Why moral systems undermine choice.

[Mystify]

Yes, this is aimed at mass effect, but it is more widely applicable.

The morality system takes the entire spectrum of choices you will make in the game, and boils then down to a single choice: Good or evil, renegade or paragon, light or dark, or whatever they decide to label it. Then they go on to encourage you to go full-hog one way or the other, and offer some benefit for doing this.

You might as well make it a choice you select at the beginning, and have the subsequent choices be made for you. Sure, you can deviate from it, but they discourage you from doing it. I start up mass effect, and decide I want to be a renegade. I play again, and I decide to play a paragon. I end up making choices, not because I want to make that choice, but because I think its the renegade option and will give me points. If you remove the explicit morality sliders, the game would lose very little. You can still offer all the same choices along the way, but now you can make the choices based on what you want to do, not what your chosen alignment thinks you should do.
You could have a more nuanced strategy. You will give aid wherever possible, help people out, but if somebody crosses you, you will put a bullet in them. Or perhaps take the sensible route of making the choices you think will have the best outcome, or will garner the most friends.

When presented with the decisions you are in mass effect, you often decide very weighty things, like the destruction or salvation of entire races. Having that be a giant pile of renegade or paragon points cheapens it. It should be you, the decision, and then the outcome of it. Not you, the decision, and your morality bar.

Now, some systems, it works. Star wars, for instance .The balance between light side and dark side is a big thing there, and hence living up to jedi ideals or going full sith to be in tune with that side of the force makes sense. If you choose to be a jedi, you should be trying to live up to their ideals. However, without a similar setup, the decision is unneeded. And such a system should not be added just to support your morality bar. The morality bar should be supporting the universe, not the other way around.

Furthermore, the existence of the morality system tends to create choices that reflect it. The creators have to create the good option and the bad option. Not option A and option B. Good choice and bad choice. However, the most interesting choices are where the right and wrong choice are not obvious. Having to decide which is right and which is wrong means that the creators of the choice must know which is which, so they can assign the right values. If they do manage a truly grey choice, and assign the morality points to it, you run the heavy risk of a player being given the opposite reward than they want, or that they think the choice warrants.

Additionally, without such a polarized morality system, you wil tend to have more options. You are not creating good and bad choices anymore. You are just presenting options. The paradigm of thought behind what your options will be different. You are also be more likely to have choices which have nothing to do with morality.

Including a morality system in a game will undermine the ability to make choices as a player, and result in weaker decision design as the creator of the system.

[Comet]

It should be you, the decision, and then the outcome of it. Not you, the decision, and your morality bar.

I agree and would like to add that the Witcher games, especially 2, are a lot of fun and everyone should play them.

[Knight13]

While I do agree with you to a degree, I would also point out that people typically have fairly consistent personal views. Playing a character that jumps schizophrenically between good, neutral and evil all the time isn't any more realistic than playing one that always picks the good/evil option. Also, most games of this type don't require you to take every single good/evil option in order to get the best bonuses or whatever. For instance, I typically play Mass Effect as a Paragon Shepard, but that doesn't stop me from taking the occasional neutral or Renegade option if I think it fits the situation better. I don't miss out on anything by doing that, because there's quite a few more Paragon points available in the game than I need to max out the bar.

Anyway, if you want an RPG that gives you heavy moral choices without an alignment system or any clear good or evil, I recommend The Witcher.

Edit: Swordsage'd

[Toastkart]

Yes, this is aimed at mass effect, but it is more widely applicable.

The morality system takes the entire spectrum of choices you will make in the game, and boils then down to a single choice: Good or evil, renegade or paragon, light or dark, or whatever they decide to label it. Then they go on to encourage you to go full-hog one way or the other, and offer some benefit for doing this.

This isn't always true. There are some games where there are a few more neutral choices. That being said, I do agree that offering mechanical or other benefit for going to the extreme of one end or the other is something I could do without, and encourages you to make certain choices, or constricts you from making others, depending on how useful/necessary those benefits are.

You might as well make it a choice you select at the beginning, and have the subsequent choices be made for you. Sure, you can deviate from it, but they discourage you from doing it

I disagree here. One of the things that make choice based storytelling fun for me is the in the moment decision making. If I wanted to just play along in the time between the cutscenes, I'd play any number of games that only allow for that, where the character isn't mine in any way shape or form.

Interactive storytelling is, in my opinion, a much more engrossing, and a much more enjoyable experience on a whole lot of levels. That doesn't mean such storytelling can't be improved over what we have now.

I start up mass effect, and decide I want to be a renegade. I play again, and I decide to play a paragon. I end up making choices, not because I want to make that choice, but because I think its the renegade option and will give me points. If you remove the explicit morality sliders, the game would lose very little. You can still offer all the same choices along the way, but now you can make the choices based on what you want to do, not what your chosen alignment thinks you should do.

Here I kind of disagree. While me3 didn't remove the sliders, it did remove the exclusivity of the renegade/paragon scores. What was also removed was more dialogue choices that would lead to more neutral choices, even though they added neutral reputation to the meter. Kind of an odd move to make, even if on the whole it did allow you more freedom in making choices than me2.

