Everything in Army of Two: The 40th Day. Great game, but the moral choices are still freaking pointless.
Moral Choices in Games that never really matter.
- Thread starter Ranorak
- Start date
Recommended Videos
I don't think there was any Moral choices in it or any other Final Fantasy game.dthvirus said:
OT:In concern with Fallout
The reason your dad sacrifice himself for you is cos love conquers hate
I'd say the Obsidian panel at PAX answered this question best (look up for their video, it has to be floating around somewhere I'm sure).
Because choice costs blood sweat and tears. 2 months production time for a single set of cutscenes on 1 level only (that is, if you want it to look and play properly). That's why.
Alpha Protocol, that is coming out by them, took something like 4 years to develop and the numero uno reason was that they wanted to provide a game where the choices would matter more than anywhere else. Until we get to try it out, games like Mass Effect will stay at the forefront I s'pose.
EDIT: Here it is. These guys lay it out on the line about choices within video games perfectly I think.
http://www.blip.tv/file/3491456
Because choice costs blood sweat and tears. 2 months production time for a single set of cutscenes on 1 level only (that is, if you want it to look and play properly). That's why.
Alpha Protocol, that is coming out by them, took something like 4 years to develop and the numero uno reason was that they wanted to provide a game where the choices would matter more than anywhere else. Until we get to try it out, games like Mass Effect will stay at the forefront I s'pose.
EDIT: Here it is. These guys lay it out on the line about choices within video games perfectly I think.
http://www.blip.tv/file/3491456
Probably killing Whisper in Fable 1.
Did it every playthrough good or evil cos it didnt matter.
DONT DO IT FARMBO-*slash*
Did it every playthrough good or evil cos it didnt matter.
DONT DO IT FARMBO-*slash*
See this I find a little odd. I liked Fallout 3 and enjoyed that the moral system was basically tucked away. I didn't want to suddenly gain extra magical powers just because I was particularly nice and patted some dogs or that I was particularly nasty and kicked them. It was just a register that ticked away quietly in the background. Adding game mechanics would have taken some of that away.syndicated44 said:
Which leads me to your next statement. You say that you didn't think it had enough impact but then later that you prefer there was no impact at all?
I'm going to have to agree with the OP and say Fallout 3. You could be a massive asshole to everyone you meet, blow up Megaton, murder civilians for not reason, and there is no effect on the story. I had the highest Karma level when I beat the game, and I still got the bad ending simply because of a single choice I made within the last 30 seconds of gameplay. There is no way to influence the plot directly, and the only way to change what ending you get is a single choice.
One of the only games to use a moral system well was SMT: Devil Survivor. You could pick and choose which story battles you were involved in and could only participate in a few of them per in-game day. Because of the overhanging time limit, you had to pick and choose which faction you dealt with the most. Once you had gotten to the last day, you would be given a choice of which faction you wanted to side with during the final battle depending on your actions and decisions during the previous 6 days. Plus, the game actually had different endings depending on what you did, not just a slightly changed cinematic like in Fallout 3 or Bioshock.
One of the only games to use a moral system well was SMT: Devil Survivor. You could pick and choose which story battles you were involved in and could only participate in a few of them per in-game day. Because of the overhanging time limit, you had to pick and choose which faction you dealt with the most. Once you had gotten to the last day, you would be given a choice of which faction you wanted to side with during the final battle depending on your actions and decisions during the previous 6 days. Plus, the game actually had different endings depending on what you did, not just a slightly changed cinematic like in Fallout 3 or Bioshock.
I don't want a ending based on moral choice, I want it based on the actions you took, for example if you decided not to help the town and instead hunted down the bad guy, you'd get a good guy ending but you stand alone, or a bad guy ending were you saved the town and in the end enslaved it. THAT would be a good game and give plenty of replay value because you'd be curious as to how much you could mix and match.
Because changing sides before the end-point wouldn't 'adjust' the main storyline, it would replace it entirely. Think about it, in the overwhelming majority of stories the side you're on is going to seriously influence what locations you have to visit and what you're going to do there. Actually creating a single story that can accomdate this is a nightmare for writers, because there are very few basic structures that can be bent and twisted in this way while still mataining decent coherence.Ranorak said:
I do actually know of a couple of games (mainly from the Escape Velocity series) where this has been done, but in those cases 'finishing' the game involved choosing one of a variety of highly linear story-lines and then following them to completion. They certainly weren't what you'd class as RPGs, and had more than a hint of the sandbox about them to begin with.
