Poll: Moral choices in RPGs

[linwolf]

Morality systems are broken and should be cast away, I must prefer when the game gives me shades of grey and I have to make my own choices of with is the best. In ME2

Spoiler

the scene in with you kill or brainwashed the geth was interesting for me but was more or less ruin by the fact that I got paragon or renegade points for it.

That is the reason that I am excited about The Witcher 2, the fist never told you whether it fought that what you did was right or wrong it just showed the consequences of you actions. For the same reason I give games like Alpha Protocol a pass.
Dragon Age: Origins had a nice way of hiding the good/bad slider and made it work by letting the other companions be the judge of you actions and I really liked that.

 

[Kagim]

Alright... time to explain things...

Everyone complaining about a 'black and white' system... I am guessing your sill in highschool...

In reality. Every choice you make is going to perceived one of three ways.

Acceptable.
Disagreeable.
Don't give a shitable.

People might really like what you do or really hate what you do, but ultimately unless they don't care people feel one way or the other. There is no gray. That gray you keep asking for is merely when personal morals conflict with perceived societal morals. There is no actual gray, it's what you believe versus what society believes which creates your indecision or doubt. There is no such thing as a gray area from a societal perception view.

There is no neutral either unless you are completely uninvolved. Politically you can remain neutral however when talking about societal perception(Which is what most games are tracking) unless you have nothing to do with it people will view your action as either good or bad. Black or white so to speak.

Now, people complaining about manipulating sliders. In real life, this is how your actions would work.

Do a thousand good deeds, kill one person, be hated forever.

In other words, imagine playing a game, accidentally kill an innocent. Now you gotta re load your game because your permanently hated by the majority of society. That's how real life works. You fuck up once and no matter what you do your condemned. The people closest to you might forgive you, but the key word is forgive, they still don't like what you did. Kill a person, your fucked. Very few things in life will people just let go. So unless you just want to steal five cent candies for a corner store be prepared for everyone to hate you.

Morale absolutes. In many games, what other choices are there. Take infamous for example. People bitched incessantly that the game is morale absolutes. I wonder if they played it.

Look, a giant rock is flying towards your head. You only have enough time to either blast it away, endangering others, or take the hit yourself. So... what's the middle ground? You take the hit while calling the innocent people cock monkeys?

In the beginning you get a crate of food down from a building its stuck on. You can either take your share, or force people to give up theirs. While i am sure there are many different amounts of taking more or less it is meaningless when ultimately your actions will still be seen as bad or good. DO you really need sixty different options of how much or little food you want to take? No, because that's not fun.

There pipes pumping poison into the water, you can turn it off yourself, which will cause you to get sprayed, or make someone else do it. Once again, whats the middle ground. Your either turning it off, or your not. Either way, what your doing will be considered bad or good. Do you want the option to ask the guy nicely to be horribly poisoned or do you want to cut his arm off and rub it in the poison? Burying your player in a mountain of useless options is kinda stupid. It makes you choices feel less important.

Or my favorite line is from a guy who played bioshock.

"I only harvested the first four little sisters and saved the rest and still got the bad ending! What about my personal growth!"

Wow... I was so utterly baffled by this statement. All i could think was "So if i go into an orphanage and murder 4 kids but give the other 12 candy i should be rewarded, or at least not punished. I mean, hey, personal growth!"

Lastly, 'forced' replay. NO. IT. IS. NOT. FORCED.

You are never FORCED to play it again. Most games i see accused of this, try as i might, i never see publishers or developers bragging about play time. It's a different way to play the game, giving added replay value. However trying to say it 'forces' you to play is clearly showing an incredibly stupid bias. When i played infamous for my second, and third, time it wasn't because the game took a knife to my balls and said "PLAY ME AGAIN OR I WILL MAKE YOU A EUNUCH!" it was because i said "Hey, this game fucking rocks, lets play it again! Oh! I can play evil this time! That'll be cool!".

What next... games with multiple difficulties are only there to force you to play it multiple times?

OH NO! that game has seven different races AND classes! They are trying to force us to play it multiple times! With there extra options and play styles! Those bastards. How dare they create different ways to play there game so if we want to play it again we can experience it in a new way!

