T0ast On Jam: Morality

A lot of games claim to have great karma systems or moral decisions for the player to experience but in most cases this is far from the truth. While many games are introducing us to the concept of being able to make a decision during a cut-scene that will influence the story and change people’s perceptions of the character. Mostly however, this is not true.

InFamous, great as it was, made morality look like a joke when near the end of the game when I was already undeniably evil, I was given the choice to either save or kill a man. Now, this was how the whole game went, your selection of choices did not sway to whichever side, good or evil, you were going but rather presented you with choices that were on completely different ends of the scale throughout the game which were comparable to: give a baby a lollipop or shoot it point-blank.

Moral decisions should adapt, if you have chosen to be good, by the end of the game you will not want to kill random strangers so you shouldn’t be given the choice to. Mass Effect 2 had a good idea with the character being set as a good guy but you get to choose whether you will be the ruthless sort of anti-hero or the Superman-type do-gooder. Ultimately though this does not affect the final outcome of the story and does not change the story in any significant way in most games.

Of course it is always good to see a developer trying to make the story interactive and allowing the gamer to think that they have some influence over the path which the story or character follows but that’s just it, they imply that the player has control and influence when they don’t. There is a scripted story which someone has written and which they do not want you to screw up.

Sometimes, moral decisions may not have much hold over the story, although they can affect the outcome of the game i.e. who dies, who lives etc, but they can simply be choices which test the player’s own morality and make for really interesting and deep gaming.

Now, the reason I’m talking about morality in gaming is that Heavy Rain may just be the way forward on games where moral decision becomes a key-feature. There are situations where you must make a decision based on the character’s various thoughts and they can really reflect your own intellect and personality; do you choose to be aggressive or calm, negotiating or accusing. You feel these decisions having an impact on the game when you may have been too aggressive and you lose a key witness and in fact there is so much scope in the game that about a third of the way through it is possible for you to cause the PI, Scott Shelby, to die. Also, these choices stay within the character’s personality. It is a very interesting take on morality because some decisions are minute: do you play with this son or the other one, while some may be something that develops the character: do I kill this man or not. Ultimately it makes for a very immersive experience that draws you in and almost makes you feel for the character.

This may not work in other games where you’re busy memorising button-mashing combos but it certainly works for Heavy Rain’s simplified control scheme. The main problem with morality and moral choices in games is not the choices you make but rather the fact that not much effort is put into the game’s karma system. Usually a game will allow you to purchase moves and powers that either correspond to good or evil and you can only purchase these by acquiring either good or evil points respectively. So you can only purchase the evil power known as ‘Sadistic Fire Heathen of the Underworld’ if you kill 2 million innocent people but can only purchase ‘Fluffy Cloud of Purity’ by hugging 100 people. So all the ‘deep’ moral decisions are there for is so that you want to play through the game twice, once for good and once for evil. More bang for your buck as you might say but all you’re really doing is playing the same game with the same story twice except with powers which are slightly different but largely the same. So not really that much more bang then is it?

Moral decisions in games are not a bad thing, in fact if done well they can add very well to the immersive aspect of the game. The main problem is that developers don’t put enough effort into these and it becomes very laughable when by the end of the game you are decidedly evil but you still have the option to save people you don’t care about. Honestly when playing Spiderman: Web of Shadows I was faced the decision: save Wolverine by ripping the symbiote off him or slash him in half. This is pretty much how bad it is in just about every game where they decide to throw morality into the mix.

Today was another one my ranting days but I really needed to blow off some steam. Anyway, this is just another call for you guys to ask us those questions which dwell on your mind. Basically ask us anything you want with regards to gaming.