140 réponses à ce sujet

[Herr Uhl]

The thing that interests me about this games morality is that every partymember has to have some kind of own ethics, due to their different backgrounds. Not just the black/white good/evil, which tends to come down to, save the puppy in the river, watch to see if it survives and learns from the experience or throw rocks at it to kill it faster. I'll probably have to make some uncomfortable choices like in Kotor2 when I wanted to be a bud with Kreia, ergo no forcepersuading robbers to commit suicide .



And yes, moral relativity is maybe "trendy" but I see it from a psychological viewpoint and always try to understand why people think that stuff (<- the scientific term) is moral and immoral. Does that mean a lack of morals or not thinking that something is wrong personally? Well I'll answer that with a big no. And for the record I happen to have no faith and do not look down on people whom have it.

[BomimoDK]

Lord Clocks wrote...

Much more understandable that time around, actually.

If i understand you, you are looking for your choices to influence the base views of your characters rather than simply changing the influence that you have over them and the way that they influence your conversation/decision choices.

I suspect that if you impelemnted a feature like that, it would be kind of a weighted balance system. E.g. you arent moving them much, they are influencing you more than you are moving them, but theoretically by the end of the game, you can have made enough of a difference with consistent choice making as to influence a near-game-end conversation/choiec set.

You would have to plan from this from very early in the game. You would also have to think about how you implement willpower. Willpower could potentially be used to indicate a character's resistance to changing thier mind, as it were.

Its an interesting concept. You could essentially "corrupt" or draw a character to your point of view. This actually draws a really interesting parallel to the Warhammer 40k expansion recently but would have to be far more subtle than in warhammer 40k. They practically beat you over the head with it using overt corruption points.

Instead these would have to be fairly invisible systems and would probably require the developers to build complexity in late-game decision trees, which is not neccessarily a bad thing, I think. More player impact, more player ownership of the end-state.

excactly as you say, i'd want this to be a subtle feature. like what was mentioned about an NPC turning out to have been proven wrong or in the case of Ascension mod where you slowly turn Sarevoks view on the world around.
ofcourse this would require you to be consistent throughout the game, but hopefully only on the level of intentions and not the outcome, if an NPC saw the valiance or corruption in your heart and looked up to it you'd have the power to guide them and their morals.

things that would make this even greater because of the intentions level of influence is that morrigan could see the valiance in your heart if you left peasant a to die to save a village or vice versa. and "whoever" would see the corruption in your heart if you murdered for treasure or power. ofcourse a backfire of actions as a corrupt character would lead to you appearing as a pathetic clown. and failure in doing good would lead Morrigan to think you're a "flawed monk", but Leliana who is already good may commend your valliant effort and even open morrigans eyes to it. i dunno i must be wishing for alot, but it'd be awesome in another bioware RPG with this kind of focus on grey shades of right and wrong+ NPC interactions.

[soteria]

However, I COMPLETELY disagree with you saying irreligious (read: Athiest) people are more likely to believe in "might makes right". Believing in a god does not automatically make someone a good person, or make them any less likely to try and exploit others. In fact, I would argue its the opposite in some cases. How many wars, killings, and purges have happened simply because someone else was of a different religion? Are they morally right because their god tells them so?

But I never said they were "more likely" to believe "might makes right," I just said that moral relativism is probably easier to justify from an atheistic standpoint. If you don't believe in a higher being, it's hard to justify any sort of moral absolute. I added that a logical conclusion to moral relativism is, "might makes right." That doesn't mean all or even most atheists believe that (I even said a lot probably don't).



Read more carefully before you try to argue a point, please. If you still disagree with me, that's fine, but I'm not going to defend something I never claimed.

[Stebenator]

Lord Clocks wrote...

Stebenator wrote...

Then Lord Clocks... you must accept your fate! We must join darkspawn... we must join them... it would be really wise my friend!

Tell me, "Friend".  When did Stebenator the Wise abandon reason for madness?!

haha you knew it =)  

[Herr Uhl]

soteria wrote...

But I never said they were "more likely" to believe "might makes right," I just said that moral relativism is probably easier to justify from an atheistic standpoint. If you don't believe in a higher being, it's hard to justify any sort of moral absolute. I added that a logical conclusion to moral relativism is, "might makes right." That doesn't mean all or even most atheists believe that (I even said a lot probably don't).

