Are moral choices poorly handled in RPGs?

[Sigourn]

Fallout is a great example of an RPG with moral choices. Particularly New Vegas. And I feel this is what makes them great examples to convey what I mean. Let's take two separate New Vegas quests:

1. Hard Luck Blues.
2. The House Always Wins V.

Though both of these quests present good moral choices, I find that ultimately one of them is the far superior quest. And that is The House Always Wins V. There are three reasons for that.

1) Receiving the quest forces you to take a stance. Once you receive the quest, you can choose not to do it. That is already taking a stance: if you decide not to do it, you won't be able to continue the main quest with Mr. House, and will be keeping the BoS alive instead. Meanwhile, once you begin Hard Luck Blues, you can simply not do the quest, and nothing will change at all: the dwellers will be alive, and the crops will be just fine, no time limit involved.

2) The quest is emotionally stronger. Regardless of how you feel about Veronica or Mr. House, the truth is that in the best case scenario, you care about Veronica (if you are doing The House Always Wins V, it's implied you already like Mr. House's plans for the wasteland and the future of humanity). Whether you choose to side with House or to side with BoS (and by extension, Veronica), there's already someone you truly care about on the line. I don't know about you, but what I look for in a quest where a moral choice has to be made is that I care about the choice to begin with.

3) The quest has lasting consequences. C&C is always appreciated, but this is what I feel makes THAWV and breaks HLB. Completing HLB while making either choice earns you EXP (100 for helping the sharecroppers vs 150 for helping the dwellers) plus some NCR reputation if you help the sharecroppers. But that's it. Nothing else changes. Meanwhile, THAWV makes you choose between your main faction and a lesser faction, whom you may have grown attached to, not to mention Veronica. You can't simply complete this quest and brush off the results. It's a long term commitment, because there's not going back.

I think that a lot of RPGs fail in making their moral choices matter. Either the player can avoid making a choice with no side effects, either the player's compromise with the moral choice is not there, or either the choice has no major consequences to care for.

Aside from the title question, what do you think are other great moral choices presented in RPGs?

 

[alyvain]

Never cared much about either of those quests, tbh. Still, the good thing about New Vegas is its aloofness, so your moral decisions do not have usual and fake emotional attachment as in other narratively-driven CRPGs.

I don't quite like the Witcher 3, but speaking of moral choices there is one episode that stood out to me. There was a questline of a former Redanian spymaster, who tried to take over the North. You can help him even to the point when he kills Radovid, I think, but in your last meeting he asks you to kill Vernon Roche from the second game and, If I'm not mistaken, Taler.

The "moral" choice seems to refuse his offer and help Vernon and Taler in the bloodbath that'll emerge. But then you basically cripple the North, killing both Radovid and the spymaster, so the war is basically lost because of your involvement.

The interesting thing is that you can fully ignore this questline. But if you're involved, then everything happening next is simply the involvement. Shoud've known better.

 

[ValeVelKal]

Moral choices in RPG are usually poorly done for several reasons :

1 In many RPG, there is a choice between "Loyal Good" and "Cartoon Evil", with sometimes the "I am just a mercenary" variation. Bad people are not doing evil things for the fun of it, they do it because they only care for their interest. Example of a game absolutely terrible at that : KOTOR
2 In many RPG, the reward for being good is not a sacrifice - it is often even better than the "evil" choice.
3 In many RPG, the morale choice has no consequence for the player himself. It does not take away from anything to him personally, it will just change the "end card", and maybe the flow of a quest

Fallout New Vegas (or Fallout I-II) is better than most from that point of view, but it still fail in particular in #2 and #3.

