofsound said:
My point is that I should be the only judge of whether my actions are good or bad and not an arbitrary game mechanic that then restricts me from doing certain things because my overall actions were considered "good" or "evil.
Levine said that the addition of the endings was requested by someone "higher up on the food chain than [him]."SmilingKitsune said:
He says he wants to "explore your impact on the world through lots of little permutations rather than like a giant ending piece, if you follow my meaning."
I hope so. The endings kinda pissed me off too. I did see something kind of interesting, and seriously mild spoiler alert on this, but
Right after you make your first decision, you can pick up an audio diary from Tenenbaum explaining that removal of the symbiote is like "taking a terminal patient off life support," which I felt trivialized the whole choice right after you make it for the first time.
It seems that much of the time, they're not very effective, because committing an amoral choice in the game doesn't seem to have large enough rewards or drawbacks. I keep waiting for a game where the advantages and disadvantages of both choices are equal.
The other thing is that it's usually pretty easy to go back on your decision if you decide it was the wrong one. My cousin was playing Fallout 3 yesterday, and he went and massacred everyone in Megaton just because he felt like it, then reloaded an earlier save and people were greeting him as a hero. If there was a game where once you made an important moral decision, its effects would exist throughout the entire game until you had beaten it, the sense of choice would be much stronger.
The other thing is that it's usually pretty easy to go back on your decision if you decide it was the wrong one. My cousin was playing Fallout 3 yesterday, and he went and massacred everyone in Megaton just because he felt like it, then reloaded an earlier save and people were greeting him as a hero. If there was a game where once you made an important moral decision, its effects would exist throughout the entire game until you had beaten it, the sense of choice would be much stronger.
Abedeus had it right - Mass Effect was fantastic for the moral quandaries that you had to deal with.
There were several times during my two playthroughs that I would simply sit there and think "God damn it, what do I do?". There are a couple examples I would like to make.
WARNING: I DON'T KNOW HOW TO MAKE SPOILER WINDOWS SO IF YOU HAVEN'T BEATEN MASS EFFECT DO NOT READ THIS
First off, during my Renegade playthrough, when you find the rachni queen in captivity on Noveria (at least I'm pretty sure it was Noveria), she apologizes for the havoc her children have caused. I legitimately sat there for a good five minutes, because I was actually torn between two options - kill her for Renegade points? That's what my character would do. Or do I set her free? That's what i would do. Good stuff.
Second, Garrus gives you a mission to track down a rogue doctor that he was forced to let go when he was with C-Sec. The man is guilty of murder, black market organ trafficking, and is all in all a huge douchebag. When you and Garrus finally track him down, he begs for mercy, and Garrus begs you to let him kill the doctor. Another "Hmmmm...." moment for me - this was on my Paragon playthrough. Do I take the doctor to jail, uphold the law and become the biggest jerk of all for denying Garrus his revenge? Or do I let Garrus murder this doctor in cold blood?
END SPOILERS
Such good stuff. That's just a tiny, tiny taste of what ME has to offer as far as moral questions go. That's a giant reason that ME is in my top five favourite games of all time.
There were several times during my two playthroughs that I would simply sit there and think "God damn it, what do I do?". There are a couple examples I would like to make.
WARNING: I DON'T KNOW HOW TO MAKE SPOILER WINDOWS SO IF YOU HAVEN'T BEATEN MASS EFFECT DO NOT READ THIS
First off, during my Renegade playthrough, when you find the rachni queen in captivity on Noveria (at least I'm pretty sure it was Noveria), she apologizes for the havoc her children have caused. I legitimately sat there for a good five minutes, because I was actually torn between two options - kill her for Renegade points? That's what my character would do. Or do I set her free? That's what i would do. Good stuff.
Second, Garrus gives you a mission to track down a rogue doctor that he was forced to let go when he was with C-Sec. The man is guilty of murder, black market organ trafficking, and is all in all a huge douchebag. When you and Garrus finally track him down, he begs for mercy, and Garrus begs you to let him kill the doctor. Another "Hmmmm...." moment for me - this was on my Paragon playthrough. Do I take the doctor to jail, uphold the law and become the biggest jerk of all for denying Garrus his revenge? Or do I let Garrus murder this doctor in cold blood?
END SPOILERS
Such good stuff. That's just a tiny, tiny taste of what ME has to offer as far as moral questions go. That's a giant reason that ME is in my top five favourite games of all time.
I getya. Maybe the moral karma code was based on vault ethics... or those of Dad... or Todd Howard... or Todd Howard's dad...Rajin Cajun said:
Justafiable reasons to shed blood (i.e. chinese invasion simulator) equals because it's hilarious... hehe
Although it isn't half as hilarious as becoming the pint sized slasher and VATS killing the entire neighbourhood with a carving knife