Given most WRPG fan's unceasing demand for ever increased freedom and choice within the overarching story, to implement this would almost in effect require them to design another game on top of the original, as it would need a alternate storyline with different locations and quite probably different characters. Again, this isn't impossible but it would mean that both side's storylines would have to be a fair bit shorter and/or less developed than the 40+ hour epics that RPG fans tend to call for. Even if this were attempted, it would probably backfire as more people would start clammering for even more options 'I want a neutral option' or 'I don't want to pursue a macguffin quest, I want something completely different' etc.
TL;DR
Because stories need to be linear if they're going to be told well. Trying to allow for the option to do a complete reversal of their starting goals would stretch any single storyline to breaking point.
Not that I disagree, moral choices are often ridiculously meaningless in the greater context of the games we play, but for several of those games at least, there's a reason you can't choose to join the Dark Side of whatever story your in.
Simply put: It's because it's a story about a person who saves the world.
Taking Dragon Age as an example sure, you can be a major asshole to everyone you meet and sacrifice children and whatnot for your immediate gain or gratification but in the end, its still a story about how you save Ferelden from the Darkspawn, no matter how much of a sick puppy you really are.
That's the story the developers decided to write and that's the story your getting.
That being said, games like Fable II where the moral system is laughable at best (slaying a dozen guards running through the town just to top it off by beating your spouse, then off to save the world) and contain no sort of framework for why you do these things, could certainly stand a bit of work.
Lets hope developers take a cue from Bioware, cause although their games are far from perfect, I think they're on to something that could turn into something extremely rewarding with the moral choice possibilities they've shown in their last couple of games.
Simply put: It's because it's a story about a person who saves the world.
Taking Dragon Age as an example sure, you can be a major asshole to everyone you meet and sacrifice children and whatnot for your immediate gain or gratification but in the end, its still a story about how you save Ferelden from the Darkspawn, no matter how much of a sick puppy you really are.
That's the story the developers decided to write and that's the story your getting.
That being said, games like Fable II where the moral system is laughable at best (slaying a dozen guards running through the town just to top it off by beating your spouse, then off to save the world) and contain no sort of framework for why you do these things, could certainly stand a bit of work.
Lets hope developers take a cue from Bioware, cause although their games are far from perfect, I think they're on to something that could turn into something extremely rewarding with the moral choice possibilities they've shown in their last couple of games.
A real problem with choice systems is that with every choice you make as a player, you are closing the door to a whole section of the game that the developers had to design.
Think about it: Even just designing a game where you can play as a good character or an evil character. That's double the work, and most people will only ever play half the content.
Now with Fallout and Oblivion and the upcoming Alpha Protocol about which I am psyched, there's the choice to play through the game in whatever way you want. The story still goes the same, with a few minor differences, but imagine the opposite. Imagine thousands of people talking about how awesome the end of a game is and "Wait until you get to it" and then you DON'T get to it, because your playthrough didn't get you that ending.
The way it's marketed now is as replay value. You play through inFamous with blue lightning then you do it again nastier to play with red lightning. But that's only important to a few people. I buy a game to play that game, not to be told that I can choose whether or not to see half the shit.
Think about it: Even just designing a game where you can play as a good character or an evil character. That's double the work, and most people will only ever play half the content.
Now with Fallout and Oblivion and the upcoming Alpha Protocol about which I am psyched, there's the choice to play through the game in whatever way you want. The story still goes the same, with a few minor differences, but imagine the opposite. Imagine thousands of people talking about how awesome the end of a game is and "Wait until you get to it" and then you DON'T get to it, because your playthrough didn't get you that ending.
The way it's marketed now is as replay value. You play through inFamous with blue lightning then you do it again nastier to play with red lightning. But that's only important to a few people. I buy a game to play that game, not to be told that I can choose whether or not to see half the shit.
There is no game (nor can there be a game) where moral choices really matter.
