The Murderhobo Problem; or, You're Playing The Game Wrong

[Thunderous Cacophony]

I was reading an article today about video game storytelling (link for posterity) and it touched a nerve.

Specifically, it talked about how in Watch_Dogs you can kill a bunch of pedestrians/innocent low level employees on your way to get to the true villains, as well as robbing those same people. This was expressed as a fault; "How can you be the hero when you're a murderous psychopath?" This attitude is one I see come up a lot when talking about open-world games, particularly as a fault in the writing ("The main character talks about how they don't want to kill people in cutscenes, but in gameplay they are murdering dozens at a time!"), so I wanted to get something off my chest:

[HEADING=3]YOU DON'T HAVE TO KILL THE INNOCENT[/HEADING]

Seriously, you don't. You are in an open world role-playing game. That means you have an open world full of possibilities to explore, and the need to play a role so that you fit in that world. If there is a break between how the character acts in cutscenes and how you act in the game, that's because you are making the conscious choice to not act as the character you are supposed to be portraying would. If you're playing Watch_Dogs and you don't want to kill a bunch of innocents or strip their bank accounts, you don't have to; you have non-lethal weapons, stealth, and targets like Blume that are both rich and in the wrong (you can rob banks if you want a "victimless" crime to fund your vigilante justice).

I come from a background of tabletop role-playing games, and if you acted there like most people play open-world games you'd be called a murderhobo, someone who wanders around and solves all their problems with violence, no effort to put down roots or fit in; someone who carries an assault rifle openly on the sidewalk, guns down targets in the street, murders any cops who show up to stop them, then steals a car and flees. Part of an RPG is the freedom to make choices without someone telling you that it is explicitly bad or good. Ham-handed systems like morality meters and desynchronization (from Assassin's Creed) are supposed to show you how your actions are being perceived, and what the character you're playing would do, but the game shouldn't have to slap your fingers and take the controller away.

If you want to be a hero, then you have to actually be one (and yes, that means that life is harder; being good is sacrificing yourself for the benefit of others). Stop calling the people who give you a multitude of options hack writers because you chose the easiest path.

Anyways, that's my rant. Thoughts? Have you seen the same wrong-headed thinking, or do you think I'm being stupid and overly critical?


EDIT: To clarify, I'm not necessarily saying that going on a murder spree is badwrongfun, just that people shouldn't blame the game for making a murder spree possible while discouraging you from doing so. Play how you want, but don't accuse the game of being "immersion-breaking" when you are the one choosing to cross lines.

 

[Shpongled]

I agree for the most part, but the problem is there are lots of games that simply don't give you the freedom to kill or not kill, and so on. The recent Lara Croft game jumps to mind. For most parts of the game you simply don't have the option to not gun down mooks in their thousands. There's a very real disconnect between the character in the cut-scenes and what the player is forced to do as the character in the gameplay.

I know you're talking specifically about Watch Dogs in your post, but there are ample examples of games that just don't bother to make any sort of connection between cut-scenes and the over-arching storyline, and the gameplay the player experiences for most of their time playing the game.

I think the problem is that for many genre's, the de jure, go-to gameplay style involves beating a series of enemies, usually with weapons of varying degrees of lethality. Many developers want to both have their cake and eat it, by telling a story involving a character they've decided to be peaceable and good, without bothering to shape their gameplay around it and just defaulting to the standard 'gun down these mooks to proceed' gameplay. Good developers try to address this disconnect by either offering peaceful routes through their games, eg, deus ex (or maybe Watch Dogs as you say, i've not played it), or addressing the insanity that is 'gunning down these mooks to proceed' in the cut-scenes and storyline, eg Spec Ops: The Line or FarCry 3, in which the player can visibly observe the effects all this killing is having on the characters.

 

[duwenbasden]

My question is: why. What's the benefits/cost to hacking innocents, running over everyone? If the payoff is good with virtually no consequences, why shouldn't I do it? In RPGs like, say New Vegas, if I killed someone, I'll be as well banned from there, and that's bad for business; therefore I won't kill innocents in towns.

