Epic Mickey Offers No Choice

[SickBritKid]

I must say, Yahtzee, for all of your pretentious monologues and absolute assholish insults toward your audience and fans, you're one hell of a rational thinker when you're putting your legendary cynicism, a cynicism that makes Frederich Nietzsche look like Immanuel Kant, to good use when you explore the deeper concepts of morality and choice in video games.

I agree, in a lot of ways, that there isn't enough contrast and consequence when it comes to morality in video games. The first game I played that actually worked this sort of dynamic well for me was Knights of the Old Republic, as there were a lot of things that made me feel just plain dirty when I was playing darkside. Most times, I play a good character mainly because I don't visit cruelty upon others who don't visit it upon me unless they provoke me. I remember countless times I've wiped out the town of Bloodstone in Fable II when its citizens would kick my dog around for no reason...heh.

However, there're few games NOT by Bioware that can evoke that sort of dynamic. The closest I can think of is the Fable series, and that was mainly in the first game when there were at least two different(if rather similar) endings at the end of the game. Ever since, Fable hasn't had that dynamic, which wasn't really that good to begin with, with 2's three different endings basically changing a piece of scenery and the note you receive at the end(one of them being completely worthless, anyway).

There needs to be better games with this dynamic, as exploring morality as applied to artificial pixels has a lot more potential than being the hero or the villain all the time...

 

[SickBritKid]

Whoa. Yahtzee basically gave Mass Effect a compliment. I'm just waiting for him to comment somewhere else about how bad it sucks to even the scale out.

Yahtzee loves the Mass Effect series...

 

[Ibzzz1991]

I want people that respect life, realize it can't be recovered once lost

Good question. Exactly what business are you in? You're a Marine, by definition you've recieved training to kill, and thus you're only purpose is to kill upon the command of another. Furthermore, you belong to an institution that pays people to kill upon command, so you're really nothing but a glorified merc with the biggest target hiring you. Rather hypocritical of you to claim armed forces of any kind should have a personal understanding of respect for life and its fragility, isn't it? Do you believe a bomber has respect for the lives of the civilians he kills and when he robs them of their homes, when he hasn't even seen their faces? You're a good person, you're deluded. I respect you, but not your profession. After all, you fall under the command of superiors, and there are superiors who are corrupted by their power. So tainted they are, that morality becomes a fine line between service to mankind, and service to their lust for wealth and power-oops, I'm sorry, the latter is technically referred to as Nationalism & National Security. You've lived with the perspective of the man looking down the sights of a gun, I've lived looking at the barrel, I understand what the meaning of "respect for life" is in the military. Respect for life means: Respect for our lives, and everybody else comes second.

 

[Mr_M]

I started reading this article because I thought the topic was interesting, but stopped at the bit where it said that the good options in Epic Mickey were no more difficult than the evil ones. Seriously? I only played the game for a few days, but I found tons of instances where the evil option was much easier. It was usually a case of 'kill this character right now to instantly complete the mission' or 'do some extra stuff that takes time and/or effort to complete the mission while preserving the character's life'. That's a very big difference.

When I played it, I went down the good path just because I felt like it. However, I was often tempted to take the evil options because of how easy they were, and it took quite a bit of willpower to stay on the good path. Saying that "Taking the evil option then is being evil for the sake of being evil" is absolute bullshit. It's not even a subjective opinion, it's a flat-out factual inaccuracy.

I'm a huge fan of ZP, but this article reminded me why I never read EP.

 

[Ryusui]

Indeed. It really is significantly harder to play the "nice guy" in Epic Mickey, and some of the ways this works are subtle. For instance, the whole "brainwash with paint vs. destroy with thinner" approach to defeating enemies. In theory, the paint approach should make things easier, but there's a problem: paint wears off as enemies take damage, so once your loyal minions rush off into battle, there's a good chance that unless you resolve the encounter very quickly, you'll soon find yourself having to repaint them once they turn hostile. For this reason, I eventually just said "screw it" and Thinner'd the Sweeps (who throw Thinner projectiles) whenever I encountered them. Everybody else was fair game.

