Moral Choices

[Palindromemordnilap_v1legacy]

I know moral choice systems can get a bit of flack for being too simple, they either make you a paragon of virtue or Satan's verruca on the foot of the world. So why not broaden it from two choices (good or evil) to four? Specifically the four humours and their associated temperaments (blood/sanguine, yellow bile/choleric, black bile/melancholic, phlegm/phlegmatic. That way you don't have to be either all the way one side or all the way the other, but can combine the various attitudes.
You could just be choleric and achieve power by cutting down anyone in your path if you wanted to play like that, but you could also try and throw a little melancholic in there to channel your yellow bile into a more Manipulative Bastard role. If you want to make the world a better place being sanguine could earn you friends, being melancholic could let you build works of art, but put them together and you could help a village start growing into a mighty city.

Not being involved in the gaming world other than playing with the end products I don't know how hard it would be to implement something like that, and it would probably only fit into "historical" themed RPOGs like Witcher or Elder Scrolls, but I can see it working

 

[Dr Jones]

I didn't get all the names for those things :/, it confused me. Imo a morality system is never needed. I prefer going through a game, say Skyrim, playing mostly a good character (I do good things because that is how my character would act, not for points), who sometimes has a bit o' fun. I love the grayness of Skyrim. You can be the nicest guy, saviour of the world, have a wife and all, and on top of that be the leader of the Thieves' guild and The Dark Brotherhood. Imo a morality system would botch up Skyrim. Stealing is a big part of Skyrim for me, i love it. If someone told me "You are bad for doing it, go to hell" I wouldn't do it, and it'd ruin the game for me.
So I prefer a personal morality system, I am the master of what i feel is right and wrong, not the game (Stealing might be necessary if you need the item to save the world, is it then unethical?)

 

[RJ 17]

I think they should take games back to the 9 Alignment system, if anything. By that I mean the combination of "lawful", "chaotic", and "neutral" with "good", "evil", and "neutral".

I then think that whichever you pick should color your protagonist's dialogue/actions.

Or I suppose an even better idea is to have the 9 Alignment system on a meter basis but that the meter is more there just to show you how you're doing, so to speak. That is, your new character starts at "True Neutral", then the actions you take throughout the game bounce you from alignment to alignment, becoming more accurate as you make more decisions. It has no real affect other than being able to look at your character towards the end of the game and see that the choices you've been making aligns him mostly with "Chaotic Good" or whatever. Perhaps as your personality gets fleshed out in this manner, your conversations and actions could begin to reflect your alignment. Chaotic Good, for instance, is described as being the alignment of jibbering madmen. Perhaps as you make more and more decisions that lead you towards such an alignment, your conversations and actions could become more like those of a jibbering madman.

 

[DoPo]

Because, first of all, those would be personality types, rather than morality. Besides, four choices are still not enough to add more dimension to morality.

 

[Kahunaburger]

They should just give you a variety of choices that cover most of the options in the situation that make sense, then give you logical (not necessarily expected) consequences that follow from those choices. No need to tie it to an artificial morality system.

 

[Freechoice]

Or go with the Freudian id, ego, superego thing because Freud is needlessly complicated whilst still being interesting and simple to get.

Also, the ability to have the "right" thing be the wrong thing simply because it's not the most optimal answer is AWESOME. Fuck the paragade system. 'Sides, morality is relative. The right thing for someone is doing the thing that makes you feel best because that's what you perceive as right.

 

[Vault Citizen]

I think that you should be given 3-4 choices but none of them should be labelled as good or evil. Instead of a simple good or evil meter I think you should have reputation (think Fallout NV) combined with the sort of impact on the world that you can have in the Fable games. How you felt you were doing morally would be left up to you to decide after seeing how people and the landscape were affected by your actions.

 

[TorqueConverter]

I know moral choice systems can get a bit of flack for being too simple, they either make you a paragon of virtue or Satan's verruca on the foot of the world. So why not broaden it from two choices (good or evil) to four? Specifically the four humours and their associated temperaments (blood/sanguine, yellow bile/choleric, black bile/melancholic, phlegm/phlegmatic. That way you don't have to be either all the way one side or all the way the other, but can combine the various attitudes.
You could just be choleric and achieve power by cutting down anyone in your path if you wanted to play like that, but you could also try and throw a little melancholic in there to channel your yellow bile into a more Manipulative Bastard role. If you want to make the world a better place being sanguine could earn you friends, being melancholic could let you build works of art, but put them together and you could help a village start growing into a mighty city.

