how do you deal with moral choices in games?

ShadowHearth

might be a bit silly, but i noticed my weakness in gaming lol.

there is alot of games where you have to choose one or anather side.

Everytime when i sit down to play a game where i will need to do some moral choises i go like this: " **** yeah! i will be a DICK! i will be most evil bastord that ever lived on planet earth!". When i actuolly play game and encounter something more seriuos i just go the way i would do it in real life... i know fail... I get an option to be a dick, but i just CANT! i know its just a game, but i cant force myself to be a dick lol.

Remember playing mass effect 1 ( oh boy ). when i needed to choose which one member of my team to save... ffs i was looking at screen for 30 mins and could not choose! i stressed out lol! then when Krog went balistic! i did not wanted to kill him! i liked him! ( even if i wanted to play all game on "dick" mode! )


Latest game now is witcher 2... this time i play the way i would do it if i would be a witcher. i cant just play a dick anymore... lol

so what about you guys? Can you just go and be a dick in games like this? might be an interesting discussion.

Mr. K

Good, usually. The good endings are usually better and are typically the canon ones.

I went bad in inFamous, just to mix things up a little. I also usually pick the Dark Side in Star Wars game, so I can have a red lightsaber and Force Lightning!

Duggy747

I always try to be evil but my kindness always seeps through, bah!!

But then I just return to the game and be the biggest asshole around. I did this for Oblivion on my 2nd run and just beat the shìte out of everything I didn't like.

DirtyBollox

the latest one i have played through as a dick was inFamous. went through it as a good guy then went through it as a bad guy. was pretty tough at times to decide to do evil but as you said its only a game and i didnt get wrapped up in the story too much.

tuxy

I think nearly every game does the moral choice wrong. It should be more like real life where rather than black and white choices it should be all different shades of grey.

Augmerson

Kill the children, all the time, everytime.

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar

some of the choices in the witcher 2 killed me. once or twice I spent 20 minutes just staring at the screen wondering what to do next, it was hell.. but i loved it

tallaghtmick

Mass effect i felt horrible whacking my number 1 fan's head off the wall:o

ShadowHearth

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar wrote: »

some of the choices in the witcher 2 killed me. once or twice I spent 20 minutes just staring at the screen wondering what to do next, it was hell.. but i loved it

"it worked, i better go say it to gerald! on the ather hand, i had newer plowed a succubus..."

i had to go and sleep on it and make dessition the next day lol.

Sarky

The best playthrough I had of Mass Effect ended up with roughly equal paragon/renegade points at the end. The game was a lot more enjoyable playing the Butcher of Torfan when he didn't particularly enjoy the title and saw it as a regrettable necessity of war.

Going all-out good or all-out bad is unrealistic and more than a little one-dimensional. The rewards for doing so in games are even worse.

johnny_ultimate

Good, always.

I have to laugh at how poor the moral choices in inFamous are. Do you a) shoot this character full of lightning or b) calmly reason with him and inform him his wife is dead :pac: Obviously the distinction is meant to be fairly clear cut when it comes to hero / villain here, but I still have to laugh at how ludicrously basic they are!

ShadowHearth

Sarky wrote: »

The best playthrough I had of Mass Effect ended up with roughly equal paragon/renegade points at the end. The game was a lot more enjoyable playing the Butcher of Torfan when he didn't particularly enjoy the title and saw it as a regrettable necessity of war.

Going all-out good or all-out bad is unrealistic and more than a little one-dimensional. The rewards for doing so in games are even worse.

yup.

thats why i play witcher 2 the way i feel. if i want to hit him for being a dick, then i do it. if i dont want someone to die, i save them. makes it way more interesting. Moral choises do matter then!

Zillah

Moral choices in games are one of my pet peeves. Rant incoming.

I like characters that are assholes. To me, an evil character is a selfish character. Sometimes it can be fun to play a callous, self-serving, opportunistic, narcissistic, power hungry champion of the dark side. Sometimes, however, it can be fun to play a character who is uncompromising without being cruel, or selfish without being vindictive.

But you never get that. What you always get are options written by game developers with a child-like notion of good and evil. Good guys don't want to be paid, never get furious and always save the damsel. Bad guys say horrible things for no reason, kill or burn for no reason because they are bad guys.

