Hopes for Dragon Age III

[Chris Tian]

Also, I think you'll enjoy the DLC. I saw you mentioning you bought it, but hadn't played it in another post. It addresses a lot of the problems people have with the vanilla game, such as additional areas to visit, not as much realiance on waves and so on. I'd be interested to hear what you have to say, whenever you get around to play it.

I am really looking forward to playing the DLC.
When i started this thread I was halfway into DA2 Act1, but then thought: "Why not get the DA:O DLC I didn't have yet and replay that game too". So I bought Witchhunt, Leliana's Song, and the Golem thing and startet a new DA:O playthrough. That means I have a Blight to stop before I get to DA2 and it's DLC again, but I have quite alot of freetime next week.

Well,I'm gonna be a total asshole and say well duh you don't know why Cassandra is looking for Hawke they never tell you because it's an obvious lead into the next game. They never explain anything so there was nothing to get. >_> sorry I can't not be an asshole at this moment.

But Legacy shows a connection between the Hawke bloodline and the Grey Wardens(not a spoiler).

Yes, of course they left that hanging over the cliff.
But I mean Hawke is relatively unimportant in the grand scheme of things. So I can't imagine any reason why she(Cassy) makes such a big deal out of finding him/her. I fear any revalations in that regard will come totally out of the left field.
A bit like the "Oh look, we found this prothean device blueprint and have no clue what it will do, lets pool all our resources and build it"-thing.

And I heard about the Legacy-bloodline-connection, i think it was even in the product description or something like that. I'm really excitet to see how it ties in the rest of the story and lore.

My hope for dragon age 3 is that my companions and I can have a conversation about...

Spoiler: THIS.

I kind of understand why they haven't let us talk about it yet, but they really should now in the next game.

Especially given what's going on in the game's world now.

Hahaha, yes you are totally right about that. This bugged me a little too since DA:O.

Wynne:"Bloodmagic is super evil and gross and everybody who uses it becomes an abomination and we shouldn't even talk about it."
Warden:"Hey Wynne, would you be so kind and make that mob explode with the bloodmagic I taught you earlier?"
Wynne:"Why yes, of course my dear."

I'd like to see more of that in DA3, mages and templars if they must, but maybe with more of a focus on "when does necessary bleed over into extreme"

There's a good chance that we will see that. Because this question lies close to the whole safety vs. freedom theme. Also "the necessary bleeding over into the extreme" is kinda what happend when everybody decided that becoming a bloodthirsty monster would make their point better than, you know, staying at least somewhat close to the realm of sanity.

 

[Legion]

Mass Effect 3 and Dragon Age 2 are extremely similar in many ways in both how they work with mechanics, as well as the way the stories worked.

Sadly from what I have read by the developers on the Bioware forums (the last time I was there anyway), they are planning to continue in the same vein that they have in their last few games.

Could you elaborate both statements?
I'm not sure what you mean, i do not see too much similarity between ME3 and DA2. I had more the feeling DA2 tried to be like ME2.
And thus i'm not sure what you mean by "same vein".

It's more of an overall direction they are heading in. There are a lot of parallels to be drawn, even though the style is different.

Both games tried to focus more on an action packed adventure, whereas the previous games had more of an RPG feel to them. The removal of statistic based abilities in favour of simply requiring points to access abilities makes it feel more like Bioshock and FarCry 3 than ME1 and DA:O.

They both lessened the amount of dialogue choices, and put in their own characterisation into the playable character. For example in Mass Effect 3 not only does Shepard not like chess, they are apparently too stupid to even grasp the basics. They also are a "bad dancer" despite my Shepard never having done so in my play-through's. In Dragon Age my example is linked to my next point.

Both games used ham fisted attempts to get us to care about characters. By making you have family members in DA2 they needed to make the character care about them, or else it'd feel strange. The problem with doing this is that you cannot force the player to care about a character just because they are family. So they "made" my character express horror when certain characters died, despite me personally not feeling attached to them in the slightest. In a game based around the player creating their own character, such things should be left to them, not the writers.

In Mass Effect 3 they had Shepard suffer from post traumatic stress due to the child dying on Earth. Despite the fact that Shepard has seen millions die, has caused hundreds of thousands to by their own actions, has had close friends and possibly loved ones die in front of them, yet the game writers decide to force them to suffer nightmares over a single child who died due to their own fault.