When presented with the decisions you are in mass effect, you often decide very weighty things, like the destruction or salvation of entire races. Having that be a giant pile of renegade or paragon points cheapens it. It should be you, the decision, and then the outcome of it. Not you, the decision, and your morality bar.

Here again I'm not sure I agree. I think my interpretation of events through the lens of paragon/renegade doesn't always agree with the interpretation of the designers as to what choices are paragon/renegade. Thus my renegade Shepard made a lot of paragon choices at key events (saved the rachni queen, saved the council, saved cure data, etc.) whereas my paragon shepard made a lot of different choices for the same reasons.

Furthermore, the existence of the morality system tends to create choices that reflect it. The creators have to create the good option and the bad option. Not option A and option B. Good choice and bad choice.

I don't think the problem is the choice A and choice B being the good choice and the bad choice so much as there only being few choices in the first place. The best way to avoid a clear best choice, or the right choice, is to have more then a handful of choices. Now, sometimes that's not feasible. Other times, such as in DragonAge: Origins and what to do with Connor. In that instance there were a lot of possible choices. Unfortunately, there was also a "best" choice that didn't cost you anything, but that's an entirely different issue itself.

However, the most interesting choices are where the right and wrong choice are not obvious. Having to decide which is right and which is wrong means that the creators of the choice must know which is which, so they can assign the right values. If they do manage a truly grey choice, and assign the morality points to it, you run the heavy risk of a player being given the opposite reward than they want, or that they think the choice warrants.

I think part of what we need to get past is the idea of right and wrong choices. That is to say, all choices should have consequences.

Additionally, without such a polarized morality system, you wil tend to have more options. You are not creating good and bad choices anymore. You are just presenting options. The paradigm of thought behind what your options will be different. You are also be more likely to have choices which have nothing to do with morality.

This I can agree with, but I think it would be very difficult to implement. Planescape: Torment tried, in a way, but sometimes got a little too heavy handed. Lying and joking around made you more chaotic, telling the truth and keeping your word made you more lawful, but it was very difficult to do both and maintain a neutral alignment because they were weighed so heavily.

Context should also matter. If I lie to my friends/allies, then I'm an untrustworthy jerk. If I lie to my enemies, then I'm a master manipulator. If I'm rude and belligerent to people I don't know, then I've got a difficult reputation to overcome, but that doesn't mean I'll be a jerk to my friends and allies.

More choices are also almost always better than fewer choices.

Including a morality system in a game will undermine the ability to make choices as a player, and result in weaker decision design as the creator of the system.

I don't know if I'd go so far as to say they undermine the player's ability to make choices, but I think more needs to be done to enhance a player's ability to make choices.

For example, mechanical rewards should be divorced from moral choices unless there's a specific story based reason for them to be that way (i.e. kill 10 babies to get the +5 sword of blood drinking), but on the whole they should be separated. For example if there is an event where there is a 'good' choice and a 'bad' choice, and keeping in mind what I said about those above, then I should also be able to choose what my reward is regardless of the moral choice I made.

That, of course, should also be separate from whatever the consequences of the choice were.

What it comes down to, though, is that morality systems allow for much greater interactive storytelling. That genre, even within video games, is still fairly new. Rather than advocating a return to non-interactive storytelling, I'd rather do what I can to encourage its development in a good direction than gut it entirely.

[factotum]

I agree to an extent here. The way moral choice systems are usually set up, you need to max out one way or the other to get any benefits, and there are no real benefits to staying neutral. It kind of defeats the whole point of role-playing, because you're choosing responses to min-max your morality meter rather than because it's the way your character would react.

However, it simply isn't possible to include every possible response in a CRPG, so there is some simplification involved there anyway. That being the case, you might as well pick a pair of extreme choices because you're more likely to end up with one that keeps your fanbase happy--middle of the road choices are rarely popular.

[chiasaur11]

Anyone else seen how the Mass Effect 3 system works?

Addresses some of the complaints. Both paragon and renegade boost a "reputation" bar (essentially a representation of how well the galactic community knows the #1 rule of the galaxy from Omega to Mars [from the council to the seediest bars], DO NOT get in Shepard's way)

Get it high enough, and alternate resolution methods show up for some conflicts. It's pretty nice. Your morality meter is essentially just a personal record of "how much of a jerk was I in saving ALL SPACEFARING LIFE".

Elegant.

[Zevox]

While I personally care little for the concept of story-affecting choices in video games, I do agree that in-game morality systems are not good for them.

For instance, the best example I can think of of a game which gives you story-affecting choices without a morality system is Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor. There is no in-game morality system of any kind. Characters react realistically to events based on their own viewpoints, and will present their own arguments for what should be done, but they never come across as anything but that particular character's beliefs.

A good mid-game example: one of your allies from earlier in the game has gone off on his own after acquiring the service of a demon known as the Judge of Hell. This character is so distraught and filled with anger over the horrible actions that the breakdown of society within the lockdown is causing people to take that he is eager to mete out "justice" to everyone, by allowing this demon to look into the heart of every person he meets and then either spare or kill them on the spot based on what he sees. Because he trusts this demon to make these judgments fairly, he sees nothing wrong with his actions. Your party confronts him, and are given two ways to approach the situation: either fight him, or pretend to agree with his actions and ask him to join you again, in the hope of convincing him over time that what he's doing is wrong. But if you pretend to agree with him, you'll upset one of the more idealistic members of your party, who will run off on her own, leaving you for the rest of the game.

