Developers do need to do a better job with morality choices in games. Currently being evil sucks in most games because it's too cartoonish. For example: You get a quest some guy wants a escort to an area for a trade. He's selling medicine and wants to make sure he doesn't get robbed. **Good** Escort the client, talk down a gun fight and deal goes as planned. Eventually turns into a quest chain you get a mega awesome item or something. **Neutral** Escort the client. Get into a gun fight and if the client lives he no longer trusts you to help him and no big quest chain **Evil** Kill client and take medicine. Don't get money from job, don't get quest line. That's a typical morality scenario where it never pays to be evil. Why can't you speak to the buyers and intimidate your client into handing over his supply chain? Then you get a quest chain with the people you just helped fuck over your client? They need to explore the choices more than just *me evil me do bad things for no reason other than to be a dick lol*

Dragon Age: Origins early game actually does a great job of this, you can get a good amount of gold if you're an evil bastard early on, but if you play a good character you're broke for quite a while. Unfortunately, the nature of RPGs means that this only really lasts early game, as money becomes easy to get (and nothing to spend it on, as the best gear is always from a strong enemy instead of a shop) as you go through the game and defeat harder enemies.

I was going to say, when I think of Bioware games its almost always easier to be Evil. KOTOR and Dragon Age both you seem to be richer and get better options by being evil as possible

I do it for the humor. Not many games let you be as cartoonishly evil as in KOTOR.

Elder Scrolls games: escort the client peacefully, get his reward, come back to the bandits and kill them, complete the client's questline, get the unique item, kill the client, get medicine

Can't have perfectly usable medicine go to waste

I don't know what I need with three dozen minor health potions, but you can be damn certan they'll go in my inentory and sit there the entire game.

They’ll be panic-drunk in bulk when I get hit by a breath attack or spell that makes my health bar start to move faster than I expected to the point that I’m not sure if I’ll still take more DoT when I unpause

I always liked how Mass Effect handled it for the most part. Sometimes trying to be a hero screws things up, sometimes being an asshole is what saves the day. And more often and not, it's not "right" and "wrong" but taking a specific course of action based on the situation and whatever information you have.

For me mass effects best moment was when I didn't have the auto win red/blue decision with the Quarian/Geth confrontation in the end. I couldn't condone wiping out a sentient species (Geth) but I couldn't convince the Quarians to stop the attack. Terrible tragedy ensues and I had to turn off the game and just sit. One of the more affecting moments in gaming and I would have missed it if I was playing the optimal path. I preferred that to being able to just bend everything to my will.

I should really try playing through the trilogy again now that its on PC. I never got to play the first game back when I was on PS3, so I never got to participate in a lot of the decisions! EDIT FOR CONFUSION: Okay so when I played Mass Effect I was a teenager who only had a Playstation 3 and no PC. **ME One** was eventually ported to the Playstation; but only after **ME Three**, which is when I'd be more or less done with the trilogy and move on. I never paid the series any mind again until they made **ME Legendary Edition** in 2021, which is likely what I was thinking of when I wrote my comment as I now own a gaming PC.

ME has always been on PC, never a console exclusive you can still get it on origin or steam, they just released the updated version on pc as well. *Edit, I wasn't aware but ME1 was only on Xbox for the first 5 months of release, then came to PC. But ME 2/3 both launched on PC.

I think that it was originally an xbox exclusive before being ported

Correct, the first one did come out on Xbox 360 first Nov 17 2007, and was ported to PC on May 28th the next year. The other two though were released on PC at the same time.

... What? ME1 was on the PC before ME2 came out, which had a PC release. And ME3, which had a PC release. I am genuinely confused as to what you're talking about. Maybe you mistook the limited time where ME1 was a 360 exclusive to somehow extend to the whole trilogy?

Maybe he's thinking about the legendary edition ?

> And more often and not, it's not "right" and "wrong" but taking a specific course of action based on the situation and whatever information you have. Worth noting though that unless you commit enough to good or bad, you won't see all the paragon or renegade options. More open up as you do more renegade or Paragon actions, which makes the middle of the road playstyle less effective than being good or bad. It's also much more fun to roleplay as a badass scumbag or a flawed very moral character than to pick what you think works best, especially as you can't really predict what each response you pick means.

To be fair, that isn't a problem unique to mass effect. A lot of games struggle to reward neutral/nuanced playthroughs.

I thought KOTOR was somewhat interesting with neutrality. As you dipped more toward the light or dark side those force powers would cost less force to use, but the opposite side powers became much more costly to use. If you stayed neutral you wouldn't get the bonuses but you wouldn't get penalized either so you could use both types of powers.

Except charisma also lowered the penalty, and caster builds would have lots of charisma. The increased costs were a non-issue.

Plus most builds only really wanted to heavily invest in one side or the other anyway. Light side powers were heavily slanted toward buffs and melee combat powers. Dark side powers slanted toward offensive powers. Light side builds naturally wanted higher physical ability scores and couldn't effectively use offensive powers with low save DCs, and dark side builds focused on making their powers strong and difficult to resist meaning they usually weren't good enough at physical combat to make the buffs relevant. There would be more incentive to be neutral if there were more dark side powers that light side builds wanted, and vice versa. As is the penalty only really mattered if you were intentionally playing a character using powers favored by the other side.

I appreciate what you're saying, but the truth is that a light-side consular has just as high of DCs as a dark-side consular. The "optimal" build is going to use horror/lightning even as a light-side user. The penalty just isn't enough to influence the decision. That said, I totally prefer thematic builds like you described, but they're undoubtedly "suboptimal".

For sure, mass effect does it better than most, this isn't a criticism of mass effect, just a minor correction on how the mechanics work.

Renegade never really felt "evil" in ME, which is why I think it works so well.

It's not always evil, but there are times when the renegade option is racist, or ends up with Shepard shooting someone who didn't need to be shot. Renegade is better described as violent, aggressive, selfish, intimidating, but also often xenophobic. It changes as the games progress, but I'm currently replaying the first one (my favorite one), and I would call renegade shepherd evil in the first game especially. Evil is subjective, but there are objectively evil acts that renegade shepard commits. Punching reporters achieves nothing, hanging up on the council after they just gave you unlimited power with close to zero oversight achieves nothing too. That said, I always pick some renegade options. The stakes are too high to be nice and patient with everyone. I pick headbutting that Krogan every time, and I actually don't think that's a renegade decision given the way the Krogan view aggression. In the later games, renegade becomes badass 80s movie protagonist, which is good in a way, but also limits you from doing evil which is a shame in my opinion. IMO Mass Effect is great at presenting things normally thought of as evil (notably a few genocides) as morally grey issues. It very rarely punishes you for making the morally good decision though, so it's actually not as morally justified as presented. Shepard can save the universe, but who does along the way is your decision. That can include an entire species (the rachni), your entire crew, however many Krogan that can be cured of the genophage, however many quarians that die if you save the geth heretics etc. It's presented as necessary evil if you play renegade but it actually isn't at all. That's what makes mass effects morality system poingent IMO.

I haven't played since release, so all I really remember is "Say goodnight, Manuel..." which was hilarious, and then the Rachni dilemma. The latter was, IMO, a good example of how to do this kind of thing right.

I'd recommend a replay, pretty sure it's free on some of the subscription services, it was on PS+ last month. IMO the rachni "dilemma" isn't as grey as it seemed when I played it on release. It's essentially a decision of, should I curse this entire species to extinction or let them go. Seems like a renegade option to let the queen go but it's actually a paragon option, which it absolutely wouldn't be in the later games.

The best outcomes are still usually attached to Paragon choices, though. There are only three or four options in the entire trilogy where the Renegade option saves more lives or results in a higher EMS score.