Not being involved in the gaming world other than playing with the end products I don't know how hard it would be to implement something like that, and it would probably only fit into "historical" themed RPOGs like Witcher or Elder Scrolls, but I can see it working

Sounds good to me. I'm all for removing linearity form games and replacing it with more of branching tree. I like the ability to play the game and have the decisions I have made result in a unique gaming experience as a direct result of those choices. A moral choice system is just another means to the same end: different play-throughs = different gaming experiences.

IMO, the problem arises when the different choices unique to each play-through do not result in unique gaming experiences. I had a blast playing through Fallout 3 as evil badass and sissy dogooder but when it came to a neutral play-thorough, it didn't feel different enough from the previous games to warrant a 3rd go at it.

I'd love to see Bethesda have another go at a moral choice game. Bethesda can't write a story worth a darn but they are excellent at creating game worlds and loading them to the brim with content. A world with loads of content would be what I would imagine would be needed to have this type of game you are describing.

 

[Bad Jim]

I think all such systems are bad ideas. It's practically impossible to add interesting long term consequences for every dialog choice you can make. They just draw the players' attention away from the fantasy and onto a clearly artificial game mechanic. RPGs should draw the players' attention away from gameplay mechanics and onto the fantasy.

A better way to offer choices is to just have specific points where the player has a choice and give those choices meaningful long term consequences. Eg if you go in guns blazing the terrorists kill one of the hostages, and the family of said hostage will hate you and won't help you in some future missions. But if you snipe them from half a mile away then no-one knows you did it, and another group who might have considered you a hero in spite of the dead hostage won't recognise you and won't help you.

 

[hermes]

I think the problem is that options are easily identifiable as "good" or "evil", and not only because they are simple and obvious as "pat this puppy, or kick this puppy", but they are also color coded (blue/white means good, red/black means bad), adorned or placed so that there is no doubt about what it represents.

My example is Mass Effect/Dragon Age. Even when the option title is vague enough so that its not always easy to know when you are being polite and when you are being a jerk, that still doesn't matter, because the good option is always in the right-top corner, while the bad one is always in the right-bottom corner. That means if I play a paragon character, I will always choose the same corner, even when other lines might sound more appropriate or closer to my opinion. I actually prefer the way Alpha Protocol did it, where the conversation options where not about good or bad lines, but personalities and some characters reacted better to you if you acted suave, professional or a jerk.

Also, most games' consecuences have too much immediacy and naivety. If you are good, good things will immediately happen and people will react nicely to you (they may willingly give you money or items). If you are evil, you are looking for trouble and will have to resort to violence to get the same resources. There are few games where the boyscout, good option will have horrible consecuences latter on, or jerky actions may eventually bring some good to the victims.

 

[Something Amyss]

Specifically the four humours and their associated temperaments (blood/sanguine, yellow bile/choleric, black bile/melancholic, phlegm/phlegmatic. That way you don't have to be either all the way one side or all the way the other, but can combine the various attitudes.

So basically, what you're proposing is the same sort of "choose based on alignment" people have suggested a la D&D for years, but with slightly sillier names because you have plhegm and bile instead of Law and Chaos.

 

[go-10]

morality systems are only good when the player doesn't know what's happening to them, like whenever I do something "evil" I don't get "evil red points" or vice versa for good. Instead the game simply takes it into account, without labeling me evil or good it simply opens up quests and paths accessible only to people with those traits until eventually you find yourself robbing a bank to pay shelter for homeless people or exploiting the homeless to takes it to the bank. No physical changes, no points or special powers for being one or the other you are simply a person that's made some questionable choices in life and are now expected to perform certain types of jobs and walk a different path

 

[Something Amyss]

I think the problem is that options are easily identifiable as "good" or "evil", and not only because they are simple and obvious as "pat this puppy, or kick this puppy", but they are also color coded (blue/white means good, red/black means bad), adorned or placed so that there is no doubt about what it represents.

To be fair, in games where you are absolutely penalised for not going all paragon or all renegade (for example), it doesn't bother me much. When you have to answer right for kewl powerz, dialogue options, etc, then you should have some indication.

Then again, it's utterly stupid that so many games play that way.

I would like more choices than Saint, Hitler, or sometimes neutral.

Though I literally laughed out loud in InFamous when Cole LITERALLY spelled out the outcomes.

 

[Andrewtheeviscerator]

I like what Dragon age: Origins did. No morality meter or anything just make your decisions how you want and have your companions or the people around you react to your decisions, that's what I want to see

 

[Limecake]

I think we need to start shying away from the 'moral choice' system. It works in some games but for the most part it never achieves anything other than "Do you want to make a jerk who kills everything he sees or do you want to save all the puppies and become the epitome of good?"

