Poll: Moral Ambiguity: That subtle shade of grey.

[nick_knack]

I am bored with the vast divide between the purest white and the darkest black. I'm tired of only having two choices. Worst of all I hate being forced to a shoehorned decision, that has no satisfactory outcomes!

I really hated:
<spoiler=Fallout 3: Broken steel's ending>Having to choose between destroying the Enclave crawler, thus finishing the job I'd been working towards for most of the game or destroying the Citadel, crippling the faction that had been helping me towards my ends for most of the game.

Whats even worse about that, is that as a result of either choice I'm given a tremendous amount of positive of negative karma AND it's a choice that is completely unavoidable. I love Fallout 3 but some of the things it does bother the crap out of me.

On the other hand:

<spoiler=Mass Effect>Killing or saving the Rachni Queen was a choice that I felt was really well done. Both decisions seem grey, and the decision itself really forced me to think. Kudos to Bioware!

Mass effect in general had an excellent moral system I especially enjoyed how the labels "Good" and "Evil" were dismissed for more fitting names.

I feel that devs who want to add a moral system should put some real work into making the choices complex and realistic, instead of just crowbaring two opposing choices in, and calling it a day. I very much hope to see this in the future.

Thats my rant. What's your opinion Escapist?

 

[Clashero]

So, you hate having only black and white, yet you hate having to choose from options whose results don't give a fully satisfactory outcome?

Does not compute.

 

[Jedoro]

We need more cowb- shades of gray.

Very little in important situations, and even all of life itself, is black and white. So much is ambiguous that it's hard to always make the right decision, and I'd enjoy if games were like that. I don't enjoy choosing between building an orphanage with my own money, or snapping a puppy's neck and eating its heart.

 

[Deleric]

Yeah..most moral choices in video games will just slate toward good and bad, and depending on how many you get of absolute goods and absolute bads will decide your level of gray.

There should really just be a gray option, yet keep it realistic and not blunt.

 

[Rigs83]

Life is never black or white.
Killing someone is wrong but letting another die is just as wrong.
You wish happiness and long life to the ones you care for but how many people could live with long life and happiness for their worst foes?
You can't and neither can your foes so you both conspire together to bring pain and suffering onto those you love to justify the hate you have for each other. Is a piece of land, faith or idea so worth the pain of death for you and your foe?
Madness is doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different outcome and we are all God's madmen.

 

[Omikron009]

Although fallout 3 is my favourite game ever, I do agree that some of the choices in the game are a wee bit strange. Aside from the end of broken steel, which is, admittedly, stupid, the choice to insert the modified FEV virus into the purifier is insane. It's sabotaging the goal that many of your friends and loved ones worked towards, and died for, for their entire life, and even the most evil psychopath would have second thoughts about something THAT crazy. I also agree that mass effect has some of the best moral choices in any game I've ever played. One that comes to mind is a side mission in which you find a brother and sister arguing while visiting the citadel. The woman is pregnant, and her husband has died of a heart defect. There's a 1 in 50 chance that her baby also has the defect, and gene therapy can cure it. However, there's a 1 in 300 chance that the gene therapy could kill the baby. Good stuff. I really hope mass effect 2 has not only the superb writing, story, and voice acting, but also the realistic satisfying moral choices that the original has.

 

[TheAmazingTGIF]

I completely agree about Mass Effect. It is one of my favorite "morality bars" in a game. Some of the choices are more black and white than the others.
Particularly when dealing with the Council.

Spoiler

Do you save the Heads of Civilization or after all the pain they put you through, do you leave them to die?

 

[Pimppeter2]

I honestly don't care. I think games with plain black and white are fine. If a dev wants to give me shades of gray thats cool too

 

[Beffudled Sheep]

I completely agree about Mass Effect. It is one of my favorite "morality bars" in a game. Some of the choices are more black and white than the others.
Particularly when dealing with the Council.

Spoiler

Do you save the Heads of Civilization or after all the pain they put you through, do you leave them to die?

Thats easy. Order must be preserved by the qualified people/creatures.
Ot:I also think that there should be more grey.

 

[Mookie_Magnus]

Basically, what's already been said above. I think most people want more shades of gray.

