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Roderick

Why morality systems are a mistake

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Why morality systems are a mistake

What can games like Mass Effect and Fable learn from Starcraft II about player choice and story interactivity?

a. I’m sure both have their own unique charm, let’s not bicker and argue. (+10 Good)

b. Starcraft II has nothing on those games! Burn in hell! (+10 Bad)

The obvious reaction to this juxtaposition is to chuckle at Starcraft II’s linear storyline and extremely limited player choice compared to the rich interlocking of decisions and character moments, not to mention morality systems, in the RPG’s mentioned. But like those games (and many others that have followed in their wake), you’d be making a huge mistake.

Good or Good

The interactive story elements in Starcraft II can be counted on a single hand. There is some choice in the order of missions, which is nice, but not really what’s important here. Rather, there are two or three moments in the game where a self-contained storyline and a clear, binary choice are presented. In the example I’d like to look at, the player is approached by two parties. On the one hand we have a Terran doctor whose colony has been infested by Zerg. On the other a Protoss commander who has spotted the infestation and plans to destroy the colony. Both request the player’s aid for either protection or destruction and have their own, unique level to play depending on the decision. It seems like a straightforward choice the likes of which you encounter a million times in the average ‘moral RPG’, if I may call it that for the purposes of this piece. The way it plays out in Starcraft II, however, couldn’t be more different.

Starcraft II wants the player to be a hero, so it alters itself to accommodate their decision. If the player sides with the Terran doctor, the Protoss are repelled and the colony survives without a trace of Zerg infestation. Should they hitch along with the Protoss however, the colony turns out to have been entirely infested all this time and the doctor a Zerg mutant. In both cases, the player made ‘the right call’. None of the two options was the ‘bad’ one, the ‘evil’ choice, and there are no real in-game repercussions. Is this facile? Is this a childish way of treating the player; a non-story where mistakes can’t be made and there are no moral conundrums? I’d like to posit that it is actually more liberating and more ‘free’ than any of the choices made in moral RPG’s.

Nullifying story

The big problem with franchises like Mass Effect and Fable is that they have systematized the choices. You are either good or evil (Paragon or Renegade). The choices you make reward you with points counting up to some apex of holiness or depravity. You are rewarded for being consistent: reach the top and your avatar grows horns and starts looking demonic, you’ll unlock special quests and regions, not to mention the achievement proclaiming you to be Lucifer himself. This means that you are at the same time effectively punished for not keeping to any one side of the morality coin.

It’s not hard to see where this leads. These franchises, that are built around the titillating promise of choice, choice, choice, only really have one for the player to make, and it’s all the way at the beginning of the game. The player’s first decision locks them tightly into an ever-constricting vice that rewards consistency (i.e. always being either good or bad, regardless of the situation) and punishes wishy-washiness. This pulls the rug completely from under their carefully crafting stories and universes. It doesn’t matter how intricate the storyline is, how ingenious the moral dilemma - I'm getting ten extra Angel Points if I just do the same thing I’ve always done.

The moral RPG’s aren’t completely blind to this and in a bid to give the player some semblance of option they slack the requirements for reaching the top of the moral experience bar a little. This does nothing to aid the problem that the player is still thinking about moral choice in the wrong way: they’re strategizing how to maximize their points for the digital carrot on the stick, rather than focusing exclusively on the (hopefully interesting) story problem at hand. Even worse, oftentimes players would like to do what their heart (or gut, or any other thinking part of the body) tells them to, but feel obliged to stick to the path they chose earlier because of the reward/punishment systems in place. The game becomes an oppressive god, monitoring and checking your actions. Have you been good? No? Then I’ll just subtract these points from your Cherub Bar and you won’t get that badass armor.

Let choices stand on their own

Let’s check back with Starcraft II. How was it again? A simple choice in which no answer is the wrong one and you’re not judged by the game in any way. This allows the player to be fully immersed in the setting, without worrying about artificial tracking systems and contrived morality meters. If I may speak from my own experience, the decision I made in Starcraft II was genuinely more frightening and tense than most of anything I did in Mass Effect or Fable. This was because there was no clear right or wrong answer, no guiding hand or gameplay coercion. I was completely free to decide what to do, based only on elements present in the story, without judgment for dessert.

Please note that the purpose of this article is not to imply that the player must at all times be made the hero of the story, nor that the story has to warp itself around them. Though Starcraft II’s willingness to alter itself was interesting and a fun direction for Blizzard to take, I equally enjoy choices that have real consequences and actual effect in the game. The take-away of this rant then is not to systematize narrative choices. Story interactivity is hurt deeply by systems that reward or punish the player for deviating from a set course, or being capricious and changeable. Story choices should exist in a nebulous context without clearly defined gameplay mechanics latched onto them. Sporting good or evil choices is fine, as long as there is no extrinsic motivation to choose one over the other, or one exclusively. As soon as the player sniffs out any encouragement to take one choice over the other, it becomes a non-choice and might as well not be in the game at all. Worse, players feel trapped in their own decisions. The fun of choosing becomes a cell with the game as Big Brother looming over them.