A good morale choice in a game is :
- Not a choice between being "good" and "bad", but ideally a "trolley problem", a choice between two philosophies, none of them clearly better than the other (no "ahah I am an individualist I don't care for people but eh that's my philosophy").
As a RL example of such a decision, I like how Albert Camus explained why he was not for the independence of Algeria (where his mother lived) : "I like justice, but I prefer my mother". That's the kind of tough decision that is great to make in a RPG : between different allegiance of different nature. Between an oath you did and your family, between your family and your country, between an innocent man you don't know and a criminal who saved your life, etc ...
- When there is a choice between a clearly morally superior decision and a clearly inferior one, then the clearly morally superior is a significant sacrifice (not "pay 1000 coins instead of stealing the merchant") : passing over the opportunity to receive a powerful item, losing a companion, ...
- Consequences should be long term and you should ideally wonder for the rest of the game what would have happened if you had done another choice.

The best game in that regards IMO is the Banner Saga. Being "good" even in the minor events often requires you to wait for stragglers, which means losing supply, and if you do it too often you will be out of food and lose more people. Some of the ethical decisions mean sacrificing forever (=death) characters in your roster to save no-name NPC. Basically, in the Banner Saga, it is almost impossible or at least extremely difficult to consistently save everyone that you can save, so you will make choice. Trolley problem;

I think the best designed ethical decision in ANY RPG I have played is at the end of the BS2

Spoiler

You arrive at the human capital that has its gates closed for all the refugees - dizains of thousands of them are now camping outside the walls. If they don't get inside, they will die, as clearly stated by the leader of the refugees (a manipulative bastard that may have tried to kill you before, but is right in this case). You meet the king and given your importance (you have with you the King of the Giants (Haakon) who vouches for you, and possibly the King own son (Ludin) ; those are playable characters you have presumably used again and again in battle because they are strong (Ludin) to extremely strong (Haakon)). The King states that he will welcome you and the people under your banner (from 500 to 1000 by this point) with open arms inside the wall, but he remains firm on the other refugees.

At which point you have to decide whether :
- Be OK with the offer, and let die all the other refugees on the other side of the wall. The idea is that you are responsible for everyone under your banner, but not anyone else,
- Refuse the offer because it means the death of thousands, and ally with someone you know is a bastard to try to save more life. Plenty under your banners will die if you do this (especially all the giants will join the King, so now you have to kill them). Here you are fighting for "the greater good".
To add bite to the decision, if you accept the King offer, some of characters will refuse and try to fight you. If you refuse the offer, your most powerful characters, for all intent and purpose main characters that you have developed since the beginning of the game, not 1 or 2 but up to 5 of them out of around 12, will fight you and you will have to kill them. And the remaining characters are the kind that is less loyal to you than the one you killed used to be, which in Banner Saga terms mean they may leave you.

In this case, taking the ethical decision is very, very costly and will critically chance the rest of the game (ie Banner Saga 3)

Another example from BS, which has plenty of these. No spoiler tag because it happens fairly early on. The endless mook (="dredge") army attack the giant capital through a bridge. The bridge was built in the time of legends and it cannot be in any way rebuilt. You are the "guest" of the King of the giants - the only human with such an honor - tells you he refuses to destroy the bridge. One of your key advisor, clearly the only one who knows what the heck is going on, tell you there is no other way to stop or rather delay the enemy.
Do you :
1. Destroy the bridge, betray the King of the Giant and show him that he should have carried on the policy of "no humans", and also have to fight and kill one of your companion which otherwise could have stayed with you until the end of the saga (there is 75% of the game still to play at this point) BUT give the giants and humans a fighting chance, or
2. Obey loyally the King of the Giants, fighting on his side a totally desperate battle, hoping for a change of mind, or
3. Leave the place, leaving to die all the Giants in their doomed capital. With this decision, the humans more in the South less days to prepare for the dredge onslaught.

 

[Nano]

Bad people are not doing evil things for the fun of it, they do it because they only care for their interest.

This is wrong. There are plenty of characters in media who are evil because it's pleasurable or amusing for them. There's a TV Tropes page for it.

 

[Zer0wing]

Though both of these quests present good moral choices, I find that ultimately one of them is the far superior quest. And that is The House Always Wins V. There are three reasons for that.

And you haven't consider that one is part of the main questline and the other is a mere side quest in a dungeon. I don't disagree that HLB would only win from some minor tweaking (timer and substantional NCR reputation loss and difficulties in negotation with NCR farmers for example) but you're comparing incomparable. Whole main questlines and single sides show different requirements to writers.

