Epic Mickey Offers No Choice

[WOPR]

I'd say that the best moral choice system was the one seen in "Heavy Rain" (SPOILERS!)At the moment when I was at the end of the trial where you have to kill a person, I really had to think. Because there was no answer to that question, would you end a human life which is worth as much as any other to save your son? When I finally made up my mind and shot him, I had to look away from the screen because I felt like horrendous monster. That's the kind of moral choice I like, the kind that actually makes feel bad for taking the "evil" alternative.

@mjc0961: "inFAMOUS" is one of my favorite games of all time, the thing that didn't work in it was mainly that you were required to choose a path and stick to it, there were moments where I really wondered (again SPOILERS!) if I should save Trish from her dead, or rather save the doctors, which would in turn, save a lot of lives, or at the time where I found a guy that wouldn't let me through a gate until I reunited him with his wife, should I tell him that his wife is dead, and let him live in suffering, or should I put him out of his misery. And while, yes some choices ended up in the same thing, they felt meaningful at the time, and I hope these two issues are solved by the time "inFAMOUS 2" comes out (I´m so preordering the shit out of that game!)

I did like infamous but it's choices weren't actually good V evil they always in my mind came down to the needsof others V the needs of self.


There are loads of morally blank dilemmas that dual-choice games don't explore enough. Would you give up a miserable but familiar existence for an exciting but unknown one? Would you rescue one baby or five old people? Is Coke better than Pepsi? Well, yes, but they both make you fat.

Answering yahtzhee's q's above in order
1 give up familiar distance everytime I hate my life
2 baby babies are cute old people are annoying
3 both taste nasty but I do like diet coke

I'll take the Dick approach, or more properly the "Richard" approach

1: I would do everything to ensure my existence stays exciting
2: I would eat the baby and watch the old people burn (actually if this were real life; neither; I hate babies, and old people- well I've seen too many mooch off certian systems that're put into place, so begone with them too!)
3: is syrupy caffeine better then syrupy caffeine with santa? no; if you need me I'll be drinking a Roy Rodgers Root Beer... or a V8 *cough* (but most likely milk)

 

[VondeVon]

There are loads of morally blank dilemmas that dual-choice games don't explore enough.

Yep. The problem is 'dual'. When you have only two choices the reflex to do what you understand to be the 'good' choice in order to get the 'good/successful' ending is strong. To reduce this moral weight, there should be multiple choices. Maybe like a quiz, each choice is worth different points to identify which ending you get. But in the meantime, you can make compromises between what you want and what needs to be done. If you want to play for fun but not be typecast as evil, you can do so.

The closest I've seen are the King-choices in Fable 3, but even they were flawed by virtue of being clearly defined as good/neutral/evil. Some ambiguity would have been awesome.

 

[Girlysprite]

I liked the witcher. It did moral choices right in two ways:
1: There was no good or evil.
2: It isn't clear what the result and effects will be in the long term. Stuff may happen hours later into the game as a result of a choice you made, and you didn't see it coming.

As for the train analogy:
Let's replace the train idea with another idea: Let's say five people are dying in a hospital because they need a new organ. There is a man in the waiting room who would be the perfect donor for all of these people. Can we drag him out of that room and take out his organs because it would save five lives? Most people will answer no.

 

[Mr Companion]

This reminds me of the Legion loyalty mission from Mass Effect 2. I really liked the Geth,so I had to choose between brainwashing them thus ridding them of their free will but allowing them to thrive in greater numbers or wiping them out, removing the threat and leaving the non-aggressive Geth alive, leaving their 'species' closer to annihilation but dealing with the problem cleanly.

 

[Ibzzz1991]