>You're Playing The Game Wrong

Don't, just don't go there. Don't be Dark Souls or Apple. This is a single player RPG where no one else is involved.

 

[communist gamer]

I think people often dont understand the point of sandbox games and how they work. In a RPG you are always, non stop in
character. You have some free time to dick around but you dont have a lot of the freedom you get in sandbox games because you are limited by who your character is, or what alignment he is to put it in Pen and paper terms, you never brake character, every action you take somehow affects your character and is used to make your character seem more human. On the other hand when you get a sandbox game, we have two game play modes. The story where you are driven from point to point and you are in character. So in TeS you are the greater hero who has been destined to do something, in Far cry 3 you are the guy who is saving him family/friends while being pumped with enough drugs to make David Bowie look as a avid weed smoker etc. Then we have the out of main story game play, which is pretty much a out-of-character part of the game. It is made purl so the players can dick around using the new mechanics they gained/upgrade the olds ones they have. It serves the purpose of allowing the player to do something other then quests. You want to scale the highest building in the game and jump down from it with a parachute? shure. You want to reconstruct the Columbine shooting? Be our guest. How about just shooting every black guy in the game because you are a racist man hater? We wont jude, here is a AK-47 go wild dude. Its a part of the game where the actions of the player character dont matter and shouldn't matter because it was made so the player can have a bit of fun with the mechanics while not worrying that their karma will go down or they wont get access to certainer parts of game play. So saying "this character is a sandbox game says in a cut-seen he dose not want to kill people and then outside of quests he murderers tons of people, therefore making my think that this character is not a good person" is stupid because there is no character development in a sandbox game outside of quests, while you are not in a quest, you are in a part of the game made so players can fool around or/and unwinde

 

[Shpongled]

My question is: why. What's the benefits/cost to hacking innocents, running over everyone? If the payoff is good with virtually no consequences, why shouldn't I do it? In RPGs like, say New Vegas, if I killed someone, I'll be as well banned from there, and that's bad for business; therefore I won't kill innocents in towns.

>You're Playing The Game Wrong

Don't, just don't go there. Don't be Dark Souls or Apple. This is a single player RPG where no one else is involved.

There are many examples in real life where there simply is no benefit in doing the right thing (edit; or no repercussions for doing the wrong thing), i don't see why it should be any different in video games. "Why the hell shouldn't i cheat on my partner?! It's not like they're ever going to find out!"

Sure, there are examples where you might ask why there are no repercussions for doing this particular thing, like robbing blind that dude who helps you out at the beginning of Skyrim, but i think they're more a result of quirky mechanics than conscious choices from game developers. Similar to when you ask yourself why the hell the cops are chasing you in GTA5 because they just rammed you off your bike when they were driving on the wrong side of the road chasing someone at high speeds.

 

[shrekfan246]

Well, I wouldn't really call Watch Dogs an RPG...

But yeah, I've never understood this fascination people seem to have with going on murderous rampages in open-world games. Maybe I'm too much of a goody-two-shoes but that's just not how I play those games. I mean, that's not to say that accidents never happen where collateral damage is caused, but I rarely go out of my way to start mowing down civilians. Hell, in open world games with driving I often try to abide the rules of the road, and you have no idea how poorly those things can be simulated. Also how difficult it is to keep the car at a steady speed that isn't either "full speed" or "complete stop".

That having been said, and Dead Rising 3 is apparently a decent enough example (full disclosure, I haven't played it myself so I'm just going off of what I've seen and heard from other people), when a story directly contradicts or conflicts with the gameplay of the game, it kinda is a problem with the writing. If your character is dressing up in frilly pink dresses and wearing massive mascot heads while chainswording their way through hundreds of zombies, I don't really think they should break down into a blubbering mess because they saw a normal person get killed or something, you know?

