Video Games with Real* Moral® Choices? !

[munx13]

I'd say STALKER: CoP

Most of the time choosing to help someone out was either dangerous or really expensive.

Plus

Spoiler

the whole thing with duty and freedom

 

[LaughingAtlas]

I think even the Dead Rising games can be said to have moral choices, mostly when dealing with survivors. Once you're max level, most innocents you can save will have nothing to offer you, the only reason to rescue them (I think) would out of the goodness of your heart, which probably doesn't extend to people who don't really exist and aren't well-characterized.

Really, most any action can probably be considered a moral choice. As Dark Harbringer said:
"...a beggar on Nar Shadda, who won't leave you alone until you either threaten the man with violence or hand over some credits, yet either of the actions results in suffering, such as the man running in fear but attacking someone else for money, or he is attacked for his newly gained credits."
Any monster you don't kill might kill someone else later on. However, someone might depend on that breed of monster to make their living. (hunting them for food, keeping pests away, maybe they just look pretty, etc.) You might be screwing someone regardless of how you treat local, oddly aggressive wildlife. In InFamous 1,

Spoiler

The Reapers are evidently innocent people exposed to a lot of that mindfuck sludge until Sasha (probably) controls them. There might be a way to cure those people, prompting the use of those preposterous electro-shackle things. Just as well, they might be insane beyond salvation and every one that lives could be a danger to themselves and others. Not that it mattered, I guess.

Am I making sense here?

 

[Fenreil]

I've never heard anyone else say it, but I find Bioshock 2 to have one of the best morality systems in a game.

While you play, it seems very black and white. I mean, choosing between killing little girls for power and saving them for less has pretty obvious moral connotations. The other three choices are less so, however. Do you kill the helpless old lady who has been mistaken about your past? What about the sneaky bastard responsible for your current state as a big daddy? What about the mad scientist whose past self begs you to kill him?

Still, there's nothing groundbreaking with those choices.

Spoiler: The interesting stuff happens when you meet Eleanor

Before this point in the game, practically nobody has said anything pertaining to your choices. Eleanor, however, changes depending on what you've done. You realize that she's been watching your every action, learning from you what is "right" and "wrong". She emulates you, shows you the result of your morality. If you've gone around saving others, she does the same. If you've been killing everyone, then she delights in doing so as well.

These actions are just a result of your choices with the Sisters, however. Your choices with the three humans aren't forgotten. Your decisions are interpreted logically by Eleanor, just like with the Sisters. If you save the sisters and the people, Eleanor is a righteous, good person. She forgives her mother and saves the Sisters. If you save the Sisters, but kill the three people, Eleanor decides to save the innocent, but have not mercy for the wicked. Killing the Sisters and the humans makes her a psychopath, obviously, but killing the Sisters and saving the humans makes her kill those who would harm her, but leave the helpless alone.

Doing a random combination leads to my favorite ending. In it, Eleanor is confused. She looked to you for guidance, but you never showed her anything solid. In that ending, you get a choice. Do you allow her to harvest you, which will push her over to the "evil" side, or do you refuse, and die alone. This ending is the most poignant and real to me, and remains on of my favorite video game endings of all time

 

[UltraDeth]

tl,dr summary below this poorly written wall of text

I was wondering how many role playing (or whatever genre, really) games actually challenged the players by presenting several options when it comes to your character's morality. Most western RPGs (don't know about JRPGs) give you a choice between idealistic papa jesus, or a psycho/sociopath douchebag ************ who's a combination of dick cheney and dr. evil.

The consequences of your choice of moral archetype are also plain: on one hand, acting like mother Theresa throughout the game gets you all the nicest, hottest girls, phat lewts, and makes the world a better place to live in as you painstakingly solve every single quest in the game the 'good' way, rescuing everybody's kittens, feeding and freeing enslaved orphans, defeating the big bad dragon/mage/sentient spaceship/personal demon, etc.

