Good, Bad, or Other - Moral Choice Games and You

[BookBeast]

Quite a number of games these days involve moral choice elements. The moral choices you're offered may involve significant trade-offs, or may not; your options may be straight-up "good vs. evil" or more nuanced; and your choices may be tracked by a karma meter, a reputation system, or not at all.

My question is: why do you make the in-game moral choices that you make? Are your moral choices primarily economic (e.g., "I'll pick the 'good option' this time because I'll get a bigger reward that way"), character-driven (e.g., "my Commander Shepard is a ruthless badass"), exploratory (e.g., "last time I picked Option X, but I want to see what happens if I pick Option Y this time"), or something else entirely?

I tend to be the good guy in games with moral choice systems: I actually find it difficult to take the selfish/evil option, even if I'm curious about the outcome. I think this is because, deep down, I want to be a superhero (or something like that), so I play that out in games when I can.

 

[staika]

I almost always pick the good path because i have been trained to hate doing the bad path because of games like fable and KOTOR which make your evil character just not pleasant to look at so if i ever did the evil path i had my guy wear a mask or something along those lines.

 

[Phoenix09215]

I tend to always pick the "bad" options of my first run through of a game because they're normally more fun. Theres not really any other reason... I never think about whether I want my character to be bad but if I play through the game I will always choose a different option to see what happens.

 

[Mr.Incognitus]

I normally make more than one save for the game, one good and one evil and I normally play through with the good character first

 

[Leole]

I tend to be the good guy in games with moral choice systems: I actually find it difficult to take the selfish/evil option, even if I'm curious about the outcome. I think this is because, deep down, I want to be a superhero (or something like that), so I play that out in games when I can.

Took the words out of my mouth.

Always, ALWAYS good on the first playthrough, then, be a son of a ***** with everyone and everything on the second playthrough since I know/don't care about the plot anymore, I loved blowing up Megaton, I loved killing the Little Sisters (Though, the adam you got in exchange was pretty much not that usefull), I loved to zap everyone's balls on InFamous.

But yeah, I always love more to play as the good guy.

 

[The Wykydtron]

I always have two saves in moral choice games, one good, one bad. Though less so with games like Fable where the evil option is there only for people who want to be a dick just for the sake of it. Rather than Mass Effect's "you can be a dick but you know it's kinda the right thing to do"

 

[BookBeast]

I almost always pick the good path because i have been trained to hate doing the bad path because of games like fable and KOTOR which make your evil character just not pleasant to look at so if i ever did the evil path i had my guy wear a mask or something along those lines.

Mass Effect 2 has something like that as well. Commander Shepard starts the gamr with some scarring and visible cybernetics: Paragon actions makr him/her look more "normal," while Renegade actions bring on the glowing red eyes, damaged Terminator face, etc. You can go Renegade and stay beautiful with a very expensive ship upgrade. Of course, some people like the scary glowing eyes and exposed cybernetics.

The karma-induced appearance change in that game really bugs me, especially since it's so crude in comparison to the way your actions (from Mass Effect 1, even!) play out later on.

 

[2xDouble]

I'll just leave this here:

 

[Cosplay Horatio]

I always choose the good when it comes to moral choices in games.

 

[Timmey]

I like to choose the evil option as often it appears more entertaining to me, perhaps I am slightly evil, or perhaps it is more fun... meh, slightly evil! muhahahaha

 

[Jedamethis]

I play through good and bad, but sometimes I have another, where I do what I would do in real life. Which often tends to be good, but stealing and occasionally killing somebody who deserves it.
I prefer reputation over moral choices, because then there are more consequences than "you look terrible because- HEY LOOK OVER THERE" and "So, I heard you like killing babies? I'm going to kill you because of a rumour."
"You killed my family ************!" and "How dare you slander my wife! Have at you!" Are much more fun.

 

[JourneyThroughHell]

My moral choices are based solely on my personal moral ideas and my values. I play games with choices the way I would make the choice myself.

Therefore, usually good, but fairly ruthless.

 

[kasperbbs]

I tend to be the good guy in games ,occasionally i slapped around a few people in me2 ,threw someone out the window ,but other than that im good.. And usually being good pays off in the long run.

 

[Berserker119]

Good guy first, bad girl second, a combination of the two if I decide to do a third run.

 

[Shionarco]

I usually play through as good or neutral in a game first, then I make a totally crazy evil character the next play through. Like my last character I made was an evil canibal doctor that used melee weapons in New Vegas, he sided with the legion naturally.

 

[BookBeast]

I play through good and bad, but sometimes I have another, where I do what I would do in real life. Which often tends to be good, but stealing and occasionally killing somebody who deserves it.
I prefer reputation over moral choices, because then there are more consequences than "you look terrible because- HEY LOOK OVER THERE" and "So, I heard you like killing babies? I'm going to kill you because of a rumour."
"You killed my family ************!" and "How dare you slander my wife! Have at you!" Are much more fun.

Fallout: New Vegas is good for that kind of thing: you can have different reputations with a variety of different factions - and a single action can change your reputation for the better with one faction while doing the opposite with another. I think that if a game's going to track the player's moral history, the multi-faction reputation approach is usually the best way to go.

 

[.No.]

I tend to mostly be the good guy, but I also kill people who deserve it. And make kleptomaniac characters.