The Morality System in Games Has Outlived Its Usefulness

[wetfart]

If I recall correctly, the "Bad" ending for Metro 2033 is the canon ending.

Spoiler

Artyom locks the missile on the Dark One's home and destroys it, only then realizing that they weren't hostile but were just trying to communicate with humanity

So even if a game does have a moral choice system, it's not necessarily the good side that's canon.

 

[Kerethos]

I think there's some confusion to the whole "grey area" of the supposed moral spectrum. Good or evil is actually, as Lightknight pointed out, often rather binary.

But even the choice of a poor person to steal from a rich person to feed his starving family is not truly "gray". It's wrong to steal, most people know that and thus they do not. It's wrong to kill people, yet often the hero murders others for a supposed good cause. But that does not make the act of murder or stealing any less of a crime or morally "gray". It's still theft or murder - and theft and murder is wrong.

What we really mean with morally "gray" is "justifiable evil". Can I convince myself that my act of evil will have a good enough outcome for me to be willing to perform it.

In not so simple terms:
If I launch a rocket powered drill up the villains ass, send him skywards and set him on fire, before blowing him to bits and basking in the shower of blood and flaming flesh, does that in turn benefit me or someone I care about enough for me to be willing to do so? If the answer is yes - even if it's just because you like the smell of burnt flesh - it's justifiable evil to you aka. "Morally gray".

Who's to say you couldn't just shoot him in the knee and leave him crippled for life (well, if the game is about shooting people then the choice has probably already been made for you, but I still hope you get the point)?

It's harder, sure, but that's what doing the good thing is about. Doing the good thing often means doing the hard thing, which games often forget. Taking the villain alive, not doing evil for the sake of good - that's what "the good choice" is about.

It's why Superman doesn't kill his enemies, why Batman keeps throwing villains through Arkhams revolving doors (yes, I'm aware the movies keep fucking this part up). Taking the high road is often costly, it's harder, it will more than likely come back to bite you in the ass - but that's why we consider those who do so real heroes. It's why Nelson Mandela was considered a great man - he took the the high road, the difficult path, chose to forgive and make peace when people called for revenge and justice in blood after decades of abuse. Even though, after decades in jail, he could have easily become a warlord instead.

This is why doing good in games only becomes interesting if there's consequences, otherwise the choice to do good might as well not be there. Doing the good thing in life often incurs a personal cost or reduced personal benefit, because doing the evil thing will normally benefit you more. It's part of human nature, it's why corruption exists in the first place. And it's difficult to always do the right thing, that's what makes it interesting. Just killing the villain, saving the girlfriend, hugging a friend - they are all boring in terms of moral choice because there's normally no cost.

Taking the villains prisoner - despite what they've done or if they'll kill your girlfriend if you do so, now that's more interesting. That's proper moral choice. Or to take one of the better choices from Dragon Age: Origins as an example:
Recruit the man who got your king, boss and fellow wardens killed, instead of executing him. Taking the high road, even if you lose a friend for it. Choosing penance over murdering him to enact revenge. That's what doing "good" needs to be, in order to be more than the default path.

 

[KaZuYa]

Most morale choice systems are just lazy programing, instead of keeping track of each choice or decision and having individual NPC's reacting to each situation in a considered way you just get points in either a Saint or Asshole meter and their reaction or your actions are rolled against them. Evil or Good are not black(red)and white(blue) I mean if you saw an NPC brutally beat and choke another to death that would rightly be seen as evil, then you find out the murdered NPC killed and raped the sister of the first NPC in the most sadistic and painful way possible and you then see that action is an understandable light, it's the old putting a pacifist in a room with Hitler and handing them a gun setup.

What I'm trying to say is any choice should be open but it's underlying motivation and personal consequences which affect the morality of it and that is difficult to code in a game.

 

[Talaris]

I'm sure someone has said this already, but both The Witcher and The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings are very good in actually making your choices matter, but at the same time they are never purely right and wrong like Mass Effect, and actually make you think about how the game might change based on your actions.