On the other hand, playing through the game as Samuel Jackson often has you behaving inconsistently, as if you can't decide if you're simply an apathetic sociopath who couldn't care less about the other pixels and just wants shit to end, a kleptomaniac mercenary dude who loves money, or a fucked up megalomaniac sadist who drinks widows' tears. One moment you're justifiably intensely ruthless as the 'anti-hero', but choosing the anti-hero option in the game's climax has you suddenly, for instance, do something unreasonably 'evil' like kill your own cat or nuke a city. Acting like the anti-hero consequently leaves you with the most unsatisfying conclusions to the game, leaving the world a crapsack place with a jaded/enslaved/utterly massacred population thanks to your apathy/cruelty. Also, playing the anti-hero/evil guy has you turn uglier and meaner, your skin becomes scarred or darker, and you glow red.

Now, I'm not complaining about how video games only give you about two real ways to go through things, or how satisfying/unsatisfying the consequences of your moral choices are (the way many anti-hero playthroughs result in an inconsistent protagonist upsets me a little, but that's another issue).

I only wanted to discover what games offered grey and gray morality scenarios, where morality issues do not really present the players with an obvious right/good or wrong/evil solution.

A recently released RPG, 'the Witcher 2' had an overabundance of these events, and I consequently enjoyed the game despite its draconian interface, hour long potion drinking animations and boring dark fantasy setting and bad voice acting and only one ultimate (though satisfying) ending. Even though you got the same ultimate ending with each playthrough with the ladybug and the view of that city, the experiences you go through to achieve that ending varied so much according to how you approached the game. The game never chastised you for your moral choices since there were no truly objective moral decisions to be made in that game; you may get punished for not picking the most prudent dialogue options and that's it. In my multiple playthroughs of the game, all of the moral decisions made by me through the game have impacted the gameplay (different people in the dead book, different companions, different animated custcenes) and yet all of the options seemed valid according to the moral perspective you held; I never felt like a good guy or Darth Vader in the game.

tl,dr: what video games present the player with scenarios that challenge the player with complex moral decisions?

"Complex moral decisions" really annoy me, I wish developers would keep it simple. Dragon Age for example, either sparing Zevran or killing him when he appears. I choose to spare him for the good choice, yet, party members give me shit for sparing a man who tried to kill me. I showed him mercy and I get told off for it, so did I make a good choice or not? It annoys me alot

 

[4173]

Alpha Protocol did a great job with moral choice, because you're always working with limited information, not "this action gives +5 to your happy meter." Really interesting balance between principles and consequences/realities, and the importance there of.

 

[Kahunaburger]

Spoiler: DS spoilers

Which ending did you go with on your first run? I played blind and went with the Naoya ending, though I was quite torn and almost went with Atsuro.

Spoiler

Gin's route - I think there's like 6 or something?

 

[dyre]

imo, Bioware, Bethseda, and Obsidian all do a horrendous job at real moral choices, even though I love their games. In each decision, while they acknowledge that the "bad" choice is not altogether retarded, and may have some reasoning behind it, it's still clearly portrayed as the bad choice.

CDProjekt is much better about actual morality. At times, you'll really, really want to do the wrong thing, because it seems so right in the short-term. Also, I don't think there's a good side in The Witcher 2 at all.

 

[CoffeeOfDoom]

Mass Effect 2. Legion's loyalty mission. One of the deepest moral choices I have ever had to make in a video game. Do I choose to destroy the Geth base and therefore prolonging the war, or do I choose to infect the base with the given virus, rewriting them to be better Geth themselves, like Legion.

There stands the morality. Who am I to change the Geth's perception of the universe? Where do I stand to force the Geth to be like Legion, accepting of organic life? If I remember correctly, Extra Credits touched base on this very example. It really stands out, you see.

I thought that too, but the only problem is that they attached paragon or renegade points to each decision, so basically telling you which was the 'good' and which was the 'bad' choice.
Which reminds me of the one thing that was strange about that mission - they make out the rewriting option to be the renegade option and the killing option the paragon one throughout the whole mission, then suddenly when it's time to choose it get swapped round, I believe that the rewriting option should have been the renegade choice.

