Moral Effect

The trend of giving gamers a chance to play with the moral football has grown over the years, and many games feature some form of decision-making process that can paint the player, and their character, as a good or bad guy. Some games deal with the most basic of moralities, such as the Infamous series’ approach of being a hero or super villain, achieved by either helping cops and civilians, or doing the opposite with an evil, moustache-twirling laugh. BioShock presents the obvious extremes of saving or killing little girls, which is even more blatant, whilst others, such as BioWare’s Mass Effect, offer a little more depth, with various kinds of situations that force the player to choose their path, often with large-scale repercussions. The devs billed these choices as Paragon and Renegade rather than simple good or evil, but let’s face it, it’s still a good or bad meter. Other games tackles specific areas of morality, such as Catherine‘s focus on being faithful in a relationship.

This is all well and good, and we’re all for injecting some moral choices and development in games. We’ve got plenty of mindless, shoot the currently in vogue evil nationality in the name of freedom titles floating around, so a game that makes you think, and even consider the ramifications of your actions is definitely a welcome sight. The problem with this, however, is that most games simply don’t get it right, or even come close.

As I said earlier, morality is far more complex than good or bad, and so are the results. Most games don’t embrace this complexity, instead offering clear cut good and bad choices. These choices will usually affect your character in either a good or bad, hero of villain way. Rarely do they attempt any real character development, and most of the time the repercussions are simply scripted events, or rail road-style signal points along the story’s time line. What’s more, choice are often delivered in obvious, in your face ways, and can even be controlled and limited. You’re also rewarded regardless of your choice in most cases, so being evil, for example, rarely comes with the kind of consequences you’d expect, or face in real life, removing most of the gravity of the decision.

Take Mass Effect for example, a champion of player freedom and moral choice. Instead of letting players make an important decision organically as Commander Shepard, choosing their own fate, the game often goes into an obvious moral moment, and a prompt pops up onscreen, and you can choose whether or not to execute the corresponding action. Much of the rest of the morality is handled in dialogue trees rather than actual actions, and many choices aren’t even available unless you’re already far enough along one of the two moral directions. So, if you’ve been good throughout the game, you’re effectively unable to even try making an evil decision, and vice versa. This limitation means its not really a moral choice, but a forced decision, and it takes the micromanagement of morality out of the equation , instead setting it up as one, large arcing choice, with a direction you initially choose to head in and stick with.

I don’t know about you, but I know that I made some bad choices, morally or otherwise, when I was younger, but I didn’t turn out so bad as I learned, changed, and developed as a person. Not so for the likes of Commander Shepard. Unless you want to end as a neutral middleman, he’s or she’s good or bad for the duration, as you have to pile in the karma points to be able to unlock the good or bad dialogue choices. If you stay neutral, a lot of these choices aren’t available, further forcing you to choose one or the other.