As I said at the start, it's more of an overall direction they seem to be heading in with their style of story telling and game-play mechanics. I am not suggesting the two games are the same with their core game-play.

 

[CloudAtlas]

It's more of an overall direction they are heading in. There are a lot of parallels to be drawn, even though the style is different.

Both games tried to focus more on an action packed adventure, whereas the previous games had more of an RPG feel to them. The removal of statistic based abilities in favour of simply requiring points to access abilities makes it feel more like Bioshock and FarCry 3 than ME1 and DA:O.

There's no reason why action and RPG need to be mutually exclusive. I like action, i like RPG, but I don't like number crunching, I don't like the feeling of dice being rolled in the background to determine the success and effect of my actions.
Do I think DA2 found a great combination? No. An action RPG feel is totally fine with me, but then it just feels very wrong if you need 30 regular hits or something with your gigantic twohander to kill even the weakest enemies, no matter how low your strength or whatever is.

In Mass Effect 3 they had Shepard suffer from post traumatic stress due to the child dying on Earth. Despite the fact that Shepard has seen millions die, has caused hundreds of thousands to by their own actions, has had close friends and possibly loved ones die in front of them, yet the game writers decide to force them to suffer nightmares over a single child who died due to their own fault.

I don't know, I'm dreaming about strange and unimportant stuff all the time, not necessarily the important stuff that's happening in my life.

 

[Chris Tian]

It's more of an overall direction they are heading in. There are a lot of parallels to be drawn, even though the style is different.

Both games tried to focus more on an action packed adventure, whereas the previous games had more of an RPG feel to them. The removal of statistic based abilities in favour of simply requiring points to access abilities makes it feel more like Bioshock and FarCry 3 than ME1 and DA:O.

That made such a big difference to you, if you need 30 whatever to get skill X? Please read no judgement of any kind into the question, its pure curiosity.

I think I liked DA2 skilltrees slightly better. I liked that they were actually more, well trees(ish) and not so linear. So you had to think a bit more about wich skills to take when, to be most effective at each level.

They both lessened the amount of dialogue choices, and put in their own characterisation into the playable character. For example in Mass Effect 3 not only does Shepard not like chess, they are apparently too stupid to even grasp the basics. They also are a "bad dancer" despite my Shepard never having done so in my play-through's. In Dragon Age my example is linked to my next point.

Personally that doesn't bother me much. I dont need choices in my games. For example FF9 is one of my favorite games, especially for its writing, story and characters. If i remember correctly you have almost zero choices there, dialogue or otherwise.
That means I dont need a blank template hero, I like the sort of pre written heroes like Geralt from The Wichter just fine.
And Shepard feelt very similar, he/she was never really like the Warden or my Skyrim hero to me. He/She was always Shepard, he/she had two extrem versions, the badass and the paragon, I only chose where between them he/she would stand and make his/her descisions according to that. Hawke was kinda a Shepard clone so for him/her its the same.

It starts bothering me very much if I'm presentet with choices and then it turns out they have no meaning or consequence. Skyrim did that excruciatingly bad.
I was the slayer of Alduin, Archmage of the Mageschool, Herald of the Companions, Warhero of the civil war, Thane of every city, but still some measly noble could frame me for murder just by saying I did the crime.
I just atempted to assassinate the Emperor and butchered myself through his bodyguard and when the guards a the gate spot me I can just pay a small fee and go my way?
Or even worse I actually succeeded in my assassination of the Emperor of this Empire in the midst of civil war and NOBODY gives a f*ck???
Well now [/rant] ähem....

My point is, if a developer doesn't want to take player choices into account while making his game, fine don't present me any. But if you do present choices they better have appropriate impact on my gaming expirience.

Both games used ham fisted attempts to get us to care about characters. By making you have family members in DA2 they needed to make the character care about them, or else it'd feel strange. The problem with doing this is that you cannot force the player to care about a character just because they are family. So they "made" my character express horror when certain characters died, despite me personally not feeling attached to them in the slightest. In a game based around the player creating their own character, such things should be left to them, not the writers.

Well i cant really say much to this point, because family themes always hit VERY close to home with me. If you introduce a character like "Hi, this is your sibling/mother" i immediatly care a great deal about them.
So my oppinion says nothing about how well there attempt to make you care about your family in DA2 went.