Witcher 2 which I completed yesterday is especially good in this regard. Entire levels and quest paths are built around the choices you make, making for very different gameplay experiences between playthroughs, and whilst I wanted to roleplay as a good guy, some of the choices and consequences are very much grey, but at the same time play out very realistically if you consider the difference in morality of people during the medieval period.

 

[Casual Shinji]

This is one of the things I really enjoyed about Dragon Age: Origins. Admittedly, the choices themselves tended to be a little extreme - do I save the mages or slaughter them to a man? - but at least it didn't track your morality as a game mechanic. Instead, you had a separate relationship meter with each character, and they all had different opinions of things you did. Being practical if cruel, like sacrificing a boy's mother so that you can save the boy himself, would get you positive points with Morrigan but negative points with Alistair.

It wasn't perfect, and most of the decisions still had obvious Good and Bad choices. But at least there was usually a reason to be bad other than for badness' sake: turning dwarves into golems is horrible, but it also means you have an army of golems to help you in the war. Plus, all the stuff at the Landsmeet towards the end, deciding what to do with Loghain and who ought to be on the throne, was not only brilliant in itself, but avoided the clearly delineated Good/Bad duality.

It could've been better, but it was a big step in the right direction.

Right-o!

I'm surprised this game didn't come up in the article, since it doesn't treat your character's actions as something judged by some invisible morality god, but by the people who surround you. Just like in real life.

The article mentions a certain solution to the inFAMOUS morality, but even that would hold no consequences for you, because it's just a game. By tying your actions to how other characters viewed you, DA: O presented the consequence of being judged harshly by people you might've grown to like. I remember when Alistair or Leliana disaproved of something I did, I felt a small pang for disappointing them. Near the end there's a great moment where you can leave Loghain alive so he can strengthen you forces, but at the cost of Alistair leaving you. Depended ofcourse on how much you liked Alistair as a character, this decision was a hefty one.

 

[Storm Dragon]

From the article:

The NCR is a stable but somewhat corrupt government bogged down by the chains of bureaucracy, whereas the Legion value individual freedom but members pledge their lives to a savage cause

That's not at all how I saw it. The Legion was about sacrificing personal freedom for a strong, decisive leader; several characters state that bandits are dealt with quickly and harshly in Legion-controlled lands. But it does not value individual freedom; all of their non-war related work is done by slaves, and they utterly eliminate the cultures of the tribes they absorb. Choosing the Legion means that the player thinks that the bloodshed and slavery is worth it for a Pax Romana Nova.[footnote]It means New Roman Peace, for those of you who don't know.[/footnote]

 

[water_bearer]

I feel like the addition of binary choices is just an easy way for developers to add content to the game and convince themselves that the game will warrant at least a second play-through.

Maybe most morality systems are just there to convince developers themselves that they've put sufficient content into a title.

 

[DeepReaver]

Non-Binary choice morality is really the way to go i think. And two games that i can think of that do it rather well are Skyrim and Mount & Blade. Each one presents the player with choices but rather than reward or penalize the player based on the choices they make it just changes the experience of the game in a different way. Granted Skyrim has it's flaws, it is not like NPC's run in terror and a little bit of gold gets all your sins forgotten. But it is a step in the right direction i think it would just need longer repercussions to go with the sense of immersion. Mount & Blade is sort of the same, you are dropped into a world and allowed to do as you see fit. You can trade between cities, stay on the straight and narrow and join a lord's cause. Or just go wild and be a bandit for life.

I do not think moral choice is dead in games, or really needs to be dead in games, it just needs to be changed to allow a more organic experience governed by the player's personal sense of morality.

 

[SonOfVoorhees]

Its a great system. After all they cant add 100 variables to your actions between Shake hands and stab in the face. We can be both good or evil, doesnt matter if under evil you slap them, punch them or stab them. Still evil. Would be nice if subtleties were added by talking me into complying or torturing me. Either way, the outcome is the same, though you would have the added outcome of making an ally which is similar to what Alpha Protocol did. Would love a better version of that game.