 

[squid5580]

What happens in the sandbox stays in the sandbox. The mass murder Aiden isn't the same Aiden you are watching in the cutscenes. One is their Aiden and the other is yours

 

[ZedOmega]

I think part of it is that wide-open sandbox games aren't as restrictive as a traditional RPG would be. While it's true that the freeform design of your average sandbox game allow for larger degrees of sociopathy, it's balanced out for the most part by a 'wanted meter': the more you take part in this kind of activity, the stronger the resistance you meet, with the highest levels of resistance when that meter maxes out. (Disclaimer notice: Haven't played any of the GTA games aside from 3; most of the descriptions of what happens are from sandbox games I have played.) In modern-world settings, this takes the form of police departments, national guard regiments, and in Saints Row IV's case, minibosses (the Wardens). In one particular case, Scarface: The World Is Yours on PS2, two wanted meters exist: Gang Heat and Cop Heat. Gang Heat maxing out gets you the endless waves of enemies trying to end you, but maxing Cop Heat out and failing to elude the police after a certain time limit makes the game temporarily unwinnable by removing the HUD, completely overpowering you with law enforcement, and displaying 'YOU'RE FUCKED' in all-caps on the screen. In addition, Scarface also has another limiter in place: Tony refuses to shoot civilians completely and will hold his fire if the crosshairs pass over one.

Another series of games (although they're presented as RPGs, I've noticed sandbox aspects to them) that have a kind of wanted meter to them are the Uncharted Waters series. While at sea, you can engage pretty much any fleet you run into. However, you can't just do this willy-nilly: aside from pirate fleets, NPC fleets are associated with a particular nation, and attacking enough of them will draw the attention of their navies. In addition to this, those same pirate fleets can target you whenever they feel like it, and in UW: New Horizons, their fleets are as close to unbeatable as you can think of until your own fleet can at least match their firepower and manpower.

The short version of these observations is this: the opportunities are there, but so are the consequences.

 

[nomotog_v1legacy]

The thing is that well you don't have to be a bastard, the game is set up with bastard in mind. All the gameplay is centered about violent vigilantly. You don't have the ability to be anything other then a murder hobo because the game doesn't give you much ability to be a nice person. You can't do something like take a NPC out to dinner, pay their phone bills, or anything like that.

You know when they make a new watch dogs, they could easily improve that with the profiler. When using that, you see lots of people with lots of problems and it would be nice to be able to help them. Like you see someone who is going through forecloser, hack hack hack, they have a new house. You wouldn't have to program anything more then a button prompt and a text message.

 

[small]

The thing is that well you don't have to be a bastard, the game is set up with bastard in mind. All the gameplay is centered about violent vigilantly. You don't have the ability to be anything other then a murder hobo because the game doesn't give you much ability to be a nice person. You can't do something like take a NPC out to dinner, pay their phone bills, or anything like that.

You know when they make a new watch dogs, they could easily improve that with the profiler. When using that, you see lots of people with lots of problems and it would be nice to be able to help them. Like you see someone who is going through forecloser, hack hack hack, they have a new house. You wouldn't have to program anything more then a button prompt and a text message.

exactly what annoyed me about it. you could steal money from anyone just about but you couldnt do anything with it apart from buy your limited mount of crap.. seriously how many trench coats does that guy need. why cant i steal the money from a totl prick and give it to someone in need.

as for not needing to kill people its stupidly easy to kill people by accident in that game, try a car chase for one which you cant skip. you will almost always hit someone if it goes on long enough and if you dont the opposition will.

you also never see any response from all the damage you do.. blow up a steam pipe in the middle of the road? its ok it will be fixed in a minute or two when you are out of sight.

 

[Irick]

I have to disagree with the primace that there is a "wrong" way to play a game. You are either playing a game, or you're not. There isn't a middling right or wrong playstyle.

Now, as for more heroic options in open world sims, I can get behind that. It would be nice to have more solutions to problems than just "gun". I love the idea of say, a diplomatic option. I love the idea of say, a round about defacement of the situation by manipulating the state of an individual's world to make them less inclined to violence. I love these ideas, even just push button "do good thing" would be an interesting addition.

Now, I do have to say I dislike the binary karma systems that games seem to like to introduce, but I do like the idea of having (for the player) a much more wide array of interactions with each encounter... it's probably why I play D&D This sort of vision would be remarkably hard to bring about in a computer game as big as the open world games... but...