In Mass Effect 3 they had Shepard suffer from post traumatic stress due to the child dying on Earth. Despite the fact that Shepard has seen millions die, has caused hundreds of thousands to by their own actions, has had close friends and possibly loved ones die in front of them, yet the game writers decide to force them to suffer nightmares over a single child who died due to their own fault.

I have not much to add here too, i absolutely hated the dreams too. Always hated to suffer through them, and that they are not cutscenes you can skip.

As I said at the start, it's more of an overall direction they seem to be heading in with their style of story telling and game-play mechanics. I am not suggesting the two games are the same with their core game-play.

Okay, that you did not mean they have similar gameplay was obvious, even to me.

 

[CloudAtlas]

(...)
The problem with this is that mix and matching gameplay elements from multiple genres, especially ones that are inherently different, tends to be a fail on all sides.

Always better to focus more on one thing and do that extremely well than to try to make the game equivalent of the spork.

And how exactly are they inherently different?

 

[Smeatza]

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I thought we were using the normative sense of morality, not the descriptive sense.
In a descriptive sense each person defines their own morality, that is true.
In a normative sense imprisoning those who have done nothing wrong yet, is objectively wrong.

Let me give you an example, If you were a monarch, and given the choice between letting thousands die from a horrible disease, or creating a cure, at the cost of a 5 year old girls life, would you consider this a moral choice?
Because it's not.
Let's break it down and get to the core of the morality of the decision. Taking one action will lead you to murder an innocent child and succeed in helping your subjects, taking the other action will lead to you failing in helping your subjects.
There is nothing morally wrong with failing, there is with child murder.
You could try and justify it, with the argument "more people survive if you take the second choice." But that is not a point of morality, it's a point of practicality.

I suppose it not only depends on what sense of morality you use but also your definition of "moral choice."
You could define "moral choice" as any choice that challenges your descriptive morality.
I usually define it as a choice between two equal (either moral or immoral) normative moralities.

For example, You are a network administrator and another employee (who is your friend's partner) requests you release a personal e-mail they sent, out of the spam filter. When scanning the e-mail (as is standard procedure for such an incident) you realise that it is being sent to a lover, and the employee in question is having an affair.
When accepting the job you signed an agreement of confidentiality stating that you would never make light of anything read in personal emails, except if there is a danger to someones life.
To tell the friend about the affair would betray the agreement of confidentiality you have with all the employees.
To keep it to yourself is to be complicit in your friends partner's affair.
Both choices are equally immoral.

It would be helpful if there was an objective definition for "moral choice" but I can't find one for the life of me.

 

[Chris Tian]

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snip

I thought we were using the normative sense of morality, not the descriptive sense.
In a descriptive sense each person defines their own morality, that is true.
In a normative sense imprisoning those who have done nothing wrong yet, is objectively wrong.

Let me give you an example, If you were a monarch, and given the choice between letting thousands die from a horrible disease, or creating a cure, at the cost of a 5 year old girls life, would you consider this a moral choice?
Because it's not.
Let's break it down and get to the core of the morality of the decision. Taking one action will lead you to murder an innocent child and succeed in helping your subjects, taking the other action will lead to you failing in helping your subjects.
There is nothing morally wrong with failing, there is with child murder.
You could try and justify it, with the argument "more people survive if you take the second choice." But that is not a point of morality, it's a point of practicality.

I suppose it not only depends on what sense of morality you use but also your definition of "moral choice."
You could define "moral choice" as any choice that challenges your descriptive morality.
I usually define it as a choice between two equal (either moral or immoral) normative moralities.

For example, You are a network administrator and another employee (who is your friend's partner) requests you release a personal e-mail they sent, out of the spam filter. When scanning the e-mail (as is standard procedure for such an incident) you realise that it is being sent to a lover, and the employee in question is having an affair.
When accepting the job you signed an agreement of confidentiality stating that you would never make light of anything read in personal emails, except if there is a danger to someones life.
To tell the friend about the affair would betray the agreement of confidentiality you have with all the employees.
To keep it to yourself is to be complicit in your friends partner's affair.
Both choices are equally immoral.

It would be helpful if there was an objective definition for "moral choice" but I can't find one for the life of me.

Okay lets get the definiton of "moral choice" out of the way, since I can't find a clear one either (not in englisch nor my native language). So iI will skip that since we seem to have slightly different interpretations, for you it should be some kind of moral dilemma (did i understand that correctly?), for me its enough if the choice challenges my moral somehow, even if its a no brainer for my chosen character.

