you'll have to forgive the morbidness but ive been playing silent hills all day. now ive noticed its become a wonderful little fad to have morale choices in games, but its rare im forced to do something horrible or pick the lesser of two evils to get a good outcome. even bioshocks method of making you choose wether or not to eat little girls had no real effect given the game played exactly the same either way due to the little adam drop offs the little sisters leave you.
so the idea i had was that every so often in a game you are given a choice, sacrifice your own body to let someone else get away unscathed. heres an example: you've just been in a car accident and your arm is trapped under the car. the person you are supposed to escort is cornered by baddies and you have two options: break the bone in your arm and cut it clean off to get free in time to save him/her, OR let that person be killed and wait for an ambulance to arrive. if you dont save them and take the selfish path you keep your arm and all the gameplay benefits it holds, if you choose to sacrifice your arm you do a good deed, but for the rest of the game you are severely weakened because you HAVE ONE GODDAMN ARM.
any thoughts on this? my theory is by kneecapping the main character and increasing the challenge four fold, players will actually have to make a tough decision: save a character you like or play with a distinct advantage.
Even that choice would be bad with the wrong context. After all, it could lead down the same "play it twice for two endings" crap that these systems have spawned for many years.
Okay idea, but it wouldn't really be fun, most people would just choose the gameplay benefit. Also, kind of nitpicky, but how would you save your friend with only one arm? it would be hard to fight off multiple baddies with one arm.
I guess the problem is that big decisions bare big ramifications. Would it be that fun to play as a guy with one arm in a shooter? Probably not. Generally I agree with you that morality choices in video games don't really have much effect on anything, but that's by design. If it was a real-world choice, most times gameplay would end up being compromised just as you say.
The morality choice that effected me most was in inFamous.
In the mission where you chose to save either the doctors or Trish, I meant to save Trish but I accidentally scaled up the building with the doctors and the game wouldn't let me go back. I felt like a piece of crap, because I was making the decisions in the game based off of how I would act in real life, and no matter what I would never save a bunch of people over my girlfriend. That's just me, as selfish as it might seem from a spectator's standpoint. Later of course I learned that even if you chose to save Trish she still died - but it didn't make any difference at the time. That decision hit me hard.
So I guess that the choices that work best are story based. Good writing can make a massive distance. I saved the little girls in Bioshock just because they were cute.
"Okay idea, but it wouldn't really be fun, most people would just choose the gameplay benefit. Also, kind of nitpicky, but how would you save your friend with only one arm? it would be hard to fight off multiple baddies with one arm. "
well for the sake of argument, you pick up an empty beer bottle off the ground, smash it over one guys head from behind, stab the 2nd one in the face with it, then just as the third one is looking around slog him in the jaw with an uppercut. and its kinda the idea that most people would pick the gameplay benefit, thats what makes it a hard choice. ordinary people probably couldnt bring themselves to make the sacrifices heroes are so often portrayed making. i always wished bioshock gave you almost NO adam if you chose to save the little sisters. as such you are severely underpowered and desperate for any break you can get. hell maybe if (i know it doesnt make sense it terms of plot but roll with me here) if you didnt save the little sisters you didnt get access to the vita chambers
Take your arm clean off? What the fuck was the point of breaking the arm in the first place then? This game is stupid, I'm going back to playing Sonic >_< *picks up Sega controller*
Say it with me, Robotic Arm. You should also have the choice to stab out an eye, then get a robotic one. You'd be Terminatin' the hell out of the rest of the game.
But if you couldn't get that upgrade, I'd probably keep the arm. Unless the other person could give a really good benefit, or if the person who needed the escorting could/would pay you (or the person who wanted the guy to be escorted could pay), then you should be able to use that money for the Robo arm. If not, then I'm keeping the arm.
Arm > Random Person who needs Escorting (without really good benefits).
This idea is kinda implemented in Space Siege, which is a horrible game btw, and you shouldn't play it.
Essentially, you turn yourself into a cyborg, or keep yourself fully human. Being human means you're weaker, but means you can get the 'good' ending. You also get some really powerful thing at the end or something, or so the game keeps trying to hint at. i never played past the first 5 minutes.