It might be in game designers’ nature to want to systematize every element of their game. This instinct must be suppressed here. If we want narrative choices to have actual, moral, emotional meaning, they must be kept far, far away from reward/punishment gameplay systems, tracking bars or even achievements. That’s the lesson that Starcraft II offers, in all its storytelling simplicity.

Roderick Leeuwenhart

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I agree with most of your thoughts here, though I fully admit that I blinked in surprise upon seeing Starcraft II as your example of a game doing moral choices well. I see what you were going for, though.

It's interesting to note that BioWare's other major property at the time of Mass Effect's development, Dragon Age, does morality in a way much more consistent with what you're asking for. There's no good/evil slider, and while all the choices have consequences, they don't have objectively better gameplay ramifications if you pick consistently.

The only part of the choice system that was "gamified" was that of companions' feelings towards you as the main character, and even that could be somewhat sidestepped by way of gifts. It still wasn't perfect, but it's interesting to note how different it was to the fairly black and white Mass Effect system. That said, even Mass Effect is better than other good/evil systems because it at least does do the maintaining of heroic status that you were talking about. You're just either a very caring and conscientious hero, or a hero that doesn't take chances for the sake of feelings.

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I haven't played Dragon Age, so my knowledge on that might be a real lack here.

I don't expect a lot of people here who don't feel exactly the same way, this topic has just been on my mind a lot over the years (hence the example of Starcraft II which is already 'old'). Today I had a flash of inspiration to write it down, and saddle you with it :buyme::gaming:

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The only time I noticed morality system sticking out like a sore thumb was with The Old Republic. I was playing a guy who does good, but with "the end justifies the means" kinda attitude. I was getting both light and dark points and felt like i was getting punished for it. Seemed like a bit of missed opportunity too - i mean it's an MMO... they could've spent the beta periods collecting player decision paths and see what kind of personalities/archetypes emerge. Do something interesting with it maybe (i can't think of an example).

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The only time I noticed morality system sticking out like a sore thumb was with The Old Republic. I was playing a guy who does good, but with "the end justifies the means" kinda attitude. I was getting both light and dark points and felt like i was getting punished for it. Seemed like a bit of missed opportunity too - i mean it's an MMO... they could've spent the beta periods collecting player decision paths and see what kind of personalities/archetypes emerge. Do something interesting with it maybe (i can't think of an example).

Reading this post makes me sad, because my first intended character for TOR is a Republic Trooper with that kind of attitude (while still maintaining being good for the most part). But it also puts the problem with morality systems into the simplest form:

Not enough archetypes / personalities represented. By a long shot.

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You make a good point. I really hate it when I have to make a moral choice depending on a vague dialogue option, only to find out I don't agree with that option at all. It doesn't feel like I'm controlling that character.

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Why morality systems are a mistake

What can games like Mass Effect and Fable learn from Starcraft II about player choice and story interactivity?

a. I’m sure both have their own unique charm, let’s not bicker and argue. (+10 Good)

b. Starcraft II has nothing on those games! Burn in hell! (+10 Bad)

I spent the whole article waiting for the RT trigger to show up so I could Krogan head-butt somebody.

Mass Effect does a decent job of integrating your decisions into the story, regardless of the points you get. If there's any bonus to being completely Paragon or completely Renegade I'm unaware of it. My Jane Shepard split her responses almost down the middle and still unlocked all dialogue options.

I suppose that anything with points is something that can be gamed, but I didn't let that get in the way of my role-playing.

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Material / mechanical reward is also another annoying aspect of morality choices. The developers should consider only narrative implications when making them.

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I agree with you, although I haven't played KOTOR / Mass Effect / Fable a lot (started the first ones of each but didn't finish). The Witcher (both I think) is another good example of morality system that isn't really a morality system and doesn't make you think you chose the wrong path*.

[edit]* well, maybe it does sometimes, but it's not because of the pushing towards good/evil, but more about "hm... this is not what I wanted to happen, I'll try the other evil, maybe it's lesser". I think there are not that many places in the game where the consequence is immediately seen, though.

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I liked that KOTOR had a morality system, that makes sense. Star Wars is a very black and white universe with clearly delineated lines. I guess it works in Fable too, with its very exaggerated and child-like outlook on good and evil.

Still, it's something i've grown to hate, for the story and gameplay problems that always arise from morality systems.

