Player choice and moral decisions

johnny_ultimate

Kind of a spin off of Zero Punctuation talking about binary moral decisions in games. You know the ones - press A to kill badguy, press B to let badguy live. One choice is 'good', one is 'bad'. It is sort of obvious which is which.

What are people's opinions on this? I think the concept of giving a player a choice in games is a hugely important one, but few developers have lived up to the task. Games always seem a bit to eager to 'reward', meaning that central narrative decisions are driven by the designer rather than the player. 'Would you kindly..." was some great commentary on this, and strange that the rest of the game hinged on simplistic 'good/bad' choices which ultimately only led to a slightly altered cutscene.

I think there are a few games that do it well. My favourite would be the moment in GTAIV where

you can choose to follow the advice of Roman or Kate. However the character you choose to follow is killed minutes later

. Here the player loses control, and what seems like a simple 'choose one or the other' decision actually has consequences that are out of your hands.

The character you choose to follow winds up dead

. Why can't more games be this unexpected, rather than the painfully obvious decisions we have to choose?

Fable II was interesting too, especially the final choice, but there were still a lot of simplistic good/bad choices throughout the game. And then something like Prince of Persia, which had a fascinating moral ending but completely led the player down a linear, chosen pathway. It ties in with the story, but it still feels weird doing something you don't have any ability to alter - more of a movie than a game.

Should games offer more than 'good' and 'bad' approaches? Can you think of any games where you honestly have complete freedom of choice in how you play the game? And should you have complete freedom? How does a designer tell the story they want to and still give the player open ended choices? I think it is just an interesting idea, and if games ever want to rise above their reputation as mere entertainment and be acknowledged as something more - interactivity means there is a lot of room for player involvement, but everyone seems to be restricting it...

Soulja boy

The only time they work well is when the moral choice is a gray area or kind of obscure, so you have to think about it for a second.

I loved the sequence in silent hill three where you have the option of forgiving the antagonist in the confessional or saying nothing and letting her suffer.

Retr0gamer

Yep I'd definitely prefer grey area. I mentioned the Pitt and the Oasis quest in Fallout 3 and some one said that it had no consequences on the main game. However I still think it succeeded. I set iut to be a goody two shoes character but when faced with the choices in these quests I really had to think about what I wanted to do since no choice was the right or wrong thing to do. That there is breaking of the fourth wall and is probably the holy grail for videogame design even if it's not entirely successful.

Most other games the choice is either be a goody two shoes or a total cock end and never really works other than giving you two paths to follow.

I think the main challenge for games developers making these games is to take into account all the different permutations of your actions. It's a mammoth task for a developer. We have already seen one developer try and they created the buggy mess that is Boiling Point: Road to Hell, which failed due to it being too ambitious.

As for GTA IV it was a choice that only changed the final mission of the game and to be honest I would have cared if the game had a story or characters I actually cared about.

Overheal

How grey area? Well, do I save a child or do I save 2 other people?

Soulja boy

Overheal wrote: »

How grey area? Well, do I save a child or do I save 2 other people?

Thats the general idea but you can get a bit more creative then that. I was always a fan of the choice not to help someone because they hurt/will hurt another character.
That or variants of Sophie's choice etc.

magick

Double Dragon,

either pick Billy or Jimmy, in my mind at the time this was the most important decision of my life!

Grayditch

They really do need to make Sophie's Choice:The Video game. Then we'll see.

johnny_ultimate

Retr0gamer wrote: »

Yep I'd definitely prefer grey area. I mentioned the Pitt and the Oasis quest in Fallout 3 and some one said that it had no consequences on the main game. However I still think it succeeded. I set iut to be a goody two shoes character but when faced with the choices in these quests I really had to think about what I wanted to do since no choice was the right or wrong thing to do. That there is breaking of the fourth wall and is probably the holy grail for videogame design even if it's not entirely successful.