For the other part of your argument.
(Disclaimer: Like you have no doubt noticed, english is not my native language. Since I am not clear if i am translating "normal" "norm" etc correct let me say when I use normal morals from now on I mean what that most peoply in our society consider the to be right and morally correct)

I think your personal moral, might bleed into what you consider to be the normal moral.

You say imprisoning someone who has done nothing is objectively wrong. But there are people locked away in psychriatric institutions because they are considered very dangerous to others and/or themselfes, without having done anything yet.

In your second example you say failing to do something is never morally wrong. I would say thats also not considered normal moral, since if you fail to help someone who is in mortal danger, for exapmle not calling 911 (in the US case, here it is 112, no clue where you'r from) you can be held legally liable, at least here (in Germany).

 

[Smeatza]

I think your personal moral, might bleed into what you consider to be the normal moral.

You say imprisoning someone who has done nothing is objectively wrong. But there are people locked away in psychriatric institutions because they are considered very dangerous to others and/or themselfes, without having done anything yet.

Which is immoral. Practically it makes sense. These people are very likely to compulsively hurt others or themselves and there's nobody (no family members etc.) who is able/prepared to look after them.
To lock them up against their will is immoral when they've done nothing wrong.
But it's more practical than taking the risk or somebody getting hurt.

In your second example you say failing to do something is never morally wrong.

Not never morally wrong. Not morally wrong in that particular situation.
In the situation I gave there being no cure was the status quo. By not killing the girl you may not have gained a cure, but effectively nothing has been lost.

I would say thats also not considered normal moral, since if you fail to help someone who is in mortal danger, for exapmle not calling 911 (in the US case, here it is 112, no clue where you'r from) you can be held legally liable, at least here (in Germany).

Exactly.

 

[Chris Tian]

I think your personal moral, might bleed into what you consider to be the normal moral.

You say imprisoning someone who has done nothing is objectively wrong. But there are people locked away in psychriatric institutions because they are considered very dangerous to others and/or themselfes, without having done anything yet.

Which is immoral. Practically it makes sense. These people are very likely to compulsively hurt others or themselves and there's nobody (no family members etc.) who is able/prepared to look after them.
To lock them up against their will is immoral when they've done nothing wrong.
But it's more practical than taking the risk or somebody getting hurt.

My point is that society obviously thinks this practice is right. Because i've never heard of protest against this kind of thing.
You were saying its objectivly immoral. But there is no such thing as objectivly immoral, there are only everyones own morals. We consider it to be "the morally right thing" if most people have the same/similar moral values at some point.
Since most people agree that locking people away, that are very likely to hurt others, it becomes "the morally right thing" by that definition.

In your second example you say failing to do something is never morally wrong.

Not never morally wrong. Not morally wrong in that particular situation.
In the situation I gave there being no cure was the status quo. By not killing the girl you may not have gained a cure, but effectively nothing has been lost.

By that same principle the satus quo is the guy lying in front of me is bleeding to death, so if i do not call for help nothing is lost.
But society would still say I was behaving immoral and even punish me for it.

I am still thinking you might mistake your own morals for objectively right.

For example I think its morally 100% okay to lock dangerous people away even if nothing happend yet. If some guy is violent and crazy, please put him away.
If some guy has a terminal illnes that he can pass on by breathing the same air, i do not want him to ride the bus with me.
And maybe more extrem and controversial, if i could save 100 men women and children by killing one innocent girl, thats a no brainer for me. The good of the many and so on.

 

[Imp_Emissary]

Well,I'm gonna be a total asshole and say well duh you don't know why Cassandra is looking for Hawke they never tell you because it's an obvious lead into the next game. They never explain anything so there was nothing to get. >_> sorry I can't not be an asshole at this moment.

But Legacy shows a connection between the Hawke bloodline and the Grey Wardens(not a spoiler).

Yes, of course they left that hanging over the cliff.
But I mean Hawke is relatively unimportant in the grand scheme of things. So I can't imagine any reason why she(Cassy) makes such a big deal out of finding him/her. I fear any revalations in that regard will come totally out of the left field.
A bit like the "Oh look, we found this prothean device blueprint and have no clue what it will do, lets pool all our resources and build it"-thing.

And I heard about the Legacy-bloodline-connection, i think it was even in the product description or something like that. I'm really excitet to see how it ties in the rest of the story and lore.