Most of the time I end up playing as the good guy, even though I wanted to play as the bad guy, because the bad guy options make no sense in game.

Mass Effect is doing relatively well representing the Renegade as a more complex sort of darker character, but most games don't.

BlitzKrieg

I like to make a premeditated decision prior to starting the game what sort of character i'll be. evil or good or something inbetween.

I extend this to other types of games like Civilisation and the total war series as well and to some extent MMO's, though the role playing servers tend to suck as most of the role playing is akin to tolken's poetry.

though alot of the time similar to my own morals, I tend to be a pragmatic needs of the many outweigh the few sort of person. Which pissess me off when now and then there's a game that rates you a *bad guy* for that sort of thinking I think Fable 3 recently was stupidly black and white on the issue.

Mostly over the issue of

accepting a new land into your kingdom, pay the money to rebuildand defend it or abandon it to be consumed by darkness. If you accept it, then the cost of it is deducted, if you abandon it you lose nothing but gain nothing...My position was accept them into the kingdom and rebuild/defend. BUT THE TAX THE BASTARDS! never brought up annoyed the hell out of me

But mass effect makes it far too easy and enjoyable to play the war worn weary pragmatist making hard decisions.

Doesnt help that I designed my shepherd to look like A young pete postaway in need of a shave.

Retr0gamer

When I started playing western RPGs I was going around being good all the time. I found this so boring and ended up hating the games. Now I just do what I feel is right. If a character is annoying me I'll tell them to **** off. However I will try and help someone out that I like. I find it's far better to you know 'role play' these games as opposed to actively seek out the ending you want to get.

deathrider

I always play the good guy as best I can. I like the idea of doing the right thing. Although doing the right thing sometimes involves being a dick. If a character deserves an ass-kicking for whatever reason, then I won't sugar coat it with a slap on the wrist, I'll supply the ass kicking. I spend most of my time being the good guy, but I've not problem switching when I feel it's called for.

However, I dislike when games have a rake of achievement attached to both good and bad choices. If I play through a game as a good guy, that's because that's how I wanted to play the game. I don't want to give it another play and be a dick for the achievements, I'd much rather replay it as a good guy again, if the game is worth replaying.

Mr.Saturn

The vast majority of answers in this thread indicate that people like to be
good in their gaming, and yet, oh, and yet, GTA series is one of the biggest
selling pieces of entertainment anywhere, ever.

Manach

My view that whatever gaming sphere you inhabit, it still contains the same person that is yourself. So I'd play Gray-Goodish character choices, in games that allow such choices as in Fallout. When faced with no choice but bad or worst, as in some GTA games, it is deadlock.

Zillah

Retr0gamer wrote: »

When I started playing western RPGs I was going around being good all the time. I found this so boring and ended up hating the games. Now I just do what I feel is right. If a character is annoying me I'll tell them to **** off. However I will try and help someone out that I like. I find it's far better to you know 'role play' these games as opposed to actively seek out the ending you want to get.

I try to do this, and I usually get punished. For example, in Mass Effect there are plenty of points in the game where you're essentially told "No, you're not allowed any of the fun choices here, because you were not sickeningly good or comically evil enough".

Dragon Age/2 did it relatively well, now that I think about it. When

Anders blows up the tower

for example, you can stay by him and back him up without the game going "You are now an evil bad guy". Moral choices are based more on particular people's opinion of you rather than some universal measurement.

ProjectColossus

I always play the depressingly good guy. As others have said, I just cant be a dickhead. About the only time I make the "immoral" decision is if someone wants my stuff that's valuable. I'll give the homeless dude in Fallout a bottle of purified water because I have loads of them, but I won't give the homeless dude in Metro one of my golden rounds because they are bloody rare and I specifically need them.

Retr0gamer

Zillah wrote: »

I try to do this, and I usually get punished. For example, in Mass Effect there are plenty of points in the game where you're essentially told "No, you're not allowed any of the fun choices here, because you were not sickeningly good or comically evil enough".

Happened to me in Mass Effect as well. With Wrex

I wanted to keep him alive but failed.