Which of these is the better choice? Is the more peaceful, tolerant course of action the right one here, or is what this boy is doing so awful and unacceptable that he needs to be stopped even if it means fighting your friend? The game doesn't tell you - even with hindsight, either one can work out just fine. You simply form your own opinion, and act upon it.

The endings are also the best case of multiple endings in a game that I've ever seen. You are presented with up to five (depending on a number of factors) different ways to potentially end the lockdown and demon invasion that are the main problem of the game, and only one of them is obviously a bad one (in that it won't work, not in that it's morally wrong - not coincidentally, it's the only one you're guaranteed to get no matter what you did). For the other four, you could debate with different people over which is the best choice forever, because each has their benefits and drawbacks. Heck, I myself prefer the choice that some would most likely think the "evil" one of the four, which isn't something I can say for any other game I've ever played.

Zevox

[Dienekes]

Personally the only morality system I've ever liked was from Dragon Age: Origins, and probably the only reason I like it was because it wasn't a morality system it was a measure of how much your companions agreed or disagreed with you (or liked you, really). When making the tough choices, many of which morally ambiguous it's hard and at times annoying when they're labelled good or evil or light or dark, but it's hard to argue that a certain decision pisses off a character.

Now unfortunately the DAO system was a bit easy to break, and more hateful dialogue for the negative side wouldn't of hurt, but it could have been tweaked to perfection. Unfortunately DA2 decided to make the game have no wrong answers for companions, which really annoyed me. In DAO there were companions who hated my guts and only stuck with me because I maybe could save the kingdom. In DA2 you could mock a person, spit on their beliefs, and spend every opportunity kicking them in the gut, and at the end of the game they were still loyal to you. The only way to lose them was to just ignore them.

[Geno9999]

I'm not completely sure if this falls into a good or a bad example of how moral system should be done, but hear me out:

Shadow the Hedgehog.

The game's stages usually have two or three choices for you to make: the Good (Sonic and Pals), the Evil (usually Alien side), and the Neutral (Eggman at times). Most of the time, the Good and Evil choices are usually "Kill the other guys in the stage." while the Neutral choice is run to the end.
This choice also translates to Shadow's signature move, Chaos Control. Going Evil give him access to Chaos Blast, which destroys everything in the room, or Chaos Control, which allows you to speed through the stage (or freeze time if you're in a boss fight.) Also, it give you infinite ammo.
Now there IS a reward for playing completely neutral, completely good, or completely evil, and everything in between, which is a new gun for you to use on subsequent playthroughs.
However, to unlock the "Real" Story/Ending, (I think, memory is a bit fuzzy) you have to play and complete all possible endings in the main game.

[Erloas]

I never really had that big of a deal with the systems. Of course I never really cared either. While there were a few cases in Mass Effect (1&2, haven't got to 3 yet) where I didn't do something because it was the opposite of what I was playing, the majority of situations I just picked what I wanted to. And of course in some cases picking the "paragon" or "renegade" option was easier so that you could keep track of it for the next play through so you didn't repeat things (because naturally I would pick many of the same choices when presented with them again, which sort of defeats the purpose of replaying it).
In the end though I can't think of any really compelling reason to pick just one side or the other. Even if there was something special you could unlock (and I can't remember at this point) the game was never hard enough that not having access to that would have made any real difference.

[Squark]

Personally, I have no problem with the systems by themselves (although some choices should just be left grey), but I dislike attaching in-game benefits to them. Now, some games have "neutral" benefits, but often these neutral characters are if anything less comprehensible than the Good or evil ones, since you are often forced to make random deciscions based on keeping the bar near the middle. The people who really get sidelined are the people who make are "More good than bad" That is, people who are halfway between neutral or pure good. They don't get the benefit of being "good" "evil" or "neutral".

[Brother Oni]

Jade Empire had quite a well done morality system if Bioware held their nerve, unfortunately they bottled it at the end and it boiled down to Open Palm = Good, Closed Fist = Evil.

[Philistine]

Alpha Protocol did this too, IMO better than DA:O - despite lacking a morality meter as such, most of DA:O's big choices still boiled down to idealism vs cynicism. AP's Suave vs Professional vs Aggressive, not so much.

[Mystify]

While I do agree with you to a degree, I would also point out that people typically have fairly consistent personal views. Playing a character that jumps schizophrenically between good, neutral and evil all the time isn't any more realistic than playing one that always picks the good/evil option. Also, most games of this type don't require you to take every single good/evil option in order to get the best bonuses or whatever. For instance, I typically play Mass Effect as a Paragon Shepard, but that doesn't stop me from taking the occasional neutral or Renegade option if I think it fits the situation better. I don't miss out on anything by doing that, because there's quite a few more Paragon points available in the game than I need to max out the bar.

Anyway, if you want an RPG that gives you heavy moral choices without an alignment system or any clear good or evil, I recommend The Witcher.

