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Action Tortoise posted:it's why morality is such a hard balancing act to do right, if it ever has been done right The only game that did binary black-and-white morality right, and I'm paraphrasing Jim Sterling here, is Bioshock, because there is literally no in-game reason to go down the evil path and the evil path is so comically, wildly over-the-top evil (killing literal children with your bare hands for bonus XP) that the game is entirely correct to punish you for it. The only character who urges you to go down the evil path is the loving bad guy. Otherwise, any game that attempts to do black-and-white morality inevitably puts too much effort (read: any effort) into making sure "both sides" of the equation have valid arguments, and then decides to have God choose the correct answer for you despite all this. You don't think theft is evil in a post apocalyptic wasteland if the owners are already dead? Well, God does. Decide to put a horrifically mutated creature out of its misery when its original body left messages urging you to do so? God says you chose poorly. The alternative is something like SOMA, which has some really great choices for the player to make, usually involving the choice between inflicting eternal suffering and inflicting death. The game doesn't call you out on your decisions. It doesn't have a meter ticking up or down in the background. You just have situations where your choices are "kill this character and proceed, or leave this character suffering forever and proceed" and it's up to you and your personal interpretation of the morality (and mortality) involved as to whether or not you kill people. Or New Vegas, where every choice just affects how the locals view you and how they interpret your current actions. Good actions for one faction are evil actions for another. It reminds me of this really good, super short game, Like Clockwork, which has this great "puzzle" involving environmental storytelling. You're urged to explore this big busted-up farmhouse to figure out what happened there, then you're asked a series of questions based on the evidence you could find, and at the end no matter what you choose- because there's really good evidence for all of the answers- you're told "Sounds reasonable." And that's the end of the puzzle. That's all there is to it. Your interpretation is valid.
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Mar 9, 2017 11:38
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Yardbomb posted:I have this problem so much with Robin Atkin Downes, around MGSV I'd gotten done playing a bunch of No More Heroes again, so any time he talked I just heard Travis Touchdown threatening to gently caress up Huey or whatever else. It took me an Extra Ops in Ground Zeroes to realize why he was cast to voice Miller.
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Mar 9, 2017 11:45
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I would like it if some games that presented themselves as having moral dilemmas actually gave you significantly better rewards for being rear end in a top hat, so there was actually some reason to do it aside from wanting to act like an rear end in a top hat or accruing rear end in a top hat points. This is what Bioshock presented itself as but it turned out to be bogus since the good guy rewards are at least as good as the bad guy ones. I guess that's not satisfying from gameplay perspective though, so you'd have people complaining about being punished for being good.
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Mar 9, 2017 11:47
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The Moon Monster posted:I would like it if some games that presented themselves as having moral dilemmas actually gave you significantly better rewards for being rear end in a top hat, so there was actually some reason to do it aside from wanting to act like an rear end in a top hat or accruing rear end in a top hat points. This is what Bioshock presented itself as but it turned out to be bogus since the good guy rewards are at least as good as the bad guy ones. I guess that's not satisfying from gameplay perspective though, so you'd have people complaining about being punished for being good. Why should a game reward you for killing children
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Mar 9, 2017 11:50
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Somfin posted:Why should a game reward you for killing children yeeeeeeah this is why I'm glad games aren't too obsessed with putting morality as a bullet point on their boxes these days.
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Mar 9, 2017 12:00
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Somfin posted:
a game with a morality system that actually asked you why you did an option afterwards would be really cool.
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Mar 9, 2017 12:12
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Somfin posted:Why should a game reward you for killing children Why let you do it at all? What [bad thing] that [other game] lets you do and does reward you for?
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Mar 9, 2017 12:13
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My favorite moral choice so far in A House of Many Doors is that you can run into a bunch of merchants stranded without fuel, which in the setting is a death-sentence. You can give them fuel or not. There is no reward. So... either lose money or help someone in need. Straightforward, brutal, and there's no judgement. (Well, the merchants will attack if you refuse out of desperation but they're weak and it's easy to just leave them behind. To die, alone in the dark.)
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Mar 9, 2017 12:18
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The Moon Monster posted:Why let you do it at all? What [bad thing] that [other game] lets you do and does reward you for? Because the point of Bioshock is that Andrew Ryan's great chain and Frank Fontaine's dog-eat-dog philosophies, both of which encourage taking everything that you can at all costs, are both wrong. It is making a point. Giving you the option of doing the obviously and blatantly wrong thing and then punishing you for it is an acceptable way to prove that point, as is rewarding you for doing the obviously and blatantly right thing. And deliberately killing children with your bare hands for bonus XP isn't really one of those things you can freely interchange with other evil actions in other games. It is beyond the loving pale. I have finished Bioshock twice and in neither play-through did I ever hit the "harvest" button because why loving would I?