 

[jSalamanca32]

Fallout New Vegas. Caesar´s Legion is the best example of evil dickheads, but they have some potencial for good, and if you side with them, the NCR, Mr. House or Yes Man is just a question of your moral beliefs, and not of black or white general conceptions of good and evi,

Gonna have to disagree with you there. Its painted very early on that Caesar's legion is suppose to bed the bad guys and the NCR are suppose to be the good guys. Sure the NCR show a bit of a bad side with all the drunk soldiers at New Vegas, but its still clear their the "good" choice.

Disagree. Imperialist dickhead crusaders trying to bring back an old system that didn't work doesn't exactly scream "good guy" to me.

 

[Evil Top Hat]

Infamous had a few, One being notable for

Spoiler

Choosing between saving the doctors who could save millions, or your lover

Not really a moral choice, one option is clearly good and the other is clearly evil. A moral choice is one that comes down to the morals and beliefs of the individual.

Choosing to save 10 doctors or 20 civilians from death would be a good moral choice, because it's open to debate as to which choice is more morally correct, instead of being clear black and white.

 

[Cogwheel]

Spoiler: DS spoilers

Which ending did you go with on your first run? I played blind and went with the Naoya ending, though I was quite torn and almost went with Atsuro.

Spoiler

Gin's route - I think there's like 6 or something?

Spoiler

Interesting. Didn't give that much thought, myself. Seemed like a band-aid solution.

Then again, "become demon lord, team up with Cain, go forth and apply fist to godface" is probably not the best plan either.

 

[The Unworthy Gentleman]

Fallout New Vegas. Caesar´s Legion is the best example of evil dickheads, but they have some potencial for good, and if you side with them, the NCR, Mr. House or Yes Man is just a question of your moral beliefs, and not of black or white general conceptions of good and evi,

Gonna have to disagree with you there. Its painted very early on that Caesar's legion is suppose to bed the bad guys and the NCR are suppose to be the good guys. Sure the NCR show a bit of a bad side with all the drunk soldiers at New Vegas, but its still clear their the "good" choice.

I'll agree with you on that, they were painted as good from the start. However, both Fallout New Vegas and Fallout 3 had the making for a good morality system. I've argued before that Caesar's Legion can benefit the Wasteland and I recently realised how Eden's Modified FEV can be seen as the good side. The actual morality in the game is cloudy when you look at it in detail.

Sadly, Bethesda and Obsidian executed both poorly. Despite Fallout New Vegas's attempt at reducing how karma affects you, it was still implemented as a slider, as did Fallout 3. Had they both ignored karma on a slider scale and just used each action to create consequences. They both felt the need to say "you're good/evil/neutral". When they take that out and stop making the goodies always good and badies bad, we'll see far better karma.

OT: Call of Duty: World at War executed morality beautifully. The beauty of the morality came from it's subtlety, you were never forced to make a decision but you always made a decision. You had the choice of killing prisoner soldiers at a few key points of the game and none of them affected how the game would play out. You could do nothing or remain oblivious to the choice, or you could kill the soldiers, neither one was better than the other.

It was beautifully done.

 

[Jimmy T. Malice]

Mass Effect has some decent ones that aren't specifically labeled as Paragon or Renegade. Like what to do about the genophage cure in Mordin's loyalty mission, or whether to rewrite the heretic Geth.

Most of the decisions in inFamous and its sequel are pretty black and white, but the Final Decision(tm) is a good one- or it would be if it wasn't labeled as good or evil.

 

[Raysett]

I do not have a good example of a game and clearly everyone has made good example, but the best (and maybe my from the few games I've played the only) example of a morality system was Mass Effect. I think they did very well in their innovation of morality as well as innovating some more for actual consequences for your choices in the upcoming ME3 but I think the next step for morality is to offer no rewards for one way or the other.

Maybe some games do this, maybe not, but I mean like in mass effect, by being paragon or renegade you get special options but by choosing a little bit of both you don't really get that. Maybe instead of rewarding for full one way or the other, don't offer any rewards but simply track the bar. The rewards come in how your choices actually affect people in the world you are playing and you don't miss out on certain things just because you choose renegade for some and paragon for others. Then it really is a game of choice and moral decisions as opposed to picking paragon or renegade from the start.

