In many of the games I’ve played, moral choices are relatively clear-cut, with a well-defined ‘good’ path and an ‘evil’ path. The good path involves protecting the innocent out of pure benevolence, while the evil path offers temptations of money, treasure, or power in return for exploiting the weak.
Occasionally a game might allow you to take a more neutral path, where you might help out purely for the incentive/monetary reward, but overall the morality of these game can be placed on a scale – which some of the games indeed do.
Examples include some of bioware’s older games (KOTOR, Jade Empire), Fallout, Fable, and even games like Bioshock and Dishonoured (to some extent).
I think this might stem from the traditional D&D alignment system, where moral choices can be broken down into good and evil, (and lawful and chaotic). Rather than giving confusing mixed choices, straightforward ‘right or wrong’ allows people to feel good about saving the world, or to get some amusement out of acting like a douchebag and doing the things you can’t get away with in real-life.
However, there seems to be recent trend towards morally ambiguous choices, with dragonage and mass effect highlighting the tougher choice between an idealistic and pragmatic approach, and morally grey choices that
have no real right or wrong. While the outcomes might be similar, these ethical dilemmas are often seen promoting intense debates.
I haven’t got around to playing all of The Walking Dead games yet, but from what I’ve seen, part of the reason it has the impact it has is the tough choices it forces you to make, and the consequences you then have to live with.
Funnily enough, some of the ethical dilemmas that have affected me the most – even causing me to restart play-throughs – are found in games that don’t have such a heavy emphasis on choice.
So – what's the choice that had you pausing to think, or even kept you up at night?
Modifié par mr_afk, 11 décembre 2012 - 11:00 .
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