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

[supermariner]

in my first playthrough i tend to be good
and let the environment i interact with flourish and improve because of my enlightened touch

then on my second playthrough i fuck it up and laugh maniacally as i do lots of murder n that

 

[[.redacted]]

I always want to be evil, but it's not always catered for.

For instance, if I want to be evil and get something off a vendor, most games won't let me kidnap his daughter and hold her at gunpoint for the goods. If sed vendor has some seriously powerful guards, the evil path just isn't catered for it all.

I mean, I can be much better at being evil than most games allow for.

 

[ReaperzXIII]

The end justifies the means! I'll do whatever is necessary is my motto, my only problem is that games seem to make good super nice and bad super evil when I just want to be an Anti-hero because thats how I would react.

 

[Wapox]

I tend to say FUCK ALL on my first playthrough.. then I say... Why the FUCK did I do that!?!?! on my second playthrough and then I just do as I please! I love moral Choice games... I get to play them over and over and over again and it's FUN being EVIL!!! BTW Love is evil backwards... just try and say it aloud

 

[UltraDeth]

I always enjoy being morally good. It takes effort but it pays off somehow

 

[brighteye]

I usually play a game as good to the Nth degree the first time, so i can justify a second playthrough as a douche.
( ..and if reincarnation really works ill come back as a douche as well.)

 

[Sunstrike]

Personally I find most of the moral choice systems we have today to be incredibly shallow and unsatisfying. I won't get into older games that offered moral choice by way of open worlds and role playing instead of having to spell out good/evil options and dialog trees, but I do prefer the first system.

A potentially bigger problem for modern moral choice systems though, is the ineptness of video game story writers. I almost always end up taking the "good" option just because the rest of the options are just making you seem like a douchebag for no reason. I would love playing an "evil" character if the evil options actually made sense and were interesting rather than just variations of "beat the tar out of this dude because RAAAAAAR I'm so evil". Give me some motivation, maybe an evil master plan, atleast do the work to characterize the player and give a reason for why they are so evil. One thing most writer' should immediately recognize is that the antagonist always has to be as interesting, if not more so than the protagonist. Until video game writers man up and can make evil players interesting, I will usually be choosing good every time.

TLDR: good, because the writers for the evil storyline's are just bad.

 

[FarleShadow]

I choose good choices normally, but not because I believe being good and wholesome is ok, rather that it seems that the Good choices simply make more sense than the dick ones.

Like, meeting a new character, they say "Hey, how are you?" and the only bloody choices you'll get are:
"I'm GREAT, HOW ARE YOU?" good.
"Not bad, you?" Neutral.
"I WILL RAIN HELL UPON YOU IF YOU SO MUCH AS SPEAK TO ME AGAIN" Evil.

My preference is 'I'll go with this good choice now, but I'm just acting until the game gives me a REASONABLE bad response, not just being evil for evil's sake'

 

[the Revenator]

I simply do what I would do in those situations, it usually ends up being good because I'm a soft hearted *****..... but yea I really do what I would do... then I play the game again as an evil bastard!

 

[Naheal]

I'll just leave this here:

There was a moral choice that was presented to me from a player of Fallout. You're sent out to go find a little girl's bear. You can either give her the bear or tear off the bear's head and stomp on it in front of her.

Funny thing: you gain karma for both. The first, you're being a nice guy. The second, you're teaching her that the world is a harsh, harsh one and that she wouldn't always get what she wanted.

 

[BookBeast]

I choose good choices normally, but not because I believe being good and wholesome is ok, rather that it seems that the Good choices simply make more sense than the dick ones.

Like, meeting a new character, they say "Hey, how are you?" and the only bloody choices you'll get are:
"I'm GREAT, HOW ARE YOU?" good.
"Not bad, you?" Neutral.
"I WILL RAIN HELL UPON YOU IF YOU SO MUCH AS SPEAK TO ME AGAIN" Evil.

My preference is 'I'll go with this good choice now, but I'm just acting until the game gives me a REASONABLE bad response, not just being evil for evil's sake'

I find being limited to saint/blah/complete monster options annoying too. But video game designers in general are getting better about this. Consider BioWare: in Knights of the Old Republic you pretty much had the saintly Light Side option and the sociopathic Dark Side option (which was, often as not, detrimental to the player). In the Mass Effect games the options may be less clear-cut. You can do morally reprehensible things that are ultimately justifiable. Some Paragon options involve threatening people or getting them shot.

And, of course, there's Dragon Age, which has no karma meter and, most of the time, options that cover the whole spectrum between selflessly good and psychotically evil. More than that, there are multiple situations in which all of your options are morally questionable to some degree. I think BioWare is ahead of most other game studios in this regard, even if they are to blame for the overuse of stupidly extreme moral choices and karma meters in the first place.

 

[Toaster Hunter]

I usually go with the good path, not because of any moral reasons, but because I don't want to alienate someone who might be useful later. To counter this, I shoot evil characters on sight whether I need to or not.

 

[Srdjan]

Game must be really good for me to role-play, usually am evil as hell.

I was really role-playing in KotOR 1 and 2, second have means to be really chaotic evil as you can with fucking Sith Lord as PC.

 

[DanielBrown]

I always start the game with a goody two-shoes character, then my next one will be evil reincarnate. The third one follows the middle path, if I can be arsed to play the game that many times.

I do this mainly for achievements.