The Oasis quest is pretty interesting alright, but the game on the whole does tend to stick to good/bad options. Although it is interesting how your character's attributes helped change the way you solve puzzles - I was far more interested in dialogue based solutions to quests when available, as they solved a lot of hassle, especially when your chosen stats opened up a further option. And there were nice touches too, like the radio changing based on your status as a hero or villain. Main story was strictly linear though - as you say, a nightmare for developers to create a branching, persistent story, but the possibilities are infinite.

Again, Fable II is a good prototype for what can be achieved. Despite the game's flaws, the way Albion reacted to you as a character was often extremely impressive. Little touches such as villagers following you or statues being erected in your honour added to your overall involvement in the world. Building upon such things is definitely the way forward to create truly interactive places to visit.

Kinetic^

This is primarily the reason why I don't like single player games. There's too many set paths and you have to do this or that to win or finish the game. At least with multiplayer games it adds the psychological battle as well whereas fighting AI can get boring, even if you can't win.

Retr0gamer

I find that multiplayer can't provide the storytelling or involving scripted events that I love about single player games. I think when developers can let player choice affect a storyline that players still care about we'll have something very special.

pwd

I liked the way it was done in the Witcher. The choices were generally two or three shades of gray and would not have an immediate effect in the game. The effects were generally not too predictable also. There was no explicit alignment, but your choices would cause you to fall in with one of two warring factions, or stay neutral - so there was alignment in this sense.

L31mr0d

I used to have to make moral decisions in Medal of Honour:Allied Assault deathmatch when we'd play it over the LAN in college... at first I had a hard time justifying my actions, but I eventually realized that TK'ing my team mate and taking his health pack was for the greater good, as he was a n00b and I would kill twice as many nazis with his health then he would.

After a while it just became second nature and I didn't even think about it.

pwd

Left 4 Dead is a good game for them too; though the choice between rescuing a team mate or leaving them is probably more strategic than moral.

DarkJager

I think Fallout 3 got this right for the most part, especially in one quest mentioned already (Oasis). When I got to the decision about what to do with the tree, I found it quite hard to choose. He wasn't any sort of threat and wanted to die himself, but there was also the option of burning him alive. It was the innocence the character portrayed that kind of stopped me for a few moments.

There's also the fact that in fallout 3, you are free to do whatever you want. Even to the point that its possible to completley dismember a body and throw the parts in a bath, although this is a choice a player makes themselves as the game never hints to such actions. The whole moral thing only works if it hits a spot with players and their own moral values, otherwise its just a simple choice between A and B to get to C.

Retr0gamer

DarkJager wrote: »

I think Fallout 3 got this right for the most part, especially in one quest mentioned already (Oasis). When I got to the decision about what to do with the tree, I found it quite hard to choose. He wasn't any sort of threat and wanted to die himself, but there was also the option of burning him alive. It was the innocence the character portrayed that kind of stopped me for a few moments.

There was a good few choices other than that if you talked to the people of oasis, they gave you other options, each had their good and bad points. I found it hard to choose. None were wrong but none of them were black and white.

Actually from the little I played the older Fallout games and western RPGs seem to handle moral choices a lot better.

Stev_o

pwd wrote: »

I liked the way it was done in the Witcher. The choices were generally two or three shades of gray and would not have an immediate effect in the game. The effects were generally not too predictable also. There was no explicit alignment, but your choices would cause you to fall in with one of two warring factions, or stay neutral - so there was alignment in this sense.

Yeah really thought the Witchers choices were good. The one that stood out to me

was the mission where you had to preform a autopsy on a dead soldier and then to conclude who was responsible behind everything. Now being the ejit that i am i didn't listen to the advice to get a book on doing autopsies and went straight in. For a start i was surprised i was allowed to carry on some games would just put the barrier "You have to read the book first". Anyway long story short i got it wrong blamed it on a innocent guy and two missions later i realised i made a massive f*ck up

Must actually go and replay the Witcher over the summer.