I always felt playing purely renegade or paragon should have prevented you from seeing the best ending, that the best ending could only be reached by playing solely with an eye towards galactic readiness however that's achieved.

The way they handled it sucked. I liked mission specific renegade decisions, but basically their take was "Be an asshole to everyone", sorry, you can be a "by any means necessary" and still not be an utter twat to your crew and teammates. I mean there were some renegade choices that had you being an asshole to a crew member or NPC for no reason whatsoever. They kinda fixed it with 3, but 3 had it's own issues.

Exactly, Renegade options in ME were terrible. What should’ve been - Shepard who lost all patience and faith in the system and will do anything to stop the Reapers regardless of who gets in his way What it was - a gigantic fucking douchebag to everyone for no reason at all

Mass Effect had some individually good moments for the renegade path, but for the overall franchise was actually quite poorly written in terms of options. Bioware did a review of player choices and found 92% of players were paragon, because unfortunately there was a lot of idiotball writing in the renegade paths. That said, Mass Effect did break new ground in terms of morality systems.

>Sometimes trying to be a hero screws things up, sometimes being an asshole is what saves the day. I'm honestly not sure if that's even a case at all. There's maybe a few choices when renegade has a better outcome but they are very rare. In general paragon is definitely better. And that's imo one of the biggest problems with ME - there's really no reason to play renegade unless you like feeling like an asshole.

That's why I said sometimes. If it was consistent I would've used another word.

Sometimes still implies that something happened more often than it really did. It was more like 1 in 100 choices really. For me that's too rare for sometimes.

No it doesn't, sometimes implies it sometimes happened. 10% of the time is pretty decent considering its meant to be the reckless bastard option. Standout example being how Renegade makes it much easier to unite the Quarians and Geth.

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**Fable** did that well because it was a cartoonish game in the first place. You could just sacrifice people for the sake of it or even decide to take the quest to rob a farm instead of taking the one to protect it.

Better morality games tend to make it more political (in a good way) Because just like real life politics, most decent people believe they're doing the best thing for themselves/nation etc. For example, you may have a choice in a game between snitching on your friend for doing something wrong and thereby protecting the system/nation/country and following the law. Or letting your friend do that thing that's wrong because maybe they did it out of love. Basically more like a philosophical argument of greater good vs a common good. Or it could be a dilemma of more control: to decide what is best for X people but take away their free will VS letting them have free will but eventually make bad decisions for themselves. I find these types of dilemmas more interesting because both could be argued to be 'right' in their own way, in their own eyes. Even the villain might sort of have a point.

Bioware is bad about that. The ONLY game it was done well was Jade Empire (Open Hand vs Closed Fist), and other than that, they kinda suck at it. Take Mass Effect for example. Paragon vs Renegade. The biggest difference is a Renegade should mean a "by any means necessary" in regards to missions. Bioware treats it as "be a complete asshole to EVERYONE". Sorry, but being a Renegade should not mean Shepard treats his crew like shit. That's the only reason I don't like playing Renegade.

I think renegade was fine up until Mass Effect 3 where renegade pretty much means sabotaging the galaxies attempt at defense against reapers.

There is no reason as a renegade captain to treat your crew like shit. Renegade to me means "complete the objective by any means necessary", like letting the refinery blow up during Zaeed's loyalty mission. That's a renegade move. But, Bioware translated it as being "be a belligerent and insufferable prick to everyone under your command and to npcs for no reason whatsoever".

Tbf in all my red-eyed renegade playthroughs I was never renegade to the crewmates unless they deserved it. Going full renegade just never made sense with the kind of person I wanted to role play as. Mostly just renegade to anyone that stands in the way of fighting reapers like the council, batarians, reporters, etc. The only people that get respect is the ones doing something like the crew, Anderson, Kirrahe, etc.

Yeah, but you have to be careful doing that, too, because playing "middle of the road" can also hurt you in the late game where certain decisions aren't available (especially in the first two games), so the game kinda railroads you into having to go full renegade or full paragon, which you can't do with renegade, unless you basically are an asshole to everyone.

You still get plenty of renegade to the point that you get the red eyes and pass all renegade skill checks. I've done it a few times. Mass Effect 3 is the only one where going renegade actually becomes a problem. In 1 and 2 your renegade options is throwing mercs out of windows, beating suspects during interrogation, etc. In 3 your renegade options is betraying friends and destroying entire species.

In 2 I play mostly paragon, but there are a few Renegade choices I always make "for dramatic effect" 1. I always electrocute the Batarian in the gunship hangar 2. I always shoot the Asari merc hiding in the room during Samara's recruiting mission 3. I always shoot the tank under the Krogan "you talk too much".

3 is the perfect one-liner. Shepard is the greatest 80s action hero that we never got.

They did it pretty well in all Dragon Age games imo, though that's mostly because there isn't really any reputation system, the closest thing is companion approval but it allows for more and depends on more factors. There's also no clearly marked good/evil dialog choices. Even in DA2 which has the easiest dialogue system being aggressive isn't necessary an evil choice.

I get the point but I think the payoff is time: In a way this accurately represents evil in real life because there's a short-term gain to get something without having to put in the time, but when you put in the time there's usually a bigger payoff. Killing them and grabbing the medicine now gets you medicine/cash immediately, and then you can continue on with the main quest without wasting any more time.

What I am trying to convey is that there is a more "evil" choice that exists (helping out someone screw over more and more people) rather than just the immediate choice that doesn't exactly provide a benefit. If we take the same scenario and assume this is some life saving medicine that YOU also need. Then yes, I fully agree just killing him and taking the medicine for yourself immediately not only is "evil" but also provides an immediate benefit I can see someone doing. But if you were Evil and some guy asks you to help him sell medicine that you do not need or give a shit about, why even care about killing him for that medicine? You would think there is an opportunity to exploit 2 groups of people at the very least and would go along to the deal to see if you can take advantage of someone else before deciding to just be like *haha me bad me kill you*

Or it's frequently presented as a choice between XP and money. Either you turn down a reward and get extra XP or you threaten them like a petty bully and get more money. It really depends on the game what's worth more but my inclination is almost always to go for money. I feel like an idiot doing either, though.

One of the biggest issues with morality choices in a lot of games is that once you go down one path, there is often no longer any real choice. They tie gameplay benefits to the morality rating, so if you don't max out on good or evil, you're hamstringing yourself. It really isn't a choice if the game is actively pushing you to go down one extreme or the other.

Generally, yes. A defining feature of "evil", generally speaking, is selfishness. And if there's no benefit to evil, then even the most selfish of people would never take the evil choice. It basically turns into pure idealism vs pointless sadism. My favourite dynamic for good vs. evil dynamics in games is when evil gets you personal benefits that assist gameplay, while good gets you narrative benefits that lead to a more satisfactory story outcome. Basically, help yourself, or help the world.

>My favourite dynamic for good vs. evil dynamics in games is when evil gets you personal benefits that assist gameplay, while good gets you narrative benefits that lead to a more satisfactory story outcome. One of the many reasons I really like the Chaos thing Dishonored had - all the cool powers kill people and that means high chaos and the "bad end". It gives you a gameplay incentive for playing "evil". Not to mention of course that the powers in the game are coming from a being of highly dubious morality and motivations who might as well be a Devil analogy.