My hope for dragon age 3 is that my companions and I can have a conversation about...

Spoiler: THIS.

I kind of understand why they haven't let us talk about it yet, but they really should now in the next game.

Especially given what's going on in the game's world now.

Hahaha, yes you are totally right about that. This bugged me a little too since DA:O.

Wynne:"Bloodmagic is super evil and gross and everybody who uses it becomes an abomination and we shouldn't even talk about it."
Warden:"Hey Wynne, would you be so kind and make that mob explode with the bloodmagic I taught you earlier?"
Wynne:"Why yes, of course my dear."

I think I can answer that question of why Hawke is important.

They do kind of explain it. Hawke like the warden is someone who both or (depending on how you played in DA2) at least on side of the fight will listen to, so the seekers(I guess because they are looking) can get them to stop fighting and hopefully talk it out.

Why would they listen to Hawke?

Well there are a number of reasons.
1. He is a champion. Not as great as "Hero of Ferelden", true, but still. You don't see those every day.

2. (The other reasons depend on what you did, who you are in both games before.)First off if the warden was a human mage, you could have been related to the Hero of Ferelden, who as the name may tell you is a famous hero mage.

3. Hawke may have been something of a hero to one or both sides of the little Mage/Templar war depending on how you acted. And he/she may have also been the viscount too.

4. Whatever Hawke was like, he/she did save Kirkwall, twice. Just saying.

5. Also, Hawke and the Warden seem to have both gone somewhere, maybe at the same time, and maybe with each other. So, maybe find one, find both?

Yeah Hawke probably isn't as important to stopping the mess as the warden is, but he/she isn't very "unimportant". Though, how important dose depend on a few things.

 

[Legion]

It's more of an overall direction they are heading in. There are a lot of parallels to be drawn, even though the style is different.

Both games tried to focus more on an action packed adventure, whereas the previous games had more of an RPG feel to them. The removal of statistic based abilities in favour of simply requiring points to access abilities makes it feel more like Bioshock and FarCry 3 than ME1 and DA:O.

There's no reason why action and RPG need to be mutually exclusive. I like action, i like RPG, but I don't like number crunching, I don't like the feeling of dice being rolled in the background to determine the success and effect of my actions.

I agree, but Dragon Age: Origins was one of those kind of games, so wanting the same from a sequel is not a bad request in my opinion. Action RPG's are great, but it's not what I got into the series for. There are already plenty of games that fit that description.

Obviously some people prefer it, and I am certainly not saying that they are wrong for liking it, or that Bioware have no right to change it, but I tend to think sequels should be of a similar style to the game before. Unless it's been a significant amount of time (Fallout series) and they are trying to bring the series into a more modern design.

That made such a big difference to you, if you need 30 whatever to get skill X? Please read no judgement of any kind into the question, its pure curiosity.

I think I liked DA2 skilltrees slightly better. I liked that they were actually more, well trees(ish) and not so linear. So you had to think a bit more about wich skills to take when, to be most effective at each level.

As I said to CloudAtlas, it doesn't bother me from a game-play perspective, it bothers me that Origins was praised as a traditional RPG, and they decided to change the direction in the sequel. There are many other action games out there, but stat based RPG's are becoming rarer.

Personally that doesn't bother me much. I dont need choices in my games. For example FF9 is one of my favorite games, especially for its writing, story and characters. If i remember correctly you have almost zero choices there, dialogue or otherwise.
That means I dont need a blank template hero, I like the sort of pre written heroes like Geralt from The Wichter just fine.
And Shepard feelt very similar, he/she was never really like the Warden or my Skyrim hero to me. He/She was always Shepard, he/she had two extrem versions, the badass and the paragon, I only chose where between them he/she would stand and make his/her descisions according to that. Hawke was kinda a Shepard clone so for him/her its the same.

It starts bothering me very much if I'm presentet with choices and then it turns out they have no meaning or consequence. Skyrim did that excruciatingly bad.
I was the slayer of Alduin, Archmage of the Mageschool, Herald of the Companions, Warhero of the civil war, Thane of every city, but still some measly noble could frame me for murder just by saying I did the crime.
I just atempted to assassinate the Emperor and butchered myself through his bodyguard and when the guards a the gate spot me I can just pay a small fee and go my way?
Or even worse I actually succeeded in my assassination of the Emperor of this Empire in the midst of civil war and NOBODY gives a f*ck???
Well now [/rant] ähem....

