140 réponses à ce sujet

[Lord Clocks]

It is very difficult to think of a title which deals with morality in anything other than sterotypical pre-concieved black/white archetypes.

Looking through the previews and the media (videos, etc) available of actual gameplay right now, I am intrigued by a system that appears to provide story based exploration of perspectives rather than stereotypical right/wrong positioning with respect to the overarching story.

The recent discussion of PA comics and the Templars is a good example of that.  Folks seem to have a pretty strong of what a templar should or shouldnt be and how that should be represented.

Is Morality malleable?
Should it be pre-defined in the game universe?

And if the designer were to do so, doesnt that by definition set up something for the player themselves to rebel against if they arent making thier own choices?

[Darthnemesis2]

Morality is what each individual makes of it. To some people X is the worst thing possible, but to others X is just something that happens.

[Lord Clocks]

But how do you then reflect that in a game? Ultimately at some level someone on the dev team has to define "right" and "wrong" and what those imply for a character right?



I mean look at "corruption" in the new Warhammer 40k:DoW II expansion. Its kind of the same thing but implemented through different game mechanics.



Does the developer get to do that?



How do you play that world?

[Jab0r]

Ultimately at some level someone on the dev team has to define "right" and "wrong" and what those imply for a character right?

Not necessarily. The developer can just decide what the outcome of a particular action is, and leave it up to the player to determine whether they view that outcome as good or bad.

Mass Effect did this to some extent - sure, you had the Paragon/Renegade scale, but neither one was right or wrong.

Dragon Age takes it one step further, and removes the visible scale alltogether.

Modifié par Jab0r, 26 octobre 2009 - 02:55 .

[aidron]

I personally see everything in life as a shade of grey and completely subjective.

In a game, I would enjoy not seeing hard and fast right and wrongs. If, for example, you run across a desparate villager who is being hounded by bandits and you refuse to help her, let's leave out the "You did the right thing." for reason X or "You did the wrong thing." for reason X. Instead, what about concrete consequences? Uh-oh, you let that person die and they could have told you how to get out of this vast marsh you're lost in. Or you rescued them, but in reality it was a ploy to get you to let your guard down so the villager could strike at you from behind.

As to whether you did the right or wrong thing, let the world around you interpret your actions based on their own subjectivity. Maybe Wynne thinks less of you now for letting the villager die or Morrigan thinks less of you for helping the weakling villager.

Don't tell me I did the right or wrong thing. Just let the consequences of my actions (whatever they may be) flow in a fluid manner. Intent is really where we as creatures determine right and wrong, I believe, and you simply cannot interpret intent when you're a piece of software I think.

And as an aside, I love that there is no visible moral-o-meter in DA. Now if only they would remove the visible influence ratings for companions.

 

Modifié par aidron, 26 octobre 2009 - 02:58 .

[Darthnemesis2]

What the developer does (in this case Bioware, specifically DA) is they give each character a set of morals. If I killed the Dalish how would Alistair respond? (for example). What is Wynne's view on murder? Where do these opinions come from? What happened in Sten's life that made him think eating babies was a moral obligation? For Dragon Age, instead of everyone who's "lightside" think the same and everyone who's "darkside" think the same, they gave everyone their own points of view, their own moral codes, and their own personalities. Again, what is 'right' is defined by each individual character and may not mesh exactly with the other characters.

How does that translate into the gameworld/my experiences in it? The origins are a big part of that. They provide you a unique look into the world that's completely different across all six. Maybe you see your family get killed in one so you hate the people who did it, but in another you never faced the same situation so you actually like the person who did it.

[Bryzon]

Darthnemesis2 wrote...

Morality is what each individual makes of it. To some people X is the worst thing possible, but to others X is just something that happens.

Couldn't had said it better myself.

Morals are a person thing, like your belief system,  you cannot expect everyone to have the same morals as you.

[PsychoBlonde]

You can have morality in a game world without defining a hard "right" and "wrong" simply by having there be consequences for actions. If both (or all) sides of a given conflict have mixed approaches, the players will make decisions based on who they, personally, sympathize with the most for whatever reason. Or, if they make a decision and really don't like who benefits from it, they may go back and try a different path.



Granted, in order to portray a mixed approach, a writer must have definite ideas of what constitutes right and wrong. They may not be articulate, and they may personally believe that no one ever achieves perfect right-ness or wrong-ness, but you can't write about morality in any way without believing it exists.



I'm a third way person. I don't think, in real life, that it's necessary to choose between different types of gray--and if one of the grays demands a "my way or the highway" type of decision when they're also partially to blame, that makes them black, anyway, and screw them. I'm hoping there will be opportunities to resolve conflicts without always choosing one set of idiots over another, or even chances to just say "screw you guys, I'm going home" on occasion. Or, if they don't even grant you that much, at least the ability to SAY "a plague on both your houses" while you're reluctantly siding with one over the other.

