Moral complexity in games (bioware games in particular)

[ExaltedK9]

WARNING: This thread contains spoilers in the following games: 'Mass Effect' 'Mass Effect 2' and 'Dragon Age'.

Though most of those games are fairly old now, so theres probably no danger of ruining the story for you now. Speaking of which, why am I talking about these old games?, you might be wondering.

Because they are some of my favorite games, and I recently went back to replay them, and made a shocking discovery. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Spoiler warning: In Mass Effect, you spend the course of the game chasing down,(and more importantly, learning to hate saren). Ah, but in the games climax, just as you are about to take you vengeful pot-shot, Saren confesses to you the hes just a scared, misunderstood puppydog who felt he had no choice in the situation he was in, and saves you the trouble of killing him. (Sure his body reanimates for a final climactic boss battle, but it wasn't his concious self, so it doesn't count!)

Dragon Age: You pursue Teryn Logain for the unforgivable crime he commited in the beginning of the game, in which you beloved mentor, and king are killed. When you finally catch up to him,and brace yourself for vengence, he gives a teary speech about how he was only doing what he thought was best for the nation he loved. And then spatter his guts onto his by-standing wide-eyed daughter. (yes, I know you don't HAVE to kill him, but the option is there...)

My point: I'm all for moral complexity in games, but the other part of me doesn't want to feel like an ass for killing the person I've come to hate all throughout the story. And I feel it somewhat takes away from the experience,and feeling of being a good guy, should you opt to be one.

So I ask you, my fellow escapists: Should you be able to kill your bad guy as just that: A bad guy? Or should there always be an underlying good side to your antagonist?

Keepin in mind that this is geared mostly toward Bioware games, which I am not bashing (I happen to love them). And yes, I know Mass Efect 2 didn't come up but that one's a bit more straight forward.

 

[ExaltedK9]

There doesn't ALWAYS need to be some good in your enemy, but I enjoy it when there is. It adds another dimension to the story and your choices.

I mean, if you want just pure black and white, good and evil, there are always games out there like Mario, Zelda...Black and White. Games where the bad guy is just evil for the sake of being evil.

I definitely get that, and like I said, I'm all for moral complexity with bad guys, but it would be nice to exact revenge without getting that "Maybe I shouldn't have done that." feeling afterwards.

Loghains death especially comes to mind.

 

[Merkavar]

well all these games seem to boast about how there is no good or evil choices, there are just choices. so they cant have a completely evil boss to kill cause that would make it a purely good choice. so they try to make the enemy seem misunderstood or what ever so when you kill or dont kill them its not good or bad.

bit of a cop out

 

[Aidinthel]

Personally, I like my antagonists to have a bit more to them than mindless evil. They don't necessarily need to have a "good" side, but they should be a realistic character. I always kill them anyway, though. Loghain shouldn't have slandered the Wardens like that.

 

[Frotality]

just the opposite; i dont want unquestioned good defeating unquestioned evil, everyone and their mother and their dog does that; a writhing mass of moral ambiguity throughout the world is what made me love dragon age, and id love to see more of it, no good guy kills bad guy because hes bad, just guy kills other guy because he has an actual reason to; no good and bad, just player and npc, im quite sick of other games (bioware games to) where im forced to accept the developers morality, i want me some more like dragon age, where i can actually make my own morality.

 

[Veylon]

There's a slogan about everyone being the hero of their own story. The bad guy should be doing stuff to advance whatever it is he thinks needs doing. Heck, even such an incomprehensible world-destroying alien monster like Lavos from Chrono Trigger had it's reasons.

 

[Grygor]

Ah, but in the games climax, just as you are about to take you vengeful pot-shot, Saren confesses to you the hes just a scared, misunderstood puppydog who felt he had no choice in the situation he was in, and saves you the trouble of killing him.

He only shoots himself if you have a high enough paragon or renegade score to unlock the appropriate dialog option (and, obviously, use that option). Otherwise, he fights you.

Back on topic, a villain who's doing what he thinks is right is almost always far more compelling than one who is basically evil for evil's sake.

