Any game that made good connection between moral system and the game itself?

[t209]

http://www.cracked.com/blog/12-video...die-part-2_p3/
I read #1 and the moral system had not been good since Ultima IV's moral system that teaches player to be good.
Well, the only good one I know are Dishonored (more death= more rats), Planescape Torment, some game where bystander will help you if you are good aligned, and the mentioned Ultima IV.

[GloatingSwine]

I don't think so.

The only really good games where there's been a good morality system that isn't just another stat to minmax are games where, essentially, the morality system is the core of the game. So, Planescape: Torment, who the Nameless One is and was and how that guides his moral choices now and did in his past incarnations is what the game is all about. Ultima IV is about you embodying the eight virtues and nothing else, not even saving the world, etc. (which are nothing like modern games where "morality" is basically just a knob-o-meter, thanks Bioware).

So no. Morality systems are generally not well integrated into the game and because you need to minmax them for bonuses are usually much more of a limitation on the player than an organic reflection of the way you've played.

[TaRix]

Well, I haven't seen it myself, but TvTropes (Not Safe for Sanity) says Iji might be close. Its morality system is basically pacifism or not, but enemy chatter and such reflect your kill count or lack thereof.

Ultima V explored an aspect of morality, namely how forced virtue ends up lacking, but I don't think it affected gameplay mechanics much.

Stealth games tend to favor players who don't spill blood, and Metal Gear Solid 3 gave better stuff and titles for fewer and nonlethal takedowns.

But yeah. Higher-level choices tend to not matter much. It's hard to digitize and quantify morality, and making storylines branch out exponentially adds to designer workloads.

[Eldan]

Iji isn't bad at it, yeah. And not just general pacifism. Leaving certain enemies alive changes the plot. Even if you have to jump through some incredible hoops to get it done.

[Vitruviansquid]

There are games with good connections between gameplay and morality, but generally not through a "morality system."

I think the games that tend to make the most powerful statements on morality are those that don't keep track of your morality and give you gameplay rewards or punishments based on them. Instead, they simply presents you with an option to do good or evil and show you the consequences naturally, like in "The Witcher" (which additionally has moral ambiguity in its decisions) or many games that give you the option of killing enemies or bypassing them some other way.

[OrcusMcP]

While it's hard to measure/code/implement morality, there's some very interesting ethical/moral hindsight you can get form some game mechanics, especially more abstracted ones like strategy games.

Let's say you're playing Victoria 2, and you're a fairly stable kingdom. However, because this is the springtime of nations, people are tired of monarchies and want democracy. So they revolt, into brigades thousands strong. Do you let them occupy the country, overhauling society and devastating the countryside and economy while they do? Do you send in your army to massacre their own countrymen? It's too late to just talk to them, they're too angry to placate with slow reform.

And often, these are decisions you make without even thinking about them too hard. What does that tell you about yourself? What does this tell you about the reigns of power?

[Winthur]

Well, the only good one I know are Dishonored (more death= more rats), Planescape Torment, some game where bystander will help you if you are good aligned, and the mentioned Ultima IV.

Eh what?
I like the Ultima series, but you can pretty much farm the virtues in Ultima IV, and the experience is kinda diluted due to the rather boring stuff you have to do inbetween.
Anyway, I'm not even sure why should gameplay be affected by moral choices, moral choices should be a composition of the plot/atmosphere/etc., it doesn't mean a game is bad if an evil character gets to use the same weapons as the good character.
Of course if you have something like "do everything good or evil the whole game and then push one of the different buttons to get your ending regardless of what you were doing" it's pretty bad if the game tries to maintain an illusion of choice, but still.

This is one of the worst Cracked articles I've ever read (supposed video game annoyances aren't at all related to gameplay, merely to the writing) and it makes me miss the times when they wrote about cool stuff (and Mr. Wong is great at contradicting himself), and if you want examples of where your moral choices are acknowledged then here you go:
NWN2: Mask of the Betrayer
Deus Ex
Baldur's Gate (well, on a very superficial level, admittedly)
Fallout 1&2
Arcanum
KOTOR 2
The Witcher 1&2

But if you somehow want a game where your alignment actually affects gameplay and has multiple endings that you have to work for from the beginning to end then you could try ADOM.

While it's hard to measure/code/implement morality, there's some very interesting ethical/moral hindsight you can get form some game mechanics, especially more abstracted ones like strategy games.