Edit: Swordsage'd

Just because you make consistent choices does not mean those choices run along the same views that the game presents. For instance, Mass effect has saving races that go out and kill everyone as a paragon choice, and so is saving the synthetic life from being destroyed. You could easily have a viewpoint where the genocidal races should not be let loose to cause problems, and all the countermeasures races did to prevent it is in the best interest of everyone, but realize that the synthetics are often being treated poorly, and that you could work with them in the long-term, and hence laying that groundwork is in everyone's best interest. There are a ton of self-consistent action choices that will not even remotely resemble a pure paragon or renegade approach.

Also, I grabbed every renegade point I could, and I still ended up unable to get the special renegade options at the end. My paragon could easily get the choices, but not the renegade. But the mere fact that every decision you make is framed in that way is encouraging you to make them in that manner.

This isn't always true. There are some games where there are a few more neutral choices. That being said, I do agree that offering mechanical or other benefit for going to the extreme of one end or the other is something I could do without, and encourages you to make certain choices, or constricts you from making others, depending on how useful/necessary those benefits are.

Having some neutral choices is not the same as having unaligned choices.

I disagree here. One of the things that make choice based storytelling fun for me is the in the moment decision making. If I wanted to just play along in the time between the cutscenes, I'd play any number of games that only allow for that, where the character isn't mine in any way shape or form.

Yes, you should be making the choices. Which is why mechanically "encouraging" players to make every choice the same way is bad.

Interactive storytelling is, in my opinion, a much more engrossing, and a much more enjoyable experience on a whole lot of levels. That doesn't mean such storytelling can't be improved over what we have now.

I want it to be improved. That is the entire reason I want the moral systems removed; they are hurting it.

Here I kind of disagree. While me3 didn't remove the sliders, it did remove the exclusivity of the renegade/paragon scores. What was also removed was more dialogue choices that would lead to more neutral choices, even though they added neutral reputation to the meter. Kind of an odd move to make, even if on the whole it did allow you more freedom in making choices than me2.

Except that, in most cases, if you get a renegade score, you don't get paragon. There are a few places where you could get renegade scores without the choice to get paragon instead, but when your choice is to get renegade [I]or/I] to get paragon, they are mutually exclusive.

Here again I'm not sure I agree. I think my interpretation of events through the lens of paragon/renegade doesn't always agree with the interpretation of the designers as to what choices are paragon/renegade. Thus my renegade Shepard made a lot of paragon choices at key events (saved the rachni queen, saved the council, saved cure data, etc.) whereas my paragon shepard made a lot of different choices for the same reasons.

There shouldn't even be the implication that you need to do action X because it is the choice the designers think is in line with your alignment.

I don't think the problem is the choice A and choice B being the good choice and the bad choice so much as there only being few choices in the first place. The best way to avoid a clear best choice, or the right choice, is to have more then a handful of choices. Now, sometimes that's not feasible. Other times, such as in DragonAge: Origins and what to do with Connor. In that instance there were a lot of possible choices. Unfortunately, there was also a "best" choice that didn't cost you anything, but that's an entirely different issue itself.

Even when presented with many choices, if your goal is still to find the choice that will give you the "most good points", its being done poorly. It becomes about predicting the morality the designers had in mind.

I think part of what we need to get past is the idea of right and wrong choices. That is to say, all choices should have consequences.

I meant right and wrong in the moralistic sense, not which has no consequences.

This I can agree with, but I think it would be very difficult to implement. Planescape: Torment tried, in a way, but sometimes got a little too heavy handed. Lying and joking around made you more chaotic, telling the truth and keeping your word made you more lawful, but it was very difficult to do both and maintain a neutral alignment because they were weighed so heavily.

Why should it have a morality system at all? All a morality system does is try to pigeonhole you.

Context should also matter. If I lie to my friends/allies, then I'm an untrustworthy jerk. If I lie to my enemies, then I'm a master manipulator. If I'm rude and belligerent to people I don't know, then I've got a difficult reputation to overcome, but that doesn't mean I'll be a jerk to my friends and allies.

Agreed, which is rather incompatible with an alignment system. A better system might be to have traits, and different people value different traits differently. Some combinations of traits could of course be considered the "good" traits and the "bad" traits, but that can rest purely on people's interpretations. Have NPCs react based on your traits, not your morality. Actually, don't even show the traits to the player mid-game. It should be an internal measurement that the game makes to better react to your choices, not something you as a player should be obsessing over. Want toi be considered trustworthy? Then keep your word. Trustworthiness and other traits can be completely separate. You could be a cold-blooded killer,yet still be trustworthy. That combination could lead to shady groups hiring you for a hit, whereas if you are unreliable, they either won't hire you, or will instate restrictions on your to keep you under control.

More choices are also almost always better than fewer choices.

agreed

I don't know if I'd go so far as to say they undermine the player's ability to make choices, but I think more needs to be done to enhance a player's ability to make choices.

For example, mechanical rewards should be divorced from moral choices unless there's a specific story based reason for them to be that way (i.e. kill 10 babies to get the +5 sword of blood drinking), but on the whole they should be separated. For example if there is an event where there is a 'good' choice and a 'bad' choice, and keeping in mind what I said about those above, then I should also be able to choose what my reward is regardless of the moral choice I made.

That, of course, should also be separate from whatever the consequences of the choice were.

