Epic Mickey Offers No Choice

[SageRuffin]

My grandma's the racist, and it's not against Asians/Orientals, it's against Hispanics/Latinos. Oh boy... the stuff that flies out of her mouth...

What are we talking about again? Oh right, the whole moral choice thing. For the most part, it's agreed that too many games have things split up into being either a delightful little harmless fairy or a psychotic jackass with no redeeming value. I still say to this day that Jade EMpire had the best approach with the "Open Palm vs. Closed Fist" thing, but even that ultimately boiled down to being a godsend or a (borderline) heartless bastard.

Oh, and fuck Coke. It's all about Canada Dry ginger ale.

 

[CopperBoom]

Mountain Dew Master Race reporting in. Coke sucks.

I like Coke Zero best, but they (soft drink corps.) are all evil for various reasons.

That said, pop makes you fat?
Like, bread-makes-you-fat fat?

 

[Daveman]

My father honestly thinks The Legion is the best option in New Vegas.
He is republican.

I... see...
Having played through New Vegas now twice I really don't get the benfits of the Legion. I initially played through the game as I would be myself; helpful, intelligent and kind but in the face of atrocities like the legions crimes in Nipton, vengeful but righteous. I ended up helping everyone and befriending the Kings, the NCR and all until I came across the Brotherhood of Steel who said I should destroy the Van Graffs. I had initially tried to become one of them due to my energy weapon preference in game but as they were clearly evil I had little conscience when it came to exterminating them (so I killed that one group, oh, and all the fiends too). I had Mr House unplugged because I thought I could do better for the surrounding area of Vegas than he had done and the NCR was just too much of a delayed beurocracy to do anything useful. At the end I wanted the NCR to stick around but it gave no option for me so I had to kick them out.

What's the point of this? I played the first time as I believed was right. But this meant I had little run in with the Legion at all apart from beating them at Nipton, seeing Caesar and at the end. So I did an evil run through.

Now this is where it becomes relevant to the discussion; I could see no viable reason to support the Legion. Yes they imposed law but it was an unbalanced, unrealistic expectation of society where following orders was rewarded above personal achievment. Where science was effectively banned. Where all women are subjugated and many more are enslaved. Not to mention Caesar being a TOTAL douche, I mean I wiped out the entire fucking Brotherhood of steel using only a big bit of metal and my fists and is he even grateful?! NO! There is no redeeming set of ideals for the Legion, I had to entirely force myself to be evil. The Legion kind of evil is just retarded and the sort nobody could agree with, especially as there seem to be no benefits whatsoever. No sidekicks that I found, only 3 arena matches to challenge myself with and thankless tasks from people I could easily kill with my 100 unarmed or melee skill and 9 strength. I wanted to stay in character and kill the general at the end but I just couldn't do it, my willpower was worn out, so I just talked him out of it... like a pussy... *sigh*...

Oh, btw, ^^^^ a few spoilers.

 

[wammnebu]

Io Saturnalia to you too

 

[kop hooligan]

This was thoroughly enjoyable.

I never finished Infamous but I thought it was the worst offender of this kind of thing. All the choices that I can remember were "save everyone" or "do something selfish and everyone dies." I mean it was a good game and I do plan on finishing it but that part of it did not do it for me.

 

[Cursed Frogurt]

Would you rescue one baby or five old people?

I read an interesting story about that once actually, you are standing near a switch, there is a train coming in, on one set of rails is fat man, on the other there are 5 people, if you pull the switch the fat man dies, if you don't the 5 people live.

Most people say they would pull the switch, 5 for 1 and all that jazz.

Now same situation, only there is no switch, and the only way to stop the train from hitting the 5 people is to throw the fat man in front of it (just roll with it).

Would you still do it? Most people say no, but morally it's the exact same choice, trading one life for five, you're hands are just a little dirtier.

A long time ago in my philosophy class, I heard about this instance where this operator had to pull a switch to lift a bridge to avoid hitting oncoming trains. One time (for whatever reason) his son was with him and he noticed that his son had gotten caught in the large bridge gears right as a passenger train was coming. He gruesomely sacrificed his son to save all the people on the train. THAT'S some deep shit. He apparently went insane and committed suicide.

 

[Callate]

Mass Effect 2 got points from me simply for (occasionally) adding something I'd always wanted: a way to cut off long-winded vainglorious villains and idiots who fail to acknowledge the power dynamic currently in play. Now if they'd just add "How about you give me what I want not because I complete your fetch quest but because the power level that would enable me to complete your stupid fetch quest is the same power level that would readily enable me to turn you into a long red smear", and we'd be set.