I think a lot of the points i'd make are the same ones Rodi has made.

I also find it a problem though, when you realize that your view of morality doesn't mesh with the one being pushed by the developer. (The real world being shades of gray and all that.) Fable 3 had some really strange incidents, and all of the Mass Effect games have had moments like this.

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Hey Rodi, if you want to post this on The Gaming Vault, let me know. It's a small site where we write for free mostly to get experience, but it's still a nice platform to publish stuff on. =)

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Yeah man, I'd love to! Do I need to use a CMS to input it myself or are there crafty editors willing to copy-paste it from above? The formatting is straightforward enough. All we need is a graphic.

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I agree with you on a lot, but the example you give of how Star Craft II does it, is pretty much a non-choice to me too (in terms of narrative). Neither choice is wrong, but it essentially boils down to "Which unit would you rather have?". Do you ultimately affect the way the story plays out on a macro level? It might, but I don't remember because it was too long ago...

I remember talking about Dragon Age Origins on these boards, and how liberating it felt to not have my choices connected to good and evil points. Morality as a gameplay system is a rather oppressive one to me.

Of all games I've played, the Witcher 1 and 2 still have some of the best examples of player choice. Set in a grey area and outcomes that are almost never immediately apparent. That's not to say that there is no room for clearly defined choices of good and evil; I think, as systems, they need to be more nebulous to the player. The player needs to decide on the morality of a choice, not the designer.

Edited by PiratePooAndHisBattleship

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I really wish someone would do something about it!

Aren't almost all of the developers doing something about it by not putting in morality systems?

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Aren't almost all of the developers doing something about it by not putting in morality systems?

That's a step backwards, I guess, because there's real potential if they allow moral choices without making a points system out of it.

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I'm not clear on exactly what constitutes a "moral choice" in a game if it's not part of a points system or some other specific "morality" mechanic. Since NPCs are basically just robots going through a fairly simple set of instructions, morality doesn't apply to them in any real sense. By necessity, it has to be an illusion supported by having them react to the player's choices in different ways. And if you're doing that, there's always going to be some kind of numerical system underneath it (unless you're just dealing with every decision individually, completely free of context, which seems less than ideal). I don't think the points themselves are the problem; it's just that they're too transparent.

The problem I have with most of these systems is that I feel like it's actually kind of antithetical to the way morality actually works, which is that you make decisions to the best of your ability based on what you think is right, without knowing what the outcome will be.

The most satisfying version of this that I can think of in a game is Fallout 3. You have a "karma" score, but there's no real reward for going to either extreme, and it can actually be beneficial to maintain neutral karma. In dialogue options, you're never told what's the "good" or "bad" option (or whether that's even applicable) and sometimes your actions have unintended consequences and something that you thought was a good idea might go wrong and get you the opposite karma from what you were expecting. Characters get killed, quests become inaccessible, etc., but the game is malleable enough to give you lots of alternatives and there's never really one option that's clearly the best one. In that game (and even moreso in New Vegas), I always felt comfortable making decisions based on what I actually thought that I (or my character) would do or say in that situation, rather than because I was thinking about my karma or what reward I'd get. (In fact, I actually tried to start an evil character to see some of the quests I'd missed by being too good, but I couldn't do it because I felt too bad about being mean to everybody.)

I haven't played Starcraft II, but having the player turn out to have made the right call no matter what does strike me as a cop-out, narratively speaking. I'd like the game to be flexible enough that I can't just accidentally screw myself over and make it unwinnable/un-fun by making the wrong choice, but I do want there to be some sort of consequences to my choices, otherwise why have me make them?

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I'm not clear on exactly what constitutes a "moral choice" in a game if it's not part of a points system or some other specific "morality" mechanic. Since NPCs are basically just robots going through a fairly simple set of instructions, morality doesn't apply to them in any real sense. By necessity, it has to be an illusion supported by having them react to the player's choices in different ways. And if you're doing that, there's always going to be some kind of numerical system underneath it (unless you're just dealing with every decision individually, completely free of context, which seems less than ideal). I don't think the points themselves are the problem; it's just that they're too transparent.

The difference is that the NPC's would act like real people. Your actions would have cause and effect. Therefore you would be making your decision based on repercussions to your character, not just because you're "playing paragon".

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(unless you're just dealing with every decision individually, completely free of context, which seems less than ideal)

This actually sounds like my ideal. Some decisions may provide context for others, but I don't see why a game would need to keep track of how good or bad you've been in order to allow you to be good or bad.

If there are consequences for my character doing something "evil" than I want to see those specific consequences. What I don't want is the game to reward or punish me based on being good or bad in general. Why must all games that give you moral choices insist on realizing some sort of karmic justice?

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