If you remove the mechanical implications of the moral system, then why is it there? Can't you just let the player make his choices and let them speak for themselves, why do you need a bar? If you remove the mechanical implications, all it is doing is telling you how well you match the designer's idea of a good guy. Why is that needed?

What it comes down to, though, is that morality systems allow for much greater interactive storytelling. That genre, even within video games, is still fairly new. Rather than advocating a return to non-interactive storytelling, I'd rather do what I can to encourage its development in a good direction than gut it entirely.

I am NOT advocating a return to non-interactive storytelling! Just the opposite! I am saying that morality systems are harmful to interactive storytelling. I am saying that interactive storytelling would be much, much better off if they dropped the morality system from it. I think you are taking my "They might was well have you pick the choice at the beginning" and misinterpreting it. I was expressing frustration on how your choices are pigeonholed into good and evil, and that makes what should be a wide variety of choices into a single choice that you make over and over again. It was not mean to be an assertion that it is the best way to implement things.
I think we are arguing for the same things, but you are coming at it from the perspective that your morality bar doesn't really matter, which is where I am trying to get everybody.

[The_Jackal]

No, I'm afraid it's the lack of choice that undermines choice. When in any computer game has a decision actually had an outcome in terms of the content you actually see, instead of an integer changing on your character sheet and possibly eventually seeing the application of increasingly goth makeup?

The real issue is that game developers tend to have one story they want to tell, and don't want to spend time developing content people may not actually see.

[Mystify]

No, I'm afraid it's the lack of choice that undermines choice. When in any computer game has a decision actually had an outcome in terms of the content you actually see, instead of an integer changing on your character sheet and possibly eventually seeing the application of increasingly goth makeup?

The real issue is that game developers tend to have one story they want to tell, and don't want to spend time developing content people may not actually see.

Be fair. There were many choices you made that altered things. People lived or died, alliances are forged and lost, civilizations lived and died. Granted, the ending was rather disconnected from it as long as you dud get enough support, but that doesn't mean all of those choices didn't matter. If you played the game up to right before the final mission, you wouldn't say those choices are irrelevant. For instance

Spoiler

Show

I destroyed the research into the genophage cure, and I could see the effects of that. It instilled distrust with the Krogan, Rex was angry when he found out, Eve died due to the lack of research, cutting me off from further Krogan support. When I go on to let the cure be sabotaged, it initially seems like I've tricked everyone, and pulled in everybody to the war through subterfuge, while ensuring their is not a Krogan rebellion in the future. Then Rex discovers what I did, shows up at the citadel to try to kill me, and ends up getting killed. Considering Rex had been my go-to squadmate in the first game, I didn't take that lightly.
Also add in that the very fact Rex is still alive is based on a choice I made in the first game, and there are some choices that really mattered.

All of that was intimately dependent on the choices I had made. Those were real, significant changes based on my choices. The lack of the ending tying in strongly does not mean all of those choices are meaningless.

[Toastkart]

Also, I grabbed every renegade point I could, and I still ended up unable to get the special renegade options at the end. My paragon could easily get the choices, but not the renegade. But the mere fact that every decision you make is framed in that way is encouraging you to make them in that manner.

Out of curiosity, which me game are you referring to here? All three of them implement the morality system slightly differently. Mostly asking for clarity, as I had this problem on some playthroughs of me2, but not in me1 or me3.

Yes, you should be making the choices. Which is why mechanically "encouraging" players to make every choice the same way is bad.

I want it to be improved. That is the entire reason I want the moral systems removed; they are hurting it.

-edit-
can't believe I forgot this whole section.

I agree, but I don't think removing morality systems is the answer.

Except that, in most cases, if you get a renegade score, you don't get paragon. There are a few places where you could get renegade scores without the choice to get paragon instead, but when your choice is to get renegade [I]or/I] to get paragon, they are mutually exclusive.

In me3, whether you choose a paragon or a renegade choice doesn't matter. Both add to your overall reputation, and your reputation level allows you to make the color coded paragon/renegade choices. What I meant by not exclusive was that, even if you were consistently making one choice throughout, you could still pick the opposite choice at any time.

There shouldn't even be the implication that you need to do action X because it is the choice the designers think is in line with your alignment.

Not entirely sure I get what you're saying here. The way I see it, having an alignment framework helps, especially in games where you're picking intentions rather than word for word dialogue. Knowing how renegade and paragon operate in general informs my interpretation of events and the likely outcome of the various choices, since they're not explicitly spelled out.

I meant right and wrong in the moralistic sense, not which has no consequences.

I think my statement applies to both, especially given the prevalence of well-developed good paths and less developed evil paths in games.

Even when presented with many choices, if your goal is still to find the choice that will give you the "most good points", its being done poorly. It becomes about predicting the morality the designers had in mind.

Only if "most good points" is mechanically desirable. If you divorce mechanical benefit from the morality system, you'd be making choices based on consequences, right? The morality system then becomes a useful tool in defining your character. All things being equal, I don't think it matters whether you get to see the morality meter or not, but the more explicit information about game mechanics that is available to you, the better informed your choices will be.

Why should it have a morality system at all? All a morality system does is try to pigeonhole you.

I think morality systems can add a lot of flavor to a setting.