I always thought of religion with an omnipotent being that decides if we fry or live in bliss for eternity in the afterlife was the ultimate "might makes right". But I'm just a layman.

[SheffSteel]

Herr Uhl wrote...
I always thought of religion with an omnipotent being that decides if we fry or live in bliss for eternity in the afterlife was the ultimate "might makes right". But I'm just a layman.

Ding. Score.

It's the people who don't have prescribed rules (literally pre-scribed, e.g. on stone tablets) who have to reason out what's right and wrong based on first principles, e.g. the golden rule, freedom-to vs freedom-from, power <=> responsibility, etc.

[Lord Clocks]

Herr Uhl wrote...

I always thought of religion with an omnipotent being that decides if we fry or live in bliss for eternity in the afterlife was the ultimate "might makes right". But I'm just a layman.

So what 'makes right' in lieu of a system of some sort of dogma/spirituality?

(Just for the record I dont neccessarily agree with the equasion of might makes right against religious belief.  And even if I did, I dont neccessarily believe that finding a system of belief which helps a million or billion individuals improve thier lives is neccessarily a bad thing.  I have a lot of problems with organized churches.  And every religion in history has used religion to self-serving purposes or to effect/perpetuate power through the use of violence.

Still, I think there is value in the underlying belief system independent of those disparate abuses.

Incidentally, I think this is also a great illustration of the discussion earlier in the thread of the intent of a particular action being the metric for ethical evaluation rather than the action.  There are ample individual examples throughout various religion's histories which lend themselves to this discussion.  From multiple directions.

Catholicism. Indulgences.  Absolving sins with the intent of either committing further sins on the part of the requestor or potentially obtaining money on the part of the church/priest.

Judaism. David and Goliath.  David kills a man with the help of god to guide the stone with the intent of saving further bloodshed and protecting his people.

There are thousands throughout almost all of the established religions.)

[Herr Uhl]

Lord Clocks wrote...
*snip*

I'm not saying that religion is bad, but stating that religious people don't believe in "might makes right" is kind of weird from my point of view.

It's just that their might comes from a divine being, not military or economic power.

[foolish_sagacity]

Wow, it's so good to see so many intelligently worded, passionate philosophizing. I can't help but add my two cents. ****Warning: The Witcher Spoilers ahead!!!!***

First, to address Lord Clock's original premise of the thread, there HAS been a game that effectively made one feel as though they were living in a world where stereotypes were ineffective. Every decision had a cournel of both good or bad. For example, you could allow some starving elves and dwarves to steal a man's boxes of supplies that you promised to protect. If you don't give them the medical and food supplies they will die, but you will fulfill your promise. If you do, not only did you break your word, but later they will be at full strength and will begin murdering people in the night. Bad people, but people all the same.

In fact, the whole game is a cause and effect playground of gray morality. Many of the decisions I thought were good scalded me morally, resulting in death destruction and mayhem. Both sides of the war thought they were good. And at times I thought both sides were good and had a point, and I truly empathized with both of them. The elves were treated so poorly, that they ignited guerrilla war for political change. The temple was trying to protect the ones they love from guerrillas of which some individuals became so bloodthirsty as to trap women, elderly and children in a crypt with ghouls.

In the game's climax, no matter which side you choose to fight for, you do evil. Even swearing off both sides as I did, seeing how they both did so much evil, leads to more mayhem and violence. There was "gooder" things to do, but nothing was truly, wholesomely good. Even in the end of the game, the spirit of death explains how your continued existence causes murder and mayhem. If you hadn't existed, there would have been so many lives saved. You are given the option to admit that he is right, or to say that your intent to do good overrides that, and that if other men commit evil, or are able to commit evil, because of your deeds, that is on them. That evil follows in your wake doesn't make you evil. It functions much like Cuuniyevo has been explaining. Though, of course, this means the game DOES have a moral alignment and message one can discern. Basically, evil exists no matter what you do, and you must simply be strong and live for your own virtues.

