Choices in Roleplay

[Trivun]

Oh look, yay, another moral choice thread! We haven't had anywhere near enough of those lately...

Self-deprecating humour aside, hopefully we can bring something different to the table here, since what I want to discuss isn't about moral choices as a whole or anything like that. Rather, I'm just interested to hear what people's individual experiences are recently regarding game choices. Oh, by the way, there may be spoilers in people's responses so read ahead at your own risk.

This has basically stemmed from the new Bioshock Infinite DLC. Playing through the other games, I felt like a ruthless killer, but at the same time tried to get into the mindset of each character I played as. When I was Jack, I killed because I was trying to survive, and made sure to save all the Little Sisters because that is what I felt he would have done. When I was Subject Delta, I tried to do right by each of the characters I encountered, to the point where I even killed Gilbert Alexander not out of malice, but out of pity. He clearly wanted to die, and I had the power to ease his pain in a (relatively) humane manner. When I was Booker, I knew myself to be ruthless, after the strikes, and I killed accordingly.

Now, in Burial At Sea, it's suddenly so different. I can recognise that Elizabeth wants to be better than Booker, and although she has the option to kill I feel like she doesn't want to. As such, my style of gameplay has changed. Even when I manage to amass enough ammo for the shotgun or enough EVE to cut a swathe through the Splicers down in the deep, I always sneak up, or use the tranquiliser crossbow. I try to avoid killing as much as I can, and even then only in self defence. Why? Because that's how Elizabeth would want to fight.

Maybe it's just me reading too much into the characters and the game, or maybe I'm just seeing things in the characterisations that don't necessarily translate to gameplay. But I'm curious. Who else lets their roleplay determine how they actually play a video game?

 

[Zhukov]

Huh. I played almost exactly the same in all the games you mentioned. Right down to mercy-killing Gil Alexander.

Fancy that.

Anyway, when it comes to role playing I basically default to nice, good, compassionate and helpful. I even do it in games like Day Z or Rust which are full of other players who will not hesitate to murder you on sight. So I usually end up essentially role playing a paranoid philanthropist hermit who creeps out at night to distribute gifts to freshly spawning players. Or on one occasion, an extremely unsuccessful bandit [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/9.838746-Day-Z-I-am-terrible-at-this-banditry-thing].

Once a friend was watching over my shoulder as I played and after a while she remarked, "Man, you are way nicer in games than you are in real life."

Occasionally a game's story, characters, setting and atmosphere will draw me in enough to get me to act a bit evil, or at least not super goody-two-shoes. For example, in The Last of Us I made a point of killing absolutely everything in my way. Granted, that game doesn't really have non-lethal options, but you can sneak past a lot of the fights. But as those characters, in that situation, in that setting? No way. Everybody in my way dies, no chances taken.

Oh, not sure if this counts since it doesn't relate to gameplay much, but I had an interesting little role playing experience in Mass Effect 3. I was playing it for the first time with my 'main' Shepard who had been about 85% paragon up to that point, with the occasional oh-fuck-you-then renegade outburst. Now, if there's one thing ME3 did well it was the sense of impending apocalypse. Shit is getting wrecked left, right and centre. Characters great and small are dying like flies. Everyone is talking about how fucked everything is and what little they can do to help and whether or not it will make the damnedest bit of a difference anyway. Every planet description lists how many millions have died there. Everyone is wondering where their families are or if they're alive at all. People are coming up with a Plan B that involves everything they've ever known being destroyed. In short, it really is all or nothing, with extra emphasis on the "all".

I found myself making increasingly ruthless decisions. After all, this is the end of days, not the time for compromise. Everything into the furnace of war.

Then the renegade cybernetic scars started showing up. "Whoa," says I, "this war is changing Shepard. Like, visibly. Maybe I'm going a bit far." I dialled it back a bit after that. The scars had mostly faded by the end, but they were still there. A little roadmap to Shepard's brief dabbling with the dark side.

It actually made for a nice little accidental, impromptu character arc.

 

[duwenbasden]

for games like Dragon Age and Mass Effect, my choices usually devolves into "What choices do I need to get X buff to team member Y/myself?" instead of "What will I do in this situation?" because it makes logical sense gameplay-wise.

for games like New Vegas and Skyrim, my choices are usually "What will my character do in this situation?" because since there is no stats changes for this choice, it feels right for this character to do that.

for games like Pokemon, my choices are usually "What do my NPC masters want me to do?" because your choices are irrelevant.

 

[Darth Rosenberg]

People really need to use spoiler tags if they're discussing major choices in games. Couldn't read the whole of the first post [or the second], but to answer this question--- Who else lets their roleplay determine how they actually play a video game?

Depends on the game and playthrough. Different games lend themselves to RP well, whilst others barely have any room for it. Dark Souls, f'instance, has zero RP potential for me. Mass Effect? Eh, broadly speaking it's there, kinda. Something like Skyrim offers up all sorts of potential. In the Companions questline there's a certain choice you make (far too early), and whilst I ideally wanted my character to be a big cheese of a warrior in the lands, there's no way he would've agreed to what they were proposing. So he walked away from the Companions and never looked back.

Also in Skyrim, there's a choice I've never made that pertains to the Blades and the Greybeards:

Spoiler

Kill Paarthurnax. I've had total bastards of characters, and all sorts of morally grey PC's. But I think I'd have to specifically create an RP and include 'really hates dragons' in their bio for me to slay Paarthurnax. So my own preference re the narrative overrides all RP's (so far) with regards to that choice.

