SPOILER: Bioshock 2 and the forced morality

[Cliff_m85]

So I just beat Bioshock 2, the story is nothing near as good as the story for Bioshock 1 but oh well. My question is this....

The third individual you can decide to let live or kill off presents quite a moral question for the gamer. However it's practically ruined by the achievement that goes along with being the most moral.

The situation is that this dude has gone nuts in a holding tank, he programmed little screens to tell you how to get to him and that he'd rather be dead than insane. When you get through doing everything you need to do to finally get to him the insane beast in the tank pleads for its life. What is the moral thing to do?

1) Kill him, as his sane personality pleaded with you to do so he doesn't suffer in insanity for the rest of his days.

2) Let him live, since killing him is wrong simply because killing is wrong (though you've done it to literally hundreds of enemies to get to him).

For me, I chose the first option. Kill him. I had to reload because the achievement told me that this wasn't the moral thing to do.

So my question to you, readers of Escapist, is which choice you find to be more moral and to also add an experience you had with a game where they decided that the opposite of what you thought to do was moral.

 

[Parallel Streaks]

Kill him. Who wouldn't want to die with the current state of Rapture?

 

[newguy77]

Yeah, I wondered about that too, but I had to get the achievement, so I let Blobby live.

 

[Cliff_m85]

Kill him. Who wouldn't want to die with the current state of Rapture?

I thought that killing him was the moral choice as well, but that damned Xbox achievement told me otherwise. Rather, I'd think it awfully cruel to let him live as he was.

 

[Cliff_m85]

Yeah, I wondered about that too, but I had to get the achievement, so I let Blobby live.

That'd be an interesting conversation, when do achievements cause gamers to change their morality?

It's kinda bribing us to not kill the guy, after all.

 

[newguy77]

Yeah, I wondered about that too, but I had to get the achievement, so I let Blobby live.

That'd be an interesting conversation, when do achievements cause gamers to change their morality?

It's kinda bribing us to not kill the guy, after all.

The achievement didn't change my morality, I probably would've listened to his sane recordings and killed him, but like you said, the game bribed me. [minor bragging]Besides, without that achievement, I wouldn't have gotten every possible single player achievement in my first runthrough[/minor bragging]

 

[Prized Cup]

Thats interesting because I was going for Best goddamn good guy too but I let him live just out of curiosity as to whether the characters I let live provide me some support for the finale (yeah - would've been nice, 2K *shake fist*). I got the ending I wanted but I still didn't feel right about letting him live.

So yeah, I reckon it was wrong to let him live. Definitely. He was in a test tube!

 

[Tireseas_v1legacy]

I will let him live when I play through, but not because I'm a nice guy. I'm the lind of guy who let's you live in hell just to see you suffer some more. And apparently, I will be rewarded for my sadism.

 

[hazabaza1]

I was on the PC version, so I didn't have achievements to motivate me. I was playing the good guy, and I killed him. I believe it would have been the right thing to do.

I actually had to think about it for a while however, which is nice in a game.

 

[Void(null)]

Yeah, I wondered about that too, but I had to get the achievement, so I let Blobby live.

I say this with all the passion and depth of feeling I can muster.

Fuck Achievements.

I'm all for achievements when they are fun little goals to aim for, but when they begin to dictate how people play... fuck achievements.

 

[Cliff_m85]

Yeah, I wondered about that too, but I had to get the achievement, so I let Blobby live.

I say this with all the passion and depth of feeling I can muster.

Fuck Achievements.

I'm all for achievements when they are fun little goals to aim for, but when they begin to dictate how people play... fuck achievements.

They are basically virtual dick-waving contests, but still....it's easy to get caught up in the numbers game. I squealed when I hit 20000 points and grinned smugly when I passed my best friends gamerscore. I'd consider myself someone who doesn't care too much about achievements but it is kinda lame to present a prize for choosing what they think the correct moral choice in that situation is.