 

[Steve the Pocket]

I think a big part of why these binary moral systems exist is because there are a decent number of people who do enjoy playing as a complete monster. Think pretty much everyone who has ever played a Grand Theft Auto game, period. I suspect moral-choice systems were implemented as a way to punish these kinds of players in the wake of the "Oh noes games are turning our children into psychopaths" scare, or at least give their style of play some impact on the world. 2K outright demanded that BioShock create some consequence for harvesting the Little Sisters, for example, so they could make the argument that you weren't being pressured into doing it.

Also, did Fallout 3's karma system get tweaked in the Game of the Year Edition? Because I've never gotten any positive karma from killing feral ghouls or other nameless baddies, just named characters who happened to be evil, like my epic massacre of Paradise Falls.

What I'm trying to say is any choice should be open but it's underlying motivation and personal consequences which affect the morality of it and that is difficult to code in a game.

It really isn't. The coding is probably the easiest part of it; just set a variable for each choice that comes up, set it when the choice has been made, and then pull it up when it becomes relevant again. Just like the game already has to keep track of which NPCs you've already talked to and what you said to them so they don't forget who you are when you encounter them again. Writing the game to take your past choices into account would be a bit more challenging, certainly, and you'd have to record more dialog, but on a AAA budget, neither of those things should be an issue.

 

[luvd1]

The best example of the moral choice I found was in drangon age awakening right at the end when you faced the architect. Now that was a choice. Kill him and doom everyone to circle of invasion from the archdemon every 1000'years or spare him and give the darkspawn free will to do what ever they want like live in peace or invade in an organised army. I sat on that queston for an hour.

 

[senordesol]

The limitations of the 'binary' moral choice system is inherent to its name: it's binary -A 1 or a 0- and you can't boil human behavior down to that level and have it be believable.

A good start is the Lawful/Good/Neutral/Chaotic/Evil grid, but even that I think is a tad over-simplified.

I'd think a good moral choice system ends up something like this: there are 3 axis: Cooperative/Competitive, Judgemental/Merciful, Resourceful/Wasteful. Within the context of the game, the major challenges you'll face will add or subtract weight to one or more of these axis. Rather than every individual decision having a direct result, have different opportunities and challenges open up for the player based on their current motivational 'weight' (even if it's neutral).

 

[Grimh]

There's one simple thing I want to do in a Role Playing Game, to play a role.

Just give me choices, don't make it so arbitrary and artificial with colored bars and themed powers.

Spoiler: And obligatory MrBtongue link.

There you go.

 

[laggyteabag]

Whilst I love morality choices, I always did hate it when a choice was obviously labelled as being a "good" or "bad" choice. For example, in Mass Effect, the paragon choices are always listed at the top of the conversation wheel, and the renegade choices are always left at the bottom, so if I wanted to be a "good" character, I didn't even need to read what the choices where, because I always knew that the top choice was the "good" choice, this was a huge issue with the Mass Effect 1 ending where you were given two options: Use the human fleet to save the council, but lose many ships in the process, or use the fleet to directly attack Sovereign to bring it down quicker. The right choice in my mind was to use the fleet to destroy Sovereign, but this was the bottom option, so this was a "bad" choice, despite it being the morally right option to me. This became even more annoying when in Mass Effect 2 when they introduced not only the paragon/ renegade interrupts, but the introduction of what I am going to call the paragon/ renegade overrides in conversation where the options were highlighted in blue/ red respectively and these options would result in the best outcomes during this conversation, but were only available to those who had a high enough paragon/ renegade score. This always irritated me as it forced the player to be either "good" or "bad", but someone who was morally grey would be left with the worst options. Why is it that I needed to have been previously good to save my friend? Or to have been previously bad to be able to intimidate a person successfully?