Off-Topic: Do you spell the word 'Grey' or 'Gray'? It seems that both are correct, but are they used for different meanings, or do people simply make a preference?

 

[Dancingman]

The grey really needs to get more mainstream, I've seen it in places where it is absolutely superb, oh and shame on Bioshock's devs for making a game as deep as that was and having your moral decisions come down to child-killing or being the freaking savior of all those little girls.

One game I thought did grey morality well, that, for all its flaws, I loved it mostly for that, was the Witcher. I'll give one of my favorite situations: you have to choose between a known witch, and several townspeople. The accusations against the witch are: selling a poison to a woman who used it to commit suicide, and possibly using a strange doll she had to manipulate a man into killing his brother. However, the situation deepens, one of the townsfolk was a city guardsmen who raped the woman who committed suicide and the brother-killer could easily have done it out of his own motives. The local priest exiled his own daughter for having a child out of wedlock. It was a very interesting decision that made me genuinely question its morality, did the witch make the man kill his brother? Was she wrong for selling the poison? Were the townsfolk more worthy than her?

Mass Effect also had some good issues, the Rachni one I loved, and another recent one I liked was the one about the Batarian terrorist. Do you let him go to save the lives of some hostages? Or do you go after him, even if he does kill the hostages?

 

[Spicy meatball]

Off-Topic: Do you spell the word 'Grey' or 'Gray'? It seems that both are correct, but are they used for different meanings, or do people simply make a preference?

Gray is a US form of spelling in particular regions while Grey, is the widely used version. They mean the same thing though; the various shades of black and white.

OT: I call for more Grey. Nothing ever is a clear moral choice until we travel further down the path and see the repercussions. Hence, more video games should try and emulate this.

 

[Wildrow12]

I say we need more 'chaotic' options. Save the world? Destroy the world? Maybe I just want to paint the planet bright yellow and scream out the word, "Dodongos" at anyone wearing Green Jerkin.

 

[Nigh Invulnerable]

We need more cowb- shades of gray.

Very little in important situations, and even all of life itself, is black and white. So much is ambiguous that it's hard to always make the right decision, and I'd enjoy if games were like that. I don't enjoy choosing between building an orphanage with my own money, or snapping a puppy's neck and eating its heart.

I've got a fever and the only pres- solution is to present more scenarios where the two sides could clearly be seen as both "good" or "evil". Do I help the townspeople gain the rights to the mine in the nearby hillside or do I let the orcs who live there peacefully stay? If neither side is outright hostile towards the other, which one is the "good" choice? That's what I want to see. More choices where your action then determines which side of a conflict becomes the enemy, not more of the predetermined "I'm humanity's last hope" vs. "I think humans are scum and should die" type situations.

 

[Dikaiosune Exousia]

I must strongly disagree with the notion that black and white is simple and unrealistic. On the contrary, I would argue that gray is the oversimplification. Gray is only possible in an amoral theory, such as subjectivism. In such a case, there can be no right or wrong, so all choices are equal and morally indistinguishable. In any moral theory that allows for a distinction between right and wrong, there are right choices (help those in need), wrong choices (kill 'em all and let God sort 'em out), and non-moral choices (I think I'll wear that blue shirt today). In the real world there are often very complex situations which do not have obvious and simple answers. Complex answers can have a combination of right and wrong, but right and wrong as concepts remain separate and distinct. Any valid moral theory ought to be able to produce a "right" answer in even the most complicated and nuanced problem. Failure to do so is a sign that either you do not have a comprehensive moral theory, or you do not fully understand the situation. To say that because things got complicated that the very distinction between right and wrong disappears is an oversimplification.

That said, I do get tired of evil for the sake of evil. It fails because it is unrealistic. Very few people do something simply because it is wrong.Far more often it stems from either choosing something they want over what is right, or they have a different view of morality. Since making the evil option the beneficial one would destroy the balance, it makes more sense to use opposing moral theories as a more realistic alternative.

Bioware has done this twice, with Mass Effect's paragon/renegade system, and Jade Empire's open palm/closed fist system (with the unspoken, greedy option being offered as well). Both were good ideas, but were problematic in their execution.