Whether you take the light path or the dark path, paragon or renegade, nice dude or heinous *****, you still are going through a fundamentally linear game. You kill certain people, refuse to kill others, save some, let others die, but at the end of the day you're still the guy who has to go find and kill the big bad and finish the quest.
I can't name a single game I've played with a moral choice system which did anything of import. I don't accept KOTOR (or any Bioware) game as being an exception, because even if you're the baddest-assed Sith in the galaxy, you're still traveling to the same planets, doing the same quests, and fighting the same enemies. Sure, your purported motivation is changed, but that's cosmetic at best. You still fight Malak at the same damned place, the same damned time, in the same damned way.
For all the moral choice in Mass Effect, you never deviate from the quest. You never get to just straight up murder the council, and make yourself the new ruler of the citadel. You just get to have an arguably different personality you take while doing all the same things.
KOTOR II was better. At least marginally. If you go dark side, you automatically fight the jedi masters. But, you're still always doing the same things.
Here's the issue, OP: So what?
What you're asking for is essentially two completely different games. You want two versions of the same games, allowing you to explore both sides of the conflict. Okay, neat, but that'd take a hell of a long time to make. If they wanted to do it well, they'd have to basically double production time (since they really would have to be distinct games). But, even then, you'd only have the extremes, the "good" and "evil" sides, with little by way of gray area.
Though, it would allow them to explore the anti-hero and anti-villain that I'd love to see portrayed. The ostensibly "evil" man who's just doing what he thinks is necessary to accomplish what is "right". The ostensibly good man who's selfish, and egotistical, and doing good only because it serves his purposes.
Though, as I write this, there are a few games with legitimate moral choice systems, they're just not grandiose.
Persona 3 did it very well by having the "moral choice" be your willingness to forge friendships and relationships, to try to help people, and generally improve the world around you, or to just wallow in your room, go fight monsters, and only gain the social links the game literally forces you to swallow. Both ways can get you to the end of the game, but helping the world around you makes the rest of the game much easier; fitting the theme of the game. And, of course, there's the big choice, the one that determines the last few months of the game: give into despair, or fight against destiny.
Persona 4 did a similar thing with the concept both of accepting the existence of ones darker impulses, even while not giving into them, and of "reaching out to the truth". It does the usual social links thing, though now with more of a focus on the darker parts of the human psyche, but the big deal are the two turning points. Without giving too much away, those moments epitomize what I think good moral choices are about: choices that matter, which massively alter the course of events, and which are fundamentally decided by how "good" the player is.
You can give into your rage, your sorrow, your anger, and take the easy answer. And that brings you "victory", but it's a pale one at that. True, it's not a subtle ticking in the back of the game that says "oh, you did nice things for people, you get the good ending", but life doesn't work like that. We don't get to accumulate brownie points with the universe, our lives are decided by individual decisions, some more important than others.
And the games drive home their lessons (and, yes, they have lessons) with that. It's subtle, and the player gets to decide what to do with it. You can push past your emotions to do the right thing, or you can sulk, and perform heinous acts based on your feelings. In one game, the Persona series does more to discuss the nature of the choice between light side and dark side than every Star Wars game, movie, and book combined.
tl;dr?
Persona 3 and Persona 4 are two of the only really good moral choice systems I've ever seen. No one else comes close. Play them.
Whether you take the light path or the dark path, paragon or renegade, nice dude or heinous *****, you still are going through a fundamentally linear game. You kill certain people, refuse to kill others, save some, let others die, but at the end of the day you're still the guy who has to go find and kill the big bad and finish the quest.
I can't name a single game I've played with a moral choice system which did anything of import. I don't accept KOTOR (or any Bioware) game as being an exception, because even if you're the baddest-assed Sith in the galaxy, you're still traveling to the same planets, doing the same quests, and fighting the same enemies. Sure, your purported motivation is changed, but that's cosmetic at best. You still fight Malak at the same damned place, the same damned time, in the same damned way.
For all the moral choice in Mass Effect, you never deviate from the quest. You never get to just straight up murder the council, and make yourself the new ruler of the citadel. You just get to have an arguably different personality you take while doing all the same things.