Developers do not investigate the concept of moral choice for a variety of reasons. Firstly, it would be bad press if a game gave the option for someone to be realistically moral or immoral, since typically people have a paranoia of the Pavlovian Conditioning Theory. If I give you a treat for being evil, you will think there is a greatness in being evil, and why shouldn't you manifest this into your own life. This line of thought is weak though, as a majority of gamers are sound enough, or at least I hope so, to make a distinction between life and virtual life. Nonetheless, developers would like to hear the name of their game in the same sentence as someone such as Ted Bundy, because money and image are more important than quality and experience. Furthermore, there are some games that simply do not consider the idea of morality and moral conciousness in characters, except for in isolated areas, such as in the Fallout series. Lets take one of the Bethesda Softworks ones: New Vegas. In New Vegas, you can strain yourself to be nice to people, skimp out of material gain, and pop a cap between their eyes, and you will be akin to Jesus. However, you may slice the head off of a little girl's puppy and wear it as a cod-piece, and you will still be loved. Trust me, murder, regardless of who or what you commit it to, is damaging to the human psyche. Furthermore, there is a certain lack of reality in consequence in games, as if good actions exist purely without negative associations. Right, if that were the case, Herzel's Israel would be much less entertaining for the media, and Bethlehem wouldn't be surrounded by and internment camp wall. So, to avoid the depressing drabness of reality, because it would cut profits, developers decide to jump over the side of the bridge and take a nice fall into the Pisswater River. However, they will insist on adding routine work, literally work, for players if they begin demanding more reality in their games. In all honesty, nobody wants to come back from brown-nosing thier boss, to begin brown-nosing a virtual-reality twat who doesn't even pay you for your services.

 

[Ibzzz1991]

Furthermore, philosophers have not yet achieved grounds of what good and evil are, though they have theaories. I think if you ever play a first-person shooter that grants a tiny window of choice, you will most likely be exposed to Nitschian philosophy, that or if you're a Nazi.

P.S. Coke is awesome X-D

 

[Rorschach II]

'But remember the true meaning of Christmas, kids: just because your parents only bought you one of the consoles doesn't mean you have to loudly and obnoxiously defend it in every internet argument for the rest of the year.'

Amen.

 

[Outright Villainy]

An excellent article.

Zero punctuation may be kind of hit and miss lately, but this is very much on the ball.

 

[Lightslei]

Would you give up a miserable but familiar existence for an exciting but unknown one?

Without a second thought.

 

[Netrigan]

Something about Fable that amuses me are the obvious scams you're encouraged to engage in, but with a good payoff.

Like tricking a man/woman into getting engaged to you. Apparently entering into a loveless marriage (with added bigomy) is the good solution. How about telling the ghost to shove it at the start.

Another had you stealing items from people and the guy doing the asking is being dead obvious that he's bullshitting you. The good solution isn't telling him to get bent, it's stealing all this stuff, getting him a whore, *then* running him out of town.

Fable 3 punished me for executing a brutal mercinary who swore his alligence to me only afte I had him at my mercy. Like I'm going to fall for that one. I killed the fucker, but apparently using my brain and issuing justice to a mass murderer is a bad thing. Letting him go free so long as he stops is "good".

 

[Roninraver]

I really think it matters more "who" the people are, unless I'm missing something (sorry I kinda skimmed up to this point).

Like if the one person was someone you loved and the 5 were strangers but kids, if they're all just strangers then it's just about math at that point.

On topic, Yeah I'm always really iffy when I hear about some kind of moral choices in games, as they usually boil down to pat puppy on head or drown it....

I can't see things this way. I can't break down the lives of human beings (or in the case of more fantastic games, sentient beings of any kind) into numbers. I can't condense the net worth of someone's life into a numeral to be stacked up against other groups of numbers and hope to just do the math.

Going back to the train thought exercise from earlier in the thread, what if that one fatty were the man who would eventually break the cancer conundrum, and save millions (billions?) in future.

What if all five of the people on the other track were members of the Junior Despots Local #305, with assorted and varied plans for genocide and enslavement. Or just reverse the thought and fatty is Adolf Jr, while one (or all) of those five will do something monumentally beneficial for everyone else later on.

Math can't apply to something as complex as the worthiness of a sentient being to life or death. When one person can do so much more (for good or ill) than five of his peers, how can you possibly try and equate them?
There are only two sane choices I believe one can make (on paper): save everyone, or save no one. Which leads me to my pick of best handled morality system in games.


Despite its many flaws, I think the Mass Effect "Paragade" system has been the best of the "moral choice" mechanics. No matter what you do and how you go about it, your goal is still the same: saving the universe and all sentient beings within it. Well... most of them. Pretty noble goal! The differences are in how you go about it.

Renegade: Efficiency and expediency are the hallmark traits of the Renegade. You're still a good guy (deep, deep, DEEP down sometimes) though you do act a jerkface occasionally, but the bad things you do are mostly in accomplishing that noble goal above. You're just taking the quick and sure path to doing it. "Can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs..." The renegade is willing to compromise to achieve the most beneficial outcome he deems possible. The choices are hard, but the achievement of the goal is (reasonably) assured.

