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The eminent "Yahtzee" of the Zero Punctuation series has, on several occasions, derided the moral choice system in games. As he put it, you are pretty much restricted to choosing between Mother Teresa or a hybrid of Hitler and Skeletor. Very black & white.
I wholeheartedly agree. If games want any pretense of realism, then moral choices should not be that simple. I can't speak for Fallout 3 or Mass Effect, but I would expect in such harsh fate-of-countless-lives-hanging-in-balance scenarios, your good character would have no choice but to do bad things and step over bodies for the greater good. And some of those bodies might be innocents.
The first KOTOR game thankfully bucked the simplistic choice system once. One of my favourite parts of the game was the murder trial of a Republic war hero, charged with murdering a Sith officer. Just one small problem, he was guilty as sin. You could chose to be a part of a cover-up, but that would get you Darkside points. You could say to hell with defending a guilty man and turn him in. I think that got you Lightside points, but it also resulted in the man being executed. The less clear-cut solution was to prove the Sith conspired to plant evidence to defraud the court. That way you haven't lied or covered up anything, and the man gets acquitted. Very well done on Bioware's part.
Also as we've seen in the real world, good and generous people are always at risk of being preyed upon by deadbeats who see kindness as weakness. But I rarely see that in games. They take the approach of doing good by people, and they automatically do good by you. The only exception was from Fallout 2, where a hooker in a bar in Redding tells you she needs money to get out of the life of turning tricks. There wasn't any indication she's lying. But it's a sob story, she's really a Jet-addict looking for her next fix. Giving her money is just a waste, doesn't give you XP or Karma. That's the only one I can think of, and it's pretty obscure.
I never had the heart to play anything but a goody guy/girl in RPG's. But as far as I can tell, there's no real benefit to being an evil person. You get extra money, which once you've got the latest equipment, does you little good. That's absolutely the wrong approach. The evil path should be seductive, promising quick rewards. Committing evil acts should get you tons of XP to begin with, but over time you must do more and more vile acts to keep those XP's coming.
The only game I can think of where GvE was done properly in terms of gameplay was Ogre Battle for the SNES & N64. An RTS game with fantasy/RPG elements, story was the usual Rebellion vs the Evil Empire. That game followed the idea that war, destruction and death were paths to the dark side. You could take the easy, conventional JRPG approach and grind through hoards of enemy units. Your levels would rise quickly, but once you started killing enemies who were more than 3 levels below you, your karma would start to drop. Guess there's no honour in slaughtering inferior units. If you want to stay on the Lightside, you have to do things like weaken the enemy without killing them, and let your own lesser units finish the attack. Darkside units don't have that problem. Certain unit promotions are only available to evil members, and certain types of attacks are more damaging, depending on your alignment. So it's harder being a good guy, and it's in your own best interest to keep evil units in your army.
If there's more examples of well-done GvE situations in games, I'd love to hear about them.
I wholeheartedly agree. If games want any pretense of realism, then moral choices should not be that simple. I can't speak for Fallout 3 or Mass Effect, but I would expect in such harsh fate-of-countless-lives-hanging-in-balance scenarios, your good character would have no choice but to do bad things and step over bodies for the greater good. And some of those bodies might be innocents.
The first KOTOR game thankfully bucked the simplistic choice system once. One of my favourite parts of the game was the murder trial of a Republic war hero, charged with murdering a Sith officer. Just one small problem, he was guilty as sin. You could chose to be a part of a cover-up, but that would get you Darkside points. You could say to hell with defending a guilty man and turn him in. I think that got you Lightside points, but it also resulted in the man being executed. The less clear-cut solution was to prove the Sith conspired to plant evidence to defraud the court. That way you haven't lied or covered up anything, and the man gets acquitted. Very well done on Bioware's part.
Also as we've seen in the real world, good and generous people are always at risk of being preyed upon by deadbeats who see kindness as weakness. But I rarely see that in games. They take the approach of doing good by people, and they automatically do good by you. The only exception was from Fallout 2, where a hooker in a bar in Redding tells you she needs money to get out of the life of turning tricks. There wasn't any indication she's lying. But it's a sob story, she's really a Jet-addict looking for her next fix. Giving her money is just a waste, doesn't give you XP or Karma. That's the only one I can think of, and it's pretty obscure.
I never had the heart to play anything but a goody guy/girl in RPG's. But as far as I can tell, there's no real benefit to being an evil person. You get extra money, which once you've got the latest equipment, does you little good. That's absolutely the wrong approach. The evil path should be seductive, promising quick rewards. Committing evil acts should get you tons of XP to begin with, but over time you must do more and more vile acts to keep those XP's coming.
The only game I can think of where GvE was done properly in terms of gameplay was Ogre Battle for the SNES & N64. An RTS game with fantasy/RPG elements, story was the usual Rebellion vs the Evil Empire. That game followed the idea that war, destruction and death were paths to the dark side. You could take the easy, conventional JRPG approach and grind through hoards of enemy units. Your levels would rise quickly, but once you started killing enemies who were more than 3 levels below you, your karma would start to drop. Guess there's no honour in slaughtering inferior units. If you want to stay on the Lightside, you have to do things like weaken the enemy without killing them, and let your own lesser units finish the attack. Darkside units don't have that problem. Certain unit promotions are only available to evil members, and certain types of attacks are more damaging, depending on your alignment. So it's harder being a good guy, and it's in your own best interest to keep evil units in your army.
If there's more examples of well-done GvE situations in games, I'd love to hear about them.
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