KOTOR II was better. At least marginally. If you go dark side, you automatically fight the jedi masters. But, you're still always doing the same things.
Here's the issue, OP: So what?
What you're asking for is essentially two completely different games. You want two versions of the same games, allowing you to explore both sides of the conflict. Okay, neat, but that'd take a hell of a long time to make. If they wanted to do it well, they'd have to basically double production time (since they really would have to be distinct games). But, even then, you'd only have the extremes, the "good" and "evil" sides, with little by way of gray area.
Though, it would allow them to explore the anti-hero and anti-villain that I'd love to see portrayed. The ostensibly "evil" man who's just doing what he thinks is necessary to accomplish what is "right". The ostensibly good man who's selfish, and egotistical, and doing good only because it serves his purposes.
Though, as I write this, there are a few games with legitimate moral choice systems, they're just not grandiose.
Persona 3 did it very well by having the "moral choice" be your willingness to forge friendships and relationships, to try to help people, and generally improve the world around you, or to just wallow in your room, go fight monsters, and only gain the social links the game literally forces you to swallow. Both ways can get you to the end of the game, but helping the world around you makes the rest of the game much easier; fitting the theme of the game. And, of course, there's the big choice, the one that determines the last few months of the game: give into despair, or fight against destiny.
Persona 4 did a similar thing with the concept both of accepting the existence of ones darker impulses, even while not giving into them, and of "reaching out to the truth". It does the usual social links thing, though now with more of a focus on the darker parts of the human psyche, but the big deal are the two turning points. Without giving too much away, those moments epitomize what I think good moral choices are about: choices that matter, which massively alter the course of events, and which are fundamentally decided by how "good" the player is.
You can give into your rage, your sorrow, your anger, and take the easy answer. And that brings you "victory", but it's a pale one at that. True, it's not a subtle ticking in the back of the game that says "oh, you did nice things for people, you get the good ending", but life doesn't work like that. We don't get to accumulate brownie points with the universe, our lives are decided by individual decisions, some more important than others.
And the games drive home their lessons (and, yes, they have lessons) with that. It's subtle, and the player gets to decide what to do with it. You can push past your emotions to do the right thing, or you can sulk, and perform heinous acts based on your feelings. In one game, the Persona series does more to discuss the nature of the choice between light side and dark side than every Star Wars game, movie, and book combined.
tl;dr?
Persona 3 and Persona 4 are two of the only really good moral choice systems I've ever seen. No one else comes close. Play them.
I hate to gush so much about the Persona series, and I truly despise sounding like a fanboy... Especially when I am a fanboy, but I think that the Persona series does what Bioware consistently fails to do:Turing said:
Actually give moral choices that matter.
Sure, you can go dark-side in KOTOR, and be an evil bastard in DA:O, but you don't really affect the story (as you noted). You never deviate from the main plotline.
In Persona 4, especially, you have chances to make very important decisions, decisions which exist organically, and which you decide on by your own volition and based on how well you've comprehended the lesson of the game. If you decide to give into your outrage, your hatred, your sadness (and if you aren't sad when that part of the game comes about, you have no soul), you get to finish the game, and it's a very different ending.
In Persona 3, if you give into the feeling of despair, of dread, of hopelessness, and the belief that you can't fight fate or make the world better, you get to finish the game. But, you've also done the very thing that the plot of the game has told you is bringing about the end of the world. Your unwillingness to fight against despair is a microcosm of humanity's unwillingness to fight, and so the bad ending fits perfectly with the theme of the game.
It's tough to describe just how brilliantly it's done, until you play the games. Your choices are important (something Bioware finds difficult), organic (rather than seeming to have been concocted simply to be big moral choices), and fit the theme of the game.
Come to think of it, a lot of JRPGs and visual novels do that, letting your choices impact the actual direction of the game, rather than only impacting the aesthetics and "motivation" behind the train tracks you're on.
Once again:
Play Persona 3, and Persona 4
To be fair towards Fable:Ranorak said:
You DID have the option of joining forces with the bad guy....although only after you beat him. 
I think the inherit flaw of any moral choice system is that it is an actual part of the game. By doing so, the developer is required to have some sort of in-game consenquences that come as a result of tilting one way or the other. And since there are numerous possibilities as far as morality is concerned, developers need to intentionally limit the effects in order to be able to actually finish development of the game.