****End massive The Witcher Spolier*****

But in the grand theme of this discussion I'm not sure I can fully subscribe to any of the exact beliefs portrayed here. I believe some people are confusing morals and ethics, and others may understand the boundaries between the two but are believing that morals exist on their own merit, when they cannot exist on anything but  mental, human, philosophical and societal levels. There is no way to establish absolute morals.

Even if you say that there are supposed human constants of morality, that cultures never tolerate torture, rape, murder, incest or pedophilia, there are problems. Yes, no modern country admits to allowing any of those taboos. And yes, because we live in such secure modern worlds, so isolated from true pain and suffering most of the time, such things seem impossible. But fact is, those are not constants of the things humans don't do, but things we just keep on doing. Part of our desire to swallow all those taboos, and constantly "tsk, tsk" them is our desrie to remain in the safety society provides.

The game Penumbra had a breathtaking line of dialogue on society, that paraphrased goes something like "Now that I am here, all alone in this wilderness, with no way to escape and no one to come to my rescure, I realize society is nothing but a safety net. All human society is built around the ability to call 911 if anything goes wrong, to know that someone will be there for you. Here, I am truly, utterly alone.

When a society no longer uses a taboo, people are all too happy to commit the old taboos. The Spanish Inquisition had no trouble finding people willing to both torture and burn victims, but also people too glad to turn others in for such treatment, based even on petty rivalries. Ancient Greece, Rome and Japan were not just tolerant of pedophilia, but encouraged it. Pupils to Greek philosopher's were traditionally sent to them naked at a young age. Rape has always, and still is whether you like it or not, one of the facets of war. The red hair of Scottsmen and the Irish? Comes from all the Scandinavian genes that were introduced by the raping Viking raiders.

Now, of course, I don't think many people were arguing that the existence of morality prevents what we call evil acts from happening, but you must remember, people that commit "evil" rarely, VERY rarely, would believe what they did was evil. Soldiers that raped Vietnamese women in the 80's thought they deserved it because the women were animals or whatever other reason. But to do such a thing, they had to believe it was the right thing to do at the time. Spanish Inquisitors really believed they were improving the world by killing people. Hitler believed he was creating the correct future for the world, pushing humans forward by killing Jewish peoples. Who walks around believing they are Chaotic Evil on a daily basis . Makes no sense. I just want to point out that the fact some people ignore morals is evidence that there can't be an ultimate moral code. If there was, how could they be broken?

Morality is owned only by the self. What you believe is right IS right....to you. The world is entirely filtered through our minds. Everything we do is at least somewhat tinted by our mind, if not entirely so. People that condemn your morality are always wrong to you. And while some moral maps are more popular than others, how can YOU decide which ones are right? What if I believed the best thing for the world is to begin to depopulate it.

I wouldn't be entirely wrong...there are more people on this world than resources comfortably allow. So what if I believed the best thing to do was to become a geneticist, find out who had the most most "perfect" genes to combine with mine, abduct that woman. Now, kill as many people I can, or better yet, kill most people on the planet, keeping just the few brightest and strongest. Now, to ensure my children are genetically strong for the very future of mankind, I rape my best genetic match. What if that really is in the best interest of the human race as I see it? In all honesty, why should I feel bad if I'm making a better human race?

We value other human life and consideration largely because it is convenient for us. We get something back from them, and ensure a safer and better chance of passing on our genes and living a pleasant, hedonistic existence. We don't steal because other people (parents, police, owner) don't want us to, not because WE don't want to. Hell, our entire economy is just about trading around little IOU's that make us have to wait until we get society's permission to have something we just want to take. It ensures that people who are too weak to take by force what they want still have a chance.

I would lose very quickly in a true anarchy. I'm not muscular, I'm not authoritative and I don't have the ability to smash someone's head against a rock for food because I have learned to empathize with them. But if I had been a young Spartan boy I would have been strong, commanding and would have had no qualms about my rite of passage involving the killing of a slave, which was the central activity of one of their holidays. So, my membership to American culture dictates my moral code mostly. Another me, born in another place, would have laughed as I examined the brains oozing from a slave's smashed skull. And, I will admit, there is a part of me that is curious what that would feel like, but another part is simultaneously disgusted by the part of me that would consider crushing a man's skull just to see what happens.

