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Posting in this thread makes you slightly less evil

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    Posting in this thread makes you slightly less evil

    Alignment has been pretty heavy in games, especially recently. Fallout 3, Infamous, Mass Effect and Fable 2 all feature it. However it's become a bit too cliched and limited. It hasn't really changed from the Baldur's Gate days.

    Moral choice in a game:

    "You find a box full of puppies do you:

    Start up a home for abandoned dogs and donate all of your money to running it?

    Sacrifice the puppies to the blood god thagype and feast on their raw flesh?
    "

    I understand the simplicity in making digital good/bad choices like that but it's incredibly simplistic and doesn't really reflect a character type. Baldur's Gate uses AD&D which has an incredibly complex alignment system yet all actions are either good or bad.

    Rather than seeing choices either add or subtract to a good:evil scale, I would rather see them add to a variety of scales. For example:

    Generosity:Greed
    Selflessness:Selfishness
    Friendship:antisocialness
    Chaste:Lustful

    You don't have to be punished for negative actions. For example a generous character may be less likely to be attacked by guards or bandits who remember how generous he's been but a greedy character is likely to be offered large rewards for quests.

    Likewise someone with high friendship will be able to able to have stronger party members but an anti social character makes up for this by being stronger or having better stealth skills.

    Rather than being either Luke Skywalker or Darth Vader, it'd be nice for a game to let you be Han Solo, a lawless character who mostly cares about himself but is a nice guy at heart.

    Too complicated? Not really any different? Not an issue? what're other people's thoughts on alignment in games?

    #2
    The only thing that springs to my mind as getting this sort of thing right is Mass Effect.

    The decisions in that game had all sorts of morally ambiguous grey areas attached to them.

    I often wonder if dev's don't make them too complicated because

    A) they're fundimentally lazy

    and

    B) they're afraid the general games playing public will be too thick to figure out which choice is which unless they keep it simple.

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      #3
      I know what you mean about the simplicity of moral choices in games, and I agree. In most games it just means you recieve a bigger reward and some evil points, or a smaller reward and some heavenly points.

      I belive that for a little while yet we will still see this type of moral sytem implemented in most games that bullet point on the back 'Chose your destiny' just for the sake of being able to mention it. However, the industry is making small steps towards a more advanced moral system with mainly the likes of Fable 2. They included a second 'slider' for pureness and corruptness on top of the good and evil sliders. The consequences of your actions were also seen in a much bigger way in Fable 2 as well. For instance, if you invested thousands of gold into a villagers project of reconstructing a poor and desolate village, then when you returned years later the town was vastly populated and had a stable economy you could buy weapons, clothing etc. from another town. Which was another way of benefiting the player for their decision that no other games had done before.

      The problem with Fable 2's idea was the progression of time. The effects of your actions were seen, but the game had to include a part where you were locked up in prison for years, just like Fable 1 did. Which shows that the developers couldn't really think of a suitable way to advance in time.

      Whatever Fable 2's problems were, I think it's the best game recently that has handled alignment in Videogames, and I think a lot more developers in the future will take a look at what they got right in terms of the moral choices and the consequences.
      Last edited by Malc; 15-06-2009, 12:27. Reason: poor spelling

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        #4
        One thing that struck me when playing through inFAMOUS (whAT?) is that the morality system in a lot of cases is restrained by being tied directly to gameplay mechanics. I've played through the game once as a hero and I'm playing now as an anti-hero, but in each case I'm doing so because I want to see the good ending/trophies or the evil ending/trophies.

        I don't think it's so much of a problem in inFAMOUS (Although it did mean I chose one option that I wouldn't have chosen usually... **** the needs of the many!), because it's not a role playing game, but in something where I am attempting to genuinely play the game within the context of a character I've created (Take Fallout 3 for example) I find it a shame that I should be punished for not behaving in a certain way (There are certain things in most games which you exclude yourself from if you don't do certain things in certain ways).

        Similar thing happened in Hotel Dusk recently. I played through a conversation in character, choosing responses as I felt my character would respond, and was rewarded with a game over screen rather than a natural progression of the game or character relationship (This is perhaps why Heavy Rain is so intriguing, due to the idea that you won't necessarily change the story, only from what perspective you see it to its conclusion).

