Before getting into the mechanical reasons of why they fail, the concept of a morality system in of itself is a flaw. The fun of being bad in a video game is when you aren't supposed to do it.
For example, in the first Crazy Taxi, you weren't supposed to ignore the goal of the mission and instead drive on the sidewalks into pedestrians. That's what made it fun to do. That's what made a really unspectacular game enjoyable for a few hours. GTA does this well too. In those games, you're never told to pick up a hooker, have sex with her, then kill her to get your money back. You're never even told that you can. You can just do it, and it's entertaining because its so goddamn malicious.
Having the game spell out "You have two options: Let the woman go peacefully or kill her to get your money back" sucks the fun out of the situation. If the game tells you that it's an option then you're no longer breaking the rules, you're just doing what the game tells you to do.
But although GTA handles being bad well, there's no system of morality. You play a bad guy no matter what your trivial machinations in the game are.
As for the good/evil dichotomy, the best evil characters are rarely outwardly evil. I hate when a game gives me two options, like "Give a flower to the woman OR steal candy from a baby", and then bases my character's morality on my choice.
I can explain it better this way: Palpatine didn't become the evil emperor of the galaxy by burning kittens and blowing up buses full of nuns. He did it by pretending to be a good guy. He did good things to convince everyone he's a good guy, then he did bad stuff. My favorite game of all time is KotOR, and even that game handles this really poorly. I'll try to explain how in the least spoilery way possible. I don't think its a secret that there's a point in the game where you can choose to be a Sith and betray your friends. The problem with it is that you don't have the option to keep it a secret from anyone. You can't convince your friends that you're a good person, have them help you take down the Sith Lord, and then betray them. No, you have to declare in no uncertain terms to everyone that you're an evil bastard and that you got a lightsaber for anyone who has a problem with it.
Now I don't envy the writer who has to figure out how to come up with a "Good/Evil/Evil-but-outwardly-Good" morality system, but the right way to do things ain't always the easy way. All I'm saying is that the friendship/rivalry system in DA2 didn't really work, because an evil person would manipulate his friends into liking them while secretly doing his own thing. Wasn't possible in DA2 or Origins.
Lastly, being evil should be easier and have rewards greater than being good. If the rewards for being a good person are equal (or better) than being a bad person, why be bad? After all, isn't the reason people do bad things in life to get ahead? If Kim Jong Un could have a decadent life of fame and (forced) love without subjugating his citizens to starvation, he probably would. But he can't, which is why he (and the old guard who really run the country) allow bad things to continue happening in North Korea.
Why should video games ignore this? Being good shouldn't have equal reward for being bad, because being good, at its heart, means to be selfless. Being evil, at its heart, is to be selfish. If you know you can expect to get the same or greater reward for doing good acts as you can for doing evil acts, are you really being good? The only reason to be evil in such a situation is just to get some jollies, or just what you do in your second playthrough just to see the rest of a game's content. What I'm getting at is that in games there's rarely any temptation to be evil other than for some sick pleasure. You want that awesome-looking sword in the shop, but it's a couple hundred gold outside your price range. In your travels though you have the opportunity to rob a merchant blind, which would give you enough to buy the sword. You, the player, might justify robbing the guy because you will use the sword to better kill darkspawn or whatever, but in your heart you would always know it was wrong. That's how easily a game can evoke strong emotional responses if done right.
Anyway, to sum up,
1. Being evil is more fun when the game doesn't tell you that being evil is an option
2. Evil people usually don't let on that they're bad until they have what they want
3. Being evil should yeild greater material reward than being good
I'm watching DA:I news like a hawk but I havent seen much on how morality plays into the game. All I hope is that there's a much bigger range of endings that depend on our choices.
Retour en haut