There is nothing wrong with a character who is a jerk or a nice guy all by themselves (plus it's easier to write). No one is pure evil or pure good, that's bad writing. Everyone falls somewhere in the middle and that is what helps us associate with characters in books/movies/games because they actually seem human, learning there particular motivations or dreams is what makes you remember these characters.

Before anyone says anything, I think choice in video games are a good idea. Branching stories can add a lot to immersion, however the idea of a 'moral choice' system doesn't appeal to me anymore (it was cool when I played Kotor!) partly because it pigeon-holes me into playing a purely good or bad character (thus eliminating the idea of choice anyway) but especially since very few problems in life are so clear cut.

get rid of them and watch writing improve since writers will be able to make actual characters again (instead of empty shells for us to project ourselves onto)

 

[hermes]

I think the problem is that options are easily identifiable as "good" or "evil", and not only because they are simple and obvious as "pat this puppy, or kick this puppy", but they are also color coded (blue/white means good, red/black means bad), adorned or placed so that there is no doubt about what it represents.

To be fair, in games where you are absolutely penalised for not going all paragon or all renegade (for example), it doesn't bother me much. When you have to answer right for kewl powerz, dialogue options, etc, then you should have some indication.

Then again, it's utterly stupid that so many games play that way.

I would like more choices than Saint, Hitler, or sometimes neutral.

Though I literally laughed out loud in InFamous when Cole LITERALLY spelled out the outcomes.

I get your point, but then the problem is that the game is penalizing you for not playing a certain way (which is a lot worst). I wouldn't mind so much if there was no situations that can only be solved if you go 100% in either direction...

 

[DoPo]

I think we need to start shying away from the 'moral choice' system. It works in some games but for the most part it never achieves anything other than "Do you want to make a jerk who kills everything he sees or do you want to save all the puppies and become the epitome of good?"

There is nothing wrong with a character who is a jerk or a nice guy all by themselves (plus it's easier to write). No one is pure evil or pure good, that's bad writing. Everyone falls somewhere in the middle and that is what helps us associate with characters in books/movies/games because they actually seem human, learning there particular motivations or dreams is what makes you remember these characters.

Before anyone says anything, I think choice in video games are a good idea. Branching stories can add a lot to immersion, however the idea of a 'moral choice' system doesn't appeal to me anymore (it was cool when I played Kotor!) partly because it pigeon-holes me into playing a purely good or bad character (thus eliminating the idea of choice anyway) but especially since very few problems in life are so clear cut.

get rid of them and watch writing improve since writers will be able to make actual characters again (instead of empty shells for us to project ourselves onto)

The issue you have is not with choice itself - choice is good. THe issue is being forced to keep choosing the saintly/Hitler options. DA:O did it all right, you could be a jerk to some and nice to others, if you wish. You are not forced to spare the person who murdered your whole family just to keep that saint meter at the right level. You could play a generally good guy who doesn't spare people who really piss him off. He'll help a villager but wouldn't let a bandit go. No karma meter is good in that regard.

In Mass Effect, the Paragon/Renegade choices weren't flat Jesus/Stalin ones but did have genuine dimension to them. But the meaning is rendered obsolete when you must keep choosing blue or red to keep that meter filled.

 

[T3hSource]

Playing through the Mass Effect trilogy again and I have stopped treating the decisions in those games as "moral" choices since the first half of ME1 on my first playthrough.I took it more like "forced role-play" at first,but now,playing as a renegade character,it's not that much of a difference.Sure there are a lot of strings to choices you've made,but the consequences don't have A LOT of impact,at least in-game,the rest depends on how you receive the performance of the actions made by the player.

 

[Trucken]

Moral choices are... well, plain bad at the moment. I mean, I'm a kinda nice guy, so I always tend to play games after the thought "what would I do in this situation?" And since the choices almost always boils down to being nice and helping people or being a total dick, the choices are never really choices (not for me, anyway).

I'd like to remove moral choices. Instead, I want tactical choices.

Let's say you're playing GTA (I picked GTA because, well, I like GTA). Your current boss has a mission for you. Johnny Bananas has a huge diamond. Your boss wants it. He doesn't care how you get it, but get it. And kill Johnny. Here's where your choice comes in. You can either go in the front door, guns blazing, kill Johnny and get the diamond. Or you decide to sneak in, kill Johnny, grab the diamond and get out without anyone knowing you were there. Or don't kill Johnny, but make him leave town.

Some of you may notice that this is very similar to Hitman. Which it is, and it's because I think Hitman was great at giving you tactical choices which also could be considered your moral choices. You could either kill only your target(s) or take down whoever might stand in your way. Spare as many as possible or do whatever it takes to complete the mission.

Someone who kills as few as possible has a better morale than the guy who doesn't care about who might die, right?