Happyninja42 said:
DoPo said:
Fair enough, I would agree the system isn't that good. It was merely a commonly known example I tossed out there, to help establish what kind of game I was referring to.
I wanted to mention it there...but I forgot - I actually rather liked Dragon Age: Origin's system. Namely, there is no good/evil meter. You are free to act as you please then, unlike ME - you can try to be as helpful as possible, however, you are also free being a complete douche to somebody who was a complete douche to you. The only sort of "moral meter"-like mechanic the game gives you are your companion's reactions to your actions. And even then, it only measures how others perceive you. Which fits perfectly well with how the moral meter is supposed to work in a lot of places.
Happyninja42 said:
DoPo said:
As for Fallout, at least when I played 3, I never felt particularly "evil". I chose the more diplomatic options, but also looted a lot of private property. Quite far into the game, I actually decided to check my morality meter, and it was leaning towards "evil". Wasn't totally evil, but at least half-into it. So, just by mucking around, I managed to become a bad person...yeah, I didn't feel evil.
Yes, but you do acknowledge that the game gives you the option right? I mean, there is no reason for blowing up Megaton, other than "lulz! Look at those fuckers die!" I mean seriously, you agree to do it, from a guy who simply wants that town out of his field of view from his home. That's....kind of an evil, dickish thing to do. xD Sure you might not actually choose those options (and in that case, i would say you would be the "hero" option).
Yeah, the option was there to blow up Megaton. I never did because it was really a stupid option.
Now, since I'm talking about it, I suppose I could just try to improve it. Bethesda style! And for that, I would use a quest from Morrowind. OK, so first of all, Morrowind wasn't known for the grand scale of evilness you could do, yet it was there - you can kill anybody, go and depopulate some cities, and then still finish the main quest with no problem. Sounded pretty evil and didn't need explicit pointing out.
But that's not actually what I was after - I'm going to use something completely different, it's a quest from the main questline of the mage's guild. It's given to you by the arch-mage Trebonius Artorius and it's called "Mystery of the Dwarves". Basically, for anybody who hasn't played it (don't worry, it's not a really big spoiler) when you get to ask the guy what to do next, in order to advance in the Mage's guild, he'll go "Oh, could you just find out what happened with the dwarves? Kthxbai". See, he's a bit...senile. Or wacky, if you wish. At any rate, just strange and old. As for the dwarves thing - well, it's not actually something you just go and find out - in-universe, scholars have spent
years only to be met with more questions than the ones they started with. The dwarves are a really big mystery - his equivalent to a teacher saying "For homework for tomorrow, can you find if alien life exists or not? Kthxbai". Essentially you are given an impossible quest. Now, as it happens, as part of the main quest, you manage to find some information about the dwarves and you can actually return it to Artorius for a (measly) reward but the quest itself is supposed to be nigh impossible in-universe.
So, we could have something very similar. An old and quirky but harmless guy asks you for something impossible - this time, it's to blow up Megaton. The reason needs to still be reason, of course. For this to work, it also has to be more firmly established that the bomb is supposed to be super inactive and not a threat at all. However, old quirky guy reasons that since it's a bomb, it can blow up. Anybody else would tell you that it's not possible. Way later in the game, however, you manage to come across something that could activate it. Or maybe just another bomb. Or whatever - point is, you come into the means to blow up Megaton and that's not actually expected by anybody. You
can do it, to which the old guy would respond with "Oh, sure thanks" and hand you something like, I dunno, 100 caps for your trouble.
It's not painted
as evil at that point, because the guy who gives you the quest doesn't really
mean harm because he's senile. As such, it's not really his fault that somebody followed his insane ramblings. Still, if you did do it despite that, it must have been more for your benefit than his. The "reward" cements that, as 150 caps shouldn't matter further down the line. Oh, and, of course, you willingly caused massive destruction and the deaths of many people. That's pretty evil.
Happyninja42 said:
DoPo said:
A lot of time you get really dumb "evil" choices, as well - if you play good or at least neutral, when somebody asks for help, you can give it which leads you to more stuff - story, money, items, XP, upgrades. If you are determined to play evil, you would tell them to go fuck off and not get anything out of it.
I agree, most of the games don't establish a good "evil" action. Yahtzee gave a good explanation on how you make a real evil choice. You make it the shittier option, but that it provides an easier solution to your problem. "Yes you could save up your money, and get in good with the local call dealer, to unlock the vehicle for you to drive around the city in, or you could just steal a car and be done with it." Few games actually give you that choice. The best examples I can think of were inFamous 1 and 2. I don't know about the other game, haven't played them yet. But the evil choice usually had a very tangible benefit to you, but at a price.
What I'd like to see is a game where being good is more of a struggle. The binary path systems usually do discourage you from being evil - while you do get resources faster in the beginning, it's not unusual for that not to matter in the long run. At most, you'd be able to get, like, a +3 sword, while a good guy would still be swinging +2. And a couple of hours later, both sides would be rolling in dough anyway. However, there are discouragements - evil is usually more stuff, but as you pointed out, at a cost. You may need to remove a shop keeper (be it kill, or drive out of business) in order to get money and/or good equipment, but at the same time, you loose access to that merchant in the long run. That might not be desirable. Also, a lot of games do the "dark side look" where being evil literally makes you look evil. Fable, KOTOR, Mass Effect all did it, for example. And looking evil is usually bad, not as much "badass" - in KOTOR Dark Side users look sickly and like walking corpses; in Mass Effect, Shepard just looks
broken; in Fable, you get horns and glowing red eyes, however, all villagers run away from you, which is pretty annoying (you may need to chase down shop keepers).
Still, what if this was reversed, somewhat? Evil people look better than good ones (for whatever in-game justification), and they are also liked more by NPCs (again, for whatever in-game justification). The game doesn't need to revel in that, as in, it's not that everybody likes the evil guy, just because he's evil - in fact, divorce the NPC reactions from directly being affected by alignment. Just have it so evil alignment does result in being liked more while good aligned characters do get to struggle just a bit more. It'd be an interesting flip of expectations - would more people still play good, even if it's ultimately harder? I'll be interested in seeing that.