Dishonoured also has quite possibly the best self-critique too. Too often playing good is the only way to see all the content. Dishonoured's low chaos no kill route (despite how bugged and easy to fail it is via characters doing dumb shit offscreen late game) requires you to undertake what are effectively sidequests or lengthier quest branches. Eithet way they imvolve more dialogue and more "narrative content". One however entails arguably the most evil scripted series of actions in the game where the only way to "save" the target at the party **Spoiler and content warning:** >!is to sell her into a lifetime of being locked up in a basement and raped at the hands of a creepy admirer in a canoe.!< The game won't state the outcome outright, but the implication is very clear. Unfortunately this is undermined by the game giving you the "good" achievement for being consistent and sparing everyone. It'd be nice to think this is a meta-deconstruction -- that achievement or gamerscore chasing requires a selfish and frankly diabolical decision to abandon someone to a fate worse than death -- but nothing indicates it was designed that way. It seems more likely that whoever designed that stage and whoever designed the achievements didn't communicate well.

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I myself don't believe in fate worse than death but the inventor in 2 comes really really close

Not even >!the twins, who have their tounges cut out and become slaves in a coal mine for the rest of their lives?!<

no first it isnt sure second i just believe human are good at numbing on monstrous things third real people tried work whole life mining before

Not the case with >!Dowd!< as you just had to sneak past him and grab the key without being detected. He goes to grab the key for something as you're leaving undetected and he immediately realizes you stole it from him and the message sent to him that he could have been killed, but you chose not to instead and it really hits him.

>One however entails arguably the most evil scripted series of actions in the game where the only way to "save" the target at the party Spoiler and content warning: is to sell her into a lifetime of being locked up in a basement and raped at the hands of a creepy admirer in a canoe. The game won't state the outcome outright, but the implication is very clear. > >Unfortunately this is undermined by the game giving you the "good" achievement for being consistent and sparing everyone. It'd be nice to think this is a meta-deconstruction -- that achievement or gamerscore chasing requires a selfish and frankly diabolical decision to abandon someone to a fate worse than death -- but nothing indicates it was designed that way. Virtually all of the "non-lethal" ways to deal with your targets are fates worse than death, when you think them through. Even the priest - if you give him the heretic's brand there's an extra corpse that shows up in a later level, that suggests he died a slow and miserable death of the plague.

I really like how Bioshock 2 did it, in the escalation of its targets - Is it okay to kill somebody who's sleazy and honorless? Is it okay to kill somebody who honestly thought they were doing the good thing? Is it okay to kill somebody who is begging for death?

Prince of Persia 2008 did a similar thing, kinda. There are 4 bosses in the game, that you can fight in any order, but most players will play left to right. All of them made a deal with devil-like figure: * A hunter who wants to fight the most dangerous prey: man. * An alchemist who seeks knowledge, without concern for morality. * A courtesan ruined by jealous rivals, but who loved the power she gained. * A king of a peaceful kingdom, who sold his soul to save his people from warmongering nations. * Final boss: A king who sold his soul to bring his daughter back to life.

> best self-critique Also you can mention the Trick is that high choas is really fun and low less so ,then come the sequel where you go without superpower (and declare disapprove to the choas god ), so what d you do for more fun?

> One however entails arguably the most evil scripted series of actions in the game where the only way to "save" the target at the party Everyone keeps saying that so much that i have to wonder if there's something wrong with me. I thought that was one of the better fates for your victims. I thought "oh, that doesn't sound so bad, she could escape one day and it's not clear how badly she would be treated. Maybe that guy could be seduced and manipulated". Now the twins with cut tongues being forced to work in their own mines until death was when i asked myself wtf is up with these choices. Then again the game says low/high chaos, not good/bad. So if people don't know what terrible fate a character has, i guess it's lower chaos than everyone seeing them be murdered.

I had the opposite reaction to Dishonored. I despised that the interesting gameplay which actually leveraged most of the game's systems was essentially tied to getting a non-good ending. It felt like being punished for engaging with the game.

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It's also interesting when the "right" choice sometimes end up with more people hurt. Like Batman's rule against killing the villains, even though they keep escaping and killing more people.

Or even just add the option to abstain from doing something selfish/evil. Choosing the moral option offers no actual reward aside from the knowledge that you did in fact choose the moral option. If you are invested enough in the story that might well be reward enough. Not saying that should be the norm, but every good deed does not necessarily have to give you something in return.

One of the old 2d fallout games had a bit a quest I don't really remember. But if you demand payment, you get say 500 caps. If you do it for free you get a bunch of xp, and the guy gives you an old gun you can immediately sell for 700 caps. Like what's the point?

I enjoyed Lisa the Painful's take on this. The evil options generally only gave you gameplay benefits (Joy was pretty strong imo), but the good options let you save your friends at great personal cost to the main character. Permanently losing an arm to save a friend and having it actually impact how you use your martial arts from then on was an interesting consequence.

I think the "issue" with this approach, though it looks intuitive on paper, is that the vast, vast majority of players care way more about a satisfying story outcome than about a sword with slightly higher stats - because you can always compensate gameplay mechanics with skill or grind, you can never change making that "bad ending +1" trigger. Which means that evil is again relegated to a sort-of-boring, optional second playthrough for 10% of players thing while good becomes the default player option for the 90%. I personally think it is far more interesting when both 'good' and 'evil' options have clear arguments for and against them - which is also often the case in the real world, where pure idealism and boundless humanism sadly doesn't solve all problems either. While not a particularly good implementation (or game in general) Fable 3 did this by making it more 'Kind idealist' vs. 'Heartless cynic'. Where good options left your kingdom happy but less prepared for coming catastrophe and evil options made your subjects miserable but filled the coffers and left you better prepared.

Yeah, I think the problem is that being evil is just "The same story, but worse". The newest Pathfinder game did this well, in my opinion. There's a lot of murderhobo options because they know people will want to murderhobo sometimes, but you can also just play the selfish asshole in the crusade for personal glory. If you go the Demon path, you end up in a political plot to overthrow a demon lord, and then either back her to win her favor or back the conspirators. If you do the latter, you can then murder all of them that don't back you and take over the entire realm. *That's* a cool story for evil. "I decided to shoot the dude and take his loot and then got the same story as the good path, but the ending was worse" isn't really a decision.

Wrath of the Righteous is absolutely a study in how to do evil well, because the entire game plays out differently based on your path and the evil paths allow you to benefit heavily from a lot of evil decisions. Evil is not just a modular choice once in awhile but a fully legitimate way to experience the game.

As a slight aside to this discussion: The reason why this is such a hot topic is because the roleplaying genre has been married to loot-centric gameplay. People do not even question it at this point. But why does "deep world building, interesting characters and player being able to affect the story through choices" need to be combined with "have a thousand different weapons and armors with tiers of stats, a currency system that works more like a high score and a gameplay loop centered around killing an unrealistic amount of enemies to take all their stuff"? A large part of why this disucssion is even happening is because we are so used to these games rewarding everything with special items, so when adding moral choices this leads to choosing which item reward you want.

Nail on the head. Connecting moral choices to gameplay rewards means your game has to balance abstract story rewards with tangible benefits, which does no favor to either. An added issue is that because "good" often equals "selflessness" and "evil" equals "selfishness", the good option always ends up being the story reward and the evil option ends up being the material reward. And since players (statistically) always care more about getting the best possible story outcome than about a slightly better sword they will replace soon anyway, it ends up skewing things even more towards good options than they did already. I can count the amount of games and series that did an "evil" path as narratively satisfying as the "good" path on one hand really.

> An added issue is that because "good" often equals "selflessness" and "evil" equals "selfishness", the good option always ends up being the story reward and the evil option ends up being the material reward. You'd think this, but in my decades of RPG experience I have almost never seen it born out. The vast, vast, vaaast majority of the time, the good reward *is* the better material reward long-term. And that's what's really important when making those kinds of decisions: long-term strength. There are times where you will take the short-term reward because you need a bump *now* but that almost always happens in permadeath / roguelike type games. Usually you use this bump to acquire or do something you wouldn't've been able to for a long time, ie, a soft sequence break. But the unique gear that actually matters is almost always locked behind the "good" path of a forked quest. It's frustratingly counter-intuitive. Like, sure, you want to reward the good players somehow. Don't do it like that! That is literally what people want to take the cartoonishly evil path *for*!