Morality is not so cut and dry that any of us could fully establish an absolute truth. I guarantee some of what I have said is inaccurate to the overarching truth, because all this involves my belief, and belief shapes my world differently. There is a reason that every religion, country, culture and epoch has a different moral code, because likely, there isn't one.

[foolish_sagacity]

I absolutely appreciate what you're saying DungeonHamster, there are many things that do work in absolutes. The earth is, absolutely round...though even that I have to take on good authority that the science books and pictures in them were accurate, as I never actually have seen from a space-eyed view that the earth is not, after all flat.

I think what I was trying to get at with my absurdly long winded ranting as that morality is not a physical science. Unlike gravity where a ball of less mass than the planet or planetoid it is dropped around will, in fact, drop toward the center of the far more massive object. But human institutions such as morality aren't governed like that. Yes, the popular moralities that govern the largest percentage of the human race are somewhat akin to a massive object. Most people gravitate into the realm of that societies mores. But there is that less than one percent that won't. It breaks away from physical sciences because 1 time out of a million, or a billion times a ball is dropped it goes up. It eats babies instead of caring for them.

I once heard a theory of which the basis was such: that our art and entertainment largely revolves around reinforcing our societal mores, and that the most successful are often the ones that challenge the mores the most. A film about a serial killer may romanticize him a little (I guess like Dexter) but will ultimately reinforce all ur beliefs that killing is bad. Even Oedipus Rex has very often been understood to be reinforcing the incest taboo, as well as the folly of trying to outwit the gods, the fates or more bluntly the forces that glue our societies together.

To bring this back to Dragon Age, for instance, look at the Harrowing. Here, a young mage is literally thrown to demons to see if they have the willpower to resist them. If they don't, well, now they endagner the Chantry's way of life and they are summarily executed. My point being that demons have often been, as I believe they are here, representative of the human struggle within themselves between following their moral code they half choose, half get born into, (the God side if you will), and between choosing the primal urges (the Demons or devil side of the coin).

In short, our lives are dependent on symbolism, and our art reflects that. Time and again our art forms reflect the eternal struggle between upholding culture and all the good it provides like safety, security and fair chance to everyone, or giving in to the primal urges that exist in all of us. Dragon Age is absolutely no exception. What are the Darkspawn but the creatures that gave themselves to mindless hedonism, depravity and selfishness?

I believe where I disagree most with you Sir DungeonHamster, is that I don't believe ignorance is anything less than another choice. We're in a world absolutely surrounded with information, more so now, it would seem, than any other epoch. What excuse is there not to know? The problem, I think, comes from the fact that we can't know everything, and the more you know, the more you realize that probably half of what you know is actually not true at all. I don't think one can say ignorance is the reason we don't know the absolutes of beauty, justice or the moral dichotomy of good and evil. In all three of those examples we are dealing with purely subjective human issues.

Beauty for instance. In America we are told thin is the penultimate form of beauty, and indeed, many men and women prefer a thin, chiseled and toned body. But take this article about Mauritania's beauty www.marieclaire.com/world-reports/news/international/forcefeeding-in-mauritania
There, the fatter a woman is, the more beautiful she is. Now, obviously this article is not scholarly, and is even written in a condemning viewpoint. But can we empirically say they are wrong? We tend to like women thin, they think hugely obese women are the best. Clearly, beauty is not intrinsic to human instinct.

The same with justice. I don't believe revenge is justice. I despise eye for an eye. I had a very deranged kid kill my cat when I was only 6 or 7. I did not and do not want to kill one of his pets. Likewise, though I cannot say with certainty this is true, I believe if someone murdered my wife I would fight against their getting the chair (even though the death penalty is illegal where I live.) Knowing that the man that killed my wife also died would simply make me feel worse, or at best not fix a single thing. But my wife disagrees. She says if I was killed she'd want the murderer fried. We both agree to disagree. But again, justice is necessarily subjective.

The problem with morality is that it's inherently inviting to the paradoxical, just as beauty, justice and every other human institution is. Where we say torturing is wrong, we torture people in Guantanamo. Or even back to the Spanish Inquisition. They thought they were helping people by torturing them, they honestly did. They believed they were redeeming witches and heretics by torturing confessions out of them so they could be cleansed in the face of god. It wasn't just "doing what had to be done." It was a noble endeavour to stretch old women to breaking. And yet, we all would say "No, no no no!!!" To such an institution.

