Morality meters in games.

[orangeapples]

I don't play games like ME or Kotor much, but I have played them. so I don't know if they have already done this:

Has there been a game where you are given 2 options: 1 good, 1 less good? or 1 bad, 1 less bad?

I guess an example would be:

You are the leader of a group and are going to be met with opposition from rebel forces. a typical game would give you:

attempt negotiations
complete annihilation of the rebels

obvious good and bad (well, they would never be THAT obvious), but what if we had something like:

attempt negotiations
increase troop firepower
increase guard defenses
complete annihilation of the rebels

now we still have the obvious good and bad, but the two in the middle are not as obvious. Is it a simple best, good, bad, worst situation or could it be best, bad, good, worst?

Or say you are a leader of an army and you encounter an enemy stronghold. They do not stand a chance, but their position is strategic. You are given 2 options:

attack them and take the stronghold.
place them under siege and wait for them to surrender.

both options are technically evil, but both are good for your cause. one is less evil and one is less good, but they are necessary.

has there been a game where they give you an option of 2 "evil" options (rather than 1 "good" and 1 "evil") and either of those choices will give you "negative points" (or however they scale it)?

 

[BlumiereBleck]

I rather like the whole never a good answer ones.

 

[Signa]

I was just playing Deus Ex last night and the morality isn't perfectly clear on it. Also, there is no meters, so every action you do could affect the game much later. It prevents you from making the dick move and then loading after you get your giggles out of everyone's reaction.

 

[procyonlotor]

Uhm, The Witcher routinely has you pick between morally ambiguous situations. Sometimes you can only go with the lesser evil. Most of the time you're in a gray area with no obvious paragon-renegade choice. But there is no meter. The game tracks your choices but they don't equate into some sort of rating.

Also, I'm generally against having morality meters. Sure, have morality in a game, a paragon-renegade system as it were, but don't quantify it. If you quantify it you turn it into an abusable game mechanic, just as you do with character influence meters and the like, so the game becomes less about the choices you make and more about numbers, which is, of course, metagaming, the bane of video games.

 

[Soviet Steve]

I loathe morality meters in any case. Just give me actions and have in-game-characters react to what they know I've done.

 

[orangeapples]

oh, so they do sometimes just say, "you've got to make an 'evil' decision." or, "hey, you're going to be a 'good' guy today."

awesome.

 

[Fallen-Angel Risen-Demon]

I hate meters, love decisions.
Why do we need both? Some situations are moraly grey.

 

[Metzeten]

attempt negotiations
complete annihilation of the rebels

obvious good and bad (well, they would never be THAT obvious)

Actually, if you play Kotor, there pretty much IS that option on the 5th(I think?) planet of the game
And I'm sure I've seen it somewhere else.

Some morality systems are woeful when it comes to actually portraying good and evil.

(I love massacres.)

 

[strum4h]

Well there is the Karma system in the Fallout Universe.

 

[StriderShinryu]

Yeah, I love moral choices but I really am not a fan of morality meters. In fact, in the best uses of a morality system it's not about moral choices at all but about choices in general.

Others have mentioned The Witcher and Deus Ex, so I'll add Dragon Age to the list. An array of choices that alter the storyline and change how you're perceived by both world NPCs as well as your own party members, but no silly "good/bad" meters in sight. Also, the choices aren't often even good/bad anyway, they're just you put in more or less difficult situations where a choice needs to be made.

 

[Truth Cake]

Record of Agarest War has by far the most backwards and illogical morality system I've ever seen in a game, let me share some examples, I'll keep spoilers to a minimum:

Once, while my small party was running away from an army to seek aid from another army, I was given a choice to divert from what I was doing and go save a damsel in distress from a small army of orcs and goblins, or I could just continue with what I was doing and ignore the damsel in distress overall- wanting to be good, I chose to go and save the girl, and apparantly that's EVIL because my morality meter went down... Didn't make much sense to me...

Another choice later on is when another girl was telling my fortune, and I had a choice between 3 vines- left, middle, and right- to determine my fortune for the day. Since I saved beforehand, I just picked one, saw what happened, and reloaded the game if I didn't like what happened; apparantly, if you pick any of them but the right one, you are evil and have bad luck... right...