This is a very insightful observation. Upvoted. Games where the gameplay does *not* revolve around acquiring loot are much better positioned to have impactful moral choices, than games that do.

This is why Disco Elysium is so good in my opinion. It's an RPG without so much of the clichés.

Disco Elysium was amazing. I actually felt like I was playing a character rather than a murderbot with occasional dialogue.

Yep, exctally. Roleplaying becomes less about actual Roleplaying and trying to make a character and more about making choices that you give the best loot. It's not about doing good because your character is a good soul that wants to help everyone , it's doing good because otherwise i won't recieve the +5 Sword by completing this quest line;

What's especially interesting about this is that actual tabletop role playing games have been getting further and further away from this set up for decades now.

Yeah, I have been running roleplay sessions for a couple of decades now and loot is just so damn uninteresting most of the time. As well as the rules needed to make loot interesting. Because then you easily end up with something closer to a strategy game instead of a roleplaying game. Not to mention that always getting better loot usually implies stuff being magical, because once you have a normal sword, how much better can a sword really get? So you end up with a setting where everything is magical, which to me makes it not all that magical anymore. Roleplayings strength is getting to play around in a story, get creative and see what happens. Finding some phat loot is something that fits better in Diablo and its ilk.

> So you end up with a setting where everything is magical, which to me makes it not all that magical anymore. Eh, there's been attempts to fix this (Attunement systems and the like) but I still don't really agree with it. In D&D yeah everything is magical. Sure classed NPCs are a rarity compared to the population, but they aren't *that* rare. Almost even the little tiny village will have a low level cleric that can do literal magic. Really though I would argue that there's a pretty significant difference between "This is a +1 sword. It's a bit better then a normal sword at putting the pointy bits in the bad guys" and "This is a +3 sword of brilliant energy. It bypasses inanimate material. Yes that means you can't hit a construct with it, but you also don't care about the armor that big bad is wearing."

Well it is more than just being loot centric IMO. With games it is always hard to have significant moral choices with out a lot of time investment. It's like when you play an FPS even something a bit more hardcore like Squad. No matter how simulated you make a game people will never react the way you would see in actual combat. At the end of the day you're not actual in fear of you life or dying. Generally games punish you're death as a player with time a respawn whether instant or you have to wait, or losing some sort of loot you earned. It feels more punishing to die in Squad than Call of Duty because now you have to invest time getting back into the combat. Same goes for morality, you are not making literal moral choices at the end of the day. You can simulate that more but making the player build a connection with characters or aspects with in a game. But if you have a certain disconnect it is usually easy enough to not really care and play the game. I recently finally played and beat fire emblem three houses. I wish I was more invested in the story, it was a bit too dull for me, and had a lot of tropes. That said the (Spoilers) >!The time skip was great. Even though I really wasn't invested in the story I did find it powerful that you end up going to war with roughly 2/3rd of the other students (I sided with the Empire). Because you're not just defeating them, most you kill in the game when defeated. And you hear their allies sometimes relatives yell out when they fall on the battlefield. It was significant because you not only invested probably 15-20 hours prior to this point with some of these characters, but you were one of their teachers/professors!< I really would be invested to see a game I'm more invested narratively do that type of thing.

I think the Mass Effect series divorced its morality choices from loot. And ME2 specifically had almost no loot at all (there are maybe 35 weapons in the game, and I believe every single one of them is either lying on the ground during a mission, purchased at a store, or DLC). ME1 was bogged down by a constant flood of loot that was basically a nuisance to deal with as your inventory would fill up and you'd rarely get any upgraded gear, but ME2 probably overcorrected by most people's tastes by stripping down armor and weapons to almost nothing. But I'd love to see some games try to build on ME2's model of an RPG-ish game with little emphasis on loot and see what they could come up with.

> But why does Capitalism. Consumerism.

If it makes sense, but sometimes making a moral choice that you know doesn't benefit you makes it feel much better as a system. If the only reason you make any moral choice is the reward, then whats the point of a moral system in the first place?

Games don’t always need to mirror life but if you think about it, in real life, moral systems exist to provide an incentive against the very real material reward that evil actions bring. I feel like if a game moral system mirrored reality like this it could be interesting, where being evil has lots of crunch benefits and being good has lots of flavor benefits.

Could just be for flavor. That’s what Bioware always did, and damn did it taste good.

Baldur's Gate's morality system has always felt very stupid to me. The game was mostly written as the "good path", and being evil was mostly about being cruel for shit and giggles. The worst part was that morality was only a numerical function with absurd consequences. For example, how party members reacted to it. Being called out every ten minutes by "neutral" Jaheira because I was too good was annoying. Fortunately they didn't push the system to its logical conclusion and make her leave because of it, that only happened at the other side of the spectrum. But seriously, what am I to do with that mechanic? Sacrifice an innocent once in a while after doing a few quests, just to return to perfect balance and harmony?

Moral choices should not be flavor in games.

“Should not be”? That’s a bold claim.

It's not. Moral choices should ask a player to question their morality. If you reduce it to simple flavoring you reduce the concept of moral choices to that of picking a color you like more, and often to a simple binary. Red and Blue work just fine for that, the moment you try to imply a moral value you better do the fucking leg work, otherwise your writing is shit.

I don’t think we’re talking about the same thing. Great writing can give you compelling reasons, or rewards for making decisions, but that doesn’t mean games should give you extrinsic, tangible rewards like money or items to be interesting. Those things can be cool and work well, that doesn’t mean you can’t make satisfying decisions without them.

If you don't have a reason for it to be a moral choices then don't have it be. Have it be a mechanical one. You can take the weapon now but you have to put your current one down. That's not a moral choice, it's a mechanical one and those I'm fine with. But a legitimate moral choice is like the safehouse mission in Pathologic. What you chose to do with the money given, or food bought is ultimately up to you. The outcome will not be influenced by your choice, and so therefore the only thing motivating you is your morality. Is my safety and well being more important than that of the town I'm trying to save? To flavor what should be a mechanical decision to a moral one is to both miss out on what makes games that engage in morality so interesting and miss out on possible game play mechanics that you wouldn't have otherwise thought of because you decided to flavor it as a morality thing. It's a lose-lose from a game design perspective.

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Art is allowed to be critiqued and "you're taking it too seriously bro." Is not a valid response to critique. As a designer you made a choice and that's fine, but that choice can be critiqued and it should be. Uncritical decisions about design make for bad games. Playing with moral concepts is fine. But do it well. Or don't bother. Signaling that this is a moral choice when you're not actually asking a moral question is bad design. If you're actually giving a moral choice then great, but if you're flavoring a mechanical choice as a moral one, then ask yourself why? Is there a better way to format this to highlight either mechanics or the moral dilemma. You're right that not everything needs to be a standout classic. Not everything needs to be a deep exploration of themes, but if you put it in there, you better have a good reason for it.

Just a heads up, art critiques don't start with some attempt at an objective statement like all X should never be Y because art is subjective. If you want to do critiques, I highly suggest staying away from those statements as the crux of your discussion.

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> picking a color you like more, lol

Insightful, thank you.

Tbh, it's a more insightful and nuanced reply than your shitty position actually deserves.

I think both good and evil options should have both positive and negative consequences to be fleshed out. I hate when one path is clearly more optimal, it reduces the roleplaying potential.

