"Moral" Choice systems and Choice systems impacting gameplay and story. How to do them right?

[Bashfluff]

LOOK AT THE BOTTOM WHERE THE SHINY LETTERS ARE IF YOU WANT TO SAVE SOME TIME.


I hate moral choice systems. I hate them for much the same reason that Yahtzee does. But I've always liked the idea of moral choice systems, or at least choice systems. What you find interesting or important or moral or whatever impacting your gameplay...that's fascinating to me. It's part of why I like Katawa Shoujo so much. You have a variety of stories, each with different characters and a different tone and with different exploration of the world depending on what you as a player chose in the game. I want to apply that type of design to a game that I'm making, but I'm having no small amount of trouble. Allow me a purposefully vague example about a TV show, because reasons:

One character, physically fit, proud, and with a minor hero complex, dresses up and plays hero. She gets a big head and her friends conspire to undermine her efforts and leave her with frighteningly low self-esteem by beating her at her own game, all the while teasing her about it and giving her some lesson as to what she was doing was immoral because she was hogging the spotlight.

Naturally, this storyline rubbed people the wrong way, and while the character accepted it, the fans felt that if they were writing the character right, she'd probably never want to be friends with those characters again. So I got to thinking, while I was thinking about "moral" choice systems in games. What would happen if she did react realistically? In my head, she goes to the next town over and hides, beaten, betrayed, alone, and depressed in a bar. This leads to her meeting some washed up superhero writer who sees her plight and the chance to make a real life superhero out of her. Her outfit, a spot-on parody of the Batman, symbolizes that betrayal (because it was her outfit before) and also her new decision to be a hero, partially out of spite for her friends, partially because of the hero complex, partially because of her shifting moral compass and attitude, and partially because she's pretty good at it.

But her friends, obviously, want to make nice and get her back home. They attempt to contact her and reconcile, or something like that. All while there is some big bad or something because this has to have a plot. Forgive me, I didn't think too much about that part because this is just an example.


So, you have two extremes: Hero/lone wolf, who is bitter, shifting her loyalties on protecting the city she now lives in (because that loyalty has to go somewhere) and exploring her personality outside of being loyal and a good friend all while exploring and having to live with her own weaknesses as a hero (she's none too bright and stupidly stubborn and headstrong).

Aaaand Loyal friend/something something who feels that deep desire for reconciliation. While she is hurt, as the events of the game progress, she's open to mend friendships and eventually become friends again, even if it will never be the same.

Unlike Katawa Shoujo, this isn't supposed to have a wildly different tone, in my mind. It's supposed to be one consistent narrative that has drastic changes depending on what the player feels (just like my examples). This should also have a combat system (I believe the term is action RPG? Think Infamous in that regard. Real time combat with RPG elements). How do you have these choices effect the combat without

A) Running into the "rewards are given to the biggest saints and the biggest cocks" issue.

B) Making the player unsatisfied because they're not happy with the changes to the combat so that they have to make choices they don't want to make to get a system they're happy with.

And how do you implement a system with two extremes, or even just many paths a player can take to affect the story, without changing the tone drastically? And don't get me started on sidequests...

Basically, if you had to make a system where player choice impacted the story in huge ways that changed gameplay in the same fashion WHILE making the tone consistent and satisfying the player, what would you do?

 

[BrotherRool]

Make Alpha Protocol, have enemies show up or allies show up or enemy composition change depending on player actions, but work on the basis that the changes should reflect the fact the player has chosen rather than reward or punish. So as consequence of playing nice a terrorist lives and will show up to be beaten again but also someone else will choose to ally with you. If you killed him he doesn't show up again but someone else has a grudge against you.

The trick is to make the changes to combat grey as well, so the player can't parse one as being better than the other, it's just different.

You also have to limit the type of story you can tell. You need a narrative that will propel you forward in roughly the sameway for a wide variety of reasons. In The Walking Dead, most actions are reactions to external uncontrollable elements (like a zombie apocalypse) so it allows player choice and to influence the character and aspects of the world, with the same tone but you can cut down on branching paths because it's natural for it all to fold into one.