Spoiler

You dumbfucking bethestard

 

[Sigourn]

And you haven't consider that one is part of the main questline and the other is a mere side quest in a dungeon. I don't disagree that HLB would only win from some minor tweaking (timer and substantional NCR reputation loss and difficulties in negotation with NCR farmers for example) but you're comparing incomparable. Whole main questlines and single sides show different requirements to writers.

Spoiler

You dumbfucking bethestard

I don't see why you think it matters that one is a main quest and the other a sidequest. It really doesn't. Sure, knowing this fact beforehand helps explain why one is much more fleshed out than the other, but I don't see how one of them being a "main quest" is a pre-requisite for the quest being great.

The issue with HLB is that it makes you choose between two things you never cared about (until this point, the sharecropper farms are just worldbuilding; meanwhile, you weren't even aware there were surviving Vault dwellers in Vault 34) and there aren't any interesting consequences to completing the quest.

 

[Zer0wing]

I don't see why you think it matters that one is a main quest and the other a sidequest. It really doesn't. Sure, knowing this fact beforehand helps explain why one is much more fleshed out than the other, but I don't see how one of them being a "main quest" is a pre-requisite for the quest being great.

Because it's not a major side quest like, say, Beyond the Beef but just a tertiary throwaway to fill some blanks in Vault 34 dungeon late into 18th months development cycle. Time constraints are anything but a thing to not consider. For some reason, Obsidian decided to pack each vault with more than one quest target.

 

[Sigourn]

Because it's not a major side quest like, say, Beyond the Beef but just a tertiary throwaway to fill some blanks in Vault 34 dungeon late into 18th months development cycle. Time constraints are anything but a thing to not consider. For some reason, Obsidian decided to pack each vault with more than one quest target.

I mean, sure, the quest got less work. This is not an analysis about quests getting more time = better quests, but about why this particular quest fails at being an engaging moral choice.

 

[ValeVelKal]

Bad people are not doing evil things for the fun of it, they do it because they only care for their interest.

This is wrong. There are plenty of characters in media who are evil because it's pleasurable or amusing for them. There's a TV Tropes page for it.

Well yes and those characters are usually terribly written.

There are indeed cruel people and sociopaths in the world, but those are extremely rare compared to the "evil by negligence", "evil because of my warped philosophy" people. Having to choose between being a do-gooder and being "For the Evulz" is a really uninteresting choice, repeated in too many games.

 

[Sigourn]

Having to choose between being a do-gooder and being "For the Evulz" is a really uninteresting choice, repeated in too many games.

But is this a moral choice then? I've always taken "moral choices" to mean a choice not between "good" and "evil", but between two "good" options that have can't coexist with one another (or have their own downsides).

 

[Horvatii]

Never in my life, even as a child, have I evaluated quests based on moral compass. As god is my witness.
Also not on some kind of play pretend childish character.
If you do, you are a moran.

Also, people who say they do are lying. They always make exception when it fits thme and then rationalize their retardo to avoid cognitive diso.

 

[Comte]

Just play a murderhobo Lukas and stop worrying about this white mans concept of "morals"

 

[Ol' Willy]

95% of games fail at introducing a moral choice. 95% of the time "good" choice will give you better rewards (money, XP, gear, more quests) than "bad" one. This is what really puts me of in RPGs - in real life it is way profitable to be a bastard than a honest person.

It's often reaches some ridiculous heights, when you help some people, don't ask for reward, but they give you something anyway (and you get some XP of course).

Best example of good quest writing is pedophile quest in Fallout Resurrection. Chuck - fat pedophile - has little boys locked in his basement for regular raping. But he is an arms dealer, and the best one in the game. He's the only one who sells Combat Armor and Pulse Pistol. Your options:

- kill him and rescue the kids. You get some XP and good karma, but no monetary reward and you lose the best trader in the game (considering that there's only 4 arms traders in the entire game)
- ignore the situation and keep trading
- kill the kids because Chuck no longer wants them. This way he will give you 20% discount at all his wares, you will get some XP and you can sell chopped up remains to local sandwich vendor.