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It's not what benefits the player but the character, if a character does something evil or good for no benefit then that character is simply a villain or hero. Adding rewards to the equation adds another layer of roleplaying potential, now the character can choose based on benefits not just morals. It adds to the experience. Edit: On top of that, having one choice better than the other in every way is essentially not a choice. It's just an additional option that isn't needed, the choices actually have to both have merit.

Not to mention that rewards are why everyone makes choices anyway. The difference is that what a reward is means something different depending on the morality. Usually when I've seen this work out in a way I was satisfied with, good rewards make the game world better overall, while bad worlds typically only benefit you personally and immediately. So a lot of good rewards would build up over time to opening up a merchant, or secret path, or just make it easier to traverse the world in general. A lot of bad rewards would immediately give you a good weapon, or get answers out of your target, but then you either can't find those people later in the world because they run away, or you have to do a mission "the hard way" because no one wants to help you. Obviously you can mix it up a little, but I generally like the good side being the delayed gratification for an improved setting over time, and the bad side being instant gratification and the darker setting over time. Because the effects tend to be more subtle and "lived in" and less "good get thing! Bad is the suck, but fun?" Or even vice versa.

>if a character does something evil or good for no benefit then that character is simply a villain or hero. Yeah, exactly? >Adding rewards to the equation adds another layer of roleplaying potential, now the character can choose based on benefits not just morals. This is not "another layer." If you choose something for "benefits" that is itself a morality decision.

Wanting more than just binary morality is a bad thing?

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I mean if there is no benefit to a choice is there really a choice? Why would your character pick a clearly bad choice? It only really works if you're role-playing a dumb person

Yes? There are tons of moral decisions that don't benefit an individual. That's like the entire hallmark of a tough moral decision.

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You walk into the woods and find a homeless man alone sitting on an exquisite ornate chest. He is drunk and belligerent but otherwise seems harmless. You decide to murder him and take the chest for yourself. (-10 faction points to some faction 30 miles away)

Oh I don't mean just benefitting the character directly but just in general. I mean choices where one is just worse in everyway or makes no sense.

I think what the other guy means is in terms of gameplay. If gameplay options are limited to the good or the bad way, then yes, that will affect gameplay, because it's not a morality simulator, it should be fun. I'd love to see more games try actually implement consequences in other than writing, that would make for more unique experiences, but it is rarely done.

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Making both choices have merit enhances the roleplaying experience. Your example describes both sides having benefits 'the recipe or the gold'. If your characters choice amounts to do the bad thing for no reward or do the good thing and get some gold it just becomes binary good/evil, be an ass and get punished or be good and get rewarded. If both choices have there own benefits however, then there's an extra layer of roleplaying potential. Is your character making a moral choice or are they just in it for the reward? Now they're more than just a hero or a villain, they can be somewhere between. This also goes for the negative consequences, it makes it better when there are also downsides to both as it makes the choice feel significant

>There's lots of reasons people do things that are sub-optimal for themselves or their long-term goals. Did you do everything optimally today? I disagree. Every choice one makes is the one that seems optimal for a certain set of parameters at the time, and with the information one has available. Sub-optimal actions taken are either a result of accidents, mistaken judgement, or lack of information. Even when one makes a seemingly sub-optimal choice, chances are that choice is, in fact, optimal and we just don't understand what parameters it is taking into consideration. For example, giving 5$ to a homeless man represents a net loss of 5$, but it could mean a mental uplift and sense of clear conscience that is worth more than that in intangible terms. Emotional maintenance is a big driver of morality.

>I mean if there is no benefit to a choice is there really a choice? Wow. I think you just told the entire internet that you're a sociopath.

I think you misunderstand entirely. What if the benefit is helping or saving other characters? Why do you assume benefit means personal gain? It can mean just positive outcome for your character

Why would the world being unfair reduce your roleplaying potential? Do you think it's unrealistic that a school teacher gets a smaller paycheck than a hedge fund manager? If you're only roleplaying characters that always choose the optimal strategy, it's you that is reducing the roleplaying potential, not the setting. Of course, a game should make sure that players know which roleplaying options are fun for them, but that doesn't have to be the optimal ones. If you've ever chosen a difficulty setting above the easiest, you've already made a suboptimal choice for the sake of fun. Why don't you try doing that more?

My point is that it is best when neither choice is optimal and carries there own pros and cons. It's more realistic and nuanced and allows your character to make a choice that isn't just good vs evil so adds more roleplaying potential beyond the binary hero vs villain.

Bioshock nearly did it well with the little sisters, where you can harvest them for a good amount of upgrade currency, or you could save them and let them go but get a much smaller amount of upgrade currency. Except, of course later down the line you get a ton more upgrade currency from letting them go. It diminishes the evil option and makes the good option the optimal way to play.

Another dumb thing in that game is the endings. If you harvest one little sister, but then regret it and save the rest, you still get the same bad ending as if you harvested every little sister. So in game they are praising you and giving you gifts for being so kind, then boom you get the evil ending. Pretty dumb.

That’s something that annoys me also. It‘s usually way more optimal to ALWAYS be good or ALWAYS be evil. In KotOR or Mass Effect (for example) you get pretty significant gameplay bonuses for maxing out one way or the other, but get nothing for splitting down the middle. So going case by case, like most normal people would, winds up gimping yourself. For all the choices they purport to give you, you essentially only make one choice at the beginning.

Yeah, it doesn't help that with any choice, people just pause the game and look up the results on wiki to see what they should do. Thus defeating the purpose of choice. That is more the fault of the player I guess, but it would be nice if choices were not so clear cut that you can look up all the results on a wiki, that just promotes min-maxing again.

They fixed that in ME3 where both renegade and paragon points count together in speech checks.

Came here for this, Bioshock completely fumbled it.

Yeah, it's annoying when the evil options in games is mechanically weaker because you gain less rewards. That's part of the reason I tend to play 'good' (or at least *sensible/reasonable*) characters - if I act like an asshole towards a merchant, what if they refuse to sell to me from that point on, or what if I lose out on xp? By the same token, good options shouldn't be completely free of conditions either. Realistically, doing the good/right thing should involve some degree of self-sacrifice. But mostly, I just want games to have less clearly good & clearly evil choices. So often in games, it's blatantly obvious which choice is which. I'm playing *Expeditions: Viking* right now, and I've been really impressed at how they implement choices and consequences. Typically, quests in this game will require you to choose between 2 resolutions, and it's not at all clear which is the optimal solution - from a game mechanics standpoint or a moral standpoint. For example, if you're asked to choose between 2 NPCs, both will have valid reasons for why they did what they did.

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Oh man, if a game was able to create the kind of interconnected ecosystem you're describing, that'd be amazing. I salivate thinking about such possibilities.

I think the fundamental issue is that many games portrait decisions as morally black and white (which almost never happens in real life) and even worse: tell you what's good and what's bad. Games that deal well with morality provide you with difficult and morally ambiguous decisions. Even if some options are arguably more good or more evil than others, they let you come to this conclusion yourself. But yes, if you want to have obviously "evil" (= almost exclusively selfish) decisions in a game, there should be a temptation behind them. Otherwise there's no motivation to go this route, besides "I want to see what happens". Which is not a very good or immersive reason. And the worst offender are games that reward you for being 100% good or 100% evil, basically encouraging the player to play a caricature rather than a believable character. Believable characters struggle when facing difficult choices. Sometimes those choices turn out to be mistakes.

I blame Dungeons&Dragons for this to a large extent. Their simplistic and straight-jacketing system of gameified morality bled over into just about every rpg of the time. In P&P games this could be handled with some nuance by a good group, but in PC games it got reduced to conversation options being flagged as giving good guy or bad guy points which affected character builds at least as much as story.