Haven't played Victoria 2, but I have played (a fair amount) of Civilization IV and in order to beat the higher difficulties, I had no qualms against enslaving and sacrificing my entire population to suit my needs, because the overwhelming goal of a strategy game is to win it. It's not like real life, it's cyber-people I'm enslaving. If I were to roleplay, I'd have to play on a lower difficulty, and I don't see the point. It's not like the game at the end says "Eh... well done, I guess?" upon seeing a bloodbath conquest victory where all of my cities are starving and rioting from the massive draft I announced.

[Todasmile]

I think most games have an issue implementing morality because their developers don't actually understand it.

All too many games give you a two-pronged choice, good and evil, and you get bonuses for being far enough to one side. This feels terrible - especially in Bioware's games, where I know that there's a "good" action all the time, and since I'm a "good" person I always take that option. I hardly ever think about anything. It's not immersive.

The best games with a morality system, though I can't remember any off the top of my head, involve three-or-more pronged choices. There shouldn't BE black and white. Rather, all three (or more) of the prongs should have good and bad aspects. Too many game developers forget that morality is subjective, and is, in reality, just a way of determining how closely you follow the ideals of a set of people.

So really, morality probably shouldn't be in games. Any game with "Loyalty" meters that exclude you from raising certain other "Loyalty" meters has infinitely better morality than any of the modern moral titles we get today.

[BRC]

I liked Mass Effect's system, but that wasn't really a Morality system, which is I guess why it worked.


A good Morality system should be about actions and consequences, rather than trying to place the player on some sliding scale of Good vs Evil.

At one point during the game you encounter a checkpoint, where government troops have detained a bunch of people they believe are rebels. The prisoners protest their innocence. The soldiers defer to you for advice.
If you tell the soldiers to release the prisoners, later on some of those prisoners, who actually WERE rebels, stage an attack. However, at the same time you get "Merciful +5", with Merciful being one of many reputation stats.

Later on in the game, you help a group of soldiers storm a rebel stronghold. The Rebels are holed up, ready to fight to the last. Sufficiently high "Merciful" and "Trustworthy" stats allows you to convince them to surrender peacefully.
The idea is to, as much as possible, associate the decisions players made directly with consequences later on. You don't get the rebels to surrender because you have a certain "Goodness" rating, it's because you made specific choices in the past that gave you a reputation for being merciful and trustworthy.

It also avoids turning things into a matter of "Do you want to play a hero or a villain". You want to avoid a Pet The Dog/Kick The Dog divide whenever possible. In my example, there IS a rebellion on, the soldiers may have good reason to suspect these men of being rebels. Detaining the prisoners isn't necessarily the "Evil" option. And creating a range of scales, rather than a simple "Good/Evil" meter allows for a far more nuanced approach.

[Closet_Skeleton]

Haven't played Victoria 2, but I have played (a fair amount) of Civilization IV and in order to beat the higher difficulties, I had no qualms against enslaving and sacrificing my entire population to suit my needs, because the overwhelming goal of a strategy game is to win it. It's not like real life, it's cyber-people I'm enslaving. If I were to roleplay, I'd have to play on a lower difficulty, and I don't see the point. It's not like the game at the end says "Eh... well done, I guess?" upon seeing a bloodbath conquest victory where all of my cities are starving and rioting from the massive draft I announced.

Victoria 2 isn't like that because you can't 'win' it. Roleplaying is basically your only option.

Its also so complex that all strategies become pretty circumstantial. You can't hit a button and know that the result will be everyone hating you but giving you more money, instead raising taxes might cause your economy to crash as nobody can buy any wine so all the wine factories close and everyone changes jobs or migrates to Argentina. Or you might have gone horribly into debt destroying Germany and find that all that land you took wasn't worth it and won't help you pay back your loans and the financial crisis will just spiral out of your control and all of a sudden China has westernised and your ability to produce goods just can't compete any more and your only option is to let the communists take over so you can nationalise and destroy all your factories and build cars because that's the only thing China isn't advanced enough to make.

[Hiro Protagonest]

Dark Souls.

[Winthur]

Victoria 2 isn't like that because you can't 'win' it. Roleplaying is basically your only option.

That's an interesting take, but how is it a strategy game? What is my goal in it, if I can not 'win' it?