Agreed, which is rather incompatible with an alignment system. A better system might be to have traits, and different people value different traits differently. Some combinations of traits could of course be considered the "good" traits and the "bad" traits, but that can rest purely on people's interpretations. Have NPCs react based on your traits, not your morality.

See, this sounded like such a good idea in DragonAge: Origins when they made the alignment system based on your party. Then I found out just trying to play the game I was constantly pissing off either Morrigan or Alistair, and to make it all better all I had to do was buy them gifts.

That is to say, I think it's a good idea, but I don't think we'll see a good implementation any time soon.

If you remove the mechanical implications of the moral system, then why is it there? Can't you just let the player make his choices and let them speak for themselves, why do you need a bar? If you remove the mechanical implications, all it is doing is telling you how well you match the designer's idea of a good guy. Why is that needed?

For story reasons. For character building reasons.

I am NOT advocating a return to non-interactive storytelling! Just the opposite! I am saying that morality systems are harmful to interactive storytelling. I am saying that interactive storytelling would be much, much better off if they dropped the morality system from it. I think you are taking my "They might was well have you pick the choice at the beginning" and misinterpreting it. I was expressing frustration on how your choices are pigeonholed into good and evil, and that makes what should be a wide variety of choices into a single choice that you make over and over again. It was not mean to be an assertion that it is the best way to implement things.
I think we are arguing for the same things, but you are coming at it from the perspective that your morality bar doesn't really matter, which is where I am trying to get everybody.

Yeah, that was a misunderstanding on my part. You don't really offer any alternatives to morality systems other than the lack of them would allow for more choices, which I don't think is necessarily true.

Divorcing the morality system from mechanical benefits and making that morality system multifaceted and not a dichotomous good/evil (or whatever stand-ins you want to use) scale would go a long way toward making games more interactive and more choice driven. Removing the system entirely just doesn't seem to have any benefits that I can see.

[deuxhero]

Honestly, ME's system is WORSE than standard good/evil meters, as it forces you to play totally to your alignment or not be able to make some dialog choices in the future.

[Zevox]

Honestly, ME's system is WORSE than standard good/evil meters, as it forces you to play totally to your alignment or not be able to make some dialog choices in the future.

ME3 doesn't do that, actually. The two alignment meters stack together in one "reputation" meter, and as long as you meet the minimum, you can make either the paragon or renegade choice at any point where they're available. My all-paragon first character still had the option of using renegade dialogue at the very last such point in the game.

Zevox

[CarpeGuitarrem]

My big issue with morality systems is that they are based on a binary Code of Behavior. You're Good or you're Evil. You're Lawful or you're Chaotic. Most morality systems, in this primitive format, boil down to one of these.

But I think it's a mistake to draw the conclusion, from this small sample, that all morality systems are a mistake. That'd be like saying digital painting is a stupid idea, because Microsoft Paint is one of the worst pieces of software invented. It focuses in on the current limitations of the idea, and not on where it could be taken.

The fact of the matter is, these primitive and simplistic Morality Meters are sufficiently engaging for most gamers, and so R&D funds other areas of game development first, such as graphics and game mechanics. (I would like to note that all the gamers you find on a forum are decidedly not representative of the market majority of gamers. That's just the facts.)

Does this mean that a game couldn't take morality and make it an interesting part of the game? I don't think it bars that option in the slightest. The main problem with Morality Meters as implemented in today's games could be solved in a twofold way.

The first way, which has already been mentioned, is to let the player draw their own moral conclusions, but to still give them moral choices in the game, choices which will have consequences. These choices, beyond altering your options in the game, also affect the world itself. If you choose to invest yourself in the game, you now have to deal with the fact that you chose to let civilians die for the greater good. Things like that.

The second way is to stop treating morality like an ironclad Code of Honor/Decency/Altruism. They miss a good deal that way. At least in my personal experience (and I am very, very close to skirting the forum ban, but I believe that my post will remain in the clear), being moral is something that is insufficiently summed up by a code. It's a personal reality: it's about how you respond to the moral ideal, how you internalize it and manifest it and such. Of course, this is very tricky to hard-code into the game, so I'd recommend sticking with the first one, and pushing hard the consequences of each choice.

[Othesemo]

Personally, I've disliked just about every game with a moral system that I've played thus far- particularly those that use the Good/Evil system (though that seems less common now, thank Pelor). My basic reasoning is this- when games make these choices matter, such as by giving benefits of matching either side, then you end up in a situation where you have to do the good or evil thing- and if you don't, you suffer for it (for example, in Dragon Age 2, there was absolutely no reason to not keep everyone in your party maxed at one end or the other- and once you got there, you couldn't really act to change that. Had a change of heart about apostates? Sucks for you, you've got Merill and Anders loving you). Alternatively, you end up with games where the impact of your alignment is so small that you don't need to pay any attention to it (for example, in Neverwinter Nights 2, I played a NG Human Druid. For the whole game, I did nothing but evil, and went about slaughtering and betraying with reckless abandon. I eventually slid down to True Neutral. However, that changed nothing at all about the gameplay, so I didn't care).
The only kind of systems I like are those like the Witcher- your actions aren't measured in any way. You simply make them, and then face the natural consequences. You don't get punished for doing something evil, per se, you get punished for slaughtering someone's family and forgetting to mop up the survivors.