Paragon: Same goal as the renegade, but unwilling to compromise and take the quick and dirty path. I think of the paragon as the guy who, given the thought experiment from this thread and put into action, would try and get all six of the victims safely off the tracks (even fatty!) before the train arrived. Or would jump in front of the locomotive and try to wrestle it to a stop somehow before it reached the junction. "Not one more life..." The paragon is unwilling to make compromises, every stand is his last stand.
The achievement of the goal is much less likely given how far the paragon will extend himself to the point of overreaching to try and save everyone all the time, but if he DOES manage to somehow pull this out of his hat, the end result will be far better than the renegade's.


Despite its flaws (looking at you, Paragon/Renegade points and the associated benefits!) I feel this system of choices is much closer to reality than (and more preferable to) most of the mechanics in games today.

 

[dunnace]

For the love of god PLAY ONE OF THE FIRST 2 ODDWORLD GAMES. That has moral dilemma down to a tee. If you want to be good, you have to rescue every muddoken, which is impossibly hard. Being evil is really easy, but then you'll get the bad ending because nobody will save you. It's a perfect quandary, selfish self interested survival or selfless saviour.

 

[Scow2]

I wish systems with clear-cut alignment choices did have inherent rewards for being evil/good, because I believe in Absolute Morality and Inner Moral Integrity. However, having the rewards be of the same nature is the wrong way to go about it.

Good choices should be hard, and come at identifiable cost to the player. However, Virtue is its own reward, and possibly converts to Morale Bonuses to the character over time, with quadratic power growth. In the end, someone who is Good should end up ultimately stronger than someone who is evil, but it would be much harder to get there. And the person who was completely uncorruptable is stronger than someone who tries gaining short-term benefits by flip-flopping between them. The natural reward is bonus Experience in RPGs, for solving the greater challenge. In the end, you end up Superman.

The Evil paths should give significant, large bonuses, tempting the player with quick, often easy rewards, most transient or temporary like wealth or positions of power or fair-weather allies.

Either way, Good and Evil should average the same power level over the span of the entire game.

Another problem with games is they are trying to use the Jesus/Satan morality tie, which works for open-ended games where Good and Evil are absolute, tangible causes (like Dungeons and Dragons, Fable, and Black&White). In those games, it's good to reward "Good" and "Evil" equally well, because you're devoting an equal ammount of effort to both. In those games, "neutral" people get brushed aside for being wishy-washy and spurned by both Greater Powers. The KOTOR Games explicitly justify this, since the two views of Using the Force are so incompatible trying to be neutral just leaves you weak. (Some people are "Balanced" in the Force, but the game doesn't permit you to follow the same path because doing so would likely be game-breaking, in addition to defiling pre-New Republic Jedi Order canon. The Dark Side is "Chaotic Stupid" pre-Luke, and the "Light Side" is "Lawful Stupid". Jolee and Skywalker are "Neutral Good")

However, developers keep trying to shoehorn this model into a game that wants a Superman/Punisher morality system (Epic Mickey, Dragon Age, Mass Effect), where the goal is to be Good, but you're constantly faced with issues where it's easier to take a quick-and-dirty route to bypass a problem.

On another note:
Also, Fable considers killing characters like Twinblade and the Defeated Mercenary as an evil act because killing someone who has surrendered or is helpless is an evil act. The problem is it doesn't give a genuinely good "Trust, but Verify" response that would lead the mercenary on a path of redemption.

And as far as moral dillemas go... I hate arbitrarily binary choices. There should always be a third, infalliably good choice that you have to run yourself ragged or be Superhumanly powered to achieve. It may even be programmed to be supposedly impossible (Trying to do too many things "simultaneously"), but it shouldn't be a "Press 'X' for Choice A, Press 'B' for choice B." I hated the fact that in Fallout 3, I couldn't have my Level 20, Speech 100, INT and CHA 10 character (In full power armor, and wielding a Gatling Laser), to persuade/intimidate Ashur into changing the way the pit was run. Similar issue I had in Dragon Age, I didn't like how the game prevented me from using my incredible force to prevent Baelin from having Harrogath executed, and cleaning up Dwarven Politics by cleaning out the corruption with my fireballz.

