WolfThomas said:
Not enough focus is given on the intent behind the action. Planescape Torment was great because you could do stuff like choose between "Truth: Tell me or I kill you" or "Bluff: Tell me or I kill you". Both would have the same effect if successful, but affect alignment differently. If it failed you could kill them if you chose truth, but not bluff, therefore being consequences to your choices.
I remember a similar situation in the first
KOTOR which rubbed me the wrong way. When the Jedi council oversaw your initiation into the order, and asked you to swear to stay true to the light side, you could promise, refuse, or swear falsely. But this conveyed information to the computer (and to the GM and to the Universe) of which none of them would be privy. At the time, I
didn't know if I wanted to be a light-sider, a dark-sider or even a believer of the The Challenge [http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Potentium][/I]. This moment felt invasive, and was one of the points that ultimately drove me to stop playing entirely.[footnote]By far the biggest issue that lost me as a player was the tedium of the turn based combat, especially since it seemed I could not to be able to turn a corner without time stopping because someone wanted to ambush me.[/footnote] That said, I wonder if the incident in
Torment could have been executed better by first giving you the option to threaten, and then later giving the option to confuse (or to torture!) had the victim refused to talk.
Regarding the original topic, I really would like to see
emergent morality choices become used more often in games, which is to say, choices that come up due to the dynamics of the game, not because the choice was engineered as a story element via dialogue- or choice-trees.
The emergent moral choices I encounter most often appear in
Left 4 Dead and
L4D2. The most obvious is
Do I heal my partner or save my healthkit for myself? The question really is,
do I surrender my power for the good of the group, or do I hold on to it, in case I need it personally. In normal campaign mode, there really is breathing room to choose either way: Dead survivors will reappear shortly in a closet, somewhere, hence the manpower lost by death is only temporary. In realism mode, there are no closets, so a survivor down is a survivor gone (until end of level). Three survivors will have a rough time against some crescendo events or tanks. Two survivors are commonly simultaneously pinned by specials (or one is mobbed by commons while a special makes a meal of the other). One is a dead survivor walking. So it's really a good idea to heal others, and heal them early (e.g. the minute a survivor starts to limp; realism is not kind to those who will conserve their health to ridiculous extremes.) Downed survivors become dead if not defended against the horde, so it's really a good idea to prevent anyone from going down in the first place. Interestingly, a lot of players, fresh from campaign-mode don't respect this shift in priorities, oft to the unfortunate demise of the group.[footnote]Realism mode tends to make for a cautionary tale about people who aren't cautious or who don't listen to the rules, especially due to the continuous influx of unsuspecting newbs and veterans of campaign mode. I tend to play realism to watch the comeuppance of hubris, often magnified since the stupidity of one often cost the lives of us all.[/footnote]
238U.[footnote]In the event that Escapist requires me to view a commercial before getting a code, I will simply not post. Depending on the frequency, this may temper or cease my future participation in the Escapist community. Apologies in advance, if this policy prevents me from replying to you when it is proper to do so.[/footnote]