SeantheMan

L31mr0d wrote: »

I used to have to make moral decisions in Medal of Honour:Allied Assault deathmatch when we'd play it over the LAN in college... at first I had a hard time justifying my actions, but I eventually realized that TK'ing my team mate and taking his health pack was for the greater good, as he was a n00b and I would kill twice as many nazis with his health then he would.

After a while it just became second nature and I didn't even think about it.

Ahahahaha....excellent :P

What a game though ! Still prob my fave multiplayer game out there.


In regards to choices.....Bioshocks one with the little sisters had me on the choice screen for at least 5 mins pondering which I should be going for

MOH

Tenpenny towers in Fallout 3

I thought I was doing the right thing by letting the poor discriminated-against ghouls in to live with the stuck-up toffs in the towers. It kind of escaped my notice that since they were ghouls, the obvious consequence of letting them in would be that they'd eat everyone. Did feel bad about that, but there was no-one left alive to apologise to.

Soulja boy

MOH wrote: »

Tenpenny towers in Fallout 3

I thought I was doing the right thing by letting the poor discriminated-against ghouls in to live with the stuck-up toffs in the towers. It kind of escaped my notice that since they were ghouls, the obvious consequence of letting them in would be that they'd eat everyone. Did feel bad about that, but there was no-one left alive to apologise to.

There's another way around that, which is ok for both parties.

pwd

must go back and play more of the sub-quests in fallout 3

CCCP^

Fahrenheit FTW

Antar Bolaeisk

Just echoing the majority here, Fallout 3 and The Witcher both get moral choices right but the Pitt DLC for Fallout 3 certainly stands out as being the toughest choice I ever had to make in a game.

uberpixie

Retr0gamer wrote: »

Actually from the little I played the older Fallout games and western RPGs seem to handle moral choices a lot better.

+1

I was left a little cold by Fallout 3 on my first play through as the ending was utter pants.. No multiple endings at all, there was one and you had no sense that anything you did in the game had any effect what so ever.

Fallout1/2 you a got a break down area by area what happened after the end of the game. You had a good sense that your actions in the game world had some actual effect on the ending: e.g. some towns were better off due to your actions, others not so much....

I always liked that in Fallout 1/2 everything was a little more grey and you could always a) get the job done, b) get the job done by being a goody two shoes, c) get the job done and be an utter cnut.

Plus there was at least one double cross in there somewhere aswell .
And the speech skill wasn't a dump stat/skill. Always took speech as a tag skill with High intelligence in fallout as it really did change the options you had during quests.

Fallout3 is a little more black and white which is a shame as bethesda seemingly didn't want to confuse casual console players with tough choices... I remember reading an interview with one of the devs where he stated that players didn't like to make choices that they were not really sure of and what effects they would have in the future....

I like fallout 3 and I am playing through it again being the most evil geebag possible and it is good fun. I did the pit and to be fair your choices are not as black and white as they seem at first which was nice. I would like to have seen a little more of that. (yet to do/find oasis)

I would still rate fallout 1/2 higher though as RPGs. You just have more of a feeling that your actions do effect what goes on in the game and you do seem to get a lot more interesting doublecross options.

I do also take my hat off to the witcher. I did like that they did give you very small minor choices to make that have a small effect on the story line. True the main storyline is very linear, but the little grey choices you make in between do keep the game very interesting and do make you feel that you have some sort of effect on the game world. I did like the choices you made early on that come back and bite you in the ass.

Retr0gamer

I think what many fans of the older Fallout games feel is missing from Fallout 3 is that the game is so combat orientated. There's no point in specialising in anything else since there's so much unavoidable combat. In the older games you can use speech, stealth, lockpicking etc. to avoid most encounters and still get through the games in many different ways. A bit like Deus Ex really. I remember my friend played through Fallout 2 by sleeping his way through the quests until he caught an STD It opens up a lot more moral grey areas as well as giving the player choice even if the outcome of quests are predetermined.

Overheal

lol. stds. I shoukd perhaps play the first two then

Retr0gamer

Just make sure you have johnnies in your inventory

(thats actually real advice on the game)