I don't get it, I bought all the property, raised taxes and left my Xbox on overnight. Still not even close to a tenth of the money I needed. :SSaneAmongInsane said:
Secret to a Good Moral Choice System
- Thread starter Vausch
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No more of this binary crap. Also, no good or bad endings. If I get an evil ending I want to feel good about it, like I chose my destiny and decided that I want to do whatever I want regardless of laws, not like I just murdered 6 orphans and a kitten.
Choices should be a spectrum of at least four behaviors;
>Selfless
>Greed
>Anger
>Honor or something
Every choice should affect at most two of those options + and one choice -.
So your end-game could have potentially 8 endings; One with one option really high or really low. Things won't ever be black and white this way.
>Selfless
>Greed
>Anger
>Honor or something
Every choice should affect at most two of those options + and one choice -.
So your end-game could have potentially 8 endings; One with one option really high or really low. Things won't ever be black and white this way.
My opinion on the Moral Choice quandary is that we need to explore the grey area a lot more. By giving us binary options with obvious tones of good and evil we know the outcome. Well if I am good the good people will like me more and i'll get roses and chocolates, if I am evil, however, I will get to run about killing people and be able to extort more money out of my victims. If we explore the middle ground with tough choice scenarios that actually cause us to weigh in on our own personal morality system (spec ops as you mentioned before), it allows us to become much more emotionally invested in the game.Vausch said:
A good moral choice system is one where you make actual moral choices rather than binary bullshit to get extra stats.
See Deus Ex: Human Revolution for examples on how to do moral choices right. There are scenarios in that game where you end up in a grey zone no matter what you do, and ultimately have to make a decision based on your own convictions rather than for getting paragon/renegade points.
See Deus Ex: Human Revolution for examples on how to do moral choices right. There are scenarios in that game where you end up in a grey zone no matter what you do, and ultimately have to make a decision based on your own convictions rather than for getting paragon/renegade points.
Agreed. As a Utilitarian I was expecting to fill up both halfway, by being generally nice and trying diplomacy and demanding surender rather than killing, but being mercilless whenever I had to. Unfortunately they very rarely asked me to do anything iffy so ti ended up either jerk with a good goal or stereotypical good guy.Zeriphor said:
If a system has no indication of a good or evil option, it's furthering our ability to choose for ourselves. If it does have the options, then it might be interesting for some of the choices to not have a good option. A damned if you do, damned if you don't situation.barbzilla said:
Pretty close to my point. With one exception. Since Good and Evil do not exist in absolutes, who do games try to force us to suspend our reality by putting the Moral Choices in that category. Good and Evil are as individual to ourselves as our finger print, it is a combination of the environment we grew up in, the way we were raised, and our natural disposition. These combine to create a unique moral structure in our personality. The games should step back and think more about the characters they are creating. Then make the choices more personal to those characters, or even the player.Vausch said:
I'm going to go with no. It's a nice novelty but I think I've grown tired of them. In the Mass Effect series, I made the mistake of thinking how my characters history and experience would affect their choices, only to be punished for occasionally picking the neutral choice. In ME2, I thought there was a bit of interesting moral dilemma with reprogramming or destroying the Geth, until the time to make the decision and they tell you reprogram good, destroy bad. Besides, doesn't it seem odd to be mowing down hundreds of enemies to suddenly act like you care about not killing someone in a cutscene all of a sudden?
I figure the best morality system would have to be utterly seamless.
First off, no colour coding. No Angelic Blues and Demonic Reds. This includes the omission of any kind of "karma meter" as well as any Lionhead-ish gimmicks like growing blond hair and fair skin or sprouting horns and being followed by a swath of flies. The world needs to remain visually and thematically oblivious to your alignment, because everyday life doesn't turn to a light bluish tinge when I step outside. Unfortunately, that kills a lot of today's "Your actions affect the world!" gimmicks and would, according to some people, diminish player agency.
Then, the script needs to be smart. We need to have more than the usual "Celebrate the Eucharist VS Sacrifice Unborn Puppies on the Altar of Chtulhu" dichotomy most morality-focused scripts and storylines tend to have. The game's lore and structure have to be deep enough for the player's choices to be utterly transparent. This includes the complete omission of anything like Dishonoured's initial loading screens. You know, the ones that go "Don't kill too many people, or else you'll get the EEEEEEEBIL ending!"