That's the real choice. It's either justice or money, no middle ground.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Never in my life, even as a child, have I evaluated quests based on moral compass.

 

[Butter]

95% of games fail at introducing a moral choice. 95% of the time "good" choice will give you better rewards (money, XP, gear, more quests) than "bad" one. This is what really puts me of in RPGs - in real life it is way profitable to be a bastard than a honest person.

Additionally, it's usually easier to do the wrong thing than to do the right thing. Hypothetically, if you found someone's wallet at a bus stop, complete with ID, the right thing to do would be return it. But that would require driving across town, and it's almost rush hour, and you'd rather just go home because it's been a long day. The easy thing to do would be to pocket the cash, leave the wallet, and continue on with your life.

 

[Serious_Business]

The idea that a moral choice would appear whether or not it is altruistic or not is christian and philosophically primitive, but it is how a player's horizon is structured (and liberal capitalist societies, I guess) : do you choose to better your position on the board, or others'? As those others often are minor players themselves and their benefit has no substantial effect on the environment, the choice has to be purely symbolic : you did "the right thing" by letting yourself go. To have more interesting moral choices you need to have more involved structures in the narrative and system ; the player needs to be concerned in different ways by other parameters than his own personal ones (his "stats" and "items" : personal belongings and a purely personal, abstract kind of status). The current trend is in fact not so much about making good and evil choices however, but to present "gray areas" ; this can work (I think it did in the Witcher 3, in so far as the narrative made you care about other characters), but often it doesn't change much to the overall structure, it even makes it a bit less engaged : at least by being defined as "good" or "evil", the game is judging you, which is kind of amusing. It's actively creating a system for judging the player's actions. What would be interesting was if the player was put into a position where he would do acts he considered to be truly good or evil, and the game judged you oppositely ; then you'd have something dynamic, in a way : you'd have someone telling you you're some kind shithead, and this is great, I love it. Of course this idea is not very serious ; to make ethics serious you need to have a reputation system : this group and that group thinks more or less of you depending on their interests and "values" ; this was attempted in PoE2 I think, and it's the right way to go if you want to be serious and sociologically accurate about ethics. It doesn't make anything fun though, as you might think, but I do guess gamers need to be educated and all that. Fucking hell why do I even have this hobby

 

[Semiurge]

Moral choices in RPG are usually poorly done for several reasons :

1 In many RPG, there is a choice between "Loyal Good" and "Cartoon Evil", with sometimes the "I am just a mercenary" variation. Bad people are not doing evil things for the fun of it, they do it because they only care for their interest. Example of a game absolutely terrible at that : KOTOR

"I am just a mercenary" = "I'm not even really into this shit, let's get it over with as quickly as possible. Never mind, I don't want your quest after all. Will someone please kill me? And did I already tell you that I'm an incredibly stupid maggotbrained POS because I don't care about making a stand."

 

[Quillon]

I don't quite like the Witcher 3, but speaking of moral choices there is one episode that stood out to me. There was a questline of a former Redanian spymaster, who tried to take over the North. You can help him even to the point when he kills Radovid, I think, but in your last meeting he asks you to kill Vernon Roche from the second game and, If I'm not mistaken, Taler.

Thanks for reminding me how CDPR massacred my boi Dijkstra.

 

[Haba]

RPG choices are rarely meaningful as they tend to exist inside a vacuum. The quest plays out as a self-contained episode of a TV-show, all the drama and the characters introduced for the short story and lose relevance soon after.

No matter how tough the choices are, deep down you still know that it is just a single quest in a location you will not revisit.

The most effective choices are those that
1. You have to live with. Not something you walk away from, something with clear and far-reaching consequences.
2. Are done consciously. If you are forced to do the choice, it needs to have that build-up beforehand. Otherwise it is just a coin toss for you - that is not a choice.

