What is the best morality system in a game

[Yoh3333]

Just about any morality system useing blurred out lines.
NOT Mass Effect, Fallout, Dragon Age and all those where certain actions give you 'points' for being absolutely good / bad.
Reason: This breaks immersion instantaniously for me. If i were to play a character that I should feel for (as with Fallout) then i don't want to have a choice where all the options have a clear outcome. In fallout, all you did had a definate consequence that could easily be predicted and therefore calculated. I hated that. When you give someone a choice between good or evil and both have so clear consequences then I won't choose based on what i morally wanted to. Rather i would choose the logical one that rewards me with 'dat loot'

Witcher 2, again, is the best one in my opinion. I actually only finished it yesterday and mostly all the decisions were not completely good / bad. Here i found decisions that i couldn't decide with. I didn't have to choose something that i would classify as good/evil since there were no clear good/evil. There were no bar that filled up or special bonuses for being 'good'.
I LOVE WITCHER 2

 

[Sagacious Zhu]

Mass Effect takes the cake for me because the choices move beyond just good and evil and allow for more of a roleplaying experience

For example, I played a Shep who was a total dick to everyone...except his crew. I felt like I was creating a more complex character than I could have if the morality system was divided into "Mother Teresa" and "Puppy Rapist"

 

[JesterRaiin]

Soooo whats yours.

No system. I'm mature enough to judge my own sins.

 

[Blood Brain Barrier]

The best morality system is none at all. "Do whatever you want to do"

 

[The_Graff]

Alpha Protocol, choices have consequences, there is no morality except what you bring into the game yourself. Espionage is a murky business.

this. less about filling up some morality bar and more about seeing the impact of your choices on the world.

 

[TheVioletBandit]

I would say the best game morality system is an absent one.

 

[Tar Palantir]

Any game that awards you "points" and benefits for the choices you make has a VERY BAD morality system, because it doesn't encourage you to do what you want, but what will lead you to a stat boost, an item, whatever.

The Witcher (1&2) has the best moral choices in my opinion, the world isn't split in good and evil, and what you do can lead to groundbreaking consequences.

 

[Joccaren]

Dragon Age Origins. No Morality, only how much individual characters like you based off how you act around them. It could have done with some tweaking (Remove most gifts, they just ruined the game IMO as you could just keep buying gifts and handing them out for an easy boost to relations, and its not like you were ever short on coins)

 

[DioWallachia]

IJI

It has gameplay-based morality system where every little thing you do has a dialog for it (Sort of like Deus Ex all the way up Action RPG elements) And there isnt any specific part in the game that you have to press a button for eating babies or save the universe thing. The way you play it will carry weight all the way to the end.

 

[spartandude]

ones where you dont have good and evil, just actions of concequences

 

[theAlfaBlade]

House = Good (est)

How is killing the whole brotherhood is a good deed.

 

[Azure-Supernova]

inFamous. It's not morally ambiguous and it doesn't try to make the player think. It knows what it is and what it wants to do and that is to give the player two different stories based around Cole's choices. The morality in inFamous isn't asking you to shape Cole, it's asking you to choose two possible actions determined from Cole's own thoughts and personality.

It aims to provide the player with two possible outcomes depending on how Cole would choose to use his powers. He could use his powers to be a hero or a villain, the game let's you choose which one Cole would be.

 

[Nicolairigel]

Without a doubt, Kotor II Had the best IMO. As other said, being able to turn your companions to your side of the morality was genius, you almost felt like you were some sort of christ figure in their eyes. Also, the dark side felt much more than just mustache twirling villains. Plus I just point every line said by Kreia about the light vs. dark side and say "That's why I love this game."

For Example:

 

[MammothBlade]

Blue and Orange moral systems which make you think about the nature of morality. Those which challenge conventions and don't make clear cut judgements of good vs. evil. It's especially good if there are multiple axes along which the morality of the player's actions are "measured".

 

[ElectroJosh]

House = Good (est)

How is killing the whole brotherhood is a good deed.

