Quests with actual moral connotations

[centurionofprix]

The game shouldn't hold your hand through the morality of the thing, or fellate you for taking the "selfless" modern-sensibilities PC choice. It's when the morality is obscured, perhaps as part of some greater questline or in interaction with the world rather than as an obvious binary choice, or when there is some actual advantage or temptation to the selfish path, that the choice itself becomes meaningful.

Edited November 5, 2012 by centurionofprix

[Jarmo]

 

There is a big problem with the ME1 example:

 

Well that's actually a problem of ME3 and while it wasn't such a big disappointment after suffering through ME2,

the whole series really went downhill fast after the first one. And even the first one kind of fell to the old good vs bad thing.

Could have been a case of "too bad we don't have The Spartan anymore after that terror strike back in 3432".

 

The dilemma in ME1 was still neat anyway.

[SunBroSolaire]

I don't particularly like explicit good vs. evil choices. If I have the freedom to do typically "evil" things, that's cool, but I wouldn't want quest branches based on good/neutral/evil. If there is a darker branch to a quest, I think it should be a logical or somehow justifiable course of action, not like say, blowing up Megaton in Fallout 3. Tenpenny Tower was a good quest though, I would love to see some decisions like that in PE.

[Milten]

Grey choices are so mature and stuff, but I'd like some white/black things, something to be proud/ashamed of, something that doesn't screw you in unexpected way just because it's so grey.

[Moirnelithe]

If all choices are grey then that would get very tiresome, there is only so much emotional stuff you can go through before it becomes a chore. But only goody two shoes vs homocidal maniac choices is too simplistic by far. I'd really appreciate being able to play a smart, manipulative character with a good sense of self preservation. Many of the 'choices' in RPGs have been unrealistic at best (running off to save a village where an army of veteran adventurers has failed already and save it for free too) and downright stupid at worst (I'll just kill you now because I can).

[Jymm]

Too much of the same thing gets boring. A universal truth, I suppose. If all the choices are obvious black / white choices then you pick your character's general alignment and play without really thinking, and that's a shame. If all the choices are always gray and lose / lose then you can easily decide the answers don't matter. So while I like some good, complicated dilemmas where you aren't sure of the outcomes and nobody seems on the level, I think you need to mix that up with a few good / bad options that are clearer. That way players keep the faith and stay invested even in the ones where they can't see the obvious answer.

 

As was brought up I believe in another thread, I also find the option interesting where many of your choices impact only relationships with others, rather than some global alignment meter. That can make for some less obvious choices or ones where you have to weigh what is best for a friend vs what is best "morally" or for a larger group of strangers.

[Jarmo]

Oh yea, Black and White choices can also work and be hard if there's an actual cost.

 

Maybe you've cornered a vampire or a demon, if you spare him and let him go, he'll give you a permanent enchancement of +1 to strength,

but then he'll stay and torment the village. Or go and torment some other village. So doing the good thing is going to be harder.

 

And if you do the evil thing, well that might come back to bite you or a friend later, in some more or less literal way.

 

Just not the simplest possible choices of do whichever, doesn't matter, moving on.

[Kecaw]

If you want to see a good game with some really good moral debate of what is right and what is wrong i recomend the Witcher 1 and 2 despite what you chose is it good or bad in your eyes the consequences will haunt you to the end of the game. In this game there isnt something as "good and evil" there is only your personal choice.

[Bos_hybrid]

Since there is no alignment in the game, simple good vs. evil quests won't do the trick for me. I expect a lot more grey area stuff.

 

There is no alignment metre in PE, which has nothing to do with good/evil quests or paths.

 

It just means you won't have an alignment metre telling you if you've good or bad.

[Sacred_Path]

There is no alignment metre in PE, which has nothing to do with good/evil quests or paths.

 

It just means you won't have an alignment metre telling you if you've good or bad.

 

I can't remember the source, but I'm sure I've read there is no alignment, not just no alignment metre. If they took out alignment, I am expecting they'll also have no cheesy black/white mentality in regards to the story, or else you can just leave alignment in.

 

At most I think there will be some kind of karma. ThaIt also with some certainty means there are no swords that can only be held by evil people, no "destroy the world" ending, and your paladin won't change into a sack of potatoes because he said the wrong thing or murdered a kitten.

Edited November 6, 2012 by Sacred_Path

[Metabot]

All of the examples you gave are pretty black and white. I prefer the grey moral areas in new Vegas.

[Metabot]

I would like to see some kind of hidden alignment system that tracks your favor and disfavor with the gods.

[JOG]

There is a difference between good reasoning for being evil, and just being evil because you're evil.

 

Selling the slaves or killing the slavers, is okay, just a matter of greed vs. heroism.

 

The biological warfare part is also fine, our ancestors used their catapults to hurl diseased bodies over a besieged city's wall, it's pragmatism vs. righteousness.

 

Megaton was just silly, there is absolutely no reason for any even slightly sane character to do it. If there were a line of quests where you gain the enmity of Megaton and at the end have the choice to nuke the town, fine, but even the most evil villain won't destroy the only safe place within miles just because a random guy in a bar asked him to.

 

Tenpenny tower is grey/grey, you can help murder a bunch of bigot humans, you can assassinate a bunch of bigot ghouls, you can be so stupid to actually believe that a truce between those groups will hold longer than a couple of days, or you can simply walk away. That's the kind of quest I like the most.