 

[Jeffro Tull]

I don't believe that the subject of moral choice should be left out in games, however the use of a tiered scale or a "moral compass meter" defeats the purpose of having them in the game. Moral choice and alignment should not be factors that should necessarily be known to the player. It should be in the background, presenting subtle changes to the gameplay experience.

I agree with Yatzhee when he pointed out that the most evil figures in history thought that they were performing a necessary cause toward an ultimate good (or something to that effect). If more effort was placed into the subtle reactions of AI toward the player, without the player having the predetermined knowledge of their chars alignment, then the experience that the player ultimately receives would be more internalized, personal. The player would have to figure out whether the actions they performed were diabolically evil or righteously good.

That being said there also has to be a better execution by the programmers of morally gray areas in order for a system like this to be completely effective. Imagine you are in a group of npc's and rather than hearing them boo or praise you, they don't know what to think of you simply because the decisions that you have made do not follow the guidelines of black and white morality. Some show that they feel threatened by your presence, some tag along in the background with genuine interest. Within the concept of an unknown alignment it would be up to the player to figure out what they did in order to cause this type of reaction.

 

[hewhosaysfish]

And as far as moral dillemas go... I hate arbitrarily binary choices. There should always be a third, infalliably good choice that you have to run yourself ragged or be Superhumanly powered to achieve. It may even be programmed to be supposedly impossible (Trying to do too many things "simultaneously"), but it shouldn't be a "Press 'X' for Choice A, Press 'B' for choice B." I hated the fact that in Fallout 3, I couldn't have my Level 20, Speech 100, INT and CHA 10 character (In full power armor, and wielding a Gatling Laser), to persuade/intimidate Ashur into changing the way the pit was run.

Yes. This.
When you can't *see* any right choice in a situation, it forces you to think about your priorities.
When you can see something that might work out but the only options the game makes available are bad ones, it makes you think that the game is trolling you.

 

[Scow2]

I don't believe that the subject of moral choice should be left out in games, however the use of a tiered scale or a "moral compass meter" defeats the purpose of having them in the game. Moral choice and alignment should not be factors that should necessarily be known to the player. It should be in the background, presenting subtle changes to the gameplay experience.

I agree with Yatzhee when he pointed out that the most evil figures in history thought that they were performing a necessary cause toward an ultimate good (or something to that effect). If more effort was placed into the subtle reactions of AI toward the player, without the player having the predetermined knowledge of their chars alignment, then the experience that the player ultimately receives would be more internalized, personal. The player would have to figure out whether the actions they performed were diabolically evil or righteously good.

That being said there also has to be a better execution by the programmers of morally gray areas in order for a system like this to be completely effective. Imagine you are in a group of npc's and rather than hearing them boo or praise you, they don't know what to think of you simply because the decisions that you have made do not follow the guidelines of black and white morality. Some show that they feel threatened by your presence, some tag along in the background with genuine interest. Within the concept of an unknown alignment it would be up
to the player to figure out what they did in order to cause this type of reaction.

Ah... here's the right solution. One of the only problems I can see with this is how games can't read intent. But hiding the effect of moral choices would probably stop the people trying to be as far out of their desired "Alignment" as they can without the game acknowledging themselves as such. Then, "Is it a Good Deed to accept this cash for completing this task?" becomes a question of morality in the game world, not mechanics.

When you can't *see* any right choice in a situation, it forces you to think about your priorities.
When you can see something that might work out but the only options the game makes available are bad ones, it makes you think that the game is trolling you.

Personally, I prefer Tabletop games (or other RPGs with a Human adjuctant), because then, even if you can't initially see a good solution, if you think hard enough and come up with one anyway, it's awesome.

I wish you could choose to fight the Big Force of Evil yourself in Fable 3... then the game might have had a satisfying challenge, and it wouldn't require the "Third Option" to be a Wealthy Economy-Breaking Landlord

 

[MikeV37]

I remember in Fallout 3 there was a problem where you either killed some ghouls trying to get into a hotel or let them break into the hotel to as far as i know, kill everyone inside. A bunch of the people inside were douche bags, but some were fine people. After thinking about it, I decided that the ghouls aggression against the whole of the occupants was unwarranted, so i killed them. Turns out that was the evil option.