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Mar 9, 2017 12:35
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Somfin posted:Because the point of Bioshock is that Andrew Ryan's great chain and Frank Fontaine's dog-eat-dog philosophies, both of which encourage taking everything that you can at all costs, are both wrong. It is making a point. Giving you the option of doing the obviously and blatantly wrong thing and then punishing you for it is an acceptable way to prove that point, as is rewarding you for doing the obviously and blatantly right thing. people consume and interpret media differently. the reason why it's hard to do morality "right" in games is that the devs' intent can and will get lost on the players. Bioshock anthropomorphized its morality system in the Little Sisters as a clever way to present a hard choice to the player - kill a child but get "rewarded" for it. but as it's been pointed out there isn't even a good mechanical benefit to being a monster, which is the main justification for Harvesting their ADAM. it almost made a point but backed out on it, intentionally or otherwise. i hated inFamous' morality system because it was very blatant and reductive, but then did a bait and switch at the end and condemned the player for making a choice which really shouldn't be so black and white. it was morality through a utilitarian lens, and i feel like most morality games tend toward that type of thinking. Edit: also, by virtue of being a game that boasts of its morality system, some population of the playerbase will treat the game as a CYOA experience rather than going by how they would act if they really were in the protagonist's place. i mean, isn't that why people talk about Undertale's Genocide Run? Action Tortoise has a new favorite as of 13:10 on Mar 9, 2017 |
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Mar 9, 2017 13:06
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Alpha Protocol was pretty great with morality choices, because you got rewards for everything, just different ones.
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Mar 9, 2017 13:17
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Action Tortoise posted:people consume and interpret media differently. the reason why it's hard to do morality "right" in games is that the devs' intent can and will get lost on the players. Bioshock anthropomorphized its morality system in the Little Sisters as a clever way to present a hard choice to the player - kill a child but get "rewarded" for it. but as it's been pointed out there isn't even a good mechanical benefit to being a monster, which is the main justification for Harvesting their ADAM. it almost made a point but backed out on it, intentionally or otherwise. If I might weigh in, I've made all sorts of bad decisions in RPGs that get me a lot of poo poo. Part of it is exactly as you said - enjoying the fantasy of it all but not just to be an rear end in a top hat. I think a lot of people are like me and they want to follow, to belong. A lot of RPGs have the "evil faction" represented by a charismatic leader - Caesar in Fallout New Vegas, TIM in Mass Effect, etc.. Of course in real life anyone even vaguely acquainted with history would think "hm, should I trust the well-spoken gentleman with his reasonable arguments about why he should have absolute power?" But that mindset defeats the whole point of roleplaying in the roleplaying game. I prefer to just indulge that basic instinct in me that compels me towards order and hierarchy and if it's represented by a neat guy with a cool voice-actor and good lines, so much the better. I absolutely love the Qunari in Dragon Age even though they offend a lot of my real life sensibilities. But for a medieval fantasy setting? Why not support them. A lot of people question how well the moral choices are done of course but I honestly do think a lot of that hinges too much on being overly critical and using out-of-universe "real life" thinking instead of immersing yourself in the setting and getting into the head of the character you are playing. You mentioned InFAMOUS. Cole gets so much poo poo for basically no reason. Trish hates "him", everyone else hates "him" there's that annoying guy on TV who lies about "him" at every opportunity and lies about you at every turn.... But as Cole is your player character, they are doing all of this to "you" as well. So why not think gently caress all of them and use your new powers for yourself?
