how do you deal with moral choices in games?

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.