Well it is, if you are on the side of NV. The Brotherhood are no more a force for "good" than the NCR. They have their own interest and can interfere when and where it suits them (regardless of whether its a "good" thing). Bear in mind that the Fallout3 brotherhood are most "good-guy" version of the brotherhood to appear in any of the Fallout RPG games (F1, 2 ,3 and NV) and this caused their chapter to splinter.

 

[RuralGamer]

KOTOR II had a great one. Yeah, it was still lumbered with the Light side/Dark side meter from the first game, but it did fit the setting. And the way Obsidian integrated the Influence mechanic, so that not only could you turn good/evil, you could turn your companions with you... what was absolute genius.

Basically, any RPG by Obsidian should be a contender for this title. If there's one thing they know how to do outside of superb storytelling, it's including morality systems that don't force you to choose between cartoonish extremes of saintliness and evil depravity.

Yeah, this. KOTOR allowed for you to do practically anything you wanted without too many negative consequences; sure following a certain alignment meant that you benefitted in certain ways, but being 'grey' in the middle had its advantages too. I never had a proper grey run, although I spent most of my first KOTOR 2 playthrough see-sawing between somewhat good and rather evil; I ended up about 50% between neutral and pure evil though. Indeed, the influence system was good, but sometimes I wished you could justify your reasons more to prevent people from disliking you because of them.

House = Good (est)

How is killing the whole brotherhood is a good deed.

They are really evil?
They are an elitist, effectively fascist cult which strives for dominance and the control of pre-war technology because no one else is 'worthy'/responsible enough to possess it. They despise and persecute mutants and non-Brotherhood humans. He only said House was the best of them, which isn't ultimately saying much, considering how dirty the others are. Having played the game a few times through, I'd agree; the Brotherhood are massive jerks in New Vegas, so they get what is ultimately coming to them. Western Brotherhood are different, but they don't factor in in NV; the Eastern Brotherhood, as portrayed in New Vegas are as much of a threat to the fledgling civilisations as they are to each other. I wouldn't ever really regard killing someone a good thing, but I'd say that House was thinking straight; their presence would threaten an independent New Vegas and so he couldn't allow them to live/survive.
Besides, the Karma system was really redundant in New Vegas as it only really affected the end videos for the main game and (one?) of the DLCs.

 

[SpaceBat]

The best morality system is no morality system. All your actions should have are consequences and nothing else. This is why games such as Alpha Protocol and the original Fallouts are the way to go in terms of morality.

Kotor 2 had a scene where you could hold a very long and detailed discussion about a certain personal subject with some NPC and there was not a single light/dark choice to be found. And it was arguably one of the best moments in the entire game. Too bad Kotor 1 was so horribly black-and-white. So much potential wasted.

 

[kickyourass]

Dragon Age, probably the main reason I like Dragon Age better then Mass Effect (though I love them both quite alot) is that instead of having a bar that says "This is how nice/mean you are", it has several each saying "This is how much this character approves/dissapproves of you." It would be even better if they did away with the meters all-together so you'd have to moniter how party members feel towards you instead of having a bar do it.

 

[Popeman]

They are really evil?
They are an elitist, effectively fascist cult which strives for dominance and the control of pre-war technology because no one else is 'worthy'/responsible enough to possess it. They despise and persecute mutants and non-Brotherhood humans. He only said House was the best of them, which isn't ultimately saying much, considering how dirty the others are. Having played the game a few times through, I'd agree; the Brotherhood are massive jerks in New Vegas, so they get what is ultimately coming to them. Western Brotherhood are different, but they don't factor in in NV; the Eastern Brotherhood, as portrayed in New Vegas are as much of a threat to the fledgling civilisations as they are to each other. I wouldn't ever really regard killing someone a good thing, but I'd say that House was thinking straight; their presence would threaten an independent New Vegas and so he couldn't allow them to live/survive.
Besides, the Karma system was really redundant in New Vegas as it only really affected the end videos for the main game and (one?) of the DLCs.

I wouldn't call them evil for most of that. Also not everyone in the Brotherhood would be "evil" even by those standards. Wasn't that kind of the point of the quest in that game "For Auld Lang Syne?" (Arcade Gannon's companion quest if you don't know.)