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Mar 9, 2017 13:28
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Tiggum posted:How are you this dense? Seriously? You can't see any difference at all between "playing this game is a tedious process" and "replaying the bits of this game I already played once in order to see the bits I didn't is a tedious process"? Those mean the same thing to you? Tiggum posted:Playing a game is not the same thing as watching someone else play a game. KingSlime posted:And lengthy games that require replays for a little more content are 100% disrespectful of your time in my humble opinion Somfin posted:Why should a game reward you for killing children E: The viewpoint of "I paid for all the content on the disc therefore I'm entitled to see it all" is valid I suppose (though do you rewatch the movies you buy to experience all the different language tracks?) but if that's your mindset then I'd recommend just avoiding games that advertise that feature; it's not like they dominate the market. 2house2fly has a new favorite as of 13:41 on Mar 9, 2017 |
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Mar 9, 2017 13:33
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NikkolasKing posted:If I might weigh in, I've made all sorts of bad decisions in RPGs that get me a lot of poo poo. Part of it is exactly as you said - enjoying the fantasy of it all but not just to be an rear end in a top hat. I think a lot of people are like me and they want to follow, to belong. A lot of RPGs have the "evil faction" represented by a charismatic leader - Caesar in Fallout New Vegas, TIM in Mass Effect, etc.. Of course in real life anyone even vaguely acquainted with history would think "hm, should I trust the well-spoken gentleman with his reasonable arguments about why he should have absolute power?" But that mindset defeats the whole point of roleplaying in the roleplaying game. I prefer to just indulge that basic instinct in me that compels me towards order and hierarchy and if it's represented by a neat guy with a cool voice-actor and good lines, so much the better. that's a cool read on inFamous. I read every choice as 'show restraint/take time to help npcs == good' and 'revel in your powers/gently caress errbody == evil,' with the final choice falling into the 'gently caress errbody' territory. it would have been cool if Cole's gf didn't die but remained bitter over his selfish actions. like she's a constant reminder of his selfishness and he ironically loses who he was trying to save figuratively rather than literally.
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Mar 9, 2017 13:56
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Action Tortoise posted:that's a cool read on inFamous. I read every choice as 'show restraint/take time to help npcs == good' and 'revel in your powers/gently caress errbody == evil,' with the final choice falling into the 'gently caress errbody' territory. Curiously enough, the first Kane and Lynch actually kinda pulled that off. IIRC, towards the end you launch a big old assault to free Kane's daughter. Once you reach her, you've got the option between just bailing with her right away, leaving Lynch and the others to die, or going back to try and get everybody home. If you go back for Lynch, Kane's daughter catches a bullet in the confusion and dies. If you leave the others to die to get her out, she basically hates your guts forever. After all, Kane's still the one who got her into trouble in the first place, and there are some kind of abandonment issues between them already. In many other games, that kind of thing would have been pretty annoying as an enforced bad end. But the whole game had already been plenty misanthropic and depressing the whole time through, so it actually felt fairly appropriate.
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Mar 9, 2017 14:29
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Elfgames posted:a game with a morality system that actually asked you why you did an option afterwards would be really cool. I killed all those children because I wanted to use Force Lightning without an MP penalty. KOTOR's morality system was really dumb.
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Mar 9, 2017 15:27
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Digirat posted:This is it. It comes across as more of an enlightenment thing and how much you are invested in the world around you than a morality system. Yep, you got it in one. It's about understanding. If you just run and gun through like the Rangers, you act like a Ranger and kill the dark ones. If you slow down and make an attempt to understand, Artyon is able to reach out and stop himself. It's more of an easter egg ending than anything though; both the book and the game go off of wiping the dark ones out. e: Oh this was pages ago oops. Well go read Metro 2035 or something idk, it's out in English now.
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Mar 9, 2017 15:40
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For those unaware, at the end of metro 2033,
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the thing dragging down Last Light for me was this fight with a giant tank. i just could not kill it.
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Mar 9, 2017 15:51
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Digirat posted:True, but depending on how far you draw that line, you're still either limiting the consequences of the player's choices or having to make extremely contrived justifications for why the same player character can do absolutely everything. For example, if the player sides with the imperials in the civil war in skyrim, how would you thematically justify them still being able to go and do the stormcloak quests after they've already killed ulfric? It wouldn't make any sense, and skyrim is even more lenient than most in that area (it still lets you be the head of every guild, etc). Somfin posted:Wanting choices to have an impact on the story and wanting nothing to be walled off by player choices are mutually exclusive urges, fellows. Action Tortoise posted:if you know a character isn't going to go along with a choice you made, how is it arbitrary that they then refuse to continue their relationship with you? The Moon Monster posted:I guess that's not satisfying from gameplay perspective though, so you'd have people complaining about being punished for being good. 2house2fly posted:Of course it isn't. But in your scenario you don't want to play the game. Imagine there's a movie with two different endings. You watch the movie and see ending A. Now you want to see what ending B is like, but for some reason you're not allowed to see it without watching the rest of the movie again. You just saw it, you know what happens, it's still fresh in your mind. Why should you have to waste two more hours of your life rewatching the movie you just saw for ten minutes of extra content? It's an absurd restriction.