Note: Am i saying that it can't be improved upon? Hell no. I like how some games are taking it to the next level and dividing your actions among groups and factions. However i always see the same things repeated, like i have this thread, and am hoping to kinda shed some light on morality and human nature.

Oh, and here's me being an asshole, feel free to skip past here.

I don't like the poll options. What if i don't totally agree? What if i only slightly agree? Why is there only three choices? You know there are more then three choices in real life? I want shades of gray dammit! God your such a hypocrite!

 

[AniThari]

*selects her well earned blue option* I apologize for the lengthy post ahead of time.

Since Mass Effect is being used to discuss this I would like to point out that these narrow decisions are only as narrow as you wish to see them.

Most of the time you can slide on without being wholly paragon or renegade. I believe Tali?s loyalty mission in Mass Effect 2 is possibly the best illustration of this. True you can go full paragon or renegade at the end of it getting Tali?s trail over with quickly and her clearing of the charges or you have three other options; Rally the Crowd (which will get her cleared if you have Veetor & Kal'Reegar?s support), claim to have found not proof (she is found guilty but remains loyal), or present the evidence (she?s declared innocent but is angry at Sheppard - no loyalty - and Shep causes the Fleet to begin breaking apart [?They couldn?t handle the truth!?]).

The first two will earn 30 paragon points but shows two different Shepards. Are you the type to fight numbers with numbers (the three Admirals vs. You and two allies)? Or do you keep quiet to protect the wishes of a friend? The last gives Renegade points but that could be either Shepard being: Xenophobic, or thinking beyond Tali?s request (?She?ll understand later??), or actually just trying to be honest. Then for all three ?back up? choices it could simply be that Shepard is unsure how you present a case in a quarian court - to explain away the grayed out options if you want.

So there are many choices but if the player willing limits their perspective that is on them, not the team who made the game.

Do not wholly disregard moral choice systems and claim they limit the story as well. I believe moral choice systems do act as catalysts for replay value because they give the player a chance to act through an alternate version of the character - example: comics wouldn?t be as fun if there weren?t alternate interpretations.

All stories have limited outcomes - even Fallout: New Vegas. We all have to reach the end sometime and while I would ?love? nothing more than for a current game company to spend twelve years on a game to make it perfect for everyone, for them to showcase nine options for every conversation, I would much rather see a title come out in three years - give or take a year. And on the other hand I would not want to be the voice actor or writer who has to think up a minimum of three to five endings (nine max[?!]), or the programmer, or the tester, or the developer who has to help craft the scenes while making sure they work. To be honest I would certainly never wish such a workload on any team even if I were rooting for the game to fail.

It might not be perfect, but the current moral choice system does get the job done when a good team is behind it.



PS: I?m tired of the Legion?s loyalty mission being the go to ?example.? It isn?t a good one if you listen to Legion closely. It is a less of a dilemma then it was made out to be.

The Paragon option is that because when they return to the Geth they will all share the fact they were brainwashed. Even though this was painted by some as the end all I would like to point out that if you bring Legion along on Tali?s loyalty mission Legion mentions that hacking attempts made against the Geth will fail - it may take time but they do fail and the Geth return to their original free state. Since the Geth believe in self-determination and hacking attempts eventually fail, coupled with the fact the Heretics will actually know how they came to their original conclusion and will have free access to that ?truth? as it were they can become Heretics again and the Geth would allow it.

I never even gave a thought as to why Legion was so split up about the choice, until I spoke to Legion after the fact. Then I was like, ?Oh damn!? Now I was faced with the choice of ?would you like to be brainwashed then find out you were and then return to your original beliefs? or ?die fighting? and I felt that revenge was best served icy cold.

 

[SideburnsPuppy]

I have a similar problem with morality systems. Players aren't playing the game and trying to think of what they would do, they're going in with an idea of what kind of character they want to be and then trying to choose choices that go along with that.

 

[Anti Nudist Cupcake]

Bioware has a very limited scope of what roleplaying is.
To them, there are always JUST 2 choices, a good guy choice and a bad guy choice. And they expect you to either play JUST as a good guy or JUST as a bad guy without ever making choices that have to do with the opposite alignment no matter what the situation is or how retarded that choice is to you.

