Game News Brian Fargo on moral dilemmas in Wasteland 2

[Mrowak]

VD, one point there, and I think it's what you're driving at anyway: most rpgs are designed so that you can progress no matter what build you roll. Fallout 1/2, BG1/2, IWD1/2, Arcanum. All of them share the commonality that you can progress with any build, with some difficulty depending on peculiarity.

It certainly is one of the issues. "No man left behind" design.

Ehh... This actually is legacy issue from PnP where you don't build adventures that are impossible to complete for your players - you build ones that would allow them to utilise their abilities to the fullest extent. From this partially stems the requirement of stat balance and viability of options to all/most builds in cRPGs...

Which I don't see as something necessarily bad actually - this is very intelligent design if you provide options to deal with a combat situation in a number of ways - provided that the player's build is specialised in some way. Scaling the level of encounters down to character's abilities is a big failure obviously, but then again, on the second end of the spectrum we have railroading a character to encounters he cannot win, just because he doesn't have some arbitrary skill or enough points in ability, they player could not anticipate he'd need. I am of the opinion that most of the challenge in an RPG should not come from stats and rolling dice, but player's ability to use skills available to his PC(s) (he himself selected) in the given situation.

 

[shihonage]

The rangers come across a man whose wife has been kidnapped by raiders. He asks them to help him get her back, but these raiders bear the Mark of Titan, marking them protected by the Servants of the Mushroom Cloud. If the rangers attack the raiders, they will anger the Servants of the Mushroom Cloud and possibly jeopardize their main mission on the map, but if they don’t rescue the woman, she will be enslaved and endure a fate worse than death. Adding to the dilemma is that without the rangers’ help; her husband is going to get himself killed trying to save her on his own.

Words like "anger" and "possibly jeopardize" and "fate worse than death", and "dilemma"... don't translate into gameplay. Only into a book or a movie. When you implement gameplay, you actually have to flesh out every single one of those terms into some very concrete consequences in the gameworld, something that can be clearly presented to the player, and, more often than not, discard them entirely and start anew.

If this was an example taken from gameplay, it would sound different. Fargo's not doing the game much good by putting this kind of "general quest ideas" out there, because you can find plenty of such raw content on any RPG fan forum.

Hey guys I have this idea for a quest where you find a person who is poisoned and he asks you to find the cure, but the cure is in a medical facility owned by the person's brother who is angry at them and you may have to convince them not to be angry or kill them and you can also kill the first guy if you wanna be a psychopath which is okay

Hey guys so there's this dog that you find, and you are really hungry

Hey guys so we have this thing where the player's blood is the only cure for the planetary disease, because he's from the past. But in order to save the world, you have to die

 

[tuluse]

The dilemma here isn't whether to kill raiders or not. Fargo himself says that deciding the kill the raiders is an "easy choice". The dilemma is pissing off the powerful group or saving some dude's wife (and him too apparently).

So then the next thing people are going to say is who cares about some random dude's wife. Which is partially fair because some people will. The answer to that is that it's probably not just this single dude's wife that you're going to go in for. It says a lot about the Servants of the Mushroom Cloud that they would protect slavers. So now the wife is really just one piece of evidence in the moral dilemma situation.

 

[Phelot]

It still sounds lame. Obviously a powerful group that supports raiders that kidnap women isn't a good group, so it is still a clear cut case of "doing the right thing" or "doing the bad thing" which is boring. Even if you can go to the powerful group and explain what is going on and have them be like "Oh OK, yeah, fuck those losers" it still feels very good vs. evil. I mean, sure it's a moral dilemma, but it is a rather boring one.

 

[TwinkieGorilla]

It still sounds lame. Obviously a powerful group that supports raiders that kidnap women isn't a good group, so it is still a clear cut case of "doing the right thing" or "doing the bad thing" which is boring.

Well, not really. It's more a matter of conscience vs survival, no?

 

[shihonage]

A designer should never even half-encourage "not doing a quest" as a viable option. It should not be there. Even in NPC language, it should NOT say "If you don't help, my wife dies". It should say "Help my wife survive!". Notion of passivity should not come from the gameworld.

Why? 'cause player can always choose to skip the quest, and it's not something you want to accenuate even further. If the player starts "choosing" not to do half of your side-quests because you presented that as a "real choice", your gameplay longevity is in fucking trouble.

Behind every choice should be something that entertains the player while spending some of his time. The non-doing is not a choice that can be afforded by a sane designer.