My point is, if a developer doesn't want to take player choices into account while making his game, fine don't present me any. But if you do present choices they better have appropriate impact on my gaming expirience.

Agreed, but my problem is that Bioware tries to pretend that their games do have choices. They used these "choices" as selling points for their games. They use phrases such as "Shape the story" and other things to try and convince us that we are playing as our own character, when we are not.

There is nothing wrong with characters already having their own stories and personalities, but Bioware tends to pretend that they are doing otherwise when they advertise and discuss their games.

My criticism stems from them changing what they did in previous games, when they are established as direct sequels. The games should really (in my opinion) feel more like multiple parts to the same story, rather than mixing and matching as they go along.

If they didn't try selling "Make your own character and tell your own story!" as a selling point, then it wouldn't bother me.

But I mean Hawke is relatively unimportant in the grand scheme of things. So I can't imagine any reason why she(Cassy) makes such a big deal out of finding him/her. I fear any revalations in that regard will come totally out of the left field.

I will not give spoilers, but the Legacy DLC does show that Hawke is more important than previously thought. Still not as important as the Warden perhaps, but more so than before.

 

[Chris Tian]

I agree, but Dragon Age: Origins was one of those kind of games, so wanting the same from a sequel is not a bad request in my opinion. Action RPG's are great, but it's not what I got into the series for. There are already plenty of games that fit that description.

Obviously some people prefer it, and I am certainly not saying that they are wrong for liking it, or that Bioware have no right to change it, but I tend to think sequels should be of a similar style to the game before. Unless it's been a significant amount of time (Fallout series) and they are trying to bring the series into a more modern design.

That made such a big difference to you, if you need 30 whatever to get skill X? Please read no judgement of any kind into the question, its pure curiosity.

I think I liked DA2 skilltrees slightly better. I liked that they were actually more, well trees(ish) and not so linear. So you had to think a bit more about wich skills to take when, to be most effective at each level.

As I said to CloudAtlas, it doesn't bother me from a game-play perspective, it bothers me that Origins was praised as a traditional RPG, and they decided to change the direction in the sequel. There are many other action games out there, but stat based RPG's are becoming rarer.

For me DA2 did not become less RPG-y because the skills have no stat requirements. Since DA2 still has stats like CON, DEX, etc. and they are fairly important for your overall effectiveness.

Agreed, but my problem is that Bioware tries to pretend that their games do have choices. They used these "choices" as selling points for their games. They use phrases such as "Shape the story" and other things to try and convince us that we are playing as our own character, when we are not.

There is nothing wrong with characters already having their own stories and personalities, but Bioware tends to pretend that they are doing otherwise when they advertise and discuss their games.

My criticism stems from them changing what they did in previous games, when they are established as direct sequels. The games should really (in my opinion) feel more like multiple parts to the same story, rather than mixing and matching as they go along.

If they didn't try selling "Make your own character and tell your own story!" as a selling point, then it wouldn't bother me.

Okay you are right, they did not deliver that expirience as advertised in DA2.

I will not give spoilers, but the Legacy DLC does show that Hawke is more important than previously thought. Still not as important as the Warden perhaps, but more so than before.

cut

You make some good points Imp Emissary. I will revise my opinion about this issue when I have played Legacy since several people now told me that it has some impact on the importance of Hawke.

 

[CloudAtlas]

Let me give you an example, If you were a monarch, and given the choice between letting thousands die from a horrible disease, or creating a cure, at the cost of a 5 year old girls life, would you consider this a moral choice?
Because it's not.
Let's break it down and get to the core of the morality of the decision. Taking one action will lead you to murder an innocent child and succeed in helping your subjects, taking the other action will lead to you failing in helping your subjects.
There is nothing morally wrong with failing, there is with child murder.
You could try and justify it, with the argument "more people survive if you take the second choice." But that is not a point of morality, it's a point of practicality.

But only in the morality system you chose for yourself here - but that is not the only one there is. If you adopt the utilitarian perspective, you'd only be concerned with maximizing overall utility, or the Greater Good. Granted, that's a simplistic description, and there's more than one branch of utilitarianism, but bear with me here. So, in your example, as result of your choice either thousands are dead, or just one. Clearly, thousand deaths are worse than one, so killing the girl is clearly the morally superior choice - from a utilitarian point of view. You might not like the utilitarian philosophy, you might think it's wrong, but that's not the point.