Mass effect 2 spoilers:

For instance, I played as a good guy shepard that would do EVERYTHING he could do to make sure that the reapers will be defeated. So at the end of the game when I am given a choice to preserve the collector base and possibly save all of galactic society (trillions of innocents) with the study of it's technology, I naturally choose to preserve the base but no, I made a bad guy choice or "renegade choice" as they call it. I also tried to role play as a Shepard that is always very nice to innocent people or allies but downright cruel to bad guys, and i'm still getting renegade points which is basically a new word for darkside points and when I reach a stage where my possible conversation response depends on how many paragon/renegade points I had I suddenly get no choice because I didn't pore them ALL in one side, THIS ISN'T GIVING PLAYERS A CHOICE BIOWARE!!!!
I also got a bit worried about Conrad Verner who keeps stalking me in an unhealthy fashion so naturally, I shot him (in the foot) because he needed to know that he should stop because what he was doing wasn't healthy but noooo, RENEGADE POINTS!!!!

End Mass effect 2 spoilers

Another sucky roleplaying feature is bioware's conversation wheel system, the options are not full sentences but labels that indicate what direction shepard will decide to take the conversation to. Now listen again, SHEPARD DECIDES HOW TO TAKE THE CONVERSATION. It's not YOUR words or sentences but shepard's own wording.
Another thing is the voice acting, the thing about kotor 2 is that your character isn't given a voice and some people say that this is lame, but by not voicing the character they are making YOU the character, YOU are the voice and you know what we call this? ROLEPLAYING.

And your'e character doesn't even get the name you want him to have, just some label for you to identify your save files with and then they have people call him "Shepard" for the rest of the game as if that was his name which wouldn't be a problem when he needs to introduce himself if he WASN'T VOICE ACTED! The rest of the cast could have just named him something else like in kotor 2 where they call you "exile" or in fable where they call you "hero" and in dragon age where they call you "warden", it's a label your'e okay with as it is just a nickname for your character who can always introduce himself with any true name you entered for him.

And did you know, the conversation wheels with multiple investigative options are meant to be followed in a counter-clockwise pattern?
You are meant to follow conversations systematically,THIS IS NOT ROLEPLAYING!

Still though, I enjoyed mass effect 2 as it was still pretty damn interesting and exciting and is one of my favorite games of 2010, right in my top 3.

 

[Anti Nudist Cupcake]

Lol, I just realized that the op's poll is a better example of good/bad/neutral decisions than anything mass effect has!

 

[Popido]

"Moral choice system" is just a marketing trick. We already had those, now they're just highlighted. Same thing with "H4rdc0r3" and multiplayer.

 

[Fr]anc[is]

That's why I prefer the old fashioned Lawful,Chaotic,Good,Evil, Neutral system that DnD uses. I really dislike the whole Good/Evil system that most games use. In most cases, it's simply a choice between an idolized good guy paladin archetype or a machiavelian evil marauder of death.. No in between or anything more complicated then that...

You are aware of lawful stupid, right? http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LawfulStupid DnD alignment has just as much stupidity and cliche as everything else, at least other systems are original. DnD just adds that obnoxious sorcerer vs wizard debate as well.

I think completely abandoning morality would also be a bad thing, because then you end up with so much gray that is just as bad. I mean they are called GREY wardens, in a game with no morality bar. I C WUT U DID THAR. Sometimes stabbing an innocent peasant in the face is evil, not everyone is secretly a baby eater or something else complex and secret

 

[crazyfoxdemon]

anc[is]

That's why I prefer the old fashioned Lawful,Chaotic,Good,Evil, Neutral system that DnD uses. I really dislike the whole Good/Evil system that most games use. In most cases, it's simply a choice between an idolized good guy paladin archetype or a machiavelian evil marauder of death.. No in between or anything more complicated then that...

You are aware of lawful stupid, right? http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LawfulStupid DnD alignment has just as much stupidity and cliche as everything else, at least other systems are original. DnD just adds that obnoxious sorcerer vs wizard debate as well.

I'm not disagreeing with you.. The DnD alignment system is flawed.. But it is, however, better then anything that's currently out there...