There should be a massive carrot dangling inside each quest, and it has to be concrete, and something that works within gameplay context. Something that DOES NOT APPEAL TO EMOTION. The wife in this quest is a weapon engineer, and husband promises she can make you a minigun sniper rifle if you bring her back. Or, she's held in some fucking Caves of Leviathan in the middle of Betrayed Sphinx Mountain, which should be an exciting location to explore.

Emotion is a crapshoot. It depends on continuity of context, and you can control that in a movie. But in a game you may have just spent 40 minutes punching toilets and setting corpses on fire. Emotion is designer's ego stuff. Leave emotion alone. It can arise naturally from a combination of game circumstances you did not foresee, as long as the game is faithful to its world, without trying to tug at anyone's heartstrings.

Now, back to the choice of "saving" vs "not saving" the wife.

Upon taking the quest, you do not guarantee success. TAKING the quest is NOT the "choice moment", just as NOT TAKING it shouldn't be one. The "choice moment" should come later in the quest, when you choose whether she lives or dies. By that time, the player has been sufficiently entertained going through the bulk of the quest, some of his time has been spent, AND he has a choice to make. Everybody wins.

 

[St. Toxic]

I guess if you side with the Servants, it would be counter-productive to help the guy get his wife back. In fact, you might want to report the guy in or take care of him yourself before he stirs any shit up. So they support slavery, big deal. Maybe this wife kidnapping business is vital to the economy?

 

[tuluse]

Excellent post shihonage.

It is possible that from this description the quest does happen in such a way.

Talk to dude, he asks you to save his wife, with hopefully some promise of reward (although everyone knows that quests lead to XP so there is always an inherent reward).

You go check out the situation, see that the raiders are actually Servants of the Mushroom cloud protected. First decision happens, well actually two at once: is this really worth it? and is there a better way than going in guns blazing?

If you answer yes and yes respectively you might try trading or sneaking or something.

If you answer yes and no, then you just march in killing everything.

If you answer no to the first question, maybe the raiders ask you to go kill the dude to spare them the trouble so you still get the quest XPs.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

Sorry to butt in, but it seems to me the big issue here is that combat in RPGs aren't a real risk. That being forced into an extra fight will be seem by the players as a good thing, instead of a danger that should be assessed. Wouldn't this problem disappear if you simply play the game in ironman mode? Even not really challenging combats can have a chance of killing one of your characters, or spoiling some important resource (like a favorite gun blowing up). Won't these be important choices if you can't just take them back wily nilly?

When I play Fallout iron man, I "chicken out" of some quests because they are too risky.

 

[Spectacle]

Let me set the scene, maybe Fargo'll include it in W2? You're out walking in the wasteland, looking for something or someone to rape, when you see two women, walking, on the outskirts of town. You drop your pants and, to your dismay, notice that you only have a single cock with which to rape. That's just typical. Now, if you recruited a rapist earlier you may be able to restrain both of them (for an easter-egg) but if you're alone you can only choose one victim. One of the women is ugly and the other is pretty, but the pretty one is pregnant and the ugly one is not. In addition to that, the ugly one walks with a limp, so the STR-check to subdue her will be a lot easier, but on the other hand the non-limp one will reach town and come back with help faster giving you less time to rape.

So, if you rape the ugly woman, the pregnant one gets the town militia and they shoot your junk off. If you rape the pretty one, you get a different ending, where the son takes revenge on you for the rape of his mother just as you complete your final assignment.

Alternatively, if you have explored enough to find the Codex Special Item that we paid $10000 to insert into the game, you can use the Multi Headed Dick to rape both women at once.

 

[TwinkieGorilla]

a post

Damn, bro. That was a p. good post.



Everything ok?

 

[Baron]

So he ends up capturing her, gives me half the bounty like he promised (500 gold), and tells me not to believe every pretty face that asks me for a favour. He says he'll bring her back to Hammerfell unharmed, but after that it's not up to him. I just looked up the wiki, if you kill them all she'll thank you...and pay you 500 gold. Yeah, she's a former noble, but she's been working as a barmaid for months / years. So by helping her you get the money plus the warriors' rare loot. Derp.

Yeah, these quests with balanced rewards are frickin' retarded. You have this DEEP MORAL QUEST, but the devs are so afraid that the Player would actually have to sacrifice something that they balance out the quest rewards, making the sacrifice and nobility (or miscellaneous roleplaying aspects) entirely meaningless.

It's supposed to be about morality. So make the sacrifice EXPENSIVE. And don't reward the Player other than "Thank you, thank you! They were about to kill me! You saved my life and I will never forget you!" (Maybe help the player out with info, give them a cool custom non-power related item, or hide them from a powerful enemy. But never reward them with money or an item worth as much or equal to the sacrifice.)