 

[Uber Evil]

I'm gonna have to agree with Mass Effect. The geth mission was a difficult decision. I was thinking forward to ME3, what would happen to them. It didn't help that I brought Tali along, so I had to destroy them because I was thinking about what would happen to the Quarians. I'd rather the Quarians get their homeworld back a bit easier than leave a race of AIs alive to continue fighting the Quarians.

 

[Sulimo]

OT: Call of Duty: World at War executed morality beautifully. The beauty of the morality came from it's subtlety, you were never forced to make a decision but you always made a decision. You had the choice of killing prisoner soldiers at a few key points of the game and none of them affected how the game would play out. You could do nothing or remain oblivious to the choice, or you could kill the soldiers, neither one was better than the other.

It was beautifully done.

So basically the best choice is a choice that effects nothing whatsoever? Bro, that is not a choice, that's the illusion of choice.

I've seen this issue discussed beyond measure on a certain RPG forum, and indeed many 'hardcore' rpg fans are unhappy about the way choices and consequences are implemented in games nowadays.

Bioware has choices but very few consequences (the exception: DA1, which was decent enough in the C&C department). Also, most of your choices boil down to "Kill the old grandmother so you can steal her cash and eat her baby." or "Help the old grandmother by picking the weeds from her garden and refuse a reward after kissing her baby."

Bethesda is absolutely godawful when it comes to C&C. In Oblivion, nothing you do affects the way the game plays out. You can join all factions at the same time without any adverse consequences (Mages being fine with a member of the Dark Brotherhood being guild master? Really?) Fallout 3 was a bit better in that regard, but it still had lots of bioware "Eat baby/save baby" binary choices.

Obsidian was the only developer who did it properly for a long time, with Alpha Protocol, KotoR2, F:NV and NWN2:Mask of the Betrayer all having excellent choices and consequences. You have lots of grey/grey choices, with no clearly defined 'good' side.

CDProjekt RED also does it amazingly well in the Witcher 1, where minor choices can cause massive consequences in later chapters, and the game rubs your face in the adverse effects of your decision. The Witcher 2 is a bit more conservative without many major consequences, but it's still miles better than anything Bioware or Bethesda have released in the past 10 years.

When it comes to the golden oldies, Fallout 1, Fallout 2 and Planescape: Torment deserve a honourable mention for not resorting to black and white choices all the time.

I personally think games get more interesting the moment morality isn't spelled out for you, and your moral choices actually have consequences. I realize that's not everyone's cup of tea, but please don't say you have a choice between 2 things when it has no effect in the game whatsoever. That's just spreading lies and falsehoods and does the entire principle of C&C more harm than good.

Btw, first post.

 

[Richardplex]

Mass Effect 2, with the genophage, Legion's quest, even quests about smuggling made me think for a significant duration of time. I RP, not playing as I myself would, so some of the trivial choices I spent a lot longer than I should of. Even if they don't have massive consequences, I still feel they are moral choices. And I liked the optional scar mechanic.

Also, it didn't have the dissatisfactory evil ending. Since ME has Shepard either being Lawful good, or Chaotic good, as opposed to good or some variation of evil.

 

[The Unworthy Gentleman]

So basically the best choice is a choice that effects nothing whatsoever? Bro, that is not a choice, that's the illusion of choice.

Firstly, welcome to The Escapist. Secondly, you misunderstand me, for that I blame myself.

In World at War the choices did have effects, however they were in the form of nothingness. In war one man has no effect, especially when he's already been taken prisoner. It's better than most because it has realistic effects, if I steal large amounts in Fallout with nobody witnessing or ever knowing it I get treated the same way as when I blow up Megaton, which aren't realistic effects. The beauty isn't in the lack of effect, rather the abundance.

 

[HT_Black]

Alpha Protocol. For all its many, many, many, many flaws, it had an excellent grasp on how to make you sweat when it gave you a choice.

 

[TriggerHappyAngel]

Fire Emblem always forces me to make tough decisions; "Do I let this unit die, or do I restart the whole chapter?"
- Not sure if it qualifies as a moral choice though.

I always restarted, I DO NOT LET RAVEN DIE!

And Matthew and Canas and Jaffar and to be honest I always restarted because no-one deserved to die!