I couldn't even figure out how to use Paint against the first boss, so I just went on a Thinnerizing tear throughout all the bosses - though I played nice otherwise.

My two serious problems with the game, however, are the lack of any real consequences in the ending depending on the path you took - the worst you get is a montage of all the wrecked bosses you left in your wake - and a frustrating interface issue where "yes/no" questions were hidden in the regular "press A to advance text" prompt. I kept finding myself pressing A to scroll only to agree to a proposition I had no intention of accepting - like selling Small Pete's journal to one of the Gremlins, or giving Donald's voodoo doll to Big Bad Pete. The game basically forced me into being a jackass because it didn't give me anything resembling a proper prompt.

 

[Natural 20]

Dragon Age did this very well. Moral choice doesn't exist because there isn't some all seeing moral authority that decides what is good and bad. The only people that can judge what is moral are the people around you who observe what you do.

There was a room in the Mage's tower with a succubus (Well Desire Demon, but we'll call a cat a cat) The succubus had seduced one of the templars and placed him in an illusion where everything was blissful and perfect according to him. Her price was feeding on his emotion and happiness and him never truly being free in his world.

So you're faced with the choice, you can either kill them both or let the succubus go. There's no black and white morality there. Is being happy more important than being free? Would the templar have chosen this option? Would he prefer death?

When you make the choice your party members approve or disapprove based on thier own belief sets. No magical moral force telling you you're a douche or a wonderful person.

I really liked that and if it disappears in favour of the vastly inferior Mass Effect system for DA2 I'll be upset.

 

[Acreal]

MASS EFFECT 2 SIDE-QUEST SPOILER ALERT

The finest example of a moral dilemma that I have come across in a game, was one mission in Mass Effect 2 where you are trying to stop some terrorist fellows from launching some nukes at some folks. In the end, you get there too late and they launch two nukes. Both of the nukes are heading for the same planet or moon or whatever, but one nuke is targeting a mine in the area, and the other is targeting the town of mine workers. The choice comes in because you have to decide which nuke to destroy, as you can only stop one of them. The idea is that if you save the town, you get the satisfaction of knowing that you saved some human lives, but if you save the mine you get more money.

This seems like a simple choice, and certainly not a great example of a difficult moral choice, but think about it: You can save the mine, or the mine workers. Meaning that even if you save the people, you are destroying their livelihoods. They get their lives, sure, but they lose their ability to provide for their families. The other choice then is death, but it's also death by nuke, so we can assume that it is both a quick and (semi) painless death. So at this point, the choice is to save their lives and give them an uncertain (and possibly harsh and unforgiving) future, or to save the mine and have the people snuffed out like a candle, and later replaced. Obviously, if you knew that the workers would all just get other jobs on another planet somewhere, it becomes the easy ''good = pat on the back, evil = more money'' choice, but since there's a very real possibility that these mine workers (who probably don't have college degrees to fall back on), and their families, will end up freezing to death on the street somewhere (or some other equally, or more, terrible fate), makes the decision somewhat more difficult.

Clearly, this is a huge decision and really should not rest in the hands of one man, but there isn't any time to warn the workers and have them set up their own committee or town meeting and vote on it. And even if you could, in addition to taking the choice out of your hands (and thus absolving you of any guilt), you have to consider the Heisenberg effect; the simple of act of knowing that they will die, and the accompanying fear, will ultimately affect their decision. The moral dilemma was life and an uncertain future, or instant death, meaning that they would (probably) be unaware that it would happen, so the death is one of blissful ignorance rather than overwhelming fear.

I ended up thinking about the decision for a few minutes (remember, those nukes were in the air; time was of the essence) rather than hitting the ''good'' choice reflexively, because in this case there really wasn't a ''good'' choice in my eyes at the beginning. I had to do some soul searching before ultimately making my decision, and even then I continued to wonder for some time afterward if I had made the right decision, and whether or not I would make the same one if it had been real life and not a game.