If you want to castigate the player for taking a certain route, make that organic. Make it a part of the experience, not a part of the loading-screen window dressing. Make me go "Oh shit, my actions really do matter!" instead of "Oh, right, it's another one of *those* gimmicky systems".
Design everything around the premise that the player's moral choices have to bubble up to the surface as something that slowly takes form. Don't shove it in my face and go "See? SEE?! THIS IS WHAT YOU'VE DONE!"
Above all, splurge on the themes and on the ending's structure. Give us breadth and depth; something to think and feel our way through. The ending has to feel like much more than the final step on a cosmic switchboard, so the branching paths leading to each ending need to start far, far sooner. You can't just constrain your players to a single set of tracks and then, after twenty-plus hours of gameplay, just go "Okay, Decision Time! The button on the left makes you a saint, the button in the middle makes you a conflicted human and the button on the right defines you as a subhuman piece of trash! GO!"
Of course, making the paths branch out sooner means a LOT more work needs to be put into level design, scripting, scenario, modelling - everything needs to be doubled, tripled or quadrupled, depending on how many final options you're aiming for. Entire levels or hubs should be locked away if you're of a certain disposition, while others should be available. The justification for this needs to go deeper than the baseline "You're good/evil so you get to enter this here zone!".
Largely, your script needs to be smart enough to tackle the fact that people aren't jerks or saints. We're all a little bit of both in different proportions at any one time.
As such, morality systems will only go away once we get past the obsession to create safe and reassuring storybook sequences. As long as we'll need a Big Bad to slay or some pseudo-deep but actually shallow discussion on the nature of Good or Evil, we won't be able to progress any further.
First off, no colour coding. No Angelic Blues and Demonic Reds. This includes the omission of any kind of "karma meter" as well as any Lionhead-ish gimmicks like growing blond hair and fair skin or sprouting horns and being followed by a swath of flies. The world needs to remain visually and thematically oblivious to your alignment, because everyday life doesn't turn to a light bluish tinge when I step outside. Unfortunately, that kills a lot of today's "Your actions affect the world!" gimmicks and would, according to some people, diminish player agency.
Then, the script needs to be smart. We need to have more than the usual "Celebrate the Eucharist VS Sacrifice Unborn Puppies on the Altar of Chtulhu" dichotomy most morality-focused scripts and storylines tend to have. The game's lore and structure have to be deep enough for the player's choices to be utterly transparent. This includes the complete omission of anything like Dishonoured's initial loading screens. You know, the ones that go "Don't kill too many people, or else you'll get the EEEEEEEBIL ending!"
If you want to castigate the player for taking a certain route, make that organic. Make it a part of the experience, not a part of the loading-screen window dressing. Make me go "Oh shit, my actions really do matter!" instead of "Oh, right, it's another one of *those* gimmicky systems".
Design everything around the premise that the player's moral choices have to bubble up to the surface as something that slowly takes form. Don't shove it in my face and go "See? SEE?! THIS IS WHAT YOU'VE DONE!"
Above all, splurge on the themes and on the ending's structure. Give us breadth and depth; something to think and feel our way through. The ending has to feel like much more than the final step on a cosmic switchboard, so the branching paths leading to each ending need to start far, far sooner. You can't just constrain your players to a single set of tracks and then, after twenty-plus hours of gameplay, just go "Okay, Decision Time! The button on the left makes you a saint, the button in the middle makes you a conflicted human and the button on the right defines you as a subhuman piece of trash! GO!"
Of course, making the paths branch out sooner means a LOT more work needs to be put into level design, scripting, scenario, modelling - everything needs to be doubled, tripled or quadrupled, depending on how many final options you're aiming for. Entire levels or hubs should be locked away if you're of a certain disposition, while others should be available. The justification for this needs to go deeper than the baseline "You're good/evil so you get to enter this here zone!".
Largely, your script needs to be smart enough to tackle the fact that people aren't jerks or saints. We're all a little bit of both in different proportions at any one time.