Finally I think inFamous would have been a really good example of combat if they'd offered a grey element to the upgrade system too. So you start the game with a mixture of precise and destructive powers, as you minimise civ. casualites or unleash destruction you _lose_ some of the opposite powers and gain powers that suit your goals more closely.

inFamous did a great job of giving powers appropriate to a players choice and of creating a combat system that inherently contained the morality decisions. It's problem was you didn't lose anything by going light or dark, only gained. If going completely light loses you dark powers than that would make it viable for the player to choose any place on the spectrum which reflects their morality without being punished

 

[Orange12345]

maybe try to make an Ikaruga thing with the powers, like if you are evil(red), light(blue) enemies will be easier to kill but red enemies will be harder to kill and vice versa, and if you stay neutral all the enemies will be equally difficult or easy to kill

 

[norashepard]

I'm a fan of reaction systems, like in Dragon Age or Fallout: New Vegas, where the actions very clearly have effects, but those effects are left up to the player when determining good/evil. Like the Great Khans in FONV are a bunch of drug runners, but they are good to their own people, and only hurt people who attack them, so the player has to decide if they're good, bad, or just whatever.

Also similar things for big choices. Have multiple choices, and make them have their big changes, but don't have anyone run up after saying, "Oh hero! You saved me!" or the like. Or if you do, have both sides. "Oh hero! You saved me!" "Yeah, by smashing up my house!"

 

[Shrack]

Most moral choice systems I have are extreanly bianary and lack subtlty. Either you are a saint or the devil which is unrealistic. Also they cannot take into account WHY you make a choice. In Bioshock 2 there is a character who in taped messages wanted to die because he was turning into a monster and going insane. But you find him he wants to live. There are many different reasons to kill or spare this character. For example you can kill him for revenge, mercy kill him, just follow his wishes from when he was sane or kill him to keep him from killing other people. Moral choice systems can't take this kind of thing into account.

 

[Legion]

The largest hindrance to proper moral choice systems are time and money. You'd need so many diverging paths to make it effective, that essentially a lot of it would be a waste. Making content that only a tiny minority of players will experience is not so much an issue if it is something small like a hidden collectible, but if it is something that requires extensive work like a moral choice would require, it can be somewhat daunting, and not cost efficient.

Then there is this, which is a very good point:

Most moral choice systems I have are extreanly bianary and lack subtlty. Either you are a saint or the devil which is unrealistic. Also they cannot take into account WHY you make a choice. In Bioshock 2 there is a character who in taped messages wanted to die because he was turning into a monster and going insane. But you find him he wants to live. There are many different reasons to kill or spare this character. For example you can kill him for revenge, mercy kill him, just follow his wishes from when he was sane or kill him to keep him from killing other people. Moral choice systems can't take this kind of thing into account.

Most moral choices do not take into account the reason for why you do something. Like in Fallout 3 and New Vegas you get good karma for killing bad people. Okay, most people do it because they are bad people, but if you kill them "just because", then the moral system isn't working. For instance if you kill a character that is bad, but you don't know it at the time, you still get the good karma.

Moral choices are incredibly hard to work into the game without a ridiculous amount of effort.

Really, the best way to make moral choices isn't to have a statistic for it, but to just make the choices available without anything to tell you if you made the right one or the wrong one.

The Walking Dead is an excellent example. You get given the choice between saving one of two people on several occasions. The game doesn't say one is good and one is bad, it leaves it up to you to decide what you think the right one is. The other characters react to your choice and it's up to you to justify it in the dialogue options afterwards.

 

[Pulse]

It shouldn't be two extremes to begin with. There should never be a meter saying you are GOOD or BAD, but npcs should react to you differently depending on who they are and what you did. Make your choices affect who attacks/helps/speaks to you, and how much/aggressively they do so.

If you attack someone, then allies of the deceased hate you, neutrals are wary of you, enemies are grateful.
If they are weaker then weak npcs fear you, strong npcs have contempt equals vary.

It depends on what you're doing with the A.I

Having combat skills/abilities as "rewards" to binary morality systems effectively renders the morality aspect of it moot, don't force a player to choose between a skill path they like the look of and a narrative they're invested in. Each should be their own separate considered choice on their own merits.

 

[Danceofmasks]

The Witcher ... gets to choose between being a dick, being a dick, and being a dick.
Seriously, though .. that's the way things should be done, though perhaps with a little less dick - every action has consequences, and no choice is really any better than any other.

 

[James Joseph Emerald]

The Witcher ... gets to choose between being a dick, being a dick, and being a dick.

You're forgetting the subtle nuance: it's a choice between being a racist dick, being a terrorist dick, or being an apathetic dick.


Anyway, I think "moral choice" is a misnomer. Since the morality of the choice is subjective, the concept itself is redundant.
For example, take the choice to eat a bacon sandwich, or eat a bowl of porridge. For most people, this is a fairly arbitrary choice with very little morality involved; but to a vegetarian it represents a serious personal decision. As a game developer, that's not really something you can account for.