Think of A Boy and His Dog. That moment of choice stands out so brilliantly, even though it ends the story. It is not some bullshit that is thrown there out of the blue. The whole story builds up to that moment.

On the other hand we have games that have the tyranny of choice. "Kill or let go", "Support faction A or B". You make a lot of choices that have some consequence, but they don't change the direction of the story. At the very best those choices can change the stories of side characters. But they rarely change the overall direction.

Personally, I think I'd prefer a honestly linear game with a handful of truly significant choices that the story has been built around on. Something that changes the entirety of the rest of the game from that point on.

 

[wahrk]

I think, as a general rule, the “good” choice should require some sacrifice/less reward and delayed benefits, while the evil choice should be easier and give greater rewards but perhaps have long-term repercussions. The evil choice should always be tempting for some reason or other, otherwise what’s the point of designing it?

I wonder if it’s simply because developers think most casual players will be frustrated by not being able to get the good boy points and all the rewards too? Or is it a larger issue of people having a shallow concept of good and evil?

This is wrong. There are plenty of characters in media who are evil because it's pleasurable or amusing for them.

Yes, sociopaths exist, but that’s a specific personality type and should be the exception. It also doesn’t make sense to design the evil choices in your game as cruelty for cruelty’s sake... unless you expect sociopaths to be a majority of your games audience.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

How many people who are evil actually see themselves as evil?
Why should a choice be better or worse simply because the designer agreed that it was good or evil?

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[ValeVelKal]

95% of games fail at introducing a moral choice. 95% of the time "good" choice will give you better rewards (money, XP, gear, more quests) than "bad" one. This is what really puts me of in RPGs - in real life it is way profitable to be a bastard than a honest person.

It's often reaches some ridiculous heights, when you help some people, don't ask for reward, but they give you something anyway (and you get some XP of course).

Best example of good quest writing is pedophile quest in Fallout Resurrection. Chuck - fat pedophile - has little boys locked in his basement for regular raping. But he is an arms dealer, and the best one in the game. He's the only one who sells Combat Armor and Pulse Pistol. Your options:

- kill him and rescue the kids. You get some XP and good karma, but no monetary reward and you lose the best trader in the game (considering that there's only 4 arms traders in the entire game)
- ignore the situation and keep trading
- kill the kids because Chuck no longer wants them. This way he will give you 20% discount at all his wares, you will get some XP and you can sell chopped up remains to local sandwich vendor.

That's the real choice. It's either justice or money, no middle ground.

Yeah, this is a good choice design.

Thinking about it, Alpha Protocol had excellent choice design as well. Allying with some pretty shifty dudes gave you access to their ware and intelligence until the end of the game, while refusing any "non-American" help would leave you with terrible weapons and little intel about anything.

 

[ValeVelKal]

1. You have to live with. Not something you walk away from, something with clear and far-reaching consequences.
2. Are done consciously. If you are forced to do the choice, it needs to have that build-up beforehand. Otherwise it is just a coin toss for you - that is not a choice.

Yes. A choice you have to live in EVEN though you have not done it consciously are really the worst kind of C&C, especially since in general those kind of choices were actually the dreaded symetric design.

Eg in Witcher 1 : Will you give the weapons to the Elves & Dwarves rebels, or are you going to give the weapons to the Humans killing Elves & Dwarves.
If the former, "OH LOOK THEY USED THOSE WEAPONS TO KILL INNOCENT PEOPLE YOU MONSTER" and also you will fight upset human later in the game.
If the later, "OH LOOK THEY KILLED INNOCENT HUMANOIDS YOU MONSTER" and you will also fight upset elves & dwarves later in the game at the exact same location.

IIRC there was no real C&C in Witcher, only that kind of "symetric" choices (sometimes better done though, eg what you do with the witch at the end of Act 1)

 

[ValeVelKal]

How many people who are evil actually see themselves as evil?
Why should a choice be better or worse simply because the designer agreed that it was good or evil?

Yeah. Everyone is the hero of their own story. Choices should be either about different values, or expediency vs value.