In the the case of Jade Empire, the open palm was altruistic and orderly, while the closed fist was darwinian and chaotic. It was a good idea, since the closed fist actually wanted to help people, but did so by forcing them to become stronger as power was it's only virtue. Unfortunately, this was reflected almost exclusively in dialogue, while actual choices often fell back into the standard puppy kicking that had nothing to do with the theory.

In mass effect, the renegade option was great idea, but rarely was there the appropriate motivation. A renegade is supposed to break the rules in order to get the job done. unfortunately there were very few situations where breaking the rules actually got the job done, but following them didn't. Just the opposite in fact, as the paragon option almost always yielded superior results. Without forcing a tough decision between means and ends, renegade loses any possible justification, and gets reduced to being the jerkass option.

I like being the good guy, but I want it to be a challenge. I want a game to try and tempt me, to make my principles mean something by making them cost me. And when I choose the other path, I want to be able to do so for good reason.

Of course, the alternative would be to forget the whole morality meter bit, and just give me a big old sandbox in which all my choices have consequences, and let me be the judge of what's right and wrong.

 

[Twilight_guy]

I think that games would be better if they removed the moral system all together. When making a choice causes a screen and flashing number to pop up saying "this decision was good" or "this decision was evil" then there is never really a choice, you just go with "this is my good guy game" or "this is my evil guy game" and make your decision based on that. Having no system force the player to say "what do I think is the right (or wrong) choice?" Not having the developer force a right or wrong on the issue leads to deeper thought and a choice based on what someone really feels.

 

[Vuljatar]

Agreed. Most games these days are far too stark.

What was it Yahtzee said about Bioshock's endings... something like "You're either Mother Teresa or you eat babies."

 

[Booze Zombie]

The original Fallout games did much better on morality than most games ever have, in my opinion.

I mean, you could be the cruelest bastard in California, but you could still talk everyone in the town in to, roughly, liking you.

You'd have a harder time of it for the bad karma, which was basically your first impression reputation (bad or good, depending on the other person's karma).

Really, it was quite big and alive for such a small game world.

 

[WolfThomas]

One game I thought did grey morality well, that, for all its flaws, I loved it mostly for that, was the Witcher. I'll give one of my favorite situations: you have to choose between a known witch, and several townspeople. The accusations against the witch are: selling a poison to a woman who used it to commit suicide, and possibly using a strange doll she had to manipulate a man into killing his brother. However, the situation deepens, one of the townsfolk was a city guardsmen who raped the woman who committed suicide and the brother-killer could easily have done it out of his own motives. The local priest exiled his own daughter for having a child out of wedlock. It was a very interesting decision that made me genuinely question its morality, did the witch make the man kill his brother? Was she wrong for selling the poison? Were the townsfolk more worthy than her?

Spoiler: Evidence that confused me

For her being a witch:
-Doll of the Merchant who killed his brother
-Sold poison to girl to kill herself
-Potentially lied about the rape, as a bunch of thugs threaten to rape a barmaid like they did the suicide girl
-Threatens you with a curse from the Lionheadspider (something) cult if you condemn her
-She seduces you (or tries)

Against:
-Nurse later on, confirms the story about the exiled daughter
-Merchant killed his own brother, there were the plants that come from an particularly vicious murder
-Trader was selling weapons to elven terrorists and main bad guys
-Guard was slow like Lenny from "Of Mice and Men", could have raped her without meaning too

On the weight of the evidence I would say she was a witch, but I supported her because of the nature of the proceedings, they wanted to execute (burn) her without a fair trial and that I couldn't support. Likewise the crowd of villagers later chose to attack me, it was self defense.

But I found the other moral decisions with far longer reaching consequences really good, like the one with the elves and whether or not to give them weapons and food or fight them. The consequences of that only occur about an hour later (depends what point you do quests), too late to quick save back and change it.

That's what works well, moral decision of which the consequences are not apparent immediately, I would love it if in Mass effect 2 the Racni comeback as an ally or villain, either way could prove an interesting point.

 

[Katherine Kerensky]

I love those subtle shades of grey.
For Humanity To Walk In The Light, Battles Must Be Fought In The Shadows.
we need grey to survive.