 

[AdumbroDeus]

Moral choice systems in games are still maturing, but as far as I'm concerned, Bioware has definitely explored this the most effectively. I see a lot of love for Mass Effect in the thread.

Any of you guys play Jade Empire? That was one of my all-time favorites in terms of role-playing/dialog/branching stories, and one of the few games where I could actually stomach playing through the story as the "evil" character. Instead of calling the moral system in the game "good vs evil", it was about two competing philosophies, "open palm vs closed fist" or something like that. Following the way of the Closed Fist often made you a grade A prick, but you were never being evil for evil's sake. The philosophy was all about valuing strength above all other values--let the weak fend for themselves, not out of cruelty, but because the struggle will make them stronger. If you take away their incentive to struggle, you promote weakness. Etc.

While the Bioshock series has thus far had a pretty rudimentary moral choice system--not quite evil for evil's sake, but evil for power's sake, its exploration of the pitfalls of strict individualism or collectivism are way more mature than most of what the gaming medium has had to offer.

Except very little of what Jade Empire had you do to gain closed fist points were not following the philosophy, they were just being a thug (in spite of the differences drawn earlier in the game),

Well, with two exceptions, the girl being sold and the incident at the dam (the latter because you can make it clear what your motivations are, however the girl is obvious, you are attempting to strengthen her).

In theory, the idea was better, in practice the moral choices were one-dimensional.

 

[FarmerMonkey]

Moral choice systems in games are still maturing, but as far as I'm concerned, Bioware has definitely explored this the most effectively. I see a lot of love for Mass Effect in the thread.

Any of you guys play Jade Empire? That was one of my all-time favorites in terms of role-playing/dialog/branching stories, and one of the few games where I could actually stomach playing through the story as the "evil" character. Instead of calling the moral system in the game "good vs evil", it was about two competing philosophies, "open palm vs closed fist" or something like that. Following the way of the Closed Fist often made you a grade A prick, but you were never being evil for evil's sake. The philosophy was all about valuing strength above all other values--let the weak fend for themselves, not out of cruelty, but because the struggle will make them stronger. If you take away their incentive to struggle, you promote weakness. Etc.

While the Bioshock series has thus far had a pretty rudimentary moral choice system--not quite evil for evil's sake, but evil for power's sake, its exploration of the pitfalls of strict individualism or collectivism are way more mature than most of what the gaming medium has had to offer.

Except very little of what Jade Empire had you do to gain closed fist points were not following the philosophy, they were just being a thug (in spite of the differences drawn earlier in the game),

Well, with two exceptions, the girl being sold and the incident at the dam (the latter because you can make it clear what your motivations are, however the girl is obvious, you are attempting to strengthen her).

In theory, the idea was better, in practice the moral choices were one-dimensional.

You might be right. I played Jade Empire so long ago, it might just be that those scenes you mentioned (the slave girl in particular) were the ones that stood out in my memory.

At any rate, to (mis)quote Doug Stanhope, being the game with the most interesting moral choice system "is sort of like being the prettiest Denny's waitress...you still have a lot of work to do."

Hopefully somewhere along the line, execution will catch up to concept.

 

[Aitamen]

Not a moral "choice" thing, but this is related to Ultima 4. In Ultima 1-3, the best ways to do things were usually the evil ways. Stealing the most powerful weapons and horses, killing jesters for keys, etc.

Someone remarked on this to Lord British (Yeah, I know, bite me, I like it). Thus, Ultima 4 was based on doing right in all things as the basis of the game. It was a very interesting thing, and it made for an amazing series. There's just so much that can be done within the realms of morality that no one is doing. Even in games where you portray the hero, the actions you take are usually things that don't fit a hero: Retreating from combat, entering houses uninvited, taking things from footlockers in every house... It'd be nice to see if something was done with this in more games instead of just the "moral choice" blue/red themed bullshit or even actual moral choices/morally blank stuff...

but hey, things are moving forward, let's hope we see some of this before long.