As such, morality systems will only go away once we get past the obsession to create safe and reassuring storybook sequences. As long as we'll need a Big Bad to slay or some pseudo-deep but actually shallow discussion on the nature of Good or Evil, we won't be able to progress any further.
Get rid of any quantitative measure of morality and make the evil options provide better benefits. Doing good should be its own reward, and all that.
I agree with you up until you say "only the one ending". No! Bad idea. Actions should have consequences, but they shouldn't be put on a binary good-bad meter that you see every time you do something. Fallout: New Vegas (minus the mostly irrelevant karma meter) did this perfectly. You have to do some dubious things to get in good with some of the "good" factions, and there are good arguments for any faction (except Caesar) being better for the Mojave.Kopikatsu said:
For movies, the end justifies the means (In that, if it has a satisfying conclusion, then the movie was good because it meant the rest of the movie tied together well).Pandabearparade said:
For video games, it's the journey, not the destination that's important. (Because that's the gameplay aspect)
The number of endings don't make the game, the game makes the game.
If there is more than one ending, there is almost always one that is inherently better than the other and so you'd feel pigeonholded into making choices to get the desirable ending. If there is only one ending, you can focus on making choices for the right reasons as opposed to 'I want the cool FMV that makes me feel warm and fuzzy on the inside'.
The Witcher series and Planescape are the best examples of morailty systems i can think of.
In Planescape your alignment changes based on what you say are you're given free reign to say what you like and act in character. There's no obvious good or bad paths with their attendant rewards, rather it's a matter of what you think you should do (or whatever type of person you're rolepaying as). It's all in character rather than trying to game the system.
The Witcher does it well in that it's all rather morally dubious and every choice has consequences good and bad. There's no optimum path for the best reward, rather it's what effect your actions will have on the game world, in the short and long term. Also it's not about stark binary choices where one choice is good the other bad, instead they're framed in ideological terms and there's a range of options. Can you make exceptions for sparing some monsters or do you always kill a monster no matter what. Should you? Does the end justify the means?
In Planescape your alignment changes based on what you say are you're given free reign to say what you like and act in character. There's no obvious good or bad paths with their attendant rewards, rather it's a matter of what you think you should do (or whatever type of person you're rolepaying as). It's all in character rather than trying to game the system.
The Witcher does it well in that it's all rather morally dubious and every choice has consequences good and bad. There's no optimum path for the best reward, rather it's what effect your actions will have on the game world, in the short and long term. Also it's not about stark binary choices where one choice is good the other bad, instead they're framed in ideological terms and there's a range of options. Can you make exceptions for sparing some monsters or do you always kill a monster no matter what. Should you? Does the end justify the means?
Not true. Imagine if Fallout: New Vegas had one ending you got no matter which side you picked, which factions you fought against, and what quests you completed and how. You'd have Fallout 3's ending, which sucked so hard they retconned it in DLC.Kopikatsu said:
There is no "best" ending in New Vegas that you are required to get. Some people worked with the NCR and get an ending where they took control. I sided with House, and thought he was a much better leader. The endings were both "good", just different and based upon choices made and their outcomes rather than a good/evil meter.
Instead of opening up gameplay, they restrict it. No system: They suck. Out and out.
Dishonored "Oh, you kill people? Bad ending for you. Now you're going to have to play again to see the other *teehehehehehehe*." It's a cheap trick to get you to play through the game twice, whilst pretending to add depth, whilst doing nothing of the sort.
Giving the player choice means accepting that the player will make choices. Morality systems override the effect of giving me options. So ditch them. Alpha Protocol did this well. Depending on how you interacted with characters in the game, you could befriend or fight them or their factions. If you were a dick to someone, they didn't like you. And you weren't stuck being nice to people just because you had to get the critical morality points.
The choices changed the narrative subtlely, and playing it by ear off what you wanted to do didn't feel like it was crippling or choosing the ending. A choice system where I've got seemingly more than one choice, linked to something apart from a universal morality meter makes me want to explore the game. New Vegas also did this type of thing-making choices and interactions with factions important as to how they treated you, rather than some stupid red/blue scale on your character sheet.
If I have to metagame the system, I'm not being imersed and enjoying it, I'm going for my "Full Paragon" or "Full Renegade" playthrough to get the bonuses. The closest thing that AP had to those morality meters was being told the medical bills and the number of orphans made by your mission. The choice is on your head whether you kill or not. You can't convince me that I'm free to make choices whilst enforcing specific choices.