[Coidzor]

Choice is already greatly undermined by the facts of the medium as it stands today. One gives up choice to see how the story will unfold rather than writing one's own story.

Morality systems reinforce this, yes, but they're not really the source, just that if they're implemented poorly they're the thing that causes the direct chafing.

[Mystify]

Out of curiosity, which me game are you referring to here? All three of them implement the morality system slightly differently. Mostly asking for clarity, as I had this problem on some playthroughs of me2, but not in me1 or me3.

I had the problem in all 3. And what it lets you do, talk your way into better solutions, is something that, from a role-playing standpoint,I greatly appreciate. But I'd much rather it be because I made clever dialogue choices, not because I got my morality meter high enough. Not get to the final confrontation and "oops, you didn't kill enough people and commit genocide enough to convince this guy of something".

In me3, whether you choose a paragon or a renegade choice doesn't matter. Both add to your overall reputation, and your reputation level allows you to make the color coded paragon/renegade choices. What I meant by not exclusive was that, even if you were consistently making one choice throughout, you could still pick the opposite choice at any time.

That was never made clear. And even if it was, I just spent the last 2 games playing as a pure renegade. Suddenly making renegade irrelevant bring up the question: Why have it at all, other than because the previous games had it? All it does is frame all of the choices in that way, which is not a good thing.

Not entirely sure I get what you're saying here. The way I see it, having an alignment framework helps, especially in games where you're picking intentions rather than word for word dialogue. Knowing how renegade and paragon operate in general informs my interpretation of events and the likely outcome of the various choices, since they're not explicitly spelled out.

But why should every dialogue choice be between paragon and renegade? Why not have some be between forthcoming and elusive, cooperative and dismissive, respectful and rude? If the short description is not enough to make it clear, then perhaps explicitly label the tone. (I'll void the obvious joke). Having it be implicit means its always paragon/renegade. It also doesn't support a wider variety of approaches better. A more expansive set of dialoge options opens up more possibilies. For instance, being able to be manipulative based on the dialogue choices you make instead of a "manipulate (75%)" option based on a skill. Create the ability to tell people things, or not, in a wider context than "Should I reveal this plot(paragon) or not (renegade)?"

I think my statement applies to both, especially given the prevalence of well-developed good paths and less developed evil paths in games.

Why should good and evil be paths at all?

Only if "most good points" is mechanically desirable. If you divorce mechanical benefit from the morality system, you'd be making choices based on consequences, right? The morality system then becomes a useful tool in defining your character. All things being equal, I don't think it matters whether you get to see the morality meter or not, but the more explicit information about game mechanics that is available to you, the better informed your choices will be.

Why have a morality meter at all if there is no mechanical point to it? If its representing something like how people will react to you, then that is an overly simplistic and weak mechanic for it.

I think morality systems can add a lot of flavor to a setting.

If thats already the flavor of the setting. I don't think Mass effect really god a lot of flavor from renegade paragon. Some of the individual choices were good, but what did the overall trend gain the series?

See, this sounded like such a good idea in DragonAge: Origins when they made the alignment system based on your party. Then I found out just trying to play the game I was constantly pissing off either Morrigan or Alistair, and to make it all better all I had to do was buy them gifts.

That is to say, I think it's a good idea, but I don't think we'll see a good implementation any time soon.

Making the alignment based on your party is not at all what I mean. I mean have individual NPCs, every one, concerned about a couple of traits. If your are not notable enough, or do not exhibit those traits strongly enough in situations they can learn about, then it doesn't matter. If you do have a reputation for those traits, then people will react to them.
Look at a political canidate. People don't go "Oh, that guy is evil, so I hate him". They go" That guy supports things I hate", or "That guy doesn't keep his promises". Imagine if it did work on an alignment system like in a game. "oh, Candidate A is very evil, but candidate B is mostly good!" It would be ludicrous. Why should people in a game react to you in the same way. It should be "I love how you saved those AIs from being destroyed" vs. "I hated it when you freed those dangerous prisoners". Let people react on their individual sets of values, not some arbitrary one the creators set up.

For story reasons. For character building reasons.

I think it does a horrible job at both of those. No system would literally be preferable in most cases. What would the mass effect story lose if you took out paragon/renegade? Nothing. What would character building lose? Nothing, and it would gain nuance.

Yeah, that was a misunderstanding on my part. You don't really offer any alternatives to morality systems other than the lack of them would allow for more choices, which I don't think is necessarily true.

Divorcing the morality system from mechanical benefits and making that morality system multifaceted and not a dichotomous good/evil (or whatever stand-ins you want to use) scale would go a long way toward making games more interactive and more choice driven. Removing the system entirely just doesn't seem to have any benefits that I can see.

What do you gain from it existing at all? Why does the game need to tell you "You are evil now!" Don't you think I know I'm evil when I'm running around massacring people?Don't you think I'd know that I'm good when I sacrifice everything to help everyone I meet?
What does that bar gain you?
Its very existence means that every choice the designers make is now tying into it, and so it frames all the choices they add. Its existence has an effect on the underlying principles of the choice system which weakens it.