In something less obviously about player defined roles, like Spec Ops The Line, I generally tried to make Walker behave as I would - morally and ethically. Clearly, that didn't last long... I still generally stuck to what passes for 'right' in that game, but by the end my playstyle had begun to reflect Walker - so it was a case of his role affecting my play.

 

[RJ 17]

Yeah, I tend to "create a character" even for non-role playing games. Bioshock II was actually the most tricky to do this for. On the one hand, I can definitely see Delta being bitter, pissed off, and EAGER to get bloody revenge upon those that wronged him - especially as he learns more about who he was before he was made into a Big Daddy - but on the other hand, it's just as fun to envision him as "the anomaly". The Big Daddy that retained a spark of his humanity, and that humanity begins to show through after his Resurrection. Just like the old black lady (sorry, I forget her name, been too long since I've played the game xP) says if you decide to spare her...something along the lines of "Ain't no mercy in a monster...mercy comes from a thinkin' man" or something like that. Lamb has convinced her cult that you're a brutal monster hell-bent on destroying everyone in your path, I think it's fun to prove them wrong.

Though that doesn't stop you from destroying everyone in your path...but hey! It's self defense!

 

[Vern5]

I found myself making increasingly ruthless decisions. After all, this is the end of days, not the time for compromise. Everything into the furnace of war.

Reminds me of the massive shift in alignment I took once I got into Mass Effect 2. For most of Mass Effect 1, I was an upstanding ambassador of humanity. I took Paragon options when I could and Renegade only when I had to because I knew Shepard would always have to answer for his actions after every mission. I still ended the game split 50/50 between Paragon and Renegade but the point is that I tried to be good.

Then Mass Effect 2 rolls around. Shepard is now working for Cerberus so I figured that protocol could be much more lax. I ended that game at 85% renegade. Desperate times and no oversight ended up overcharging Shepard's ruthlessness; an understandable reaction.

OT: When it comes to RP, I usually see myself as a Director for the main character rather than a part of the main character's persona. I choreograph the action scenes and rely on the character's previous actions in order to establish context. While my personal preferences determine roleplaying early on in every RPG I play, it is my memory of these actions and any pre-defined events that influence the remainder of the story. This way the character takes on a life of its own and I only have to worry about the combat and puzzles.

For example, every time I play Dragon Age: Origins I end up making my character respond with really strange lines that either state the obvious or question the normal. Why do I do this? Because every character I have ever made usually strolls into his adventures with a completely placid look on his face. The PC rarely shows any serious reaction to the game's events and even when he does they are diluted emotions at best. So when Sten asks me if I intend to travel north until it becomes south and take the Archdemon from behind, I always state the obvious: "It will never see this coming".

Independent of my personal values of intelligence or morality, the Hero of Ferelden becomes a detached savant. Sure, not every character I have "directed" ends up as a savant but they all end up straying from my own personality in time.

 

[Kyrian007]

Maybe someone can get a recommendation to me here, but in moral choice situations I've noticed a disturbing trend. I find that I ALWAYS play "good" first. And after I finished Far Cry 3 I really saw the REAL reason I always go "good guy" first.

Moral choice games seem to equate "evil" with "stupid-evil."

The FC3 example. The ending. Won't spoil it, but I thought the "good" ending was kind of dumb. Then I youtubed the "bad ending" (rather than do the "final boss" fight... QTE REALLY? A game with that excellent game play ends in a freaking QTE?) Anyhow, at least it kept one theme going.

I liked FC 3's story at first. It was interesting and promising, all the way up to the end of island 1. Then the story got stupid and just kept getting more and more a pointless exercise in padding out more gameplay (excellent gameplay I might add) with pointless and unnecessary story after it should have ended. I kept thinking "this story can't get any dumber" and I was wrong every time I thought so. Including seeing the "evil" ending after a "good" ending that I thought was pretty bad.

Sorry, long way round. Point being, moral choice systems really aren't in my experience. I've never played a game with a moral choice system that didn't present me with the no-brainer choice between "generally logical path of good" and the "only-makes-sense-if-you're-David-Berkowitz-or-Hitler otherwise evil just for the sake of evil bad guy path." Example, (I'll spoil FC3 here)

Spoiler

is there any way I can decide that maybe I'm not going to fit back into my old life; that doesn't require me to A: side with the moronic Rekyats, B: kill my best friends for "reasons?" Wouldn't letting the friends go and staying on the island and supplanting the leadership to become the newest drug lord while subjugating the natives be a more "evil" choice than just "killed ma friends cause I'mm a wurrior now."

Never once have I played a game in which reasonable reactions didn't lead to a "good" ending, and in a second play I had to be cartoonishly Snidely Whiplash to get a bad ending. So in answer to the thread question... yes I do. But it's always the same answer, because I've yet to find a game that gives me a good reason to choose evil. The closest I've EVER come is New Vegas, but even then I've never sided with the legion except in my "cartoon supervillain" run.

Spoiler

First play I couldn't rationalize siding with House or NCR, both asked me to exterminate the Brotherhood which I had fully reformed, so in a "kind of" evil move I used the NCR to help me with the battle at the dam, then seized NV for myself.