Things are a bit more complicated in reality, though. Your sick subjects might feel very uncomfortable with the idea of sacrificing a child for their cure, and the rest of your people might share this sentiment, so overall utility might actually be lower in the kill-the-child alternative, but that would probably be a bit beyond the scope of this example.

A good, entertaining, and very popular introduction to these issues is "Justice with Michael Sandel" - you might find it interesting. First episode: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBdfcR-8hEY


So, no, I think your example very well qualifies for a moral dilemma. It is, in fact, a classic dilemma - Michael Sandel talks about it too, already in the first episode I believe.

 

[chuckdm]

1. The narrative of Mass Effect 3 is about many things. It is about literally saving the galaxy from annihilation - that is Shepard's overarching goal.

No, it isn't. That is Shepherd's goal in Mass Effect 1, and saving the galaxy from a considerably slower annihilation is the goal of Mass Effect 2. This is why I didn't complain about those, because yes, that IS what I want. In ME3, the superfluous reason as to why Shep is doing that he's doing is to stop the Reapers. But every interaction he has with the reapers, be it the reaper on Rannoch or any of the various dialog with indoctrinated organics, is all about the Organic vs. Synthetic conflict. In effect, ME3 is like one of those pictures where someone screwed up the zoom - it's heavily focused on one aspect of the picture and blurry elsewhere, paying only lip service to what should have been the prime directive of the game. The fact that you aren't even allowed to MENTION your alliance between the Geth and Quarians to Starchild shows how the developers had tunnel vision here. Even if that alliance didn't change Starchild's mind, Shep would never work so hard to make that alliance work, then fail to even mention it to Starchild. Why? Because it serves to disprove that the whole Organics vs. Synthetics conflict is necessary to begin with.

And you know what? I loved all of it. And I'm not the only one. So don't be so arrogant to assume that everyone hated the deeper themes, that everyone would have preferred a simpler, shallower story. None of that is true, and frankly, a bit insulting.

There's nothing deep about this. That's my whole damn point. It's Organics vs. Synthetics. And guess what? Shep is an Organic. He's fighting to save Organics. And even if you choose to save the Geth, you're still using them to defeat Synthetics as part of a mostly Organic army. The game spends all this time and effort drawing your attention to this forced moral conflict and yet you can't even side with the Synthetics. I agree that'd be silly, but that's kinda the point - the only GOOD, moral choice is peace and coexistence, which in the end is the only choice you cannot make. Even the Synthesis ending posits that without destroying everything that makes either Organics or Synthetics unique, they can never have peace. That's not peace. It's genocide and selective breeding of a master race, but prettier.

2. I don't think the concept of moral choice, and moral ambiguity, is what you believe it is. It is about making choices between morally distinct alternatives, but nothing says that one of those choices has to be clearly morally superior than the others.

My point exactly. Neither side is morally distinct from the other any more than either is superior. On one hand, we can damn the many to protect the whole from the few. On the other, we can damn none to protect none from the few. That is, neither freedom for all the Mages, nor total lockdown of all the Mages, is a good choice. They are both BAD CHOICES. Neither is even 1% better than the other. This isn't a choice we can weigh and apply a modicum of logic and reason to - either side is a coin toss and both heads and tails lose. Neither choice has to be drastically superior. But one MUST be at least SLIGHTLY superior to the other, or else it is not a moral choice, but merely a choice. For the side we chose to be moral, there must be something about it that makes it a better choice than the other side. But here, there isn't. Both sides are totally morally bankrupt, as neither solution solves even a tenth as many problems as it creates.

Moral choices that lack a (at least slightly) more moral option to choose are not moral choice. They are coin tosses that we fool ourselves into thinking are superior choices because we aren't allowed to simply not choose, and the consequences of choosing poorly are dire. So we tell ourselves one option is better. That isn't moral choice. It's false moral choice. Mages vs. Templars is false moral choice.

And, from a gameplay perspective: aren't difficult, ambiguous choices, choices that make you think about what might be the right thing to do, much more interesting?

Yes they are. Until NEITHER is the right thing to do. Then they're frustrating, not interesting. That's Mages vs. Templars.