If the Player reloads until he has played all quest outcomes and chosen to let the girl die because he figures he can maximise his gold pieces, then no problem! You secretly store a variable, and then late in the game when it's too late to turn back you have locals NPCs or an omnipotent astral being decline the PC and say, "But Bro, you're a total cunt. You're like a HIV positive rat. I only just crossed the street just now to take your head off, teabag you, and nick all your stuff. What's good for the goose, and all that..."

Selfishness should be a good option for succeeding in the game and gathering material wealth. But it should be bad for larping NPCs friendships, bromancing, and getting into fantasy heaven.* Encourage ruthlessness! Make it advantageous to steal, cheat and murder! For the path of the virtuous is fraught with difficulty. Sacrifice and restraint are rarely beneficial, particularly in a harsh lawless setting. In a land of thieves and killers the good men are rare, but they can have a great effect on others. Remember the Avatar in Ultima IV... you could steal and cheat, quite easily. The clever part was when you realised that you probably shouldn't.


* tautology xians!

 

[kazgar]

It's supposed to be about morality. So make the sacrifice EXPENSIVE. And don't reward the Player other than "Thank you, thank you! They were about to kill me! You saved my life and I will never forget you!" (Maybe help the player out with info, give them a cool custom non-power related item, or hide them from a powerful enemy. But never reward them with money or an item worth as much or equal to the sacrifice.)

This led me to thinking about FTL, while its a long way from a traditional rpg some of its rewards are pretty interesting. While most of the time you get some credits/items/etc, occasionally the rewards or outcomes can lead to the overwhelming doom that's following you being sped up or being delayed. Its a rather useful and interesting outcome, and can change the gameplay of a run in a fairly large manner if you get one in ways widgets can't. Also leads to further considerations when taking quests on, can I afford to do this before the overwhelming doom gets to me. Not all games factor in time as a concept well, but if they do, it can probably lead to more Moral Dilemmas then just the quest outcomes themselves.

edit: So in the raider example, if killing the raiders and saving the woman means you delay getting into another place or makes a further encounter more difficult (representing time for the big evil to prepare) the choice for the player becomes more unclear. However if saving her allows her to show you a shortcut or lend you a vehicle or somesuch, the benefit may be worth being hunted by the mushroom dudes, and neither reward ends up being widget based.

 

[Redeye]

If the point was to save her from a fate worse than death, then why not compromise by taking her out with a sniper rifle?

Like that guy in Serenity that was trying to catch a ride on the cargo skiff. Rather than dump the loot to free up payload, Malcolm shot the guy to save him from the Reavers' torture.

 

[Aeschylus]

Yeah, this is not a moral dilemma at all. A moral dilemma in this situation would be as follows:

The husband who asks you to rescue his wife is not some destitute chump, but a local post-apocalyptic equivalent of a feudal lord. He has been twirling his metaphorical (or possible actual) mustache and oppressing the local survivors for his own benefit and possibly engaging in other dastardly deeds. The raiders are a local defacto terrorist group who have been combating his regime, but resort to some decidedly less than friendly methods to do so (bombing, raids on the local food stores, etc.). Meanwhile, his wife is an innocent bystander in all this, who fled her despotic husband but was captured by the raiders, and is now leading a dangerous, but free and more fulfilling life. Returning her to her husband would be far from a good deed. The impetus for the quest would not be to help a poor suffering lout (black and white morality), but to get something the party *really* needed from this local bigwig, such as safe transportation across a mountain range along a rail line he controls. The player could do this, and ease their passage west to continue the game, they could join the raiders fighting against the quest-giver, or they could try to use diplomacy and cleverness to play both sides against each other, possibly getting the hell out of there on the train, but leaving both sides to their fate in an unsatisfying conclusion.

Of course, this is just an example off the top of my head. It could likely get a lot better than that, given proper thought.

 

[nihil]

And this is why it's very important for developers to present specific ideas (not generic vision to make the game bestest and deepest) to the audience and engage the audience in a constructive debate.

If the key developers don't know how to do interesting moral dilemmas and gameplay consequences after what, 25 years in the business, I'm not sure listening to fans would do any good. Would they listen to the "good" feedback, or would they spend a lot of resources on making changes that don't really improve the game in the end?

Fan feedback can probably do good things, but only if the core team has a clear vision and know their shit to start with. At least that sounds like a reasonable statement to me.

Conclusion: Either the moral dilemmas will suck in WL2 no matter what, or Brian Fargo just picked a bad example or presented it sloppily, for some reason.

Other parts of the game could be fun, regardless, such as combat, exploration and puzzles.