Its also so complex that all strategies become pretty circumstantial. You can't hit a button and know that the result will be everyone hating you but giving you more money, instead raising taxes might cause your economy to crash as nobody can buy any wine so all the wine factories close and everyone changes jobs or migrates to Argentina. Or you might have gone horribly into debt destroying Germany and find that all that land you took wasn't worth it and won't help you pay back your loans and the financial crisis will just spiral out of your control and all of a sudden China has westernised and your ability to produce goods just can't compete any more and your only option is to let the communists take over so you can nationalise and destroy all your factories and build cars because that's the only thing China isn't advanced enough to make.

I have to doubt that there exists a game in this universe which doesn't have algorithms and patterns that are noticable and exploitable.

[Hiro Protagonest]

That's an interesting take, but how is it a strategy game? What is my goal in it, if I can not 'win' it?

Except for Hearts of Iron, all Paradox grand strategy games are about letting you decide what you want to do in the given time limit. They do have lose conditions though.

[Winthur]

Except for Hearts of Iron, all Paradox grand strategy games are about letting you decide what you want to do in the given time limit. They do have lose conditions though.

Ah, I see the point. I even recall playing Europa Universalis 1 way back when, though I don't remember much.
Still, from the screenshots I saw, I'm 99% certain that there exist certain "tried and true" strategies that are the most optimal if you want to achieve goals like "making Italy a worldwide Empire in WW2" or "make Hanseatic League the largest state in the world".
That's not a derogatory statement and I'm not trying to spite anything, I just don't think there exist games that are truly unpredictable and that can't be mastered.

[Closet_Skeleton]

Victoria 2 can be mastered, but most players never will. I certainly don't see myself doing so. Its quite predictable in some areas, partly because the truly random elements tend to be quite small in effect and have to build up to do anything. Its only a very simple simulation of economics, but its still an economics simulation which most game economies simply aren't. In Europa Universalis IV I can take out a 60 ducat loan with 10% interest, build a 50 ducat building that produces 1 ducat a year and will last for the whole game (400 odd years) and know that loan was worth it in the long run since I can probably pay it back in 5 years. In Victoria 2, taking out a loan and building a railway is pretty safe but building a glass factory is not because I have no idea what the price of glass will be in 10 years.

The most optimal state in Victoria 2 is liberal democracy with a laissez faire economic policy, 100% literacy, no taxes on the middle class, tiny taxes on the rich and medium taxes on the poor. Keeping that viable is very difficult. Sometimes you don't want to educate anyone in order to stop your plethora of minorities from rebelling or you can't pay your teachers without taxing the middle classes and have to hurt either your science and literacy or your economy.

Subsidised industries are mathematically worse due to the bonus laissez faire gets, but sometimes you're in such a terrible position that subsidies are your only choice or the fascists have forced their way into power and refuse to let you be laissez faire. Whether or not that's morality or not I'm not sure.

On the other hand this is a game where you can choose the United Kingdom as your country, leave it running and do absolutely nothing and still come up as the most powerful country in the world when the game ends in 1936. Playing the United States and becoming the most powerful country in the world is much easier than playing Mexico and turning them into the equivalent of the real world United States. Merely surviving as some Asian countries is more of an achievement than conquering most of Europe with Germany.

[Grinner]

It doesn't really have a morality system and it certainly doesn't compare to the Mass Effect example, but Geneforge is a fair contender here.

The central premise is that there's an empire of mages, called Shapers, able to create life. They, while I wouldn't call them brutal, are certainly quite stern about their "creations". Their regard for the sanctity of life is minimal, and if they deem it necessary, they will obliterate a creation without a second thought. To them, their creations are just tools.

Their creations disagree.

On a remote island, Shaper researchers develop a device, the eponymous Geneforge. Upon realization of its potential, the project is shut down and the island abandoned. Through a series of events, the technology is rediscovered and secreted back to the mainland. What emerges from the dusty, forgotten waste where it is hidden is nothing short of calamity, to the Shapers. For their creations, it is liberation.

In short, the games ask the player to make a series of hard choices pertaining to technology, safety, and freedom.

[Domochevsky]

Iji isn't bad at it, yeah. And not just general pacifism. Leaving certain enemies alive changes the plot. Even if you have to jump through some incredible hoops to get it done.

Oh yeah... like getting all the weapon tech upgrades, paradoxically.

Spoiler: Reason

Show

So you can get the lvl 10 gun that shoots through walls to destroy that reactor thingy, instead of going down into the bunker and encounter that person (and be forced to kill them).