It should just be a 'choice system'. And even then, I think it should be handled a lot more naturally than "Press A for choice 1; press B for choice 2."

 

[bug_of_war]

Moral choices has never really been well developed simply because too often they do the whole Bioware/Fable thing where depending on how many 'points' you put into one or the other will determine your look. The worst case scenario is Fable 3 though, where the games supposed 'half way point' basically comes down to making decisions on whether to gain or loose money. The stupid thing is that ALL the good actions loose money whilst all the evil actions gain money. So already the devs made it difficult for player whom generally found themselves being good to succesfully save the town while still remaining good. You can't even explain to the populace the reason why you're being a dick, so right then and there your choices are gone and it's no longer about being good or bad, but raising money.

One game that I played that did actually have a good moral choice system was Spec Ops: The Line. It didn't count what you did as a numerical value, rather it let you ponder about your actions. Also, at no point does the game come up and say DO THIS TO BE GOOD OR DO THIS TO BE BAD. It presents you with a situation and allows you to pick what to do without telling you what to do. A good example is the section where

Spoiler

one of your squad members is killed by locals and they are surrounding you.

The game doesn't flat out tell you to shoot them, but it does tell you the people are a threat and that your team mate wants to kill them. The option is left up to you though, and without holding your hand or having button props or text pop up, it leaves it up to the player on whether they open fire on the crowd, or shoot in the air to scare them away.

I know this was more a thread about how to make choices effect the actual outcome of the game and the two examples I gave really don't do a whle lot to effect the actual outcome, but personally I believe that in order to succesfully pull off that idea would require us to stick to the numerical system. Games would then have to calculate "Well, they did 4/9 bad things, so do we give him this outcome or this?", I know this is a bleak outlook, but I am unable to think of a system that would really work in any other way than that, and I personally am not a fan of the whole moral point system.
So yeah, to wrap this up I'd say steer clear of Fable 3 for advice on how to do a moral system and to take some pointers from Spec Ops.

 

[Loonyyy]

Make Alpha Protocol, have enemies show up or allies show up or enemy composition change depending on player actions, but work on the basis that the changes should reflect the fact the player has chosen rather than reward or punish. So as consequence of playing nice a terrorist lives and will show up to be beaten again but also someone else will choose to ally with you. If you killed him he doesn't show up again but someone else has a grudge against you.

The trick is to make the changes to combat grey as well, so the player can't parse one as being better than the other, it's just different.

You also have to limit the type of story you can tell. You need a narrative that will propel you forward in roughly the sameway for a wide variety of reasons. In The Walking Dead, most actions are reactions to external uncontrollable elements (like a zombie apocalypse) so it allows player choice and to influence the character and aspects of the world, with the same tone but you can cut down on branching paths because it's natural for it all to fold into one.

Finally I think inFamous would have been a really good example of combat if they'd offered a grey element to the upgrade system too. So you start the game with a mixture of precise and destructive powers, as you minimise civ. casualites or unleash destruction you _lose_ some of the opposite powers and gain powers that suit your goals more closely.

inFamous did a great job of giving powers appropriate to a players choice and of creating a combat system that inherently contained the morality decisions. It's problem was you didn't lose anything by going light or dark, only gained. If going completely light loses you dark powers than that would make it viable for the player to choose any place on the spectrum which reflects their morality without being punished

Pretty much this.

If the system doesn't have a large impact on the game, it's pointless, but that impact has to mean something. You can't pull the Dishonored BS where the story contradicts the meaning, contradicts the character, and the gameplay is hampered by association with a broken moral choice system. Similarly, Fable isn't really offering choices, so much as kicking a kitten or sacrificing yourself for one, and the open setting means that these decisions feel very arbitrary. The new Fallout games do this terribly, where Karma is a magical load of BS which is metagamed to hell, and has no relevance to the story.

The few moments in "Spec Ops: The Line" that gave you choice were very interesting, exploring the idea of controlled narrative, the expectations players had, and giving different resolutions, which were all fairly well thought out.

The best way is to simply make choices matter, and make sure that players know that what they do has been effecting things. Rather than letting them affect something, and letting them know it has through a +5 Angel/+10 Hitler points, and changing the ending cutscene.

 

[mooncalf]

My favourite moral choice ever came about in Bioshock. No, not the grand overall moral choice. Slight spoiler warning.