 

[tuluse]

Fargo isn't really a developer, he's a manager type.

 

[Stinger]

Yeah, this is not a moral dilemma at all. A moral dilemma in this situation would be as follows:

The husband who asks you to rescue his wife is not some destitute chump, but a local post-apocalyptic equivalent of a feudal lord. He has been twirling his metaphorical (or possible actual) mustache and oppressing the local survivors for his own benefit and possibly engaging in other dastardly deeds. The raiders are a local defacto terrorist group who have been combating his regime, but resort to some decidedly less than friendly methods to do so (bombing, raids on the local food stores, etc.). Meanwhile, his wife is an innocent bystander in all this, who fled her despotic husband but was captured by the raiders, and is now leading a dangerous, but free and more fulfilling life. Returning her to her husband would be far from a good deed. The impetus for the quest would not be to help a poor suffering lout (black and white morality), but to get something the party *really* needed from this local bigwig, such as safe transportation across a mountain range along a rail line he controls. The player could do this, and ease their passage west to continue the game, they could join the raiders fighting against the quest-giver, or they could try to use diplomacy and cleverness to play both sides against each other, possibly getting the hell out of there on the train, but leaving both sides to their fate in an unsatisfying conclusion.

Of course, this is just an example off the top of my head. It could likely get a lot better than that, given proper thought.

The issue I have here is that the major groups in this scenario are both assholes and I simply don't give a fuck as a result. A lot of people cite Witcher as an example of good moral choices and I honestly have to disagree as I think it's pretty bad in this regard.

When everyone is a complete dickhead then I just stop giving a shit about the choices because I genuinely don't feel one way or another about these assholish people, which is what Witcher does frankly- both the scoiatel and the Order of the Rose are pretty reprehensible and any potentially good points they might raise are lost in their aggressively violent actions and behaviour. Dragon Age 2 does the same shit and it's awful.

Good choices need to be between factions/people/dilemmas where the options are all good but for very different reasons.

Fallout New Vegas is one of the better games about handling this. Aside from the Legion, the choice between the other 3 major factions is a largely political one and there is genuinely no 'best' option here. Instead what you have is a series of consequences that mean very different things to different people because instead the consequences are based on political preferences and what people personally value over other things. I'd say MotB had a similar approach to the Crusade as well.

Personally I'd rather Fargo disposed of the idea of 'moral dilemmas' and instead gave us a sandbox-esque setting with multiple, conflicting factions each of differing political beliefs for us as players to play around with and engage with in different quests. The game will be much more interesting when it stops trying to be 'morally complex' and instead just tries to give the player multiple options with different consequences, the value of each depending from player to player.

 

[Infinitron]

When everyone is a complete dickhead then I just stop giving a shit about the choices because I genuinely don't feel one way or another about these assholish people, which is what Witcher does frankly- both the scoiatel and the Order of the Rose are pretty reprehensible and any potentially good points they might raise are lost in their aggressively violent actions and behaviour. Dragon Age 2 does the same shit and it's awful.

Stinger cannot into utilitarianism. Who cares if they're assholes? Ask yourself which one of them is better for the world in the long run, in your view.

See yourself as a heroic manipulator, pushing the world in your chosen direction. Not as somebody doing a favor for a buddy.

 

[Stinger]

Stinger cannot into utilitarianism. Who cares if they're assholes? Ask yourself which one of them is better for the world in the long run, in your view.

I brought up those examples for a reason. In Dragon Age 2 I think the crazy blood mages (because almost all mages become blood mages by the end) and the nazi-esque templars are both pretty terrible for the world in the long run and neither are particularly helpful. For Witcher the choice between oppressive dicks who subjugate other races or the fanatic terrorist group who apply the same logic but in reverse to their perceived oppressors, including those who bear no ill will to nonhumans is a shit choice no matter how you look at it.

In Witcher 2 there's this shitty side quest where some humans are claiming this elf lady is an evil terrorist despite having insubstantial evidence for this and you can get them to leave her alone. Then she promises you a reward for your efforts...whereupon you are lynched by evil terrorists because it turns out that's what she is.

What is the point of this shitty quest? The asshole humans were judgmental with little evidence, the elf girl was actually a violent terrorist after all and she lynches you for no good reason. Neither of these people are better for the world according to my personal view. So fuck this aggressively grimdark bullshit, I have better games to play!

And this is my point, these choices need to be between factions that have both pros and cons where you actually have to assess these things and decide who might be better for yourself. Making everyone evil is almost as bad as a 2 dimensional black and white scenario.

