Philosophical games?

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ChupathingyX

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Fallout: New Vegas goes a bit into political philosophy, the whole point of the main quest is choosing which faction ou want to join based on your beliefs of who you think wuld best rule Vgas. All of the factions have ther pros and cons and the whole thing is suppossed to represent how after destroying themselves with atomic fire, humanity is still at each other's throats.

I think you could go on for a while discussing your choice of faction allegiance with people in New Vegas. Not just for the big 3 (and independent path), but also for the more minor factions such as the Kings, Followers, Boomers, Brotherhood of Steel etc.
 

The Madman

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Might want to take a look at some older PC adventure titles, The Longest Journey in particular dipped it's toes quite often into philosophical debate.


Take a look, I've a suspicion you'll end up loving the game. By todays standards it's far from a pretty looking game and the puzzles weren't very good even when it came out, but the plot and its themes stand out even against its modern contemporaries as excellent.
 

Nenad

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Halceon said:
Dungeons and Discourse. It's not a digital game, but it's completely and solely about philosophy. Go here [http://dndis.wikidot.com/] and have a look!
Bookmarked, we'll see. :)

WaReloaded said:
Do I know any games strictly rooted in philosophy? Not really, no. Sorry.
I ain't asking for the impossible, just the best games with as much philosophical in them.
 

Prince Regent

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trollpwner said:
But without any of that whole "superman" business I found so distasteful....also, I've heard that beyond good and evil ended on a cliffhanger, something I hope the book doesn't.
People make too much out of that. It's a small 15 second after credits scene. If you haven't played the game yet, I can really recomend it.

Philosphical cliffhangers, that'd be something else though:

After just having entered plato's cave to find Occam's razor, descartes triped and knocked himself subconscious on a rock. When he woke up, he only saw shadows dancing on a wall. After realizing where he was and that he still existed, he noticed a big shadow walking towards him. Descartes grabed for his flashlight and as soon as he turned it on he realized that he was looking in the face of an übermensch.

To be continued.
 

Ordinaryundone

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Surprised no one has mentioned Bioshock 1 and 2 yet. Both games can be read as big critiques of Objectivism and Collectivism, respectively.
 

Nenad

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The Madman said:
Might want to take a look at some older PC adventure titles, The Longest Journey in particular dipped it's toes quite often into philosophical debate.


Take a look, I've a suspicion you'll end up loving the game. By todays standards it's far from a pretty looking game and the puzzles weren't very good even when it came out, but the plot and its themes stand out even against its modern contemporaries as excellent.
I'll add it to my already too long list of games to play.
 

inFAMOUSCowZ

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Bioshock, thats really the only game that comes to mind. Plus its quite good, so you dont have to worry about it being bad.
 

Bostur

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Maybe "Grim Fandango". It does question the whole existance thing, and dabbles in ethics sometimes.

As an aside movies sometimes strike some interesting philosophical chords. "The Truman Show" was noteworthy in this regard, so was "Matrix" and "Point Break".
 

DonMartin

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Philosophy shines through any person or character in a game. A well written game with developed characters is bound to have a lot of philosophical value. However, if you want a game that deals with -isms a lot, I would say Bioshock. Just as about every other post in this thread.

But yeah, you can find philosophy anywhere in everything.
 

Weaver

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You could try "I have no mouth and I must scream" (it was a short story).
Bioshock deals with Ayn Rand's stuff.
 

Ryucotsa

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To ask if for a philosophical game is to broad a question, ALL games have philosophy (Aside from the actually game-making philosophy)it's a matter of how you look for it.

Consider Final Fantasy 7, The characters in the story all develop by remembering past events, Cloud takes this two steps further by remembering someone ELSE'S past events. With that little bit of information about the game we can already ask a few really interesting philosophical questions: For a metaphorical question, we could ask "Is all knowledge memory" a question Plato pondered quite a bit. For an Ethical question we could ask "Is it all right for Cloud to be using Zack's Memories?" (For deeper analysis: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSbA-oERHN0 )

The way the game unfolds might answer these questions, but more important is that the game should make US ask questions about the philosophy.

Anyway, narrow the question a bit and perhaps you'll find better answers;

"What are the morals behind Mario?"