Moral choices in games have always been great when the choices are not black or white, good or evil, but just having to make a choice out of two equally good or bad situations. For example, the Doug or Carley choice in The Walking Dead, or Kaidan or Ashley choice in the first Mass Effect game. Neither of these choices are "good" or "bad", but they are just a choice of pick one, lose the other, an equally shitty choice no matter which one you go for. Dragon Age and Dragon Age 2 do this fairly well, even though there is no overall good or evil morality bar like there is in Mass Effect, each companion has their own approval rating of your character and their actions, for example, choosing to go out of your way to help a person will have a impress someone like Leliana or Alistair, but to someone like Sten or Morrigan, they will only see it as a waste of time, and their approval of you will change accordingly.

Morality in games is just so common now, but only two or three games actually do it right. Developers just need to move away from the morality bar, and just stick to the anonymous outcome system instead.

 

[Agayek]

No, poorly written/constructed moral systems have outlived their usefulness but I'm not quite sure shitty writing/mechanics were ever useful in the first place.

However, even barely competent moral systems add a lot of enjoyment to my games. You may think they've served their purpose but I think the [insert game mechanic you like that I don't here] has served it's purpose more.

Let's take inFamous for example. Sure you have a lot of punch puppies or save widows in the game but there are some deeper choices like saving your maybe girlfriend or a group of doctors.

The future of moral choices just needs to come up with legitimate choices that both are motivation and not just purely evil or good. Like a hero who becomes wealthy at the cost of honor. As is, being evil seldom benefits the hero in any meaningful way per choice. So then you're just being an ass for no good reason.

I think the author's point isn't that moral choice has no place in games, it's that it shouldn't be a mechanic. If I read it right, the idea is that imposing restrictions and visibly tracking what's "good" and what's "evil" kinda defeats the point of having the kind of tough choices to make, because it removes the complexity and difficulty from the choice.

I agree with that idea, in all honesty. Morality bars and meters and direct, tangible gameplay impact should all go flying out the window at a few hundred thousand meters per second. There is no reason to have a morality bar; all it does is take all the ambiguity out of a difficult choice or encourage the devs to devolve into the retarded "murder a baby and bathe in its blood or save the orphanage" choices that are so prevalent.

Games with choices, moral or otherwise, should handle it like the Witcher 2 or the like. Simply present the choice to the player, let them make whatever choice they want, and then have whatever supporting characters respond accordingly. There is absolutely no reason to quantify it as a "good" or "evil" choice. If you really must have a gameplay impact, have it come from the reactions of the NPCs/rest of the party/whatever, not from an utterly arbitrary metric that only serves to diminish the impact of making such choices.

 

[Goliath100]

Funny, I can come up with one game with a totally binary, "good" or "evil" moral choice system that's so well done it leaves the rest of the industry without an excuse. It's embarrassing how well this Metro 2033 (not Last Light) does it and how quick people are to forget about it. To be fair, the first thing it does right is...:
1) It doesn't tell the player it's there. It judge you silently. INfamous is terrible because you are never asked to be good or evil. You act good because you want the rewards, you act evil because you want the rewards.How is that a question of moral behavior when either way, you are selfish.
2) It's actually thematically relevant for the main story and works as a character arc for both character and (in less extend for) player. The narrative is a Coming of Age story, asking the player to find "the higher way" works.
3) It's only one (there is another, but it servers another porpoise too) true moral choice in the entire game. Everything else is done through the mechanics. From not killing, to observing some conversation, to keeping your word about a last request. Everything is done through the mechanics.
4)At the end of the day, everything is still grey. Actions are market "good" and "bad", but everything is still reasonable.

 

[Stanislav Dimov]

Well.. What about The Banner Saga ? I don't know if it qualifies for a game with morale system, but every choice was done right. It wasn't kill puppy/save puppy. It was more of take their food or starve.
Will you side with the brothers and gain allies or let them die but gain food for your people ? How about this guy ? Would you kill him, leave him be or take him with you? Is he lying or is he telling the truth ? Bandits are attacking innocents ? Will you save them, losing your own men, or leave them to their fate but saving your strenght.
No good/evil. There were choices and with each choice you took gamble, trying to achieve what you thought would be best.
And it was great

 

[Stormwaltz]

(leaving)