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Mar 9, 2017 16:05
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quote:That's not what I said though? For a start, it's a choice by the writers, not the characters, and they could just have had it play out differently. Like, there are places in Dragon Age: Origins where you can lose current or potential team members by making the wrong choices, but there's no good reason to ever make those choices. You don't gain anything by it, you're just being punished for not knowing ahead of time what the writers wanted you to do. Yes, it makes sense for Wynn to turn on you if you say you're going to kill all the mages, but why is that even an option if you're not supposed to pick it? I picked that option because I was half listening and didn't realize she was even a potential party member. I continued on anyway, it was a lot of fun storywise (mechanically it sucked, but so does most of DA:O). I also shanked the elf guy because I forgot he existed so when his assassin buddies rolled up he sided with them. It would have been a more boring game if I had just reloaded either time to work around it. quote:I don't want to play the loving 90% of the game I have already played. I do want to play the bit I haven't seen yet. Just copy the save to a second file and load it. quote:Imagine there's a movie with two different endings. You watch the movie and see ending A. Now you want to see what ending B is like, but for some reason you're not allowed to see it without watching the rest of the movie again. You just saw it, you know what happens, it's still fresh in your mind. Why should you have to waste two more hours of your life rewatching the movie you just saw for ten minutes of extra content? It's an absurd restriction. I'm not sure how much sense, say, Fallout New Vegas would have made if you had sided with the Legion the whole game then at the end a pop-up asks if you want to watch the NCR ending instead. RBA Starblade has a new favorite as of 16:23 on Mar 9, 2017 |
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Mar 9, 2017 16:20
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Fil5000 posted:Alpha Protocol was pretty great with morality choices, because you got rewards for everything, just different ones. It was great because it wasn't about morality, it was about how you approached a situation, and how people reacted to it. ...though even as I say that I am reminded of my playthrough as utter rear end in a top hat Thornton, who literally shot a wounded, disarmed Sis with an indifferent shrug and a offhand "You almost had me" comment. Like, that was the only part of the game where I felt like an actual badguy.
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Mar 9, 2017 16:26
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Tiggum posted:Imagine there's a movie with two different endings. You watch the movie and see ending A. Now you want to see what ending B is like, but for some reason you're not allowed to see it without watching the rest of the movie again. You just saw it, you know what happens, it's still fresh in your mind. Why should you have to waste two more hours of your life rewatching the movie you just saw for ten minutes of extra content? It's an absurd restriction. Edit: I just remembered, something similar to what you describe already exists; have you heard of such a thing as a "Director's Cut"? 2house2fly has a new favorite as of 16:28 on Mar 9, 2017 |
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Mar 9, 2017 16:26
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Tiggum posted:That's not what I said though? For a start, it's a choice by the writers, not the characters, and they could just have had it play out differently. Like, there are places in Dragon Age: Origins where you can lose current or potential team members by making the wrong choices, but there's no good reason to ever make those choices. You don't gain anything by it, you're just being punished for not knowing ahead of time what the writers wanted you to do. Yes, it makes sense for Wynn to turn on you if you say you're going to kill all the mages, but why is that even an option if you're not supposed to pick it? you pick the bad option because you bought a role playing game and are playing the role of a bad guy. did the game give you fair warning about what consequence that choice would result? if it didn't then yeah that's the writing's fault.
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Mar 9, 2017 16:43
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spit on my clit posted:the thing dragging down Last Light for me was this fight with a giant tank. i just could not kill it. There is a giant fuckoff sniper rifle near the wall facing that boss, pick it up and giant glowy red weak points pop out to be nicely shot. Usually you are told this weapon exists by a helpful NPC who at any moment if you do poorly enough at repelling the initial assault can and will eat a bullet.
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Mar 9, 2017 16:50
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I'll never understand why people argue with Tiggum, he's so goddamn dense he could be used as reactor shielding.
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Mar 9, 2017 16:51
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Unexpected consequences dished out with no warning for apparently arbitrary reasons are good writing. Losing control over where the story and your character are headed is fun.