"Don't FPS hero's suffer from PTSD?"

"Is it morally acceptable to sexualize women?"

My point is that most games (and stories in general) have some philosophy to dig out.
 

KingofallCosmos

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I'd add Braid.

Also you should check that obscure game episode from extra credits; there's a lot of simply built but very thought provoking indie games out there.
 

Nenad

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Bostur said:
Maybe "Grim Fandango". It does question the whole existance thing, and dabbles in ethics sometimes.

As an aside movies sometimes strike some interesting philosophical chords. "The Truman Show" was noteworthy in this regard, so was "Matrix" and "Point Break".
Grim Fandango... so hard... so hate walkthroughs...
 

Pyroguekenesis

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Anything by Atlus really, especially the Persona series. Escpecially Persona 3. Catherine also has some interesting concepts.
 

Matthew Valkanov

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I Have No Mouth, And I Must Scream. Freaky game, freaky story(it's based on a short story by this somewhat crazy man), but interesting in it's vision of cruelty and humanity.
Otherwise I can suggest The Void or Pathologic , both by Icepick lodge. Both are weird, wonderful and...wdark. And both play around with ideas of right and wrong, destiny and choice,... but they are also quite difficult(or at least I thought so).
 

Therumancer

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Well, a lot depends on what you are willing to accept as philosophy, and whether your willing to accept things that you might not want to hear.

Video games are being used as propaganda by a lot of differant movements nowadays, if you do checking you can find decent numbers of games produced by white supremicists, like the infamous "Ethnic Cleansing" game. Then you've got left wing propaganda/humor games like "Liberal Crime Squad", and then there was a thing on the news about how the Isreali goverment financed and put up a bunch of extremely pro-semitic games for their youth to download. With the exception of "Liberal Crime Squad" I have not played any of these, as my interest is minimal, I'm just saying they are out there if you look.

Our own Cleril was producing a philsophical RPG type game at one point, I never had the time to test it for him, but he might have finished it, and if he did you might be able to pick up a copy of that from him. I can't say much about the actual content of the game, having never played it.

Then you have "The White Chamber" which is a free download from Studio Tophis which is fairly interesting.

People have already mentioned Atlus' "Shin Megami Tensei" series.


Then of course you have "9 Hours, 9 Persons, 9 Doors" for the Nintendo DS which raises some interesting questions towards the end.

The whole good/evil, Open Hand/Closed Fist thing from "Jade Empire" was also very well done. It raises some very interesting questions through the situations in the game and the central philsophies about things like morality in the short term as opposed to the long term. The "evil" philsophy in that game isn't just about being a puppy kicking jerk for the sake of being one, but basically about being a malevolent bastard in such a way that it benefits society as a whole in the long run. In general you typically wind up doing the right thing, when you look at it from enough distance and the probable results. Being a nice guy right here and now, in some cases winds up causing worse problems for more people, or not resolving anything in the long run. I could say more about it, but it's kind of interesting how things wind up playing out in some cases, or when you look at the overall context of a lot of situations. Sometimes being a good guy is the right thing, sometimes being a bad guy is, however it's one of those games where your rewarded for literally being a sort of warrior-poet an adhering to principle in a slightly differant fashion than most games with a morality system.


There are quite a few, especially seeing as philsophy can be so broadly defined, you'll
 

Matthew Valkanov

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WaReloaded said:
Nenad said:
WaReloaded said:
I'll be sure to let you know if anything serious arises from this.

On the topic of current games and philosophy, the Final Fantasy series is a good example. There's even a book called 'Final Fantasy and Philosophy', I've got it and it's a very interesting read. One of my favourite chapters in the book is what David Hume would think of Video Games as an artform and they base the whole piece on a Malboro (FF monster/mob).
Wow, that really does sound interesting, but then I would have to play FF and to do that get an PS, and that's a lotta trouble. I could just read the book, but that ain't my may, but I might make an exception.

Anyway, I should really better phrase my topics, I actually heard there are philo games among older titles. Know any?
You could probably find a copy of Final Fantasy X and a used Ps2 cheaper than an actual PS1 nowadays.

You could also get a PC ported version. Not emulated versions mind, but actual ports. I have FF7 myself on PC, and a friend of mine has 8 and 10