As Chris Tian already said, the mages vs. templars conflict has nothing to do with racism, it is about freedom vs. security. The reason to control mages is very real - they often are dangerous. And this is a conflict I find interesting precisely because it is morally ambiguous, and precisely because it is connected to our real world experiences. Every society in the world struggles to find a balance between freedom and security.

I'd argue that it is still predominantly about racism, but let's say you're right. Let's look at an example. If we abolish the TSA tomorrow and next week the terrorists fly another plane into another building, then obviously that was the wrong choice. If we start requiring passports just to travel state-to-state and 5,000 totally innocent people end up locked away for a year just so we can catch zero terrorists, obviously that was probably the wrong choice too. In both cases, the arguments against EITHER choice are as strong, if not stronger, than the arguments in favor of either choice. In effect, the only right choice is to do nothing, because the odds of something good or bad happening are equally high, yet by doing nothing, we achieved the same level of failure without the expense.

In this case, neither choice is better. I wouldn't expect either choice to be 50% better. But if we're going to go to the expense - and have to be responsible for our choices too - then one choice had damn well better be at least 1% better than the other. And they're not. They are equally bad all around, and neither has even a slight advantage over the other, or a disadvantage that is not cancelled out by the other. Both choices suck equally, and the collateral damage from either choice makes neither worth choosing.

So no, this is still bad moral choice, or really, not moral choice at all. A good, functional moral choice system should not be black-and-white, nor should it be a coin toss. It should be like a real world quarter, actually - weighed 5% in one choice's favor, but not obvious to the naked eye. This gives the player a "right" choice to make, but doesn't make it easy. It shouldn't be easy. But it should be rewarding. If both choices are outright awful, there's no reward, only regret. Mages vs. Templars leads to nothing but regret no matter what the hell you do.

4. With all your ranting against moral ambiguity, you seem to forget that DA:O, the one game which you seemed to like, is full of morally ambiguous choices, you have to make them from the very beginning to the very end. I could name countless examples of that on the top of my head. Pretty much the only thing that is not ambiguous in some way is, well, the darkspawn. They are evil and need to be destroyed.

True, but DA:O is ABOUT the darkspawn (and really the Archdemon.) It's a well-crafted game for this very reason. The plot driver, the one thing that guides everything you do, is defeating the Archdemon. Everything else is a means to that end. All the moral choice in DA:O is used for side quests. That isn't to say it's not important.

In fact, DA:O uses Mages vs. Templars in the BEST way it can be used - solely to determine whose help you gain against the blight. Hell, ME3 even did this right once. Quarian, Geth, or Both? Mages, Templars? But the question here is different because it's not in a vacuum. If the entire game of DA:O was the "return to the tower" mission and nothing else, it'd be an awful game. But the fact that we can add some weight to one side of the scales - we can pick sides on the merit of which side is more useful against the Blight - gives is an ever-so-slightly better choice (Mages) and makes the moral choice system really work.

But an entire game built around that mechanic just fails. This is why ME3 and DA2 failed, even if nobody wants to admit it. All the story problems (mechanics are unrelated), endings or otherwise, are limited by trying to fit them into these frameworks. If they'll just drop the stupid Alliance vs. Horde crap for DA3 I promise you it'll be better.

But they won't, and I'll end up arguing this again next year. *sigh*

 

[CloudAtlas]

Go play an older RPG, coincidentally from this very same developer, Buldars Gate 1 and 2 and Neverwinter Nights. These are slow games, certainly not "actiony" positively "lardy." These are mother fucking RPGs. Seems the antithesis to action games does it not?

I did play Baldur's Gate 2, and I loved it. But I wouldn't want to play a modern game with such a combat system anymore. If you do, that's fine, of course, I just disagree with the suggestion that "actiony" combat systems would be inherently, objectively less appropriate for an RPG.

Certainly RPGs can incorporate things from action games, works well enough in the tales series and star ocean games in the JRPG side of things. All sorts of genres have incorporated RPG mechanics, and have helped these genres with more tools to work with.

But straight up combining RPG and action? Maybe one day some developer will be able to accomplish this and make it work successfully and create some new genre, but given how hard all attempts have been so far, seems ill fated to ever work.[/quote]

For me, an RPG is just about, well, being able to play a role. That's all. Being able to play a role like Warrior, Ranger, Rogue, whatever, and/or being able to behave noble or ruthless. I don't even necessarily request a level progression system. But I can do just fine without worrying about stats, numbers, chances and all that.

Tastes are just different, I guess.