The best way to implement morality in a video game is to....well, not implement it at all. Allow the player several choices as to how to handle a certain situation and then let him/her figure out for himself/herself whether what he/she did was moral or not. The issue of morality is complicated and is at it's best when it can be questioned and debated, not when the game explicitly tells you whether or not what you did is right or wrong.
Simply put, video game developers should follow the traditional rule of any artform of "show, don't tell". A game shouldn't say what it's moral story is. Instead, it should let the player draw his own conclusions.
A game where you can join the badguys AND have a completely different set of levels and objectives?
Command and Conquer. Dune II. Or any RTS ever.
THREAD OVER
EDIT: Let's be fair, most RTSs don't come with moral choices, even though they do provide you with a different campaign for the badguys, so let me take it one step further:
Earth 2150. Three different sides, three different campaigns and because of shifting allegiances, you DO get to betray your allies IF YOU WANT, because after all it's every man for himself.
Command and Conquer. Dune II. Or any RTS ever.
THREAD OVER
EDIT: Let's be fair, most RTSs don't come with moral choices, even though they do provide you with a different campaign for the badguys, so let me take it one step further:
Earth 2150. Three different sides, three different campaigns and because of shifting allegiances, you DO get to betray your allies IF YOU WANT, because after all it's every man for himself.
I haven't played many but KOTOR II did it fairly decently. Obviously, being a dick to all of your crewmates would lose influence with 90% of them. Yeah, you could actually be a bad guy and kill the Jedi masters instead of saving them. You could say you continued fighting the Sith because they tried to kill you first and are still trying to kill you anyway. The last boss muddies this a little bit though, more or less depending on who you are.
That person's motives change depending on if you're playing Light or Dark and that person chews you out no matter what you did. There's no pleasing them or turning them, which would reasonably equate to a stubborn person or one whose cause just can't align with yours. It feels a little flimsy when that person leaves you for dead a bit before the endgame starts. Of course, that's just my personal opinion.
Another example from the same game is that your choices on how to take a planet does change it pretty significantly, but the change doesn't really affect you at all and you never get to see anything particularly happen after you finish the main questline for that planet. You're just doing other peoples' chores for them. Now that the next game is an MMO, we won't be able to see how our choices affect the galaxy. Sure, our friend the final boss gives us a glimpse into the future, but it really isn't the same.
I'd go on to how Mass Effect did it the best so far (of the games I've played), but I haven't even finished the first one yet and this post is pretty long. And I doubt more than a few people will read it all the way through.
That person's motives change depending on if you're playing Light or Dark and that person chews you out no matter what you did. There's no pleasing them or turning them, which would reasonably equate to a stubborn person or one whose cause just can't align with yours. It feels a little flimsy when that person leaves you for dead a bit before the endgame starts. Of course, that's just my personal opinion.
Another example from the same game is that your choices on how to take a planet does change it pretty significantly, but the change doesn't really affect you at all and you never get to see anything particularly happen after you finish the main questline for that planet. You're just doing other peoples' chores for them. Now that the next game is an MMO, we won't be able to see how our choices affect the galaxy. Sure, our friend the final boss gives us a glimpse into the future, but it really isn't the same.
I'd go on to how Mass Effect did it the best so far (of the games I've played), but I haven't even finished the first one yet and this post is pretty long. And I doubt more than a few people will read it all the way through.
I actually prefer Dragon Age's style to the black-and-white style of karma found in Fable or Fallout 3. I don't walk around in real life with a little karma meter that adds or subtracts when I do something. There's only my decisions and people's reactions to them. (And my reactions to their reactions, and so on.)
Good in game example: I found myself in Dragon Age agreeing with Sten in most situations, but I suspect in other games playing like him would net me a bunch of evil karma points. The idea that you could be abrasive to people but ultimately good seems to be completely impossible.
Good in game example: I found myself in Dragon Age agreeing with Sten in most situations, but I suspect in other games playing like him would net me a bunch of evil karma points. The idea that you could be abrasive to people but ultimately good seems to be completely impossible.