Everything humans create seems to inevitably be riddled by paradoxes. And it is the inability of the human mind to grasp that two apparent contradictions can exist that keeps us from understanding our minds and societies better. It isn't ignorance, and ignorance doesn't mean that there IS an answer to morality once and for all. It's not that the universe is entirely subjective, it's that human consciousness is. And sometimes human consciousness distorts that universe.

But keep in mind I'm rather proud of my username. I am sagelike because I know I'm a fool, but I'm foolish for believing for a moment that I'm sage.

[MadHatt3r]

I believe people here would be surprised. Morality is not malleable - much of it is tied as others have pointed out - to survival of the species.

edit:  heh... holy word walls batman - you're all saying the same basic things.

1.  Nobody can prove "God" - thus you cant claim our moral code is "hardwritten".

2.  Nothing is perfect; as Sigmund would tell you, some of us were not breast fed 0_o

3.  "Civilized Society" offers some differences in perception - but I think you have to define what exactly "morality" is -- in my view it is not the judgement of whether fat/thin is beauty - it is the definition and follow-thru of good/evil and as I stated above - I personally believe the definition and follow-thru for good/evil is tied to our instinct for survival.  Killing is bad - why?  duh.

Now my question to you super intelligent people .. is does "Good" actually have a definition or is it simply not Evil ? 

Modifié par MadHatt3r, 27 octobre 2009 - 08:18 .

[briskojr]

soteria wrote...


But I never said they were "more likely" to believe "might makes right," I just said that moral relativism is probably easier to justify from an atheistic standpoint. If you don't believe in a higher being, it's hard to justify any sort of moral absolute. I added that a logical conclusion to moral relativism is, "might makes right." That doesn't mean all or even most atheists believe that (I even said a lot probably don't).

Read more carefully before you try to argue a point, please. If you still disagree with me, that's fine, but I'm not going to defend something I never claimed.

I imagine many atheists tend to agree with the concept of moral absolutism at least to a degree. It's a matter of where morality comes from. Society, religion, perceptions, and philosphy are the ones I think of. Morals that stem purely from society (that exists so that the society itself may do the same) are absolutes as they're common among all societies. Has theft or murder ever been morally acceptable in an established society? No, because if they were that society would not have survived to that point.

Morals from religion, perception, or phisophy are all relative as there are many of each and they have their own codes of conduct. Some are more aligned with societies moral absolutism, but  are so mostly due to modernization.

[Herr Uhl]

MadHatt3r wrote...

Now my question to you super intelligent people .. is does "Good" actually have a definition or is it simply not Evil ? 

I'm against calling myself intelligent, but something that is positive for the society is often considered a good action. Scratching your ass is not evil nor good imo.

[briskojr]

MadHatt3r wrote...

I believe people here would be surprised. Morality is not malleable - much of it is tied as others have pointed out - to survival of the species.

edit:  heh... holy word walls batman - you're all saying the same basic things.

1.  Nobody can prove "God" - thus you cant claim our moral code is "hardwritten".

2.  Nothing is perfect; as Sigmund would tell you, some of us were not breast fed 0_o

3.  "Civilized Society" offers some differences in perception - but I think you have to define what exactly "morality" is -- in my view it is not the judgement of whether fat/thin is beauty - it is the definition and follow-thru of good/evil and as I stated above - I personally believe the definition and follow-thru for good/evil is tied to our instinct for survival.  Killing is bad - why?  duh.

Now my question to you super intelligent people .. is does "Good" actually have a definition or is it simply not Evil ? 

Good is something that's not bad Evil, well that would be like, Dracula or something.

[Active_Download]

Isn't helping other people good and hurting other people evil?

Serving to exist only to sustain one's existence at any cost is selfish; not necessarily evil but if the cost of sustaining one's existence by not allowing pain to come to themselves but rather to cause it to others, doesn't that make someone evil/bad?

But if someone else were to serve to help others and stop those who would work to undo everything that society has created wouldn't that make them good?