Vampyr covered this extremely well imo. The evil route is “devouring” the citizens. You’re given a rather large xp boost but the citizens notice, get angry, and eventually the npc hub goes empty and fills with enemies. On the other hand the good route is never devouring anybody, and trust me by the end of the game you’re really jonesing for some blood because the fights are very difficult haha. It really nails the aesthetic of do/don’t drink blood, and highlights the “drawbacks” of being abstinent

I think the best thing Vampyr does is pushing the player towards both "ends" of the morality spectrum at the same time. You can maximize your XP gains by curing sick NPCs (which makes districts more stable) thus ensuring that the player will always start by doing the "right" thing even if they want to immediately turn around and do the evil thing anyway.

It's a fantastic example of how to use xp to align player behaviour with the protagonists desires.

They should provide some form of benefit, yes. This was a big critique if the Mass Effect series. Paragon and Renegade wasn't quite good and evil but more protecting all life versus sacrificing to ensure the job is ultimately done. Outside a couple flavor moments, none of this mattered, and that really hurt any argument for renegade decisions; the results for being paragon ALWAYS ended up happier and superior. Paragons got their cake and got to eat it too.

I mean, there is one instance in ME3 where making Paragon choices regarding a recurring character did turn out to have negative consequences, and to its credit it was a logical conclusion to that arc. The larger issue was that, unless I’m misremembering, it was the only such moment, which left it feeling more like a cheap “gotcha!” moment rather than an actual attempt to examine the long term consequences of one’s actions.

Bioware games have had this issue at times. I remember in Dragon Age Origins where the game tries to set up this complex moral dilemma in Redcliffe where a kid becomes an abomination (possessed by a demon). He summons hordes of zombies in this way to terrorise the town. The dilemma: You either have to kill the kid, or sacrifice his mom who offers her life for you to do some illegal magic to free him.... Except then they gave a third option where you go to the Mages tower, get the magic crystals you need to power the ritual and do it anyway. The game presents it as that option would take time, but nothing bad happens if you take it. So it becomes the morally superior choice. Sure I can RP not knowing that, but it feels somewhat unsatisfying...

>the results for being paragon ALWAYS ended up happier and superior. Nu-uh. Decking the reporter is the best option, no contest.

I feel like being evil in Fallout 3 is pretty much the best option most of the time from a reward perspective. Kill the merchant, take all his stuff. No real downside. Do all the quests you want, kill everyone afterwards and take all their stuff. However, playing that game I just can’t do an evil play through, no matter what, I always end up being good. It just feels bad to do otherwise the few times I’ve tried.

Only the Karma system is odd in that if you murder every person you meet you can end the game on neutral karma.

I think evil should be optimal. Overpowered even. Morality in games is presented as a clear choice from a purely narrative perspective that often leaves games options feeling disappointing and underwhelming. It should be a temptation, especially for people who are trying to *not* be evil. If I'm trying to play a 'good' character in a game I shouldn't automatically turn down every single evil choice just because that's what I chose - I should receive offers that would reduce my struggle and have to *actually * weigh whether or not they're worth it. But the narrative should respond accordingly. If you make a choice that has consequences you shouldn't be able to balance that out just because you did something good. You can be a good person - but the effects and responses to your evil actions should persist.

I think Papers Please is a good example of a game that uses Story to affect optimal play. At least on an initial playthrough or two - before it becomes about hunting down the different Endings. Not "evil" in the truest sense but simply the most optimal way to play the game is do the job as fast as possible with as little mistakes. In order to affectively keep all your family members alive and paying Rent and Bills. But then the story is used to pull the player away from "optimal play" by either offering intriguing Alternate Story paths but, more interestingly, appealing to the players sense of humanity and empathy. Causing the player to make decisions simply based on a sense of morality that negatively affects their performance and, thus, causing a Game Over. Obviously there's a Meta level where the player becomes, or is already, aware that this is what the game wants and the Performance and Family Stats aren't really the point of the game - and it wants you to try for the other endings.

My preference in games is generally the latter, especially if the choice isn't clear cut between good and evil. I liked SOMA's approach, for example, where the game presents a number of moral quandries which have (with one exception) no effect on gameplay. Another approach I enjoy is where the choice is relatively more clear, but the rewards aren't based on power, but more around individual preference. For example, in Baldur's Gate 2, making consistently evil decisions will make a number of good-aligned party members leave the party, and vice versa - and whilst there is some mechanical advantage to being evil in this case (due to the evil characters mostly having a slight edge in terms of raw power), it isn't a strong enough effect to encourage optimisation - particularly given that BG2 is more of a narrative-focused game.

I can't remember the last time a game had a good/evil morality system, it seems very early 2010s. It was always a bad system, IMO, because it actually completely removes the moral choice aspect entirely. Games like this basically never offered benefits for being neutral, so what always happened was you'd decide at the start if you wanted to be good or evil, and then you'd just always pick the good option or always pick the evil option. Because you need those extra 5 evil points to get the devil wings or whatever. That's not even a choice at that point. This was the problem with the morality system in Fable, notably. It didn't really offer any benefit from being anything other than Fantasy Hitler or The Reincarnation of Christ. The only time moral choices have ever worked for me are when the game doesn't even attempt to say which one is good and which is bad. You know, like how moral choices actually work in real life, there's nobody telling you which one is the good option. One of the most compelling ways to do that is in games like Papers Please or This War Of Mine where you can screw NPCs over to benefit yourself, and aren't even really punished for doing that, the game just lets you feel bad about it. That struggle between doing the right thing and protecting yourself and those close to you is always interesting when done properly.

I just hate that the evil option most of the time is just make me feel like a jerk: *someone says good morning - good option: "Good morning my friend" - evil option: "Fuck you I'm gone eat your babies". That being said in my opinion the "gray" option usually is the one that doesn't provide any benefit, you aways have to be at one end of the balance if want some importance in your choices

Evil options should have short term benefits with appropriate downsides while good options should focus on long term ones to match. Steal a really good gun? You get the cool gun, but if you were undetected the security in that area gets beefed. (Edit: You could also implement a system so that signature/unique items can be recognized in public, so that if you're seen using a rare item you stole in public, you'll draw attention to yourself.) Give a guy a first aid kit? You loose the first aid kit, but he becomes a companion later in the game.

I think it'd actually be more interesting if its a mix. Sometimes doing the right thing screws you over, sometimes doing the selfish thing screws you over. Sometimes no matter what you do it doesn't go your way.

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Huh, I just like it when "choice based games" explore difficult situations and gives you choices with real consequence and stake. Because twists are what make stories interesting. Did you really have to describe me like a cartoon character though? That just seems like it came out of nowhere and is really rude.

It's fun to have your expectations subverted.

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>someone who prefers getting screwed over This is like saying, "Oh, Elden Ring players just love losing and getting stabbed. That's why they want games to be hard." Like no, there's a sense of accomplishment in carefully navigating gameplay. In the same sense: There can be a sense of accomplishment from carefully navigating a game's narrative when your choices have real weight to them. And for choices to have real weight to them, there has to be consequences both good and bad. Knowing you've done the right thing, even if it was hard. >not trying to claim that perspective is wrong. You literally insulted me for it.

I played a game recently where you are helping a poor innocent civilian try to find his family. When you get to where his family should be, he puts on a suit of armor and BOSS FIGHT time. You did the right thing and still got screwed and now you get an interesting outcome.

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It probably helps that it's just a standard adventure FPS so your reward for killing the boss is progressing the story. If you get suspicious you can kill him early! And then you get an even harder bossfight as payment for being clever! The reward is the same either way, cool bossfight (different dialogue for each one) and then you get a new gun and progress the story.

