Stupid in game morality.

[Beartrucci]

This is one of the reasons I can't enjoy InFamous or Fallout 3.
If I play as evil in InFamous, I get cool powers and such but then I wanna be the hero. If I play as the Hero I get all these boring powers then I'm not having fun anymore.
With Fallout 3, if I start a new file and play as good, the game becomes a shitload of not having fun while playing as evil gives me cool stuff but then I feel bad surprise surprise.

 

[Silva]

Actually, you can do the Tranquility Lane quest without killing anyone.

That's odd, I think I used the Vault Wiki to find out if there was a way to do that, and they had nothing. Let me take a look... Nope, you're wrong. You see, killing the people in the simulation kills them in the Fallout 3 "real world":

http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Tranquility_Lane

Braun explains it in-game; the people are no longer able to leave the simulation as their minds are reliant upon it to stay alive. So killing them in the simulation is like removing life support.

I don't recall gaining karma for doing that. I thought the result of that sub-quest was no karma consequence, but maybe my memory is incorrect.

You have to go to the wedding I think.

Ah, now that would explain it. The wedding glitched up and didn't finish properly on my version, so I never got the karmaic consequences. Thanks for the tip.

OT: inFamous seemed to work well with the Karma meter, because it worked. The karma options weren't ridiculous choices like:

Kill this healthy baby to become master of evil or, commit suicide to resurrect the world.

They were: Get this man to turn the valve and be blind for a while instead of you.

When I got that decision, this automatically, was my response.

"Mu. Ha. Ha." I said as I walked off, free from a tar covered face.

I think you're overestimating the subtlety of that particular tar-related choice, as said tar was also the reason why people were dying on the street/suffering mind control and joining the Reavers. Letting the other guy's face get splattered meant exposing him to the long-term consequences (which don't effect Cole as much) as well.

 

[ProfessorLayton]

Spoiler

Why is it that killing all the people in Tranquility Lane is bad, when you are freeing them from their sad existences? And how is using a kill switch that kills them all better than just killing them yourself?

Spoiler

Well, it doesn't make sense, but not because you're freeing them because they're not freed. If you broke into the terminal thingy inside the scary old house, there are messages that say even if they die, they come back. He mentioned that people fell down the stairs and impale themselves and get shot and horrible things happening to people, but the people who he mentioned you find back in the town. I remember when I had to make that kid cry, so I beat his dad to death, then left the house that I killed him in, then saw his dad outside. I'm pretty sure that wasn't a glitch, and meant to say that they're stuck there forever and there's nothing you can do to save them. You're not really killing them in the first place, since they come back, so that's why getting negative karma doesn't make any sense. But I guess it's all a sense or morality. You attempted to kill the people is what matters, not if they really die or not... I tell you what Tranquility Lane was probably the best part of any game I have ever played.

This is one of the reasons I can't enjoy InFamous or Fallout 3.
If I play as evil in InFamous, I get cool powers and such but then I wanna be the hero. If I play as the Hero I get all these boring powers then I'm not having fun anymore.
With Fallout 3, if I start a new file and play as good, the game becomes a shitload of not having fun while playing as evil gives me cool stuff but then I feel bad surprise surprise.

Obviously, you weren't playing Fallout 3 right. I'm playing it on the good path and having a lot of fun. I have super high karma because I'm nice to people and if you kill people, you lose quests. Stealing and killing may be fun at first, but you can never really advance. Or maybe I'm just playing the game wrong.

 

[barryween]

Spoiler

Why is it that killing all the people in Tranquility Lane is bad, when you are freeing them from their sad existences? And how is using a kill switch that kills them all better than just killing them yourself?

Spoiler

Well, it doesn't make sense, but not because you're freeing them because they're not freed. If you broke into the terminal thingy inside the scary old house, there are messages that say even if they die, they come back. He mentioned that people fell down the stairs and impale themselves and get shot and horrible things happening to people, but the people who he mentioned you find back in the town. I remember when I had to make that kid cry, so I beat his dad to death, then left the house that I killed him in, then saw his dad outside. I'm pretty sure that wasn't a glitch, and meant to say that they're stuck there forever and there's nothing you can do to save them. You're not really killing them in the first place, since they come back, so that's why getting negative karma doesn't make any sense. But I guess it's all a sense or morality. You attempted to kill the people is what matters, not if they really die or not... I tell you what Tranquility Lane was probably the best part of any game I have ever played.

Spoiler

But I thought if you access the terminal you hit the kill switch and turn off the safety, that way the little girl/creepy guy dies. So all the other people die too.

 

[phoenix352]

I forgot about that.well morality tends to be in the eye of the beholder (is there anywhere the eye of the beholder doesn't fit?) so I'm gonna go with "more or less

True that. Like in the "you gotta shoot em' in the head" quest in Fallout 3, why does killing the ghoul bigots give you evil karma, when doing so is a good thing for the ghouls? Karma is a state of mind.

technically you can lie to crowly and not kill a single person in that quest...lol
if you tell the people what your there to do they work a deal with you so you lie...

 

[Skillswords]

something i need to say, shadow the hedgehog had the best moral choice system because you can change depending on actions and you have a choice to betray and ignore the good v evil thing entirely for your own needs giving middle ground

 

[Nigh Invulnerable]

to me it is a certain charecter in kotor named jollie bindo who claims to be nutral but if you make the ultamate evil choice he turns on you wtf

Neutrality =/= stupid. If you were him and saw the actions a Dark Side Revan takes over the course of events you'd probably run/turn on him too. I imagine a neutral character would still prefer good neighbors over evil ones most of the time.