There was also several places in-game where no matter what you did, you were either good or evil for being forced into a choice and there was no way to proceed otherwise, so you often HAD to make choices that you didn't want to make and face the consequenses because of it.

I prefer games that don't have morality meters, but you can still choose to be good or evil, games like Dragon Age: Origins- people react naturally to your choices, and you still HAVE choices.

 

[SageRuffin]

Dragon Age Origins has something akin to that. You're not good, but you're not evil instead. Your morality is only slightly reflected in your companions, but they won't immediately dislike you for, say, killing a person or giving someone a free lunch.

Jade Empire had the best thing going in it's morality system in practice, but on paper it devolved back into the usual "good guy/girl, bad guy/girl". Also, if you play your cards properly in ME, you can completely max out both morality bars and tell whoever to stick what where when, and how many times. Or don't. At that point it's completely of your own volition.

 

[Zombie Shakespeare]

I hate morality meters unless it is universe appropriate, like in Knights of the Old Republic.

I think it should be based on individual events, instead. Immersion. It encourages you to do what you think your character would do, not what fits the developers ideals of good or evil. Basically, I think it encourages player flexibility. Natural reactions are good, instead of the wild extremes found in a lot of recent games that fit smoothly into (keep your money; that isn't why I did it) good, (I'll do it for a price) neutral or (give me your money or I will sacrifice this puppy to fuel my wacky voodoo rituals) evil.

 

[JWW]

Why not, instead of a morality slider, we have personalities? If you always try to be virtuous and kind, you get the "Knight in Shining Armor" personality. If you torture bad guys to save/bring justice for others, you get the "Dark Hero" personality. If you push people around for whatever you want (good or bad), you get the "Bully" personality. If you piss on kittens for fun, you get the "Psychotic" personality. If you do a mixture of all these, you get the "Wild Card" personality.

 

[hazabaza1]

Alpha Protocol doesn't have any sort of 'metres' or 'morality measures'. It's just your choices, and the consequences.

 

[IBlackKiteI]

Fallout 3 is the only game I know of where good and evil is actually done ok.
There are just so many options to solve a problem.

I find Mass Effects petty take on morality silly and unneccessary, its just doing every single dialogue option the 'good' way or doing every single dialogue option the 'bad' way.
It has no real impact on the story other than dialogue, while Fallout 3 and Deus Ex make often radical changes based on your actions.
And neither have those stupid morality meters.

If you do something bad, it should show not in some bar or pointless dialogue, but in what you have changed in the game.

 

[discordance]

Fallout 3 is the only game I know of where good and evil is actually done ok.

Did you ever do the Roy Philips quest?

 

[MelasZepheos_v1legacy]

Fallout 3 (as mentioned) has some very morally ambiguous choices, often ones you won't know about unless you come back later to check on them.

I feel I should also stand in defence of KoToR and any Star Wars related morality systems:

The main thrust of Star Wars has always been good and evil, thus it makes sense for the morality to be very black and white. Maybe if you were playing as a smuggler in the Star Wars universe it could be less so, but everyone wants to play as a Jedi. Newsflash, you want to play as a Jedi, eventually it all comes down to the Dark Side vs the Light Side.

 

[Taneer]

Actually, I found Fallout 3: The Pitt one of the most spectacular moral choices I've ever seen in a game.

Spoiler

Basically, Ashur rules The Pitt, and his daughter is immune to both radiation and disease. He wants to research her and find a cure, but he is doing so slowly so as to not harm her. However, the slaves who work in The Pitt want you to steal the baby so they can research her more quickly, allowing for a cure to be found sooner. And if you don't, they start a rebellion and you end up having to kill most of them. There's no good way to do this, but what I did was steal the baby, use it to lure out the rebellion leader, charm him into giving up, then disarming the slaves and returning the baby.

 

[StriderShinryu]

Dragon Age Origins has something akin to that. You're not good, but you're not evil instead. Your morality is only slightly reflected in your companions, but they won't immediately dislike you for, say, killing a person or giving someone a free lunch.

Well, it depends on the party member and the choice involved. There are some choices in the game where if you choose counter to what a party member agrees to they will either straight up leave the party or attack you.