Moral Choice With Consequence

[Soviet Heavy]

I just thought of the simplest way to make moral choices in games actually matter. So many people just reload to an earlier save point if they screw up something they didn't mean to, negating whatever punishment they had received.

What if RPGs instead used the Minecraft tactic? You can only save your game when you quit to the title screen. No going back, if you lost your diamond pickaxe in lava, sucks to be you.

Now obviously, this has some drawbacks. If a game is exceptionally buggy, having only a single save file for each playthrough could be rather risky. But if a polished game with no corrupted saves was to do this, it would make for a much harder and more satisfying experience, as well as also promoting multiple playthroughs even more.

Thoughts? Suggestions? Discussion?

 

[Blunderboy]

This is an option in Mount and Blade.
If I really get my arse handed to me I just quit to the main menu and load from there.

 

[Soviet Heavy]

This is an option in Mount and Blade.
If I really get my arse handed to me I just quit to the main menu and load from there.

I haven't played Mount and Blade. I really want to because it sounds so enticing, but the animations for combat just put me off.

 

[Blunderboy]

This is an option in Mount and Blade.
If I really get my arse handed to me I just quit to the main menu and load from there.

I haven't played Mount and Blade. I really want to because it sounds so enticing, but the animations for combat just put me off.

Power through it. It's really worth playing once you get over that aspect..

 

[Irridium]

Or you could do what The Witcher 1/2 does and have those consequences show up later in the game, when reloading would mean re-playing hours of stuff. Now this would require a developer to actually write the story and plan it all out before building the game. But you know what? That's a really good thing. Perhaps then we'll finally have more games with decent stories.

This is an option in Mount and Blade.
If I really get my arse handed to me I just quit to the main menu and load from there.

I haven't played Mount and Blade. I really want to because it sounds so enticing, but the animations for combat just put me off.

Trust me, it looks a lot better when you're playing. I don't know how to explain it... but it really plays a LOT better than it looks.

 

[Grouchy Imp_v1legacy]

You mean Roguelike games? Like Nethack, ADOM, and, well, Rogue?

"Roguelikes traditionally implement permadeath. Once a character dies, the player must begin a new game. A "save game" feature will only provide suspension of gameplay and not a limitlessly recoverable state; the stored session is deleted upon resumption or character death. Players can circumvent this by backing up stored game data ("save scumming"), an act that is usually considered cheating."[sub]From the wiki page[/sub]

Personally, I love 'em. The implementation of a savefile system that means you have to a) be bloody careful, and b) actually really think about in-game decisions adds so much to the overall gaming experience.

 

[DasDestroyer]

Then that game would receive the same treatment Minecraft did in that department: people will copy the saves to backup locations and later someone will make a program that backs up your saves for you. Now if someone were to find a way to avoid this, kudos to them.

 

[Zhukov]

That would just be a pain.

I cannot know what the exact results of any given action are going to be. Hitting me with permanent punishment for a wrong choice would be akin to slapping someone for getting heads instead of tails.