I didn't reload my save and get mad, I just lived with it. It's more fun that way and my character means a lot more to me now going into Mass Effect 2. What's the point in building up negotiation skills when you can just reload and get the effect you want. If I failed a negotiation dice roll I keep on playing with that decision.

dreamers75

Usually good but something always happens a little slip of keyboard or gamepad and BAM shes dead, im left with no alternative but kill everyone leaving no witnesses. Happens a lot in Oblivion and Fallout i set out with good intentions but it always happens.

Jagle

have sex with her, kill her and get my money back, then drive over some people kill some more and laugh all the way to the bank..


so lonely

landsleaving

Mr.Saturn wrote: »

The vast majority of answers in this thread indicate that people like to be
good in their gaming, and yet, oh, and yet, GTA series is one of the biggest
selling pieces of entertainment anywhere, ever.

I'm only in it to build a relationship with my cousin.

Carl Sagan

I always play as good. Even on a second play, I find myself drifting along the good path when I plan on playing as evil.

K.O.Kiki

Deus Ex.

I always used to pick the crossbow, thinking I should be stealthy, but also a "good cop".

Then one day, I got really frustrated, and just picked the sniper rifle.
But somehow... that made me feel like an asshole.

Using the "easy way", I was now actually KILLING people, people that I'd eavesdropped on and found were just regular Joes,

and that I found out later were probably the good guys

.

Robert ninja

I don't really PLAN to play as good or evil anymore. For any decent game, it's never black and white, either. I do sort of lean to a selfish persona which always pays off. I make decisions that benifit me, which sometimes screw others over big time. All in all, I tend to a get a mix for a while, but it eventually becomes full blown evil. I had a hard time being good in FALLOUT. I hated almost everyone in the game.

And that's another thing, I will indeed let my taste in people decide outcomes at times. Example, in FALLOUT series, GOULS and SUPERSTISIOUS people are as good as dead coming accross me. I show no mercy to gouls because they NEVER STFU about being gouls... and superstitious people because they just annoy me. The gouls who were superstitious in F: Vegas... I totally sabotaged their stupid rocket XD Was fun, and the way I see it, I put them out of their miserable lives, which they were going to end anyway so might as well get to see the crash.

My sis says I am the most evil gamer ever. WIN

Fnz

My brain seems similarly wired when I try to play properly bad. I keep getting drawn back towards helping nice people. As mentioned, I think it due to the disconnect between trying to play a selfish asshole who wants to save humanity from evil. Sometimes choosing the asshole dialogue/actions just come off as completely childish/inappropriate for the situations you find yourself in.

Zillah wrote: »

I try to do this, and I usually get punished. For example, in Mass Effect there are plenty of points in the game where you're essentially told "No, you're not allowed any of the fun choices here, because you were not sickeningly good or comically evil enough".

RPGs have lots of issues imho. One of which is the tendency to abuse the player (well, me) with illusions of depth. I always spend way too much time trying to out-think the game, planning for outcomes that never materialise because the depth is seldom there. I drive myself mad when it comes to making decisions in games. It's a limitation that can easily be explained (time, resources, tech) but that still makes it no less annoying and leave me bemused when people sing the praise of this genre.

In ME2 I came upon a situation where I was given the option to save a dying Batarian. Gave him some medi-gel to tide him over until I could get to a doctor and send help his way. I was fairly certain that quests in RPGs are not time-based (unless you see a countdown timer) due to the ridiculous lack of urgency shown in all other aspects related to the plot. Still I was concerned that, should I interact with too many other 'things' on the way for medical help, the game would count these up and the decide I had spent too long and the Batarian patient would die.

I made a beeline to the doctor, saving the Batarian, and for my trouble I get, inexplicably, (what's the word?) 'gated' away from content I passed in my rush to do the right thing. I missed out on a number of interactions including human looters (whom I could have been bribed by!) and missed out on hacking a bank.... A BANK!. So, the game punished me for my urgency to save a dying man. All this because I expected depth that obviously wasn't there.

Rant continues\\ ... and another thing (;)) ...