I don't think a randomly generated "Do good" button would be difficult, or even a mood alteration mechanic making people less likely to commit violent crimes.

 

[happyninja42]

What happens in the sandbox stays in the sandbox. The mass murder Aiden isn't the same Aiden you are watching in the cutscenes. One is their Aiden and the other is yours

I think that's the problem though. There is a distinct disconnect when your actions in game, don't have any bearing on the story/cutscenes. If your Aiden in game is a homocidal maniac, who wakes up and brushes his teeth with the blood of the innocent he killed, but then in the cutscenes, they keep playing him up as some pillar of morality, then there is a major problem IMO.


If you want to give me the freedom to be that maniac, fine, but have it have repercussions to the game and it's storyline. When the actions are completely disconnected from the story, then I feel disconnected from the game, because then it really doesn't matter what I do, at the end I'll still be considered a "hero", from the top of my pile of corpses.

Have the npc's dialogue change if I go really crazy. Have my support characters refuse to help me any more, and actively turn against me or something. Have certain missions be locked out, because I'm now a known serial killer, and there is no way in hell that the npc in question would do anything but scream and run away from me. Have what I do effect what happens.

 

[Extra-Ordinary]

Huh, I haven't seen that criticism for Aiden Pearce.
But I'm with you, that version of Aiden could not be further from how I play Watch Dogs. I try to be a hero as often as possible and Watch Dogs isn't an exception yet. I use his baton as much as possible, I only shoot at enemies who are shooting back. Except cops, I never kill or even hurt cops, I can get away, and I take down street thugs with melee but might put a bullet in their leg just to slow them down. My[/] Aiden Pearce is a good guy.

This was also something I thought of with The Last Of Us, when people were calling Joel bad not not unlikable guy. I was all "how is he a bad guy?" because I was careful as f**k in that game, I choked out almost every person who was an enemy as opposed to stabbing them and if the going got tough, I used melee way more than a gun. To be fair, you really gotta count your bullets in that game and I was only beating people down because I needed to save that ammo but still, I was knocking out far more than I was killing. Maybe when people say he's not a good dude they were talking about the ending? I don't know, but in any case, I didn't see him as bad, but hard, which is what you need to be if you're going to stay alive in that world.
I'm usually a big proponent of being a good guy but man, you do not last long in the world of The Last Of Us if you're easy.

 

[Something Amyss]

Don't, just don't go there. Don't be Dark Souls or Apple. This is a single player RPG where no one else is involved.

Yeah, the idea that you can play a sandbox wrong is really annoying.

If anything, they need to better develop the story mode to work with an open world environment.

 

[Lunar Templar]

I wouldn't call Watch Dogs, or any sandbox game an RPG. The reason being you could remove the (tacked on) Leveling systems and it really wouldn't change much since all the important upgrades are generally locked behind story progression.

as for the murderhobo thing.

Sandbox games like GTA and Watch Dogs are effectively consequence free. You can easily wipe away a wanted level and no matter how many people you kill the streets will always be full. In these games 'life' is cheap and meaningless, so why wouldn't you take the easy way when there's no real deterrent to.

VS

Say Dark Souls or Skyrim, where killing the 'civilians' (NPC vendors, guards and so on) HAS a lasting effect. Killing random NPCs or vendors in these games CAN FUCK YOU OVER. You can lose items on that shop has, quests needed to complete the game or get some important item and that's to say nothing of the OP as fuck guards in Skyrim. Your 'wanted level'? yeah, you can't just hide in a bush and expect it to go away.


REAL open world RPGs provide a real, tangible consequences for your murder spree, and an unending stream of conscripts isn't a consequence. It's a shooting gallery.

 

[CpT_x_Killsteal]

Love the "murderhobo", also agree that some reviewers can be idiots when presented with multiple options.

I do however disagree with you on the part about morality meters and desynchronization in AC. If a developer can be clever enough to come up with a way to better control the narrative in a sandbox game, then power to them, but if they don't do this, I don't think it takes away anything from the game.