EDIT: Just rereading, saw this:
Dishonored "Oh, you kill people? Bad ending for you. Now you're going to have to play again to see the other *teehehehehehehe*." It's a cheap trick to get you to play through the game twice, whilst pretending to add depth, whilst doing nothing of the sort.
Giving the player choice means accepting that the player will make choices. Morality systems override the effect of giving me options. So ditch them. Alpha Protocol did this well. Depending on how you interacted with characters in the game, you could befriend or fight them or their factions. If you were a dick to someone, they didn't like you. And you weren't stuck being nice to people just because you had to get the critical morality points.
The choices changed the narrative subtlely, and playing it by ear off what you wanted to do didn't feel like it was crippling or choosing the ending. A choice system where I've got seemingly more than one choice, linked to something apart from a universal morality meter makes me want to explore the game. New Vegas also did this type of thing-making choices and interactions with factions important as to how they treated you, rather than some stupid red/blue scale on your character sheet.
If I have to metagame the system, I'm not being imersed and enjoying it, I'm going for my "Full Paragon" or "Full Renegade" playthrough to get the bonuses. The closest thing that AP had to those morality meters was being told the medical bills and the number of orphans made by your mission. The choice is on your head whether you kill or not. You can't convince me that I'm free to make choices whilst enforcing specific choices.
EDIT: Just rereading, saw this:
Again on Dishonored (Because it does the worst form of morality systems), I did have one moment where I thought that I was doing the wrong thing killing everyone. When I came back to the first level, where I'd killed every guard, the guards had a watchtower, which they used to vaporise a bunch of people (They might have been weepers). I thought "Was that because of what I did? Did I just get a bunch of innocents killed? Wow. I'm kind of a dick." That felt like an organic moment. I don't know if the towers go up either way (Which would invalidate this, but I'm not playing through the whole thing and the million bloody sidequests just to find out), and later, upon finding out that Weepers are just out and out enemies set to always hostile (Good work on morally ambiguous there *sarcasm*), who you just end up butchering (I seriously question their inclusion. The mad man later on is interesting-Zombies are not), I stopped caring again. Good morality systems should work off regret and feelings of unintended consequences rather than supernatural influences of evil.IamLEAM1983 said:
Moral choices should not happen only in Designated Moral Choice Zones, like in Bioshock or Mass Effect. If moral choices only occur in certain, very obvious situations, then it implies that everything outside of these situations is amoral, which leads to weird stuff like in Bioshock, where you could be a paragon of absolute good despite having gunned down hundreds of people. Allowing the player to make their own choices in the midst of gameplay, like in Deus Ex or Dishonoured (the choice to kill or not to kill) is much more effective. This also means that the player should be given multiple ways to progress, so that they aren't forced down a specific moral path by the game.
Moral choices should not be labelled as intrinsically good or bad, they should be presented as equally viable choices. Mass Effect did this wrong, as it was entirely possible to disagree with how the moral choices were graded. For instance, what if I'm playing a good character and I decide that exterminating the geth is morally preferable to brainwashing them, or that not curing the genophage so that the galaxy doesn't end up overrun by krogan is preferable to making Wrex happy? If the game disagrees with me, it feels like I'm being punished for having an opinion that differs from the writers. Dragon Age did this right, I never felt like I was being judged for my choices. In Dragon Age, I just made choices and there were consequences, and I could decide on my own as to whether I'd done the right thing.
Moral choices should not be labelled as intrinsically good or bad, they should be presented as equally viable choices. Mass Effect did this wrong, as it was entirely possible to disagree with how the moral choices were graded. For instance, what if I'm playing a good character and I decide that exterminating the geth is morally preferable to brainwashing them, or that not curing the genophage so that the galaxy doesn't end up overrun by krogan is preferable to making Wrex happy? If the game disagrees with me, it feels like I'm being punished for having an opinion that differs from the writers. Dragon Age did this right, I never felt like I was being judged for my choices. In Dragon Age, I just made choices and there were consequences, and I could decide on my own as to whether I'd done the right thing.