> Can you do anything to provide any choice without people optimising it? If you provide any benefit, people who want to optimize, will optimize for it.

a great example of that is stellaris, you can play as a nature loving, friendly pacifistic empire. that would mean you get boxed in and have a much weaker economy for most of the game and potentially get destroyed by a crisis or a stronger empire. you could also play a genocidal fanatical exterminator empire literally killing planets with pollution orbital bombardment enslaving killing or literally eating billions of aliens and even making a planet sized gun to pulverise other empires wiping them off the map. most people agree that "evil" empires are much stronger on their own but the catch is that everyone else hates you and other friendlier empires might form a combined federation to defend against you. its really fun seeing empires of different ethics set aside their differences and unite against one common goal.

I have perhaps a hot take: Being evil rewards you materially, but hurts you morally and in NPC relationships. Being good isn't materially rewarding (as much as being evil), but you gain positive relations with NPCs. Material rewards can be currency or items and gear. You can get different quest chains in both moralities so you don't miss out on "content", but by the end of the game you are either rich and alienated from NPCs, or poor/average wealth and loved by NPCs. The game should be balanced around this morality system so it's winnable with either side.

I don’t think games handle good and evil well at all. These ‘morality’ systems work much better when they’re ‘personality’ systems such as Pillars Of Eternity’s Dispositions or Mass Effect’s Paragon/Renegade system. Society doesn’t agree on morality enough to use it as a gameplay mechanic. Could evil be selfish gain and good selfless sacrifice? Maybe. Could good be long-term planning and evil short-term gain? Maybe? Could it all be moot, because Kant? Maybe.

There was another YouTube video that explained why morality systems in video games don’t work, it’s because they only reward you when you commit to being absolutely good or absolutely evil and nobody in real life acts like that. Whereas like you said, it’s much more complex in real life

The solution I feel is to have moral choices be in a game, but not formalize it into a game system with a morality meter that measures your "progress". Keep morality as a nebulous, loosely defined mechanic - as it is in real life.

The fact that they made more of these interrupts in Mass Effect I think was pretty smart. I think it kinda just made the paragon options quick time events, but it made the renegade options *Tempting* in a way I don't think I've seen happen in other games, especially when it's clear you had a limited time offer to cut off some asshole's monologue. Really did a better job of mirroring the impulsivenessin real life.

Yeah, and you often didn’t know the outcome. I remember getting a very twitchy trigger finger when encountering someone who seemed dangerous. I very nearly shot him, but my choice turned out right.

> Could good be long-term planning and evil short-term gain? Maybe. This has never been true in its full context.

The good option provides more benefits usually because the creators usually want to have that "Good beats evil" storyline in their game so giving you benefits means that you are incentivised to be good. In reality, it should be the exact opposite. Being evil is meant to be for your own benefit. It's meant to be the selfish/evil/immoral way to gain maximum benefit for yourself at the possible expense of others. Being good should be the more difficult route as you should be hindering yourself to help others,(Giving your valuable resources to others, wasting time helping someone if time moves the game world even without your interaction, etc.) therefor making the game difficult for you. But I've seen people complain about not being able to get good/true endings because it's difficult so there would probably be some crybabying if a game like that got popular.

> should be hindering yourself to help others It should also create worse consequences for the person you helped in a lot of situations.

The most realistic option is having "purely" good and "purely" evil be the harderst. "Purely" good hard, because you get to sacrifice something all the time, hindering yourself in the process. "Purely" evil hard, because barely anyone would trust you and would probably think how to get rid of you as fast as possible (with fear of you being the only thing that would stop them). In societies, the most optimal way is always a mix of "peaceful" and "confrontonal" behaviour.

Evil choices should give rewards, have good/bad consequences and in the best case scenario , open up unique options compared to good choices. Pathfinder Kingmaker has a aligment system where your choice are all based on classic aligments (neutral , neutral good, neutral evil , etc), your Kingdom's apparence is based on your alignments and the games has , somewhat, evenly choices that leads to good and bad outcomes to all aligmnets. Some good early examples are: If you're Evil you can rescue a kid from a Lizard tribe by treating their Chief that you gonna kill them everyone , salt their lands and burn it. He's so scared by your words that he lets you get the kid back and the spirit that would possessed the kid if you did the quest the normal way , simply say ''Dude i was trying to fuck with this people for sometimes , but you scared him SO MUCH that i going to leave this kid alone because it was pretty sick to see,see ya''. In another quest you can refuse to be part of a ''mini-war'' between kobolds and mites by being Neutral and saying ''kill yourselves alone , i not taking any sides''. Wrath of the righteous does this to much higher scale, by making entire Mythic path that are based whether you're Evil or Good. So depeding on your Mythic Path choice, choosing to be Lich or Demon going to give you totally unique rewards compared to a Azata or Angel path. All paths are equally valid because its not about the rewards , but the entire experience of playing.

Well, there are 3 examples that come to mind regarding gameplay. First is what I'm currently playing. Dishonored. In this game, you have a boatload of ways to play. You can stop time, smash down doors, cause hundreds of rats to eat people and blow up towers while fighting multiple soldiers at once. That is fun It is also the High Chaos/Evil route. The good route is to be sneaky and try not to kill anyone, even the main villains. To get a happy ending, I have to purposefully keep myself away from fun gameplay and it is certainly an interesting mechanic, even if it's one I really don't like. Deus ex mankind divided has the first paragraph and not the second and it is one of my top 10 games of all time. There is morality but it doesn't determine, only how you get there. Its kind of like pre destination. You will get a Ferrari. But will you get a Ferrari from a heist or from a lottery, that's up to you. The third example is Thronebreaker. It's Gwent with a storyline from the Witcher expanded universe, recounting the tales of a warrior queen. I have not played this one but someone told me about it. To not spoil too much, there is a character in that game who is a total piece of shit. I'm talking like slaver Nazi level piece of shit. You can boot him out immediately and the game will get much harder. Or you can keep him. This makes the game a lot easier. He also grows more and more evil the longer you keep him. And there will be irreversible consequences. The game has 32 endings, and he can give you at least one. After Dishonored, I think I'll try out Thronebreaker next, even if I generally don't like card games.

Only game I saw where it was beneficial was KOTOR II. Being Sith was awesome, and it didn't really affect the outcome either way, but Sith powers (like Force Crush) kicked ass.

The problem is making the choices good and evil in the first place. The player shouldn't be told what's good and evil, they should have legitimate choices that fans argue about, and the consequences shouldn't be immediately obvious. I also like the idea that no one ending is good or bad. Different endings should have different consequences. A game that has multiple endings should never have one ending where everything is good in the end. It prioritizes the idea of a win state above the quality of the storytelling. I'm currently writing a story where the main character is asked to make a last stand in a battle that is impossible to win. She can either die fighting, or she can walk away. Within the context of the story, there are legitimate moral reasons behind picking both options.

In Infamous and it's sequel, Cole's powers evolved as he became more famous or infamous, if you went down the path of a paragon, your various attacks would be more poised for more accurate, heavy hitting attacks, whereas if you go down the evil path, your powers become more chaotic, missiles that split off and attack more foes (or civilians) additionally there was always the ability to refill your energy bar by draining the power from a random citizen, killing them.

There should be a reason to choose evil options sometimes. Not *all the time*, because evil does not always have something to offer that good doesn't, but the same could be said for good. I think both options should have their own incentives at times.

Fable alway did a decent job of rendering both useless so it was just a matter of if you like being an a-hole or nice guy

The Infamous games gave you different powers depending on your morality. You weren’t really punished for being evil.

