Were moral choices ever done well in video games?
Perhaps Witcher 2 where the game actually changes depending on who you choose?
Surely not Telltale shit, their choices affect nothing.
I love /pol/ threads on /v/.
I love when people flag everything they don't like as /pol/
>>335972695
Due to how costly video games are you're almost always going to be stuck with shitty false dichotomies ala Mass Effect or Telltale
Generally the best moral choices you're going to see are going to be little one off moments like the can in HL2, orPate fighting Creighton in Dark Souls 2, choices in games not about choices.
I love the mountains
Not really. It's usually either a choice of
>"If you kill me, you'll become the villain!" naive good guy route
or douchey and edgy evil route.
I wish developers would strive for a balance of idealistic vs pragmatic instead.
>>335972695
This is some impressively strong delusions.
>>335973785Why?
>>335972695
>the game changes depending on your choices
>there are good complex moral choices
Pick one. The two can't exist together.
If you see the exact consequences of your actions for each choice that opens up metagaming. That's the problem with Mass Effect, every choice has a clear right and wrong answer, and if you play the game more than once it becomes clear which is which.
The only way to make truly ambiguous moral choices is to hide the consequences from you. But this never works. Mass Effect 3 tried doing exactly that for the ending, and they got blasted for it. Then Life Is Strange tried it with their ending choice, and everyone hated it.
This is why as long as games pride themselves on having lots of meaningful decisions they won't have any really good decisions. The developers have to choose between depth through ambiguity or stripping decisions of any weight. Let's keep Mass Effect as an example: the best choices in those games that all fans can agree on are who you save on Virmire, and whether you cure the genophage. The first one is just personal preference. It's pick the character you like better. It works because there's no clear right or wrong answer. The long-term consequences of the genophage choice aren't seen, so there's no clear right or wrong answer there either. Those are the only ways developers can make choices really good: either make the consequences vague or completely equal. Otherwise there's a right choice and a wrong choice, and while you enjoy the game as it's happening, you will look back on it and realize it's a simple good/bad dichotomy. The only solution is to stop putting emphasis on decisions in games so that players will stop obsessively keeping track of changes, and be able to make those choices naturally and without complaining that the entire world didn't change as a result of their actions.
TL; DR: gamers don't know what the fuck they want. Marketing games as decision games is bad.
>>335972695
Witcher 2 was just consolized, streamlined and generally dumbed down shadow of far superior Witcher 1.
>>335975310
>The only way to make truly ambiguous moral choices is to hide the consequences from you. But this never works.
Witcher begs to differ.
Just look at the Baron quest.
>>335975310
Also what >>335973560 said. If you go into a game like Mass Effect worrying about what the optimal path is to save everybody good and punish everybody bad and get the best possible results, you're just going to drive yourself nuts. It's a great series but not when you're waiting to see the consequences of all your choices because you end up disappointing yourself.
Reminds me of a psych study that was done on kids in poor areas. There was a program that gave kids a dollar for every book they read to encourage more kids to read. What they found was that although more kids started reading books, the kids who were reading for fun found it less fun, and wouldn't do it as often.
It's called extrinsic and intrinsic motivation. You can love doing something, but as soon as that something becomes your job, you lose interest in it. Once you start making decisions to get the best results instead of just having fun and doing what you want, it stops being fun.
Mass Effect 3 found this out the hard way by putting numbers to the consequences of all your decisions, all adding up to the best ending. I swear if that system was removed players would've liked that game a lot more. People want to save Wrex because he's their bro, not because you get a lot of points for it.
>>335972926
> don't refute me xD
You must think we're eating up your bullshit just because we aren't dogpiling your comment
>>335975585
Sure, but that's not point I was making.
>>335973567
I love the clear blue skies
>>335975957
Dis.
I still feel bad about what I did in the baron quest, definitely one of the best written side stories in gaming history.
I tried to save the demon baby and give it a buriel, fucked it up somehow so had kill it's spirit.
Turned off the game and went to bed after.