[PsychoBlonde]

Bryzon wrote...

Darthnemesis2 wrote...

Morality is what each individual makes of it. To some people X is the worst thing possible, but to others X is just something that happens.

Couldn't had said it better myself.

Morals are a person thing, like your belief system,  you cannot expect everyone to have the same morals as you.

No, but I can sure as heck shoot them in the head when they decide that their "morals" indicate that they should break into my house, kill my best friend, and rape me.  No, wait, go for the body mass shot, that's more effective.

You can try believing whatever you want, but there are always consequences if you think anything goes.

[Varenus Luckmann]

I completely agree with Jab0r. I just felt a need to say that.

[Maria Caliban]

Darthnemesis2 wrote...

Morality is what each individual makes of it.

In the real world, perhaps. In a fictional construct where you can only act or speak in a way that the developers have planned and implements, I'd suggest that doesn't hold true.

The developers have called this dark, heroic fantasy, and said there are a number of immoral things you can't do. This tells us that the developers have an ethical framework they're basing the game on. It might not be as obvious as an alignment system, but then again, even the most heavy handed of fiction rarely uses an alignment system. The lack of one doesn't guarantee lack of in setting morality.

[xODD7BALLx]

Have to agree with Darth. In American society which stems from puritan concepts nudity and such is an awful thing and is not socially acceptable, yet in Europe it's acceptable, I dont mean people go at it in the streets or anything, I just mean the human body isnt so much taboo over there as is here.



And in thinking back it's funny how Black Isle/Interplay's Fallout 1 & 2 had children whom in some places in the waste typically pickpocketed you ect but others were bystanders could get caught in a hail of gunfire intentional or unintentional and be shredded to bits with extreme gore and it was ok here, but in Europe all children NPCs were removed because of that possibility because it wasnt ok.



I like the freedom of choice in games, and I am very much against censorship, when games are on the same level socially as film is and M games are looked at similar to R movies then there wont be as big a difference, like nudity and sexual content, language, ect. To be bad or good has been a cool trend in gaming, I think sometimes it's forced though, like in Fable, "could you watch my stuff make sure nothing happens to it", bad guy says "smash it all it's fun", you're forced to choose good or bad. The original Fallout games were kind of go through the wastes do as you please, and the game wasnt centered on morality rather the people in the game developed opinions of you, either of fear, spite, anger, love, or neutral, it wasnt forced though and it didnt really matter because the scenario the player was in was something you had to make choices on how you the player felt, you run across a slave camp, you can just be on your way, join the slavers, or stand up against the slavers and attempt to rescue the slaves, it was based on you not the games morality meter.



I look at Dragon Age so far with the idea that you are put into a situation in which your main goal is stopping the Blight, that seems to be the only forced part about it, and what you do to reach that goal is up to you, like in the Haven video, I'm sure there are ways around slaughtering people to accomplish your goal, but do you as a player in this persona feel that mercy and sensitivity and going around your ass to get to your elbow to complete your objective isnt worth the risk of failing Thedas and Fereldan in stopping the Blight?

[PsychoBlonde]

I personally see everything in life as a shade of grey and completely subjective.

So, if you get run over by a bus, that's your fault for imagining it into existence?  Why would you do that?

[Flamin Jesus]

I think almost all games nowadays (If they even attempt handling the question) just apply our present-day morality to paint their worlds, but that's not really a *bad* thing as such, I mean I could imagine playing a game where the hero is something akin to a real historical templar, inquisitor or similar (That is, a pompous fool who has no problem exterminating unarmed innocents if they happen to think the wrong thoughts or stand in the way of their interests), or a real soldier who has seen one too many of his buddies torn apart by machine gun fire to care anymore what pvt meyers does with that screaming woman, and where the (game) world would in fact be surprised if things were any different, but I don't think I'd really enjoy it, even knowing that that's how the real world works. After all gaming always has an element of escapism, and if I escape into another world, I prefer to go to one where ****s are the ones who get gutted and good (As in 'good in my opinion') people get a break every once in a while. Even if I play to get an opportunity to let out my inner ****, I won't get much of a kick if murdering babies is a completely natural and expected way to spend the afternoon in that particular society.
Too great an emotional disconnect between player moralities and the ingame society's moralities means that nothing I can or can't do really has any impact on me.

EDIT:
"Even if I play to get an opportunity to let out my inner ****, I won't
get much of a kick if murdering babies is a completely natural and
expected way to spend the afternoon in that particular society."
By that I meant: If I want to play an ****, I won't have fun doing it if 'being evil' means giving money to the poor, or helping to build a community house, or demonstrating against a war.