Spoiler: Two-decade-old spoilers ahead

Just compare Garland/Chaos in Final Fantasy to Necrosaro in Dragon Quest/Warrior 4. Garland/Chaos just wants to live forever, though how meaningful eternal life is in the context of a 2000-year time loop is debatable; he basically wants an eternal Groundhog Bimillennium.
Necrosaro, on the other hand, wants to destroy humanity because humans, motivated by greed, deliberately abused the love of his life - driven by revenge, he does terrible things even to the ones he loves in pursuit of his ultimately racist agenda.
One of these is much more compelling and interesting than the other.

It's certainly possible to make truly inscrutable evil compelling (see also Cthulhu and, some
would argue, Kefka), but it's extremely tricky to pull of the right tone - the end result is far more often banal and pathetic.

Spoiler: Decade-and-a-half-old spoilers

Just look at FF5's Exdeath. He is basically evil incarnate (inlignate?) who wants to destroy everything because he's evil and that what evil does, and who is nearly impossible to take seriously after you find out that he's just an evil tree.

Compare this to Kefka, who denies the existence of anything good or decent in the human heart and torments people purely for his own amusement. There's a kind of deep, existential dread in the realization that your suffering exists solely as a source of joy to an omnipotent, unknowable entity who only does it for fun.

 

[imPacT31]

The thing you've got to bear in mind about these characters is that they aren't actually the main antagonists of their respective games. In Mass Effect's case, Saren is intended to be a distraction before Sovereign's reveal, while Loghain is intended to offer a measured alternative to the Archdemons chaotic evil approach. Both characters are given an measure of humanity (turianity?) to show just how inhuman the primary antagonist is and through demonstrating how the main villain exploits and abuses its minions, intentional or not, the developer makes it seem more evil and distracts the player from it's glaring lack of characterisation.

Who's the more interesting villain?

Teryn Loghain, who is misguided, acting on reasonable suspicions and has the same long term goal as you, or an evil dragon that doesn't have a single line of dialogue and just wants to kill everyone?

It's easy to want to kill the Archdemon or defeat Sovereign, as they have no redeeming characteristics, while both Saren and Loghain both have a measure of reasoning behind their actions. When an antagonist turns out to be less than 100% evil and has motives we can appreciate, it becomes notably harder to outright condemn them.

 

[ultrachicken]

The moral choice system in Mass Effect was shit anyways. I never found myself actually thinking

about the consequences of each action, I just spammed paragon/renegade, because you are brutally

punished if you don't.

I still loved the game, though.

As for dragon age, I just found myself picking whatever option I assumed would keep my teammates

liking me. Again, great game, just poor moral choice system.

Bottom line, I didn't really spend time thinking about whatever choice was put forth by each

game, because there was no reason to.

 

[virko]

only if theres more complexity in figuring out how to bang the chick, only reason i play those games.



im so lonely

 

[Kimarous]

snip

A game does not have a bad moral choice system because YOU do not give a shit.

 

[Engarde]

Personally, niether bothers me, but there is one thing that does. Being forced into black and white character development for the self. Bioware had interesting and well written enough OTHER characters, yes, but Shepard was REALLY good, REALLY bad, or neutral. Nothing stuck out as morally interesting, just good / bad / meh.

Dragon Age was better, as it did not have BLUE TEXT RED TEXT to clearly tell you if your moral compass was wavering. Also, I got to be a fancy pants elf man. I love elves.

 

[Grygor]

The moral choice system in Mass Effect was shit anyways. I never found myself actually thinking

about the consequences of each action, I just spammed paragon/renegade, because you are brutally

punished if you don't.

You know, it's funny.

I see people talk about how "the Mass Effect games punish you severely for not going all paragon or all renegade" yet my playthroughs which go for a fairly even paragon/renegade split have not been significantly penalized for it.

 

[Spencer Petersen]

Bioware are pretty much stuck in their ways of making the big twist about your enemy being that they are not the real problem, and that they are simply tools of a bigger threat. This same thing happened in ME2 where you see the collector beg to its master Reaper before being abandoned like a baby on prom night. Id like to see some closure out of their games for once, hopefully this will be in ME3 but I'm not holding my breath. Watch, the Reapers are going to turn out to the soldiers for some great space monstrosity who want to eat the universe over and over again.

 

[MiracleOfSound]

I just wished Fable 2 had let me kill fucking Reaver.