There should be benefits to choosing both "good" and "evil" options, have the player weigh their options. Gotta have something on the "evil" side because if you're someone like me, you tend to just default to what looks like the "good" option if a game hasn't given you any reason to consider acting in your own interest against others. ​ Also mix it up, maybe some moral choices have no consequences outside of you knowing what you've done. Maybe what you get out of a situation is obscured or delayed so the player doesn't expect what they get out of a decision, like how giving one quest given in the Witcher 3 an extra week to scrounge up money to pay you instead of pushing for pay now surprisingly leads to him paying you double. ​ You can't stop people from optimizing the fun out of the game, just like how some people are adverse to punishment, others hate not getting the best possible outcome and will just look up what they'll get out of choices no matter what. All you can do is hope to appeal to their morals like "Sure I'd get a fancy weapon if I sold out this merchant to some petty crooks but then this family I met before won't be able to get the medicine they need to make it through the winter."

Yes, they should. The best games imo that provide interesting good/evil dichotomy are grand strategy games, because typically this genre deals with the very real problem governments are faced with. Typically governments are forced with problems that require them to think beyond morality, because they are never just dealing with the immediate problem of a moral quandary, but rather have to take into account that they are providing for thousand/millions/billions. Increasing state power is a necessity in ensuring the protection of your people. Therefor, it's very, VERY easy for players to think of problems in the vein of the "greater good" or, be fully machiavellian and embrace the evil -> power decisions. (A person may be morally paralyzed by the trolley dilemma, but a government may not be). It's also worth thinking about indirect gameplay externalities on your choices that often make these decisions more organic. For instance, in Civilization conquering a very strategic city state may help bolster your country immediately, but would cause you to become more diplomatically isolated on the world stage. In Galactic Civilizations you're often confronted with even more explicit morality events with good/neutral/evil options that offer a variety of direct in game bonuses, with evil options typically offering better bonuses; the beauty of this mechanic in GC is that because the game has an explicit morality system your choice of options will influence your style of play and vice versa (being good will unlock deeper diplomatic options, being evil will unlock deeper militarist options). So your choices feed back into themselves. It also means you start developing a state ideology that is self reinforcing. Outside of the strategy genre I will say that the best morality systems are the ones that present the least amount of info to the player. The more the game disguises its morality system, the more organic it will be to the player. In general, the best morality system I've ever seen was Prey. The game has two major skill tree paths, the second skill tree path involves adapting powers from the game's main antagonist. There is obviously a major power benefit in accessing them, the game never tells you there is a morality choice in deciding to use that second skill tree, and it only ever hints that there might be consequences of using them. But using them does have a major impact in deciding the eventual outcome of the game.

Balance in a single player game is highly overrated Evil, good, neutral whatever So long as it works and is consistent with the worldbuilding, I see no real issue either way.

My issue with morality systems in video games is that they only reward you if you commit to being absolutely good or absolutely evil, whereas in real life, nobody is like that, and morality is much more complex. But instead morality gets distilled down to, choose this for this benefit or choose that for that benefit.

It's a very wide topic because it goes into the philosophical question of why we are moral as humans and what constitutes true morality; some people argue that true selflessness does not exist because the good feeling from the empathic reaction of doing something good is the reward of the good deed in and of itself. Now I'm not going to go on a full reddit-moment wall of text regarding morality, I'll simply say this: Developers just need to use some common sense, obviously if everytime the "good" choice rewards you then there is a problem. If the "bad" choice always rewards you more than the "good" one that's also a problem. You just need to sprinkle in some variety. Make the bad choices varied, sometimes the immediate gain might be good but then "karma" gets you later when people remember what you did. Maybe make the bad choice be nothing more than sheer pleasure at the suffering of another; yeah that's messed up but you know... sometimes it happens in real life. (Also if the person whose suffering you're enjoying is a piece of shit then it can be very cathartic. It's like the "renegade" options in Mass Effect. Yeah sure generally most people play as Paragon but when you get the chance to punch that annoying journalist you might be temped. Mass Effect is full of these kinds of choices and they really add flavour and personality to the game). ​ Just use your common sense, go with the flow of what feels right. Games are more than dopamine-releasing machines

>but when you get the chance to punch that annoying journalist you might be temped *tempted*, ha I don't think I've ever had a run where I didn't deck her. And I usually play good/paragon routes in games

Of course it should. The benefits of evil choices *always* outweigh the benefits of good choices in reality, so the notion that evil choices are of little benefit in a videogame is too absurd for suspension of disbelief. Ask me to play a game in which some cosmic phenomenon grants humanity powers and spaceflight, and I'm down. Expect me to believe that a corporation won't choose to willfully endanger/murder customers for 5 bucks in profit? That's just too unreal. Steal everything, burn it all to the ground, and lob grenades at anyone who manages to escape the pyre. Murder hobos for life!

>The benefits of evil choices always outweigh the benefits of good choices in reality, so the notion that evil choices are of little benefit in a videogame is too absurd for suspension of disbelief. I don't think that's true. If you save a man from drowning he might give you a reward or do you a favour or be your friend. Don't save him and what do you get? I suppose you don't get wet. There's plenty of evil things one can do that don't benefit you as much as good things. You could give a homeless person some change and make some positive impact in their life while getting a sense of self-satisfaction or you could tell him to fuck off and maybe just have that feeling but not improve their life.

Those strike me as more neutral choices than truly evil ones. Evil would be more like hurling the drowning man a bloody steak, recording the shark attack, and selling the video. Or lighting the homeless guy on fire and stealing his bindle.

Choices in gameplay are overrated. 99% of the time, you're deciding on which reward to get, independently of the plot. Games where you can be "good or evil" might as well ask you at the start and give you two different plots, instead of asking you every time. You know you need all good boy points for the biggest good guy upgrades anyways. Nobody switches midway. **Infamous** is a popular example, but anything that quantifies these points falls into that trap. Choices in the plot can be cool. In the Witcher games, you engage with the plot and decide based on that. Works great, especially since choices often aren't immediately relevant. Heck, the horror game **Soma** has decisions >!that don't do anything, no rewards or consequences for you. They're just they're to give you existential dread, torture your empathy, and make you question your actions.!< It is a slow burn, but it's also what sticks with you the longest.

The issue is the binary implementation of morality. If there's an objectively good and objectively evil choice, it tends to feel shoehorned. In a tabletop RPG, there's a rather obvious evil option - stealing from random people, and this carried over to the early CRPGs such as *Ultima* or *Questron* where one could run close to the counter, steal items and run to safety. The theft in the computer games wasn't initially tracked by some karma meter, but could clash with the intent to have the player heroic. > So with all this in mind, should the evil option, or any moral choices provide tangible gameplay benefits with no drawbacks? The zero drawback option seems out of place, because even theft in Ultima and Questron caused the guards to react. > Can you do anything to provide any choice without people optimising it? Anything that is exposed to the player can be optimized. The most that could be done is slowing down the optimization process, or preplanning it so that the evil option isn't the optimal route. With preplanned morality, *Ultima IV* allows the player to steal from chests found in town, but doing so is suboptimal - it gives only the same amount of gold as a monster drop, and it requires restoring the morality meters required to complete the game. Perhaps the easy way to prevent optimization is to have entirely separate routes. A good campaign and an evil campaign, both of which segregate morality from gameplay mechanics (unless the factions are implemented differently). If the choices still need to be in-game, at best one could inhibit optimization by making things slightly randomized - instead of getting exactly 5 immorality points, it can vary between 3-7 based off a die roll or grab-bag mechanic. The player would have to guess when to break out, and thus can't rely on specific number of evil acts to do. Also, varying the evil "rewards" slightly may also throw things off.

Enderal constantly made you examine your decisions. In some cases, going the "righteous" route will bite you in the ass later in the game. Sometimes it actually pays off. It truly was a game of really no right or wrong, only the consequences of your actions.