Good game, actually.

[Tengu_temp]

Dark Souls.

DS has a morality system?

[Hiro Protagonest]

DS has a morality system?

Nope. But it gives you agency. The ending will always be the same, pick one of two choices, but what you do along the way defines who you are.

[Anteros]

Fable and the Fallout games do this, but only to a tiny extent. If you want to go old school Tactics Ogre's entire plot, as well as the maps you play and enemies you face drastically changes based on the decisions you make. As well as what members of your team live and die. To this day, I've still never seen a game that made your decisions actually matter the way Tactics Ogre did.

[Morty]

I don't think I've ever seen a "morality meter" that didn't end up being completely and utterly daft sooner or later. You just can't measure morality with points. As much as I love Planescape:Torment, its execution of the D&D alignment system, which is pretty clunky to begin with, isn't very good - it suffers from the old "lawful is more good than chaotic" assumption and treated all lies as Chaotic acts, which opens up a huge can of worms. Although the dumbest morality tracker of all time might just be the Karma meter in Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas.

[BRC]

I don't think I've ever seen a "morality meter" that didn't end up being completely and utterly daft sooner or later. You just can't measure morality with points. As much as I love Planescape:Torment, its execution of the D&D alignment system, which is pretty clunky to begin with, isn't very good - it suffers from the old "lawful is more good than chaotic" assumption and treated all lies as Chaotic acts, which opens up a huge can of worms. Although the dumbest morality tracker of all time might just be the Karma meter in Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas.

Ah yes.
"Kill the Powder Gangers", Good Karma!
"Loot the bodies of the powder gangers": No Karma!
"Pick up objects left lying around the camp of the now-deceased powder gangers": BAD KARMA!

[Winthur]

Ah yes.
"Kill the Powder Gangers", Good Karma!
"Loot the bodies of the powder gangers": No Karma!
"Pick up objects left lying around the camp of the now-deceased powder gangers": BAD KARMA!

Although it is silly, you could explain it with the idea that the mere act of exterminating Powder Gangers, a minor menace to the locals, is a good act, but looting them afterwards turns it into a selfish power-play on rejects that nobody cares about. A shining star, a truly good character probably wouldn't resort to scavenging and robbing, so the good and bad karma cancel out. You no longer kill them because it's the right thing, you do that because nobody will mourn them and they have goodies in boxes.

Still, Fallout 1&2's morality system was much better.

[Tengu_temp]

Nope. But it gives you agency. The ending will always be the same, pick one of two choices, but what you do along the way defines who you are.

That is partially true. On one hand, you can decide to kill pretty much any NPC there is, and your actions can also save some others from their imminent death.

But on the other hand, the world generally barely reacts to your actions - at most you will aggravate one or two more NPCs, and that's all. Most of the acknowledgement of what kind of person you are is in your head. And saving NPCs often requires actions that are impossible to figure out on the first playthrough.

[GloatingSwine]

Ah yes.
"Kill the Powder Gangers", Good Karma!
"Loot the bodies of the powder gangers": No Karma!
"Pick up objects left lying around the camp of the now-deceased powder gangers": BAD KARMA!

Actually I think they fairly swiftly changed it so that killing powder gangers was neutral as well, and they aren't necessarily immediately hostile to you, which is why their owned items count as owned for karma reasons. It's rare that you get karma for killing things in FNV.

(Plus, karma was of absolutely no consequence in that game anyway, it was all about faction rep)

It's always something of a problem in games with morality systems when you gain morality points for killing things that you have to kill anyway because they're attacking you and you need to kill them to pass. Fable was chronic for it, you had to eat babies when you weren't even hungry to maintain your evil cred because of all the bandits and werewolves and hobbes and other "evil" creatures that you had to kill to progress.

[Wookieetank]

It doesn't really have a morality system and it certainly doesn't compare to the Mass Effect example, but Geneforge is a fair contender here.

The central premise is that there's an empire of mages, called Shapers, able to create life. They, while I wouldn't call them brutal, are certainly quite stern about their "creations". Their regard for the sanctity of life is minimal, and if they deem it necessary, they will obliterate a creation without a second thought. To them, their creations are just tools.

Their creations disagree.