Mass Effect has the problem of rewarding players only for choosing extreme responses. So the neutral repose, even if it's the one that makes most sense for the situation at hand, is being actively discouraged by the game mechanics.

So, yeah... I don't like decisions.

Retr0gamer wrote: »

What's the point in building up negotiation skills when you can just reload and get the effect you want. If I failed a negotiation dice roll I keep on playing with that decision.

1. To see the follow-up piece of content without having to do a second playthrough?

2. Some might play the game to tell their own story rather than leaving it to a dice-roll (or similar). Which is neither the right or wrong way to play.

3. Like you suggest, they may do it so that they can invest 'negotiation points' into other skills.

4. I often reload because immediately after my Shepard (in ME) opens her trap, I slap my forehead thinking "that is not how I intended my chosen dialogue option to sound".

deathrider wrote: »

I like the idea of doing the right thing. Although doing the right thing sometimes involves being a dick. If a character deserves an ass-kicking for whatever reason, then I won't sugar coat it with a slap on the wrist, I'll supply the ass kicking. I spend most of my time being the good guy, but I've not problem switching when I feel it's called for.

Well, sometimes you gotta be a dick.

(Spoiler from end of Team America)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3x3MJkg6PMA

jaykhunter

I almost always play thru a game first time exactly if I myself were faced with the decision...which is generally good guy but sometimes it's thumbs down and people die.

Like you kill the guy who's holding slaves captive but before you leave a guy comes and offers you money for these slaves; so you can either a) free the slaves or b) sell those slaves. But I choose secret option c) where I free the slaves; kill the guy and take his money. Woohoo!

So on 2nd playthrough i'm bad/girl as I always play as a good/guy first time around.

krudler

Depends, like in inFamous I wanted to be bad but got sick of the citizens throwing things at me and running away from me so went good again.

I agree the moral choices are too black and white in games most of the time, should be more shades of grey, doing bad things in the name of good and that.

ShadowHearth

krudler wrote: »

Depends, like in inFamous I wanted to be bad but got sick of the citizens throwing things at me and running away from me so went good again.

I agree the moral choices are too black and white in games most of the time, should be more shades of grey, doing bad things in the name of good and that.

play witcher 2. they all grey and evil

infamous was very bad for that i heard. its stupidly good vs evil. mass effect and witcher are best so far for morale choises. bioshock was quite interesting with moral choises too.

Ridley

jaykhunter wrote: »

I almost always play thru a game first time exactly if I myself were faced with the decision...which is generally good guy but sometimes it's thumbs down and people die.

YOU'RE THE WORST DOCTOR EVER!

I usually favour the light side (or as close to it) on the first play through, when given the option, but I agree that moral choices in games are only as interesting how difficult they are to make:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_KU3lUx3u0

Daniel101

In Mass Effect I was normally a good guy although I spent more time trying to chat up the women then actually saving the galaxy :rolleyes:

ShooterSF

Am I one of the few then that plays as a selfish bastard? Good and bad choices are weighed up depending on what suits my character's needs best at the time. I act solely on making my job easier.
An example from the original Deus Ex near the start

where you get the ambrosia you can shock a helpful guard to take his better weapon which for the betterment of humanity I needed dammit

Kingpin had another fantasic moment where you buy the crowba

r for a dollar off some bum and if you kill him with it you can take the dollar back.

I was so impressed with that kind of thinking ahead by the developers.

bastados

Games are amoral , thats part of the game.

tallaghtmick

In L.A Noire i was quite a cnut,I took pleasure in sending family men to jail:D

ShooterSF

tallaghtmick wrote: »

In L.A Noire i was quite a cnut,I took pleasure in sending family men to jail:D

Sand

I tend to go with what seems most rational tbh. Most of the time that means the light side options because "light" tends to be the "not a serial killer" option which is more normal. Also, game designers tend to consider the thug side to be its own reward - in practically every game Ive seen, the min-max rewards are far stronger by taking the light side (In KOTOR for example, Force lightning is a weak power compared to the light side stun trees, plus the light side star forge robes..)