Although, I'm not sure you framed the the topic question the way you wanted it to be. It comes off as you think there's a way people shouldn't enjoy sandbox games, might be the reason you've gotten the type of comments you have. Perhaps changing it will help.

 

[Zak757]

How much empathy I show to others in RPG's (or any game with choice) depends on the character I'm playing and how invested I am in the story. Skyrim has a boring, cliche narrative full of immediately forgettable 1-dimensional characters, so I don't feel compelled to roleplay a remotely moralistic hero. On the other hand, New Vegas seemed enough like a real world full of real people that I behave as I would actually behave.

 

[nomotog_v1legacy]

Huh, I haven't seen that criticism for Aiden Pearce.
But I'm with you, that version of Aiden could not be further from how I play Watch Dogs. I try to be a hero as often as possible and Watch Dogs isn't an exception yet. I use his baton as much as possible, I only shoot at enemies who are shooting back. Except cops, I never kill or even hurt cops, I can get away, and I take down street thugs with melee but might put a bullet in their leg just to slow them down. My[/] Aiden Pearce is a good guy.

This was also something I thought of with The Last Of Us, when people were calling Joel bad not not unlikable guy. I was all "how is he a bad guy?" because I was careful as f**k in that game, I choked out almost every person who was an enemy as opposed to stabbing them and if the going got tough, I used melee way more than a gun. To be fair, you really gotta count your bullets in that game and I was only beating people down because I needed to save that ammo but still, I was knocking out far more than I was killing. Maybe when people say he's not a good dude they were talking about the ending? I don't know, but in any case, I didn't see him as bad, but hard, which is what you need to be if you're going to stay alive in that world.
I'm usually a big proponent of being a good guy but man, you do not last long in the world of The Last Of Us if you're easy.

You know, I always had the impression that Joel wasn't performing a sleeper hold on people. Even his stealth kills are violent. Describing Joel as hard is accurate. The guy is brutal selfish and kind of a sad creature. It's not really a disconnect anywhere in his character though. He is the same in the cinematic as he is out. The game also dose send the message that this is how he should be. I can see that message being kind of jarring.

 

[Evonisia]

That having been said, and Dead Rising 3 is apparently a decent enough example (full disclosure, I haven't played it myself so I'm just going off of what I've seen and heard from other people), when a story directly contradicts or conflicts with the gameplay of the game, it kinda is a problem with the writing. If your character is dressing up in frilly pink dresses and wearing massive mascot heads while chainswording their way through hundreds of zombies, I don't really think they should break down into a blubbering mess because they saw a normal person get killed or something, you know?

I think I said something similar when it had just came out, but my impression of Nick is that he's not all that naive. He's probably fully aware that there's nothing that can be done about the Zombies (which may be why he's so desperate to help the living even when they've gone a bit nuts like that character who did or the fanboy psychopath). By Dead Rising 3 the people have known about Zombies for over ten years so the shock horror of them has worn away.

It's not like Dead Rising 2 where Chuck says he has sympathies with C.U.R.E. (Citizens for Undead Rights and Equality) yet spends most of the game chopping up Zombies, and his C.U.R.E. member sidekick doesn't even blink an eye.

 

[theSovietConnection]

My question is: why. What's the benefits/cost to hacking innocents, running over everyone? If the payoff is good with virtually no consequences, why shouldn't I do it? In RPGs like, say New Vegas, if I killed someone, I'll be as well banned from there, and that's bad for business; therefore I won't kill innocents in towns.

>You're Playing The Game Wrong

Don't, just don't go there. Don't be Dark Souls or Apple. This is a single player RPG where no one else is involved.

At the risk of putting words in the OPs mouth, I don't think he was saying to never play like that. I think his point was more when people play like that, then fault the game for how they played because it doesn't "fit in the narrative".

Back to the OP, I get the point, I really do. The way I've seen some people go on, you'd think the Ubisoft employees were showing up at people's houses and forcing them to act like the horrible person their Aiden turned out to be.