On a remote island, Shaper researchers develop a device, the eponymous Geneforge. Upon realization of its potential, the project is shut down and the island abandoned. Through a series of events, the technology is rediscovered and secreted back to the mainland. What emerges from the dusty, forgotten waste where it is hidden is nothing short of calamity, to the Shapers. For their creations, it is liberation.

In short, the games ask the player to make a series of hard choices pertaining to technology, safety, and freedom.

I'll second this. Not often you find an RPG world as immersive as Geneforge either (outside of Spiderweb sotfware games anyways ).

While the game didn't give me as many choices as I wanted, I highly reccomend The Walking Dead by Taletell as an interesting exercise in morality in video games. You choices don't effect the overarching plot (which didn't bother me any), but they do define the main character and how others percive him. One of the ones that stuck with me most was whether to let someone who was already zombie food provide a distraction as your party gathered much needed supplies, or put that person out of their misery. The game also gives you time limits on making a choice so you can't just sit there and try to figure out which option is best, most often you just have to go with your gut instinct. This game is not for the faint of heart though, and I highly reccomend having something fluffy ready to play afterwards.

[Crow]

I actually thought Spec Ops: The Line was right up there with Dark Souls as far as this thread goes.

[Math_Mage]

I actually thought Spec Ops: The Line was right up there with Dark Souls as far as this thread goes.

As I understand it, Spec Ops doesn't have as much of the 'moral choice' aspect. The moral picture they paint is pretty damn amazing, though.

[Crow]

I just loved how the choices the game presented were basically "stop playing" or "keep going".

It actually gave me a pause when it hit me.

[Winthur]

I just loved how the choices the game presented were basically "stop playing" or "keep going".

It actually gave me a pause when it hit me.

I think SO:TL is a terrible example when it comes to a moral system because it just doesn't have one.
Myself, I thought it was "so deep you can't even see me right now". As in, kinda pretentious; patronizing even.

Spoiler: Spec Ops The Line

Show

When you interpret the storyline as you just playing out Walker's story, it becomes a Heart of Darkness-inspired, rather mediocre story-driven shooter which is all kinds of hamfisted in execution.
As a result, you get a game which forces you to do something a specific way, and then claims you're a bad person for doing so.
Yeah, so what? Those were all fictional people; I certainly can't grow attached to the whole phosphorus bomb incident when the game doesn't even pretend it left me any choice beyond "stop playing if you can't handle it, you murderer". So, they develop a game, make the only way to resolve it riddled with pretty evil stuff, and then berate me as if I was the one to have invented this course of action. It's as if the DVD commentary of Cannibal Holocaust consisted of being chewed out by the filming crew, implying I'm the one who killed the turtle (which is what happened IRL during the filmmaking) and did all that horrible stuff to (fictional!) people.

I could maybe grant it the quality of being ambitious in concept and quite original in exploring the medium. It certainly tries to do away with the typical America F*** Yeah plot of a typical CoD knockoff. It has some interesting presentation at times. But in delivery, it's not subtle at all, and I think it missed its mark.

Its moral system is pretty much non-existant, IMHO, because you are never making a choice, unless "not playing the game" is now one. Might as well say do the same with Mortal Kombat and feel at ease because I decided not to beat up and then maim and murder all of the combatants. With Spec Ops The Line, the game pretends you are Walker. You are not; you are the player. The game's plot has already been made, I'm not preventing it from happening by not playing it. Might as well close my eyes during the cutscenes and pretend I wasn't ever there.

In case you want to accuse me of not being able to immerse myself in the story: It's hard to do when the game does so many things to make me feel like I'm being watched by the creator and he's wagging his finger at me in a demeaning way for accomplishing the challenge he gave me ("You're a bad person for playing video games!"????????). SO:TL's themes could have been done in a way more subtle way.
Hell, look at CoD MW2's (I think that SO:TL was, among other things, trying to completely subvert the typical AAA shooter) infamous "No Russian" level. Nothing ever says that you have to kill any of the civilians on the level. You're just given a gun and are told to follow. No matter what you do, however, the outcome is the same, and you don't have to shoot anyone at all to fulfill this goal (except in self-defense). So what does it say about me if I shot everyone on this level? Maybe I was accustomed to shooting everything in my sights and being accustomed to the CoD gameplay made me triggerhappy. Or maybe I'm not actually Joseph Allen and I'm just playing out his (pretty tragic, all things considered) story. But the game doesn't hammer in what I'm supposed to feel. And the game still lets me skip the level if I am so sensitive that I can't handle it.