 

[Desert Tiger]

Shouldn't be any morality things. Instead, other character's should react on what you've done throughout your gaming experience from their own point of view, and act accordingly. If the character is a dick and you act like a dick, then you'll get along just fine. If your character is a godly figure of all things good, then someone else who goes around murdering bad guys might see you as a show-off pussy, while the general population adore you. If you turn off your grandmas' life support, half the room could respect that it was a hard but right decision to make, then the others could estrange you from the family.

At the end of the day, there is no good or evil, just what people perceive as good and evil.

 

[Yegargeburble]

I shot Silver in the face and then for some reason lost Karma when I started 'stealing' the items that her corpse apparently still owned. You'd think they'd have coded that her items were no longer owned once she has no face.

Yeah! This is so ridiculous. I shoot people fifteen times in the face, and taking their items is still called stealing. I do believe that those items should belong to me now. It's not like the deceased is going to use them.

 

[Crimson_Dragoon]

InFamous.
You come across a bunch of citizens punishing a criminal by hanging him upside down from a street-light. If you leave them alone, you get "bad" points. But if you cut the cable holding guy up, potentially dropping him on his head, you get "good" points. Anyone else confused by that?

 

[SantoUno]

I guess Knights of the Old Republic kind of has an excuse in that the Force's morality is kind of objective, so if you disagree with it then you're "wrong" since it has nothing to do with your moral code. Even so, some of the things that give you Dark Side points are just odd. Wait, so it's okay for me to kill a prize fighter, but doing so in an honorable fight to the death instead of running up and blowing his head off in a bar is a dark side move? What?

I was surprised by this too, I guess the fact that you're agreeing to kill him is evil, tch.

And yes I love Force Crush too.

 

[Axeli]

About Mass Effect...

Like said, it's not a s much of a good and evil bar as a good cop or a bad cop bar. Plus it should be noted that it's two bars in there; Making hard decisions doesn't take away from your Paragon bar, and avoiding needless fights doesn't take away from you're Renegade bar.

So when you decide you'll help those brainwashed Salarians out of their misery even if it means shooting them in the face doesn't make you less of a Paragon, it makes you also a Renegade. I.e. if you have somewhat near same amount of Paragon and Renegade points at the end, it probably means your Shepard was a good guy who on the other hand could make tough or coldly calculated decisions when needed.
---

Anyway, what bugs me most about most moral choice games is there hardly ever is a backslash for being good. That one last enemy soldier that begs for his life never comes back with reinfocements if you decide to let him go instead of killing him seeing his life is not worth the risk of you getting more trouble later on.
I find it annoyingly unnrealistic that cold, calculated and even cruel decisions would never turn out to be the better ones in the end, even if just out of dumb luck.
As these games are now you can be laughably trusting with your kind decisions and it never backslashes.

You could ask if it's really the evil decision anymore if it's in fact the correct one, but that's exactly where moral choice systems go wrong. No one thinks of themselves as purely evil, for christ sake even most psychopaths have excuses for their behaviour. There's more to being "evil" than the kind where you slice up townfolks for the kicks of it. It doesn't work too well for role playing.
The problem is that just that kind of evil is lumbed together with being ruthless, greedy, indifferent or egosentric.
Maybe these games should rather focus on different philosophies and attidutes rather than such broad and hard to define terms as good and evil.
And maybe sometimes letting that enemey live, no matter how he begs, when you're extremely vulnerable to an ambush the next thirty minutes should backslash.
So what if you get "bad karma" for your ruthlessness despite it being the right call? That's the grey area these games desperately need.

 

[For Science]

Anyway, what bugs me most about most moral choice games is there hardly ever is a backslash for being good. That one last enemy soldier that begs for his life never comes back with reinfocements if you decide to let him go instead of killing him seeing his life is not worth the risk of you getting more trouble later on.
I find it annoyingly unnrealistic that cold, calculated and even cruel decisions would never turn out to be the better ones in the end, even if just out of dumb luck.
As these games are now you can be laughably trusting with your kind decisions and it never backslashes.

If Deus ex 2: Invisible war existed there was a bit where helping someone would make them shoot you. In games that do exist Jade Empire tried to be two paths but can't stay on topic all the time so I went the "don't mistake this for the good path path" to keep from going mad trying to justify it.

 

[ProfessorLayton]

Spoiler

But I thought if you access the terminal you hit the kill switch and turn off the safety, that way the little girl/creepy guy dies. So all the other people die too.

Spoiler

Oh, I just watched a video on the ending of that and it turns out that I was wrong. He says that the subjects will die and he'll be stuck in this hell alone, so yes the subjects die, but he doesn't. So I have no idea why exactly you get good karma for causing the leader to go insane and killing the subjects instead of murdering them all.

 

[barryween]

Spoiler

But I thought if you access the terminal you hit the kill switch and turn off the safety, that way the little girl/creepy guy dies. So all the other people die too.

Spoiler

Oh, I just watched a video on the ending of that and it turns out that I was wrong. He says that the subjects will die and he'll be stuck in this hell alone, so yes the subjects die, but he doesn't. So I have no idea why exactly you get good karma for causing the leader to go insane and killing the subjects instead of murdering them all.

Maybe it's just because

Spoiler

When you kill them all you have to wear a mask and be the little slasher or whatever it's called, so you strike fear into their hearts THEN kill them. But then again being slaughtered by Chinese Soldiers is quite scary too

 

[dietpeachsnapple]

It is difficult and can go both ways. I think that karma could be built around a questionnaire at the beginning so that if you do not remain true to the model of behavior that you built at the beginning you will lose karma for failing to be "true to yourself."

A person could create a profile that is inherently machivallian and be a completely pragmatic, economical, 'logic bound' being, or they could embrace strictly humanitarian, and benevolent traits.

*shrug* Just an option.