 

 

Even if we take the gods into account, different faiths have different creeds, even if they are just variations of the same religion. This includes a karma system like in Fallout: the good-evil value just represents the reputation you would have with a neutral good deity, a god that appreciates law and order or an evil one might judge you quite differently

Edited November 6, 2012 by JOG

[Jarmo]

A Megaton anecdote of Good vs Evil.

 

I was playing a shining knight of the wastes, at least as far as the game knew.

Told the sheriff about burkes (or burne?) plan to blow up megaton and helped to take the bad guy out. Of course.

But I let the bad guy shoot first because I wanted the neat sheriffs hat, and the ak-47....

[TheTeaMustFlow]

How about, instead of making a moral choice out of an evil v evil or grey v grey situation, have something more rarely seen: good v good? Have two relatively nice (though not pure good) factions in opposition to each other reason. The nearest I can think of to this was, as mentioned above, New Vegas, where you had three benevolent (if maybe not actually likeable) powers against each other: The NCR, which is the last refuge of democracy and the rule of law in the wastes, but is imperialistic, and will destroy any who stand against them, Mr. House, the benevolent autocrat of Vegas who truly wants the best for the Mojave but will do anything to hold onto his power and will destroy any who stand against him, and the Wild Card Courier, who wants to free Vegas from all the power blocs, but is willing to bring anarchy to do so and will (mostly) destroy any... you get the idea. But you can make a good case for any of these being the best option.

 

Perhaps we could have a similar plot in PE: An imperialistic nation invading a smaller independent one that just wants to be left alone. However, the empire is more modern (in a good way) and personally speaking, more free. Think late British Empire versus Westeros (with Westeros not being ruled by someone either a) utterly evil, b) utterly incompetent, or c) utterly insane.

[PsychoBlonde]

Heh, actually, you know what I'd kind of like to have in addition to black/white choices and quandaries?

 

Some real opportunities to just **** with people. I mean, options where you can complete the quest in such a way that everybody involved winds up yelling "WHAT IN THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU?!?!?" Including your party companions.

 

For an example:

 

Let's say you have a fairly typical quest where Sad Woman's kid got picked up by slavers and is going to be sold in the market. So, there are a few fairly standard options here. (I'm not going to include the option of just telling her to bugger off, because that's more refusing the quest than a way of completing the quest.)

 

1. Buy the kid at the auction and return him to his mum. This is the shortest option, you don't get in trouble with anybody, Sad Woman gets her kid back, but you don't otherwise interfere with the operation of the slave ring, so in many ways this is a sub-optimal outcome unless you're just not that interested in the quest.

2. Break in and set the kid loose which perhaps enables you to rescue lots of other slaves, but also gets you in Serious Trouble with the slaver ring. Granted, you also get to kill them, loot their base, loot their corpses, and wreck their operation, so in many ways this is actually a much better outcome.

3. Some kind of **** move, like convincing the mom to trade places with her son, giving her to the slavers, then taking the funds and leaving. I don't much care about the specific details of this.

 

What I'd like to see are the occasional additional options like:

 

4. Set the kids loose, arm them, and use your powers of persuasion/magic/tactics to turn them into a crazed mob and enable them to take their revenge on the slavers, including gruesome tortures. Then you take Sad Woman's kid back to her, give him a spiel about how she was weak and sinful to let him be captured in the first place, and order him to kill her. Then you set the kid up as the leader of this new street gang you've founded. They recruit all the little slum children and begin a reign of terror over that section of the city. Periodically, you can come back, get news from them, bring them presents, and get them to help you with occasional related quests.

 

or

 

5. Go to RichTown, pull out your Pipe of Charming, and play until all the local kids come out. You then lead them out of town to the river, where you threaten to drown them all unless their parents send the local guard to clean out that slaver ring.

 

or

 

6. You notice that Sad Woman's son bears a striking resemblance to the son of the local Duke, so you talk the slavers into this elaborate plot whereby you kidnap the Duke's son and hold him for ransom, and when the ransom exchange happens, you turn over Sad Woman's son instead. You then give the Duke's son to Sad Woman.

 

or

 

7. Exactly like option 1, except you use Amnesia on the kid so he doesn't remember his mother when you reunite them, and throws a fit.

 

or

 

8. You use Amnesia on the woman so she forgets she has a son.

 

The more bizarre/surreal, the better.

[Oner]

Instead of morality driven quests, I'd prefer ideology based ones. Instead of choosing between, say, killing or helping a bunch of genocidal mercenaries I have/get to decide wether they're executed, imprisoned/treated or hauled off to PE's version of Mengele to advance medical SCIENCE!

 

Black or white morality is just a no-brainer between being nice or naughty. Grey and grey sometimes ends up being imbalanced *cough* NCR vs Legion *cough*, or just cruel for cruelty's sake, and can easily be messed up. Like that quest in DX:HR when I was on paper supposed to convince some guys to testify against the bad guys instead of going on a killing spree, but considering the Illuminati (the bad guys) likely control the judiciary...

 

Plus Obsidian probably wants to go with Fallout style freedom, letting the player choose which option s/he thinks best instead of spoon feeding the morality of each choice. My "idea" would parallel with that perfectly.