Are moral choices poorly handled in RPGs?

[Yosharian]

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.

 

[luj1]

95% of the time "good" choice will give you better rewards

I'm not so sure, I always felt the evil choice nets you standard reward + something on top

 

[Wunderbar]

95% of the time "good" choice will give you better rewards

I'm not so sure, I always felt the evil choice nets you standard reward + something on top

usually the evil choice gives you more money while good choice gives you more XP and rep. And we all know how useless money in most of RPGs are.

 

[Sharpedge]

In a more recent game I played (Enderal), there is an example of a quest that I think presents a moral choice well. It is also a good example of how to properly do companion "influence" in games since most examples of that is pretty awful. The quest in question is Qalian's Last Smile although the outcome of the moral choice is only visible in the quest Dark Chambers of our Mind and progresses as follows.

Spoiler

1. Tharaêl (the person who gives you the quest) wants you to come with him and help recover the lost pages of the Jael Tannerson's journal, so that you can infiltrate the Rhalâta. The person who knows their location whom you interrogate is a man called Nailaq, who happens to have been a murderer who committed many horrible crimes.
   
2. Upon recovering the manuscript, Tharaêl claims that as Nailaq killed 10 girls he deserves to die. At this point you have the option to either try and stop him from killing them (which Tharaêl disapproves of), or agree that he deserves to die (which Tharaêl approves of).
   
3. If you try to stop him, Nailaq comments about something from Tharaêl's past which enrages him and causes him to kill him regardless, which initially makes you think that regardless of what you say, the outcome was the same (which is a poor example of quest design), but this is not actually the case.
4. At the end of the second quest mentioned above, the outcome from your decision truly kicks in. If you had told him to kill the Nailaq, regardless of what you tell him here, he commits suicide, stating, "if you thought someone who had killed 10 girls was beyond redemption then for what I have done, I am as well."
5. However, if you had stated that you believed that Nailaq was not beyond redemption and should be left in peace, then you have a chance to prevent him from committing suicide here.

I believe this quest presents the moral choice well (whether you believe that Nailaq was beyond redemption or not) here, it doesn't incentivize you to make either choices with cheap currency which a lot of moral choices in games do and the rewards for either outcome are not immediately obvious. Its also a good example of a companion influence decision. Friends of yours may disapprove of something you do, but over time after thinking about it, it causes them change their mind on things that they had previously been against you on. The quest is one of the very few quests I can think of in a game where if you care about the character, it is in your best interests to go against what they approve of.

 

[HarveyBirdman]

Yes. Moral choices almost always impose the writer's conception of morality. It's nice when conceptions overlap, but is annoying or downright revolting when out of sync.

This is why Morrowind has the best moral choices. LARPing lets you finagle whatever morality you want.