WhiteFangofWhoa said:
I know moral choice systems in games have gotten a bad rap due to their linearity ham-fistedly forcing a second playthrough (amusingly I am replaying SMT: Strange Journey Redux right now for that very reason), which is why I thought it would be better to play it for humor.
Now that you mention moral choice systems in games I have an idea. I'd love to see a game with a moral choice system that actually changes the game based on it for once. While so many games with moral choice systems have claimed this is the case not a one that I know of actually does it, it just effects the ending at the most. The choice between good/evil or lawful/chaotic ultimately is nothing more than cheap replay value, you still end up fighting most of the exact same enemies and going through the exact same plot with the exact same villain. The only difference ends up being whether you solve the challenges of that plot by being a total saint or a total dick, it doesn't actually change anything.
Thus, my idea is this: Have the first third of the game be making choices to determine if you're Good, Evil, or Neutral, then the next third be about what kind of Good/Evil/Neutral you're going to be, and then finish up the last third. Every third of the game except (by necessity) the first third will be completely different depending on what happened in the last third, locking in the morality chosen with each third which determines what direction the plot takes and who your enemies and allies are.
For instance, the first third will be deciding if you want to side with the bright clean Federation of Goodenstein, the filthy downtrodden Empire of Evillotius or the nondescript merchant fleet of the land of Neutralia.
Let's suppose you decided to join Evillotius. During the second third you demonstrate what kind of evil you are. Will you be a loyal little minion of the Emperor, fighting his enemies and bringing conquest and glory to his name (Lawful)? Will you be an Ax Crazy lunatic only barely kept in check by the Emperor's word (Chaotic)? Or will you decide to overthrow the Emperor and rule yourself (Neutral)?
In the third and final part of the game your choices will be near nonexistent. You've chosen your path, now you must walk it.
If you picked Evillotius and Lawful, you're now a general in his army and direct his forces to conquer Goodenstein. Your choices now come down to whether you're a cunning master of war who makes effective use of every man or a wasteful pathetic excuse of a tactician who doesn't care to do anything but throw men at the enemy until your forces or theirs stop existing.
If you picked Evillotius and Chaotic, the Emperor has slapped a slave collar on you and set you lose in various battlefields to slaughter indiscriminately, the only "choices" you can make are if you're a cold efficient killer that kills enemies in one strike and moves on to the next or if you are a butcher who hacks their enemies and allies who get too close to pieces while possibly taking a bite here and there.
If you picked Evillotius and Neutral, you've successfully killed the Emperor (to keep this path from just being the good path but you're evil) and taken over. This path would probably be the one of the three with the most actual choices and variation, given that you could decide who you're going to attack and how, Goodenstein or Neutralia.
Something like that.
TL;DR: I want a Moral choices game with real differences made by your choices rather than it just basically being the same thing no matter what you do.
WhiteFangofWhoa said:
A JRPG with a moral choice system where the art style and dialogue style consistently reflect your alignment. You start out with just standard Tales game kind of aesthetics, nothing too harsh but not too cutesy... unless you keep making 'unrealistically good' choices at which point it starts gradually transforming into anime Care Bears, everyone's eyes bigger and cheeks rosier, the text bubbles becoming fluffy clouds.
Then if you go the opposite approach and make 'dark' choices it would get closer to the art/dialogue of one of the better known 'grimdark' comic artists like maybe Todd McFarlane, all thick black brush outlines and brutal scars, all the colors getting progressively de-saturated except the vivid blood red and more cuss words getting injected into people's dialogue in jagged text boxes. And this mechanic affects every location, speech bubble and character in the game, even the villains.
There's two ways I could see this working. Either one's thoughts and actions can directly effect reality like Belief in Planescape Torment, or it turns out you're in either a computer simulation or the Main Character's head the whole game and what you think and decide to do directly effects everything due to the world being a direct reflection of your mental state. Any of those could be interesting, though with the first you'd have to come up with an excuse as to why your thoughts and actions effect the world more than everybody else.
half the work is done already.