Modifié par Flamin Jesus, 26 octobre 2009 - 03:12 .

[Darthnemesis2]

PsychoBlonde wrote...

Bryzon wrote...

Darthnemesis2 wrote...

Morality is what each individual makes of it. To some people X is the worst thing possible, but to others X is just something that happens.

Couldn't had said it better myself.

Morals are a person thing, like your belief system,  you cannot expect everyone to have the same morals as you.

No, but I can sure as heck shoot them in the head when they decide that their "morals" indicate that they should break into my house, kill my best friend, and rape me.  No, wait, go for the body mass shot, that's more effective.

You can try believing whatever you want, but there are always consequences if you think anything goes.

Absolutely. I wasn't trying to say anything different. However, even in self defense, some might say killing is wrong.
What I was talking about is maybe something like prostitution. Its against the law (in many places) but some people either don't see it as wrong, or have no other choice, or insert random reason X here. According to society's laws, its wrong, but to the individual it may not be.

[briskojr]

Any society will impose some sort of moral code on any individual raised in it. So it makes sense that the characters in DA would have different ethics for any given situation. Given that, real morality behaves more in accoradance with one's perception of morality and in that way yes morality is malleable. This is why I love Bioware games, seeing characters change due to my actions is interesting and I can't wait to see how it will work out in DA.

[Arttis]

They define right and wrong from the perspective of the character.

[PsychoBlonde]

Have to agree with Darth. In American society which stems from puritan concepts nudity and such is an awful thing and is not socially acceptable, yet in Europe it's acceptable, I dont mean people go at it in the streets or anything, I just mean the human body isnt so much taboo over there as is here.

I love how people always come up with these totally optional values that are of almost no importance when they talk about morality being "subjective".  Who cares about whether people get twitchy when you show your boobs in public?  How about murder?  Rape?  Torture?  Anyone think of any decent society where THOSE are accepted?  Would you want to live there?  No?

Congratulations.  You now know that some things actually are pretty damn bad.

[Herr Uhl]

Murder, rape and torture. For invading armies it seems moral enough. Human sacrifice was considered extremely moral in some societies.

[Arttis]

Some people would live in a lawless place.

[Darthnemesis2]

Maria Caliban wrote...

Darthnemesis2 wrote...

Morality is what each individual makes of it.

In the real world, perhaps. In a fictional construct where you can only act or speak in a way that the developers have planned and implements, I'd suggest that doesn't hold true.

The developers have called this dark, heroic fantasy, and said there are a number of immoral things you can't do. This tells us that the developers have an ethical framework they're basing the game on. It might not be as obvious as an alignment system, but then again, even the most heavy handed of fiction rarely uses an alignment system. The lack of one doesn't guarantee lack of in setting morality.

I'm not even talking about a lack of a meter though. I'm reffering specifically to the fact that there is no absolute 'right' or 'wrong' in the gameworld. There are choices and there are consequences. You decide what choice is the right one for a given situation. Some people will hate you for it, some will love you, some will see it was necessary, some won't like it but will go along because they have no other choice (in their minds).

[Herr Uhl]

Arttis wrote...

Some people would live in a lawless place.

There is always some kind of law if there are more than two people. Who sets it and why is a different issue.

[briskojr]

Herr Uhl wrote...

Murder, rape and torture. For invading armies it seems moral enough. Human sacrifice was considered extremely moral in some societies.

*cough* Black Water *cough*




The fact that 30% of women in our military are raped and a significant portion of our country support torture as long as you call it something else makes you wonder just how far we've come.

[PsychoBlonde]

Darthnemesis2 wrote...

Absolutely. I wasn't trying to say anything different. However, even in self defense, some might say killing is wrong.
What I was talking about is maybe something like prostitution. Its against the law (in many places) but some people either don't see it as wrong, or have no other choice, or insert random reason X here. According to society's laws, its wrong, but to the individual it may not be.

*Legal* is different from *moral*.  Legal issues are rightly *subordinate* to morality, but it is not proper to attempt to *legislate* morality.  It is immoral to refuse to work and live off the efforts of others even if they are willing to support you, for instance, but it shouldn't be ILLEGAL to be a worthless bum.  It is always incorrect to reduce the proper hierarchy of philosophy and try to replace ethics with politics.

But, worse, people forget that when they declare morality is subjective, they are making a sweeping epistemological statement that leaves the door open for ANYONE to do ANYTHING and claim it's "perfectly okay".  No.  I don't care what society you're from, that which destroys human life and dignity is evil.

[PsychoBlonde]

Herr Uhl wrote...

Murder, rape and torture. For invading armies it seems moral enough. Human sacrifice was considered extremely moral in some societies.

The fact that they *did* it makes it *moral*?  How's that again?