But as far as "moral choice" goes, I think it made much the same mistake as The Sith Lords; namely, what is supposed to be a mechanic to make the player think and develop their character into something that seems more like a believable personality instead ends up making the player go all-out one way or the other because they want the stat boost or the dialogue options.

The boosts one gets for going all-out Renegade or Paragon aren't quite as blatant as the ones one gets in the KOTOR games, but they still frequently end up, if nothing else, determining who lives and who dies in the end game. Which ultimately amounts to: restrict your choices to branch "A" or branch "B", or you'll have fewer viable options in the last mission.

By all means choices, "good" and "bad", should have real consequences. But it ought to be possible to come up with a moral system for how one envisions one's character without being railroaded into an absolute for the sake of game mechanics.

One other thing, just to stir the hornet's nest... The more I know about it, the more I feel like the "Terri Schaivo" affair was nothing like a moral equivalency. One party wanted to let their spouse die with dignity; the other turned the lives of everyone trying to live out the end of their lives in peace, and everyone who worked at the hospice, upside down so they could pursue their medically untenable delusion that their daughter wasn't a vegetable. The best one could say about Terri Schaivo's parents is that they may have thought they were doing the right thing, but the means and extremes to which they went to go about it puts them so far in the wrong that it's hard for reasonable people to feel anything but disgust at their actions.

 

[DTWolfwood]

Im on the "sacrifice the few for the many" camp. So all my decisions are based on that.

 

[Kegluneq]

I'll sound like a broken record, but fuck it: Silent Hill 2 has the best moral choice system of any game, because you're never aware of the choices you make. For all you know, you're simply playing a game without choices, untill you receive one of the multiple endings.

Definitely. I think the subtleties of a system like this are kind of lost in recent games, since it was about more than just lampshaded binary choices. Did you neglect other characters or yourself more? Did you care enough about your wife to listen to all she had to say?

Silent Hill 1 had a very crude but quite effective moral choice - did you save a villainous character or not? If you were playing without foreknowledge of the game, saving him would affect the ending, and reveal a technique the player could use earlier in a replay to get the 'best' ending (sadly non-canon).

Morality in games is generally handled fairly clumsily. I'd like to see a game that left things morally hazy; I haven't played Mass Effect but the dilemmas posed there sounds pretty interesting. The notion that there are two correct (or equally bad) choices should be explored more.

 

[GoWithDAFro]

Personally, I feel that while moral choices should definitely have an effect, certain characters being grateful and others hating you, stuff like that, they shouldn't have any actual in-game benefits. Your own morals should be the sole motivation for your actions. You also shouldn't be told which choice is good and which is bad, or there'll be situations like "hmm, I want to be a good guy, and the game says this is the good choice, so even though he's a homocidal dick, I guess I'm not killing that guy!" More gray morality would be great as well.

 

[hansari]

that was pretty interesting, but in all honesty, was anyone expecting boundary pushing human experience art from DISNEY?

No, but from Warren Spector we expected something more.

 

[CosmicSpiral]

Moral ambiguity in video games would increase ten-fold without reliable rewards. Real-life moral choices never have guaranteed results, only beliefs and suppositions.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

Interesting. This made me think of the end of ReBoot where they've finally captured Megabyte (or so they think) and Bob's talking about reprogramming him and Megabyte's like "Ah, so a fate worse than deletion? And they call me a monster."
Sometimes killing (or deleting or erasing) isn't always the the "bad" or evil option.
Another example would be in Mass Effect 2, where you're given the choice to either reprogram the heretic Geth or destroy them. For myself I felt that destroying them would be the less evil option. Of course both felt pretty evil.

 

[Imperioratorex Caprae]

In the sense of Moral Dilemmas, perhaps instead of the whole "save or kill" option, perhaps it could be perceived in a different viewpoint. Such as attempt to save (and fail anyway) someone or leave them to the wolves without ever thinking of helping them. The end result may be the same, but perhaps the choice itself affects the way people in the game look at you later: Attempting to save x person nets you another ally later on, saying "screw this" turns said "ally" into "enemy" or something along those lines.
A lot of moral dilemmas in life still tend to have the same result whether or not we choose to act, but the action itself can define us as persons later in life. Mostly because we don't know the outcome beforehand. Just something I haven't really seen in games yet I'd like to point out.