 

[wii_about_guide]

Warren Spector has said specifically that Mickey was not a game of moral choices, and I think that's accurate. Paint and thinner are not good and bad, and the choices you make are ultimately more about whether you want to fix the world you're in or just get through it. This is not to say that I disagree with the point that choices in Mickey could have been much more interesting, I just don't think the game was trying to be a good/evil game so that criticism seems a little unjust.

 

[Towels]

Its not a duel-choice system, but the most aggrovating morality concept is dialoge trees where "choices" simply force you to redecide, and won't let you proceed without selecting the "good" answer.

Worst Offender: Chrono Cross. Serge is offered to stay that timeless, peaceful oblivion with the sacrifice of a turbulent future. You're choices are "REFUSE!!!" or "Accept..."
Accepting only gets your party members a little mad at you, and then they forget as the game proceeds as if you refused.

Some friends argue that its just to role-play a character. Choices without consequence is not role-playing. Most jRPGs force me to watch characters make their own conversations with NPCs, so why force me through a superficial lie that I have a "choice" at random?

 

[M4yce]

I really think it matters more "who" the people are, unless I'm missing something (sorry I kinda skimmed up to this point).

Like if the one person was someone you loved and the 5 were strangers but kids, if they're all just strangers then it's just about math at that point.

On topic, Yeah I'm always really iffy when I hear about some kind of moral choices in games, as they usually boil down to pat puppy on head or drown it....

I can't see things this way. I can't break down the lives of human beings (or in the case of more fantastic games, sentient beings of any kind) into numbers. I can't condense the net worth of someone's life into a numeral to be stacked up against other groups of numbers and hope to just do the math.

Going back to the train thought exercise from earlier in the thread, what if that one fatty were the man who would eventually break the cancer conundrum, and save millions (billions?) in future.

What if all five of the people on the other track were members of the Junior Despots Local #305, with assorted and varied plans for genocide and enslavement. Or just reverse the thought and fatty is Adolf Jr, while one (or all) of those five will do something monumentally beneficial for everyone else later on.

Math can't apply to something as complex as the worthiness of a sentient being to life or death. When one person can do so much more (for good or ill) than five of his peers, how can you possibly try and equate them?
There are only two sane choices I believe one can make (on paper): save everyone, or save no one. Which leads me to my pick of best handled morality system in games.


Despite its many flaws, I think the Mass Effect "Paragade" system has been the best of the "moral choice" mechanics. No matter what you do and how you go about it, your goal is still the same: saving the universe and all sentient beings within it. Well... most of them. Pretty noble goal! The differences are in how you go about it.

Renegade: Efficiency and expediency are the hallmark traits of the Renegade. You're still a good guy (deep, deep, DEEP down sometimes) though you do act a jerkface occasionally, but the bad things you do are mostly in accomplishing that noble goal above. You're just taking the quick and sure path to doing it. "Can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs..." The renegade is willing to compromise to achieve the most beneficial outcome he deems possible. The choices are hard, but the achievement of the goal is (reasonably) assured.

Paragon: Same goal as the renegade, but unwilling to compromise and take the quick and dirty path. I think of the paragon as the guy who, given the thought experiment from this thread and put into action, would try and get all six of the victims safely off the tracks (even fatty!) before the train arrived. Or would jump in front of the locomotive and try to wrestle it to a stop somehow before it reached the junction. "Not one more life..." The paragon is unwilling to make compromises, every stand is his last stand.
The achievement of the goal is much less likely given how far the paragon will extend himself to the point of overreaching to try and save everyone all the time, but if he DOES manage to somehow pull this out of his hat, the end result will be far better than the renegade's.


Despite its flaws (looking at you, Paragon/Renegade points and the associated benefits!) I feel this system of choices is much closer to reality than (and more preferable to) most of the mechanics in games today.

Good post very deep, but you're not in the military are you? A good Sgt I knew told me he would never really befriend anyone under his command, yeah he'd take care of them as a Sgt should, but never befriend him.

*Side note we were only shooting the shit because I wasn't in his squad*.

The reason being that he didn't want any reason or any hypothetical reason to be put against him ordering men/women to die for the rest of the squad. Example, when there's poisonous gas in the area how do you check if it's clear? You order the man/woman with the least use in combat to take off his mask and breathe, he dies not clear, he lives all clear (for the most part, sometimes it takes time).

So I'm not saying that it's good to count things by the numbers, but sometimes that's all you have. The lives of the many vs the lives of the few.