I think morality decisions need to move beyond a simple ranking with Awful Good at one end and Stupidly Evil at the other. Maybe theres no ranking, just story implications as people either agree or disagree with your decisions: Look at characters like Dirty Harry: psycho cop or vigilante, probably depends on how your own views on the law, due process and justice. Rather than good/evil.

krudler

ShadowHearth wrote: »

play witcher 2. they all grey and evil

infamous was very bad for that i heard. its stupidly good vs evil. mass effect and witcher are best so far for morale choises. bioshock was quite interesting with moral choises too.

yeah the first time I harvested a Little Sister I felt awful, then on my 2nd playthrough I did it the whole way through it :pac:

Coriolanus

I usually end up as a dick whether I want to or not. Most rpgs at least make the good options so ridiculously saccarine that I can't help but attack that unarmed orphan.
Bioshock was the only game I can recall that made me really think. But then I worked up the courage to harvest the third little sister I came across and I decided to be a dick in that one too.

the_syco

ShooterSF wrote: »

Kingpin had another fantasic moment where you buy the crowba

r for a dollar off some bum and if you kill him with it you can take the dollar back.

I was so impressed with that kind of thinking ahead by the developers.

Likewise in GTA where you could get a hooker in the car, go to somewhere deserted, have some fun, and then

kill her and take all the money - usually you get more money than you had given to her

:P

=-=

Other than that, I play the good guy, and kill every bad guy there is. And in Rockstar games, you don't really come across "good guys"...

Yitzhak Rabin

I presume murdering the adoring fan in Oblivion is a given regardless of playing as a good guy or bad guy.

Sisko

The ending to mass effect 2 was interesting in that :




One of the choices involved gambling the lives of everyone in the entire galaxy for your own personal reasons
and the other involved taking the only option you've been given to possibly save the galaxy even though it means temporarily having to deal with a single person your character has a personal dislike to, its still the less risky choice.

Amusingly the option where you put the most lives at risk is considered the 'paragon' option.

Whats extra amsuing is the amount of people that pick it with out a second thought due to it saying paragon beside the option.

penev10

Glad to see I'm not the only one who always heads down the goody-two-shoes route.

The options are rarely moral dilemmas and are usually ridiculously polar so it's usually the only option to go for imo.

zero19

I'm either a saint or a complete bastard in games with moral choices, usually a saint though!

ShadowHearth

Sisko wrote: »

The ending to mass effect 2 was interesting in that :




One of the choices involved gambling the lives of everyone in the entire galaxy for your own personal reasons
and the other involved taking the only option you've been given to possibly save the galaxy even though it means temporarily having to deal with a single person your character has a personal dislike to, its still the less risky choice.

Amusingly the option where you put the most lives at risk is considered the 'paragon' option.

Whats extra amsuing is the amount of people that pick it with out a second thought due to it saying paragon beside the option.

Mass effect 2 was terrible. I lost 2 characters which I liked most... I cba going all that liner crap again with special choices just to save them for mass effect 3 ...

the_syco

I find that in most games (esp GTA), the "kill everyone/everything" option is usually the most fun.

tallaghtmick

the_syco wrote: »

I find that in most games (esp GTA), the "kill everyone/everything" option is usually the most fun.

you would love the saints row series.

the_syco

tallaghtmick wrote: »

you would love the saints row series.

Have Just Cause 2 waiting on my machine to get it's RAM back.

nyarlothothep

I played ME1 as a complete douche who couldn't get laid, played ME2 as a reformed douche who bedded all the female characters. Played Dragonage as a somewhat sneaky and somewhat morally duplicitous but overall good randy elf, again with having mulitple relationships and the whole Pearl Tavern sojourn.

Back in the days of Baldurs Gate I used to play very ethically, and chose almost always from the Paladin character class. Morrowind was a bit different, I became a very powerful wizard elf, again I mostly made ethical decisions where they arose.

Sticky_Fingers

ShadowHearth wrote: »

Mass effect 2 was terrible. I lost 2 characters which I liked most... I cba going all that liner crap again with special choices just to save them for mass effect 3 ...

Erm, I would see the possibility of losing major characters a good thing. It gives the game a bit of tension particularly if you have made a connection with them on some level.

The real kicker for me with regards moral choices was in ME1 and how to deal with Wrex, the Ashley/Kadian choice was simple in comparison.