Here's my idea for a better use of that moral choice system. It's not perfect, but I think it's close to as good as this system of choices could possibly be. First off, switch the labels of good and evil. Keep the "harvest and invest" options the same, but label them as good, because, duh, it's all for the purpose of protecting the people of the land. As for the "party and die" options, label them as evil, and, and here's the major change, emphasize the ulterior motive: To keep the civilians happy and make them let their guards down. Prepare for the day that the monster comes, and let him kill the majority of the people, while you and the royal guards and police, who have been trained in dark magic defense behind the scenes, defend yourselves. The reason for this is thus: You plan on killing most of the civilians so that the population will be low, and with a weak population, they will have no ability to defend themselves against a more aggressive tyranny, of which you are the all-powerful ruler. By the time the population regrows, your harsh rule will have settled, and your guards and police will be loyal and unstoppable, because you spent the year training them, and concluded the attack by placing them near the top of the pyramid, giving them wealthy privileges.
Admittedly, this begs the question of why exactly you didn't just have the police kill random civilians and leave it at that. Well, for two reasons: One, you wanted to keep the population high, so that the monster could eat a while bunch of people and leave with some people left, whereas with a low population, there would have been little to no people left after it was done. Two, somewhat contrivedly, you wanted the massacre to happen in one quick, massive attack, so that the civilians will not have time to form another resistance, whereas killing people with the police may have taken too long, and would have left people an opening to hide and form something of a rebellion.
Thirdly, if you made "harvest" choices at some points and "party" choices as others, then the main character will feel the need to protect the civilians, but also the need to keep them happy. I guess s/he would be idealistic, but kind of a moron. It sounds stupid, but we need a middle ground for mixed choices, BioShock.
The problem with this is that it still consciously differentiates between good and evil, but come on, how is it possible to make the "party and die" options and make them look both noble and not completely stupid?
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