Army of 2:2 is tryign similar crap, with little to no real meaning. The first one is, you shoot a guy in the head for 7 grand, and he nearly kills you, or you let him go, hug a puppy, and some asshole in a snorkel caps him a week later. Its really hard to make it work.
If you ripped off your arm you'd most likely die from blood loss, not to mention you'd probably feel too weak to even stand up let alone fight and defeat 3 guys at once.
Most people would most likely just go for the "let that random fucker die" option too, so it wouldn't even matter. Even if it had some massive effect on the story the developers would probably be making too much of a deal about the moral decisions to care about a half way decent story.
" Take your arm clean off? What the fuck was the point of breaking the arm in the first place then? This game is stupid, I'm going back to playing Sonic >_< *picks up Sega controller* "
@graniteoctopus: that sounds kinda cool acctually.
i mean you only need one arm to shoot. and if you are right handed and you have to sacrifice that hand/arm, then it just adds to the exitement cuz then you will have to shoot with your weaker hand/arm and miss alot of bullets while for example you get chased by bloodthirsty zombies ^^.
@Fudgeblood: what if you were forced to watch a character you had grown to be fond of be brutally raped while you couldnt stop it? would you let that happen for your own sake?
Market research shows people don't want real consequences; they want to feel like they're changing the world, but they also want every benefit from every branch. Having the cake, eating to too, etc. The only way to get away with 'real' consequences is to have time travel so you can negate it yet keep your reward. Like in Majora's Mask or something.
Everyone is giving this guy flak for his "example". Its the main idea he's talking about you fools. I think it's a great idea. Decisions that effect the whole game in a different way, change the whole experience. Instead of just a character you can't play with or a planet you can't do a couple missions on.
Well, moral choices that would make them game a lot less fun or ruin the game-play wouldn't be very fun. I like the idea as long as it doesn't make the game bad.
This would be best if it where a dynamic situation in that the initial situation was not scripted. That would get it away from the issues @ryanwho came up with and would make it even that much cooler.
It'd be cool if there were more games that gave you lots of really impactful decisions.
I was playing Star Trek Online Beta the other day and there's a quest where you have to walk around to NPCs and listen to what they say then you get quizzed. Well I didn't bother listening to the NPCs, and each time I guessed wrong I was given another chance to guess. It was so stupid and gamey.
@TMThomsen: fable 2 tried, but all it did was effect what your character looks like. to quote zero punctation unfortuntely peter molyneux hasnt yet grasped that not everyone gives a shit
I prefer moral choices that go the entire other way- when you don't know which option is the 'worst'. My problem with moral choices, even ones with heavy impacts like you mentioned, is that at the start of the game I'll generally say to myself 'I'M GONNA BE GOOD THIS PLAYTHROUGH LAWL' (Yes, I internally monologue using word 'lawl') before I've even started the game, and choose every good option that is presented without even fully considering. Then i'll play through again and be evil. The game may as well ask me what playthrough I'm going for at the start, and keep me on this path. Choices that aren't obviously 'good' or 'bad' are much closer to actual choices if you ask me, as I have to consider them. Mass effect had some great examples of this, though at the same time it had a lot of 'are you going to stab this fool or talk him down' choices where one was obviously evil, and the other obviously 'good'.
" It'd be cool if there were more games that gave you lots of really impactful decisions. I was playing Star Trek Online Beta the other day and there's a quest where you have to walk around to NPCs and listen to what they say then you get quizzed. Well I didn't bother listening to the NPCs, and each time I guessed wrong I was given another chance to guess. It was so stupid and gamey. "
Getting your scrotum phasered if you answered a question wrong would make it even less enjoyable.
" Even that choice would be bad with the wrong context. After all, it could lead down the same "play it twice for two endings" crap that these systems have spawned for many years. "
Excuse me, good sir, but I've seen every Mass Effect ending many times, with no plans to stop.
Instead of a choice, just make it part of the story instead. Maybe make the choices part of the solution. For instance, you lose the arm & then get the option of picking a simple prosthetic that can hold a firearm or a sword & then you're stuck with whichever option chose. Although it seems like this kind of game could turn out to be frustrating, not entertaining.
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