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Mar 9, 2017 16:54
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Tiggum posted:Imagine there's a movie with two different endings. You watch the movie and see ending A. Now you want to see what ending B is like, but for some reason you're not allowed to see it without watching the rest of the movie again. You just saw it, you know what happens, it's still fresh in your mind. Why should you have to waste two more hours of your life rewatching the movie you just saw for ten minutes of extra content? It's an absurd restriction. Because Clue is a totally great movie and the jokes are good twice over. This entire argument is predicated on the assumption that it's not good to assume the player would want to play a game twice, which is a thoroughly retarded assumption to make. If you personally don't like to play a game twice, then that's fine and your thing, but that's not a "thing dragging the game down" because clearly there are people that do like that; it's just a personal taste. There are plenty of good games where you see the entire world in one go. RyokoTK has a new favorite as of 17:01 on Mar 9, 2017 |
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Mar 9, 2017 16:58
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Guys it's goddamn Tiggum. He's loving messed up even by the standards of goons. Stop arguing with him.
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Mar 9, 2017 17:01
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RyokoTK posted:Because Clue is a totally great movie and the jokes are good twice over. truest post in this thread
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Mar 9, 2017 17:14
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Somfin posted:Because the point of Bioshock is that Andrew Ryan's great chain and Frank Fontaine's dog-eat-dog philosophies, both of which encourage taking everything that you can at all costs, are both wrong. It is making a point. Giving you the option of doing the obviously and blatantly wrong thing and then punishing you for it is an acceptable way to prove that point, as is rewarding you for doing the obviously and blatantly right thing. The problem is that Bioshock doesn't actually punish you for harvesting Little Sisters and arguably doesn't strictly reward you saving them, either. The choice ultimately boils down to a little bit of extra Adam for harvesting and a few extra exclusive plasmids/tonics (plus various supplies) for rescuing them, none of which are particularly amazing. If there's any meaningful difference it's that harvesting gets you Adam at a steady, unerring rate while saving them forces you to wait for the thank you gifts with one large lump sum that appear after every three rescues. The choice might've been more interesting if the game was hard enough, and your abilities scaled dramatically enough, that having more Adam now was actually a temptation over being forced to wait.
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Mar 9, 2017 17:31
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Slime posted:Guys it's goddamn Tiggum. He's loving messed up even by the standards of goons. Stop arguing with him. Tiggum and Guy Man, two interlocked cogs eternally turning at the heart of an idiot universe.
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Mar 9, 2017 17:49
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What about MisterBibs tho
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Mar 9, 2017 17:57
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John Murdoch posted:What about MisterBibs tho
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Mar 9, 2017 18:04
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MisterBibs is too busy talking up the "great value" he gets from spending real money in idler mobile games.
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Mar 9, 2017 18:11
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I've got a loving problem with this new Ghost Recon Wildlands game. You can get into the trunk of pretty much any car as a passenger, but there's only a couple models that then let you open it up and shoot at stuff while being driven around. It's the only way to travel and it's a god drat travesty you can't do it in every car.
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Mar 9, 2017 18:13
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RyokoTK posted:I killed all those children because I wanted to use Force Lightning without an MP penalty. To be honest I liked it in the context of a star wars game. It's a universe where morality is established to be at the level of a 5 year old, so just run with it.
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Mar 9, 2017 18:23
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What are people even arguing about right now? Content like, bad person action leading you to not be able to do good person actions later on, or something else entirely? I can't even tell what's happening anymore. Content: Something about the protagonist's face in Horizon Zero Dawn seems kinda off and it bugs me. It's a lot worse when she was a kid though so hey, baby steps I guess.
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Mar 9, 2017 18:55
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RareAcumen posted:What are people even arguing about right now? Content like, bad person action leading you to not be able to do good person actions later on, or something else entirely? I can't even tell what's happening anymore. She's lived out in the wilderness her entire life and it's drat near perfect is what gets me
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Mar 9, 2017 19:03
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RareAcumen posted:What are people even arguing about right now? Content like, bad person action leading you to not be able to do good person actions later on, or something else entirely? I can't even tell what's happening anymore. Pretty sure it's "content" like the House Guilds in Morrowind, where selecting one (usually, mostly) locks you out of the other ones. Which is good, choices with consequences are good, and if I'm enjoying a game enough to want to spin up a new character in it having fresh content that I know I haven't seen before is awesome.
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Mar 9, 2017 19:05
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Len posted:She's lived out in the wilderness her entire life and it's drat near perfect is what gets me From what I've seen of things, life is all bows and excessive cardio so I guess that makes sense? But really, the thing is no one wants to play an ugly person in a video game unless you can design them that way yourself.
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Mar 9, 2017 19:07
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