The dancing splicers: During the apartment section of Bioshock the player character enters a home where two splicers are dancing to the tune of a gramaphone, apparently oblivious of and ignoring the player's presence in the room. The gramaphone is perched precariously atop a stack of books and most importantly, a box of shotgun shells. The outcome of you taking the box of shells is predictable, the gramaphone will become unbalanced and topple, stopping the music and inciting the wrath of the splicers. So then, do you take the ammo or not?

I think it is a question which has a surprising amount of nuance, the splicers aren't 'nice' for you to want to please them, the gains aren't great and amount to theft in any case, you have something of a noble cause but you could avoid yet more murder and destruction simply by leaving the scene as you find it.

 

[Loonyyy]

Chrono Trigger(a game with over 15 major endings): every decision actually changed the endings. Unlike many modern choice games, you weren't given hundreds of useless dialouge options, which, in the end made no diffrence, but instead, were given several major choices which affected the ending. Also, the ending in the game changed depending on when you fought the final boss (you could fight him 3 hours in, in a 20 hour game).

WARNING! Potential Minor Spoilers Below(The Walking Dead, Mass Effect, Dragon Age Origins, Knight of the Old Republic 1 and 2)

OT: Mass Effect was terrible for choice. All we got was 3 diffrent colours in identical endings.
The Walking Dead's choices had no impact on the main flow of the game whatsoever(with the exclusion of a choice in chapter 1).
KotoR 2 was probably the best if you include the content restoration mod. The game changes quite a bit depending on the choices you make, and is the only game(besides Chrono Trigger) that I have felt somewhat satisfied with the choices.
Dragon Age Origins had a nice ending, making sure to wrap up all your choices. The main impact on the game itself though is minimal(mainly just dialouge) which is dissapointing
KotoR 1 was terrible for choice. It never let you off the leash untill the last hour or 2 of the game. And even then, there were only 2 endings.
The funny thing about choice in games, is that(IMO) that Chrono Trigger did it better than ME, KotoR 1 and TWD. Yet Chrono Trigger was realeased all the way back in 1999(I think) for the PS1.

That's no coincidence. As technology's gotten better, people have become accustomed to voice acted, fully animated stories, and these end up being more expensive to produce the same amount of content, and that's hard to justify if the player might miss it.

I'd really like a game that stepped back from the bleeding tech edge so that it could do some of this.

 

[Marik2]

Make the decisions ambiguous and with no meter or system that shows what you have done.

Some visual novels do that good

 

[deathbydeath]

I seem to remember my favorite "moral choice" being the one involving the illegal farm in Deus Ex 2, but most of that came from the dichotomy of the WTO and the Order. The reason I liked that so much is because there is no stigma attached to any of it. The question is merely: "When rebuilding a society, do you start from the bottom or the top?" Also, both methods are valid with each having their own strengths and flaws.

 

[sanquin]

Moral choice systems, if done right, should never have clear good/evil/neutral choices. Bioware was (or is?) well known for their dialogue choice options and such but they always have a very binary morality to them. It's always good/neutral/evil. Or sometimes not even neutral.

The Witcher 2, for me, came close to this. Their choices were still too limited, mind you. It was usually either one or the other. Just two options for a situation. But in the first area I already encountered quite a few choices where it wasn't clear what the good or bad choice would be. I instead had to rely on my own morality, figuring out what I would personally think was good or bad when picking between the choices.

 

[Arslan Aladeen]

I'm a bit tired of the moral choice system, but if I had any say in it, I would have it done in gameplay. It just seems a bit disingenuous to me how I can be slaughtering hundreds, and all of a sudden this one person in the cut-scene seems so special for no particular reason.

 

[xorinite]

Personally I really liked the system in Fallout: New Vegas. Specifically the 'fame' and 'infamy' system.

You do a certain act and some people will think what you have done is really good and will praise you for it, another group might hate you for it.
I also really liked how you could have both, it wasn't one meter, it was two. Did you save a village from destruction only to rob the bank after? well then +80 fame, +40 infamy. The game then considers you a dark hero or something similar.

 

[infohippie]

Allow me a purposefully vague example about a TV show, because reasons:

Or you could just accept that Mysterious Mare Do Well was a crap episode from a writer who just does not "get" the show.

The problem with trying to implement choice systems in games is that paths will quickly diverge and it becomes ever more difficult to account for the cumulative consequences of the player's actions. This is why choice needs to be constrained fairly severely in order for the dev team to have any hope at keeping the number of permutations down to something they can deal with.