[Forum Explorer]

I agree with Mystify. Most alignment systems add nothing to the game. Just keep the same options but don't tell me if I was good or evil. I think I can figure it out on my own. In particular mechanical benefits for maxing one out have to go.

[Craft (Cheese)]

I think all of this discussion about player choice in game narrative is missing something important.

Imagine, if you will, a hypothetical game where combat sequences played out like this:

You are attacked by an elderly children's book author!

- I kick him in the face!

- I stab him in the groin!

- I keel over and die!

If this could even be called a "game" at all, I think everyone here would agree that it's not a combat-focused game in the same vein as Guilty Gear or Battlefield. Combat is found within the text of the game, but not its mechanics.

Yet, we feel perfectly comfortable with calling Mass Effect or Dragon Age "narrative-focused games" even though the only way in which we interact with this narrative is through pre-scripted dialogue trees. Why is this?

[Mystify]

I think all of this discussion about player choice in game narrative is missing something important.

Imagine, if you will, a hypothetical game where combat sequences played out like this:




If this could even be called a "game" at all, I think everyone here would agree that it's not a combat-focused game in the same vein as Guilty Gear or Battlefield. Combat is found within the text of the game, but not its mechanics.

Yet, we feel perfectly comfortable with calling Mass Effect or Dragon Age "narrative-focused games" even though the only way in which we interact with this narrative is through pre-scripted dialogue trees. Why is this?

Because most forms of narrative are static. You have 0 control over a movie. You have 0 control over a book(except for a choose your own adventure, which is similar to, but more limited than, a game like mass effect's narrative), you have 0 control over most mediums. The focus is purely on the narrative, and you get no control over it. You add that same level of narrative force to a game, and add in any degree of control, and your game is now one of the most narratively interactive forms of media in existence. The game is built around the narration, and so it is narraive focused. It is still a game, so the term "narrative-focused game" is apt. Its not "narrative-focused gameplay". That is pretty much a technological dream. But we should move towards it. And in order to do that, we need to get rid of the morality bars. They do not advance us towards narrative focused gameplay. They are a crutch for the designers, one we should be capable of leaving behind by now.

The only form of media I can think of that exceeds a video game like mass effect in interactive narrative would be a tabletop RPG. You have the full cognitive capacity of a human sitting there and dynamically adapting to everything you do, giving you total immersion in the narrative. Any variation of that idea falls in the same category. Ideally, we could create virtual worlds with that same level of fidelity. However, I strongly suspect that would require true AI to do fully. However, if we do accomplish it, we can marry the advantages of the tabletop RPG and the computerized RPG, and acheive the ideal RPG experience. multiplayer/MMO aspects, combined with future communication techniques, could transfer in all of the social aspects of playing with a group of friends. The computer can worry about all of the bookkeeping, utilize deep systems that would be infeasible to do by hand, but work perfectly well in a computer, include whatever level of real-time interaction you desire, and have all the open possibilities of a live DM directing the action. And it wouldn't just be like playing with your friend as DM. It would be like playing with a guy who was born to DM. The one that can take all of your bazaar actions in stride, the one that makes every NPC come to life, the one that puts together brilliant combat scenarios.Though this is far beyond us at the moment, it should be the goal we are moving towards. Not just pushing out a generic new RPG.
I'm rambling now, so I'll stop.

[Craft (Cheese)]

*snip*

My main objection here: Action-based games have already pulled (most of) this off, without having hard AI. How do other game mechanics manage to have dozens of meaningful choices at every given moment, yet avoid the problem of having to pre-script an exponentially-increasing amount of ways for the environment to react to the player's choices? And why haven't these same methods been applied to dialogue interaction and plot events to make them just as deep and dynamic?

I suspect this has far more to do with shortcomings of design and creativity than with lack of technological ability.

[Alchemistmerlin]

I have not played Mass Effect so I can't speak from that view but I do know that in Fallout 3/Fallout: New Vegas my character jumped all over the moral spectrum...and still came out on the "Goodness slider" as a saint.

I always picked the "greater good" options, but if someone crossed me I was likely to murder them and their whole family.

I killed everyone in

Spoiler

Show

the home vault when they kicked me out the second time

and apparently did not damage my Karma.

[maglag]

I would like to point out to Fallout 3, where besides rewarding good/evil extremes, it also rewarded neutrality to an extent. Some stuff could only be obtained if you oscilated between saving children and stealing whatever wasn't nailed down (thus condeming them to die in a wasteland where resources are scarce).

And honestly, most of the talk here just shows why most people out there are actually neutral. If you simply go for the option that looks more profitable at the moment and are quick to abandon your personal beliefs if it means extra loot, you really can't call yourself good/evil/paragon/renegade.

[Alchemistmerlin]

I would like to point out to Fallout 3, where besides rewarding good/evil extremes, it also rewarded neutrality to an extent. Some stuff could only be obtained if you oscilated between saving children and stealing whatever wasn't nailed down (thus condeming them to die in a wasteland where resources are scarce).

And honestly, most of the talk here just shows why most people out there are actually neutral. If you simply go for the option that looks more profitable at the moment and are quick to abandon your personal beliefs if it means extra loot, you really can't call yourself good/evil/paragon/renegade.

Oh yeah, that's a good point.

I also stole EVERYTHING.

Wasteland 's a scary place.