I personally believe that the best humans are the ones who don't fool themselves about the "good" and "evil" aspects of life. We all operate on either selfless or selfish impulses (and even sometimes the selfless impulse is only triggered to make ourselves feel better thus being selfish in the end) and therein lies the core. I believe in the end we're all self-serving creatures, but the best of the bunch are the ones who are willing to take a gut punch (metaphorically) so that someone else doesn't have to suffer as much or at all. Decent Being vs. Selfish Prick. Sometimes tho neither choice is decent... and thats another aspect I haven't seen much of in games. Life is complicated, and I don't know if translating that into games can be a good or bad thing. My head is spinning now, thanks.

 

[Carbo]

Thing is Yahtzee, this game's morality system is more of a way telling you "how do you go by solving a problem/what kind of hero are you", not good/evil. I'm surprised you're approaching this game with preconceptions of black and white morality, that's completely missing the idea behind it. The system is supposed to be simple and it doesn't detract the game the least, it supports both choices. Hero = The goody-two shoes Mickey we know today, and Scrapper = The mischievous little troublemaker we used to know him as.

The shittiest thing about morality scales is that more than often being evil in a game results in you getting a non-standard game over because you weren't nice, and the end result feels shit. Epic Mickey isn't about being a massive douchebag who punts puppies across the street, and your choices do have consequences in the long run, whether or not you were good or evil. The endings, the bosses you face etc. It's more long-term. It's a hell lot more clever than most other games I've played, and it leaves room for replay value. It supports both paths and ways to the fullest, and it's all in there for light-hearted fun.

I dunno. I feel almost as disappointed with this article as with the review. In the review you completely omitted the game's core gimmick and idea, while in this article you're mostly talking about how it isn't evil/good. I thought you out of all people would be against that, especially after your inFamous review. At least Epic Mickey feels alot more solid and has less ridiculous purposes of morality. It feels more down-to-earth.

 

[doriant]

The central choice in Fallout 3's Pitt expansion knocked me for a loop:

SPOILERS

I was all about toppling the slaver regime and stealing the cure to the plague. THEN I discover that this means stealing a baby from her loving parents who plan to eventually cure everyone and handing her over to a grad-A a-hole who may or may not have society's best intentions at heart. I was stuck with either maintaining a horrible status quo or destroying it, orphaning a child, and possibly not making anything all that better.

I literally spent a couple *days* pondering what to do before I decided that my anti-slaver policy meant I *had* to bring down the regime, no matter how disgusted I was with the idea of orphaning a child and handing her over to a scumbag. Once I'd done it, though, I immediately left the Pitt and never wanted to see it again.

I found the Pitt to be the best quest line in the whole game because of this. And unlike the regular quests in Fallout 3, you get no extra reward or karma for choosing one side over the other, it just asks you which one you think is right. It doesn't even tell you the long term effects of your choice.

Personally, I sided with Ashur, the slavemaster, even though I disagreed with some of his methods. I don't think the upper class would willingly release the slaves at any point in the future, but at least Ashur has a plan and good intentions; all I know about the other guy is that he used to be a slaver and now hes trying to get power. Plus, I broke into Ashur's safe and found the tapes he made for his daughter, and I would have felt like a total bastard if I kidnapped her after listening to those.

 

[JaymesFogarty]

I'd say that one of the best moral choices I've encountered in gaming was during a playthrough of Bioshock 2. Near the end, I encountered a room full of enemies. The twist was that they weren't attacking me; they were rocking back and forth holding their knees, looking terrified. I was presented with a nasty choice; should I still kill them, and as they are undoubtably enemies, (or better phrased, do I have the right to kill them unprovoked) or should I leave them alone as they haven't attacked me, but potentially risk being assaulted the second I turn my back. I stayed in the room pondering for a solid two minutes, before I decided to let them live.

Yes! I loved that level, and I too let them live. I wish they had done more with including splicers who, if not actively friendly, were at least not actively hostile to the player. It seemed like a bit of a stretch that for every single person in Rapture to go all homicidal, and I always imagined that there may have been still functional communities barricaded into other parts of the city.

I also thought that the confrontation with Stanley Poole in Bioshock 2 was very well done, in terms of moral ambiguity.

Good to hear that you had the decency to give them a chance as well! I believe personally that they missed a good chance for diversity in Bioshock 2, by having areas in which there were not friendly NPC's, but indifferent. I loved Stanley Poole, although I had no qualm first time about putting an electric slug into his skull.