        I know it's incredibly difficult within the medium given that there are so many variables, but I do think it's ultimately a problem with the way the games are designed. Basically that they're games first and stories second - and I should point out that this isn't a criticism, I'm happy most games are designed this way.

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          #5
          The strict nature of good/evil decisions in games does really show up how the medium is really poor at dealing with moral choices.

          inFamous is the most recent and whilst as a game I rate it highly the entire good/negative karma aspect not only felt a little forced but some of the choices truly baffled me as to how the developers presented them.

          The biggest one that struck me (start of third island spoiler coming) was the

          save 6 doctors or save Trish (your ex-girlfriend) choice. Choose to save Trish and sure enough you finish the mission and are informed "your actions have made you slightly more evil". Was that really an "evil" act, choosing to save the character that at many times prior to that point, the game had made clear was the person that the main character loved? Selfish most prbably but evil?



          That is probably the problem. For too many developers they equate not being altruistic as being evil which is incredibly simplistic.

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            #6
            I think for me, the first game which actually used an alignment system to good effect was Jedi Knight on the PC. Alignment shifted depending on various factors obviously, mostly by the killing of innocents.

            But the entire game changed depending on which way you went, you'd fight different Dark Jedi and the consequences of these fights would be different as a result. Both endings would also be noticeably different, rather than the odd slight change here and there ala inFamous.

            These days, if a game features an alignment system, I always pick the evil route to begin with and only finish the game the once unless the storyline and gameplay are both fundamentally altered depending. Who wants to save a world anyway, when ruining it is so much more fun...

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              #7
              Could be rose-tinted glasses, but weren't the original Baldur's gate and Fallout a fair way above the level you've described? I know the vast majority of games give you very straightforwards choices, but I think those were a bit more sophisticated than that.
              Can't really remember many examples though. I do remember Fallout giving you a quest to go "kill the evil mutants" more or less, but if you ended up talking to them they turned out to be nice and were just being persecuted...

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                #8
                Baldur's Gate gave you the option of choosing the alignment (lawful good, chaotic good, neutral chaotic neutral, lawful evil, chaotic evil) but ultimately they simplified this, putting a two dimentional alignment system on a single plane. You do a quest that helped people, you gained reputation, you kill innocent people or do something 'evil' you lost reputation. It was basically a sliding scale of good/bad. and the choices were divided as such.

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                  #9
                  It's what happens with that reputation that counts isn't it though... I can't think of any game that's done anything truly remarkable with a good/bad alignment.

                  Demon's Souls also has a basic system, you can choose to invade other players games and assassinate them which shifts you towards black tendency, or help people which shifts you towards white. The problem is, if you are in black tendency you open up a number of subquests that give you several extra rewards, whereas earning pure white tendency only gives you one unique item. Completists would want to do both but the lure of the dark side is much stronger! (that said, you have a % cut in HP in black tendency so it's not entirely the best way)

                  edit - oh, and you have to kill NPCs that help you so I guess it is more of a dilemma than I made it out to be lol
                  Last edited by Darwock; 15-06-2009, 14:26.

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                    #10
                    The main reason this tends to happen is resource costs. If there were many more shades of grey you'd have to implement lots more quest outcomes. It quickly multiplies up the paths through the game (exponentially, in fact). Given that most people that buy games don't even finish them, and those that do don't tend to replay, then the percentage of content you're creating that the average player will never see goes up.

                    Try justifying all that to the person holding the purse strings.

                    And that's why moral choices in games are so linear.

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                      #11
                      That's a good point, but one exception I can think of is Way of the Samurai. Particularly part 3, which had 20 different endings. It's not really a case of morality so doesn't exactly belong in this thread, (alhough there is one ending for being particularly evil) as the actions you take are not necessarily good or bad in nature.

                      That is the nature of the game though, it's not like an extraneous feature.

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                        #12
                        Doesn't that only take about 30 minutes to play through though? And so the game actually *is* playing it through multiple times.

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                          #13

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                            #14
                            The RebelFM guys actually made me laugh when talking of inFAMOUS, Morality and Kittens.

                            "If you save these kittens, and take them in, your karma will be positive...However, if you take those kittens and shove glass bottles up their asses, your karma will be negative".

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                              #15
                              well with morality in game usually alters the endings......trouble is the endings are usually rubbish anyway (ahem...bioshock)

                              while not morality in deus ex things that i did during the earlier levels would change slightly what happens in a later level which i thought was really cool

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