[Maria Caliban]

DungeonHamster wrote...

Now my question to you super intelligent people .. is does "Good" actually have a definition or is it simply not Evil ? 

There's a thread about this in OT right now.

[foolish_sagacity]

My, what fun this topic is. I think the basis of everything I'm trying to say is that I'm not convinced that good has an absolute definition, but we spend our whole lives trying to prove to ourselves that what we think good is is in fact what's good. As I said, we tend to prefer art that espouses and reinforces our core moral values.

The thing is, there were cultures that not just tolerated murder, but enforced it. Spartans used to bash babies against rocks that couldn't drink wine immediately after being born. They were also legally obligated to beat their slaves. And once a year there was a holiday which Spartan youths celebrated by murdering slaves to get their first taste of blood if they hadn't already. This wasn't tolerated, this was what they did. And they lasted a good long time, and even got a pretty awesome tribute movie. Other races like the Mongol hordes of the Genghis Khan weren't any better. They lived to murder, pillage, rape and steal.

The morals we have now are just the most current incarnation of human morality, and they have changed (I think for the better) but will also change profoundly in the future. Just because they believed what they did was good and right doesn't mean it was. But just because we do what we believe is good and right doesn't mean we're going to be considered good by anyone but ourselves.

What's important to me is that Dragon Age has every character believing they are right. If everyone thinks they are doing precisely the thing that needs to be done, even if that means killing a friend, then they'll have hit the moral fen I believe will give us the ability to really take something away from the game regarding morality and choices.

[soteria]

briskojr wrote...

soteria wrote...


But I never said they were "more likely" to believe "might makes right," I just said that moral relativism is probably easier to justify from an atheistic standpoint. If you don't believe in a higher being, it's hard to justify any sort of moral absolute. I added that a logical conclusion to moral relativism is, "might makes right." That doesn't mean all or even most atheists believe that (I even said a lot probably don't).

Read more carefully before you try to argue a point, please. If you still disagree with me, that's fine, but I'm not going to defend something I never claimed.

I imagine many atheists tend to agree with the concept of moral absolutism at least to a degree. It's a matter of where morality comes from. Society, religion, perceptions, and philosphy are the ones I think of. Morals that stem purely from society (that exists so that the society itself may do the same) are absolutes as they're common among all societies. Has theft or murder ever been morally acceptable in an established society? No, because if they were that society would not have survived to that point.

Morals from religion, perception, or phisophy are all relative as there are many of each and they have their own codes of conduct. Some are more aligned with societies moral absolutism, but  are so mostly due to modernization.

Your logic is impeccable, except you base it on a shaky premise (theft and murder are universally deemed wrong).  I know of cultures where (successful) thieves are honored, murder is OK as long as you're killing someone from a different village, and treachery is admirable.  You could probably say universally that people don't appreciate murder and theft being practiced on themselves.

I guess this is the point where you tell me that tribal groups in the Amazon, deep dark Africa and southeast Asia don't qualify as established societies so they don't count.  For what it's worth, I *used* to think certain moral values were universally accepted.

I do think it's interesting that you claim that societal values are absolute because of perceived commonality (murder and theft are unacceptable) but religious or philosophical values are relative because... they don't have perceivable commonality?  Religion and philosphy are both elements of culture and societal values, right?  If, as I hear so often, all religions are just a construct of a given society, I wonder how it is you wave away religious values as "relative" but accept societal values as absolute.

Is it that "all" societies agree on this one point, so it must be true?  If so, then don't "all" religions agree on the existance of the supernatural?  Would that make that true, as well?  Or is it that you, philosophically speaking, believe that certain values are just necessary for the survival of the species?  If the second, then I guess we're probably stuck back at arguing whether or not such societies *really* exist as I claim.

[Active_Download]

That's a good observation foolish_sagacity, every character believes that they are right in DA:O. Which I would presume brings up the fundamental problem of good and evil. Since everyone believes they are right then that would mean that they think they aren't doing anything wrong, so they would act to further their own interests whether those interests are aligned with the whole of humanity or not. I guess when a character kills a possessed child, who could still be saved, they believe they are doing good because they are ridding the world of evil through it's destruction, but the perception of that character by others could make him look evil.