In Aeschylus's story I see lots of cons on both sides with almost nothing good to actually make me consider if either faction is a viable option.

 

[Infinitron]

Stinger cannot into utilitarianism. Who cares if they're assholes? Ask yourself which one of them is better for the world in the long run, in your view.

I brought up those examples for a reason. In Dragon Age 2 I think the crazy blood mages (because almost all mages become blood mages by the end) and the nazi-esque templars are both pretty terrible for the world in the long run and neither are particularly helpful. For Witcher the choice between oppressive dicks who subjugate other races or the fanatic terrorist group who apply the same logic but in reverse to their perceived oppressors, including those who bear no ill will to nonhumans is a shit choice no matter how you look at it.

In Witcher 2 there's this shitty side quest where some humans are claiming this elf lady is an evil terrorist despite having insubstantial evidence for this and you can get them to leave her alone. Then she promises you a reward for your efforts...whereupon you are lynched by evil terrorists because it turns out that's what she is.

What is the point of this shitty quest? The asshole humans were judgmental with little evidence, the elf girl was actually a violent terrorist after all and she lynches you for no good reason. Neither of these people are better for the world according to my personal view. So fuck this aggressively grimdark bullshit, I have better games to play!

And this is my point, these choices need to be between factions that have both pros and cons where you actually have to assess these things and decide who might be better for yourself. Making everyone evil is almost as bad as a 2 dimensional black and white scenario.

In Aeschylus's story I see lots of cons on both sides with almost nothing good to actually make me consider if either faction is a viable option.

So you don't believe in the concept of "lesser evil"? (which btw Geralt constantly talks about in TW1)

 

[Stinger]

My point is that I lose all interest in a conflict when I feel there is nothing worth supporting. It really shouldn't be that hard to understand, Evil vs Evil is grimdark bullshit and a choice between a lesser evil just makes me very apathetic rather than an actually good set of choices where I have to actually think because these are all viable factions but for very different reasons. Sea says it so much better (he's talking about Skyrim here but it still very much applies):

In the end, I find myself not really caring for any of the factions available, and I've found many others who feel the same way. While I made my choice, it felt like I was choosing the least incompetent party, not the one which best represented Skyrim and my character's beliefs. Though it's great to have choices and better still for them to be interesting, the way the Imperials and Stormcloaks are set up, it's clear Bethesda went too far in giving the groups negative traits to counteract the positives, without actually spending time to build up those positives in the first place. Good moral ambiguity in alliances makes for interesting choices, but in Skyrim, you're asked to choose between factions based not on which is better, but which one is least likely to screw things up.

http://gamasutra.com/blogs/EricSchw...and_Choices_in_Skyrim_All_Setup_No_Payoff.php

 

[tuluse]

One thing I like about the Witcher games is that you're able to influence which ever side you go with and soften their stances.

I also agree with Stinger that having choices you actually agree with makes for a more compelling situation.

 

[Infinitron]

But there is something to agree with. You're just not thinking about it deeply enough. Human law and order or elven liberation. You need to be able to look past the personalities. Character-centrism is the way of the Biodrone.

 

[Aeschylus]

In Aeschylus's story I see lots of cons on both sides with almost nothing good to actually make me consider if either faction is a viable option.

Well, sometimes there are a lot of cons in a situation and any solution is going to have some negative in it. I just see a 'moral choice' as not being one that makes you feel good in two different ways, but one in which you're forced to choose between different layers of bad, and try to wrench an overall positive outcome from the wreckage. And again, I didn't put a ton of thought into that scenario, literally made it up off-the-cuff, and I'm willing to admit it's not perfectly thought out. Still, if you're just choosing between positive option A, or positive option B, where is the real difficulty in that? It's like choosing between Pepsi and Coke -- just a cosmetic difference, really. If their objective is to force seriously difficult choices upon the player, and to make those choices actually provoke some thought, then they are not going to give obvious bright-shiny outcomes on either side. Maybe there are hidden layers to it, like the quest giver who seems like (and possibly is) an asshole, has good reasons for his behavior in such a harsh environment -- keeping transportation lines running, minimizing looting and anarchy. Hell, maybe he really does just miss his wife.

The point is, the choice and their consequences should not be so obvious. It doesn't always have to be such a bleak scenario, of course, but it should have layers.

Edit: With a little more consideration, I actually agree that there should be some positives to both sides layered in as well, and maybe I didn't express that particularly well. Obviously, if both sides are just assholes you're not really motivated to do anything, and making both sides just be assholes is somewhat lazy writing (I came up with it in 5 minutes, give me a break :D), but that doesn't mean that making both sides be essentially positive choices is any less lazy...