Morality Matters

[Drake_Dercon]

A. If you peg morality in your mechanics to a 2d bar, your moral choices will be 2 dimensional. No writer can write around this, no level of voice acting is going to save you.

That's one dimension, James. Physics are important.

but,

I actually prefer a three-dimensional axis.

Law - Chaos
Good - Evil
Pomposity (or self-righteousness) - Modesty

With neutrality in the middle, of course

An invisible system is better, too.

Many RPGs would do better by hiding the framework (RPG in a general sense, anything that involves roleplaying elements).

 

[conflictofinterests]

A. If you peg morality in your mechanics to a 2d bar, your moral choices will be 2 dimensional. No writer can write around this, no level of voice acting is going to save you.

That's one dimension, James. Physics are important.

but,

I actually prefer a three-dimensional axis.

Law - Chaos
Good - Evil
Pomposity (or self-righteousness) - Modesty

With neutrality in the middle, of course

An invisible system is better, too.

Many RPGs would do better by hiding the framework (RPG in a general sense, anything that involves roleplaying elements).

Then people complain about the RPG in a specific sense, a game that lets you customize the character you play through as, as being too opaque in its mechanics.

Don't get me wrong, I'd LOVE a game where after the initial customization, more hidden customization and world altering comes about, you just couldn't label it RPG in a video game community

 

[Anezay]

I've never played Chrono Trigger... I'm thinking I'm going to have to rectify this. Can someone tell me what systems it's on? I'd google it, but I'm too lazy for that.

 

[MowDownJoe]

I've never played Chrono Trigger... I'm thinking I'm going to have to rectify this. Can someone tell me what systems it's on? I'd google it, but I'm too lazy for that.

It originally released in the SNES, and was later remade for the PSX (AKA: the Loading Time edition) and then again on the DS. The DS version was the one I played, and from I understand, they redid the translation on that one to be a little more... well, serious, I guess.

 

[PlasticTree]

Welcome to the Escapist, Neumann, glad to have you here.

 

[Drake_Dercon]

A. If you peg morality in your mechanics to a 2d bar, your moral choices will be 2 dimensional. No writer can write around this, no level of voice acting is going to save you.

That's one dimension, James. Physics are important.

but,

I actually prefer a three-dimensional axis.

Law - Chaos
Good - Evil
Pomposity (or self-righteousness) - Modesty

With neutrality in the middle, of course

An invisible system is better, too.

Many RPGs would do better by hiding the framework (RPG in a general sense, anything that involves roleplaying elements).

Then people complain about the RPG in a specific sense, a game that lets you customize the character you play through as, as being too opaque in its mechanics.

Don't get me wrong, I'd LOVE a game where after the initial customization, more hidden customization and world altering comes about, you just couldn't label it RPG in a video game community

I'd call it an RPA (role-playing adventure, if you can think of a better name, please do), just to set it apart. You're right that genre fans wouldn't accept it initially, but I don't think it could ever kill the RPG genre. Nor should it, diversity is great. What I meant to do (and forgot) was quote this:

You know what game did that amazingly well for the time period? Chrono Trigger. I will never, for my entire gaming life, forget being put on trial and made to look a fool for choices I did not know the game was tracking. I stole that old man's lunch, and the game friggin' knew I did it. I felt that pang of guilt in my stomach when I realized, not only was I going to jail, but those bastards kind of had a point. I broke the law. But that was so effective because I was unaware the game even had a morality system in place to be tracking my transgressions. I simply thought I got away with being in the moment.

I think mechanics such as that could be very well applied to many RPG elements, apart from morality.

But the old things shouldn't go away, either. Maybe we need a new genre.

 

[PixelKing]

The 2/3rd act choices in GTA IV spring to mind.

 

[Dectilon]

"A. If you peg morality in your mechanics to a 2d bar, your moral choices will be 2 dimensional. No writer can write around this, no level of voice acting is going to save you."

Oh I don't know. Considering that even the best acting and writing in video games still isn't that great it's hard to know if this statement is true or not.

I thought it was interesting in Kotor 2, because even though the light/dark side meter was present and influenced events and characters, the entire game is basically about how something like that is woefully insufficient and how people can't be categorized as good or evil.

 

[rapidoud]

My main qualm with morality systems:

Morality is a flapping subjective view you inbred developers, and across cultures 1 thing can mean something completely different everywhere else.

So how about you just give us choices without saying "oh committing euthanasia is bad you get evil points" and just give us 2 choices with characters reacting according to their personalities.

Especially bad if they say "oh hey this option is what you get for personality points invested" UMM NO that just forces me to take the special choices to see what they are, how about you hide it and have every outcome something the player has to think about instead of pressing X for good Y for evil (DA2, Fable III are the 2 most recent examples, KotOR 1+2, Mass Effect etc).

Thank god Deus Ex: HR will change this.

 

[Kroxile]

I really loved 3rd Edition DnD Morality. Being a Lawful Evil Character was so much fun because you couldn't just go around murdering people for giggles but you couldn't always do the right thing either.

I really wish more RPGs would use that morality scale and do it right.

 

[Alphakirby]

Chrono Trigger. I will never, for my entire gaming life, forget being put on trial and made to look a fool for choices I did not know the game was tracking. I stole that old man's lunch, and the game friggin' knew I did it. I felt that pang of guilt in my stomach when I realized, not only was I going to jail, but those bastards kind of had a point. I broke the law.

I really didn't feel as remorsed,I just thought "Holy Shit,HE KNEW!?" and as for the little girl,I tried looking for the cat for a few seconds cause I remember seeing a cat,but I couldn't interact with the cat so I gave up and moved on.