268 réponses à ce sujet

[Han Shot First]

Thats the point, make the renegade choice not the stupid one. Have them over different outcomes:

Paragon = nice guy route, yields a good outcome and everyone looks at you like your a hero

Renegade = yields a better outcome but people think you're too ruthless

 

What I'm saying is that the renegade choices shouldn't be stupid and insane.

 

Renegade shouldn't always yield a better outcome either. A better approach would be to have some paragon choices backfire, and in other situations some renegade choices backfire. It should be well balanced, and the player should be forced to actually think about their choices rather than always spamming the blue or red option to get the best outcome.

 

Renegade needs to be handled better in the next game however. Far too often in the Shepard trilogy it strayed into stupid evil or pointless jerkass territory. 

[MissOuJ]

I'm more into "chaos vs order" or "liberty vs control" sort of choises, because let's face it, most of the time "good" and "bad" choises in video games boil down to "saint vs evil troll". Having two opposite ideologies and giving them both strenghts and weaknesses is much more engaging and immersive story telling, IMO, and it's one reason why I find the Mage-Templar -conflict so interesting.

 

Not to say that there shouldn't be choises such as altruism vs self-interest (which usually get coded "good" and "bad" respectively) but one thing I would like to see is making the "good" option harder or more difficult or costly in terms of game mechanics. Like, have an option to help people/groups, but it'll cost you resources you could use to get gear/upgrades, and the only reward you'll get is that the people/groups are grateful to you, period. No unique gear, no extra help later in the game - well, maybe something so that the game doesn't become completely unbalanced on a "good" playthrough, but nothing that makes the "good" choice the "if I do this now I'll get the Infinity + 1 Sword later in the game" investment. Make morality its own reward.

[Sifr]

Renegade shouldn't always yield a better outcome either. A better approach would be to have some paragon choices backfire, and in other situations some renegade choices backfire. It should be well balanced, and the player should be forced to actually think about their choices rather than always spamming the blue or red option to get the best outcome.

 

ME3 actually did have a good example of this with Legion's Loyalty Mission in ME2, where it turns out that the Paragon option of rewriting the Heretic Geth was ultimately the wrong choice as they discovered what you did and remained loyal to the Reapers, whereas the Renegade option of blowing them up actually worked in your favour.

[In Exile]

ME3 actually did have a good example of this with Legion's Loyalty Mission in ME2, where it turns out that the Paragon option of rewriting the Heretic Geth was ultimately the wrong choice as they discovered what you did and remained loyal to the Reapers, whereas the Renegade option of blowing them up actually worked in your favour.

 

Interestingly, I always thought the far more morally upright choice was to grant the heretics a proper death instead of essentially making them mind-wiped slaves. The morality of the paragon option, to me, was always just pure bonkers. 

[ShadowLordXII]

Hell, Bioware did this with Bhelen/Harrowmont.  Bhelen is a sleazy, backstabbing, fratricidal (possibly patricidal), selfish but progressive piece of slime.  Harrowmont, by contrast seems kinder, honorable and and overall nicer candidate (aside from that traditionalist mentality perpetuating a caste system that can only be described as despicable).  The sleazy candidate, overall, is the better choice for Orzammar than the 'nice guy' by far.  While Harrowmont doesn't really have time on the throne to really screw up anything (since he dies not long after taking it) Bhelen actually is supposed to be better for Orzammar, dragging them into a more progressive state.

 

While not an 'evil' choice to put Bhelen on the throne, I still felt horrible the first time I did it and his first action was to kill Harrowmont and wipe out Harrowmont's entire family except for the one cousin/nephew who finds Hawke in Kirkwall. 

 

I'd say that this situation demonstrates the problem with making the "moral choice" the wrong choice just for the sake of screwing with the player.

 

There is no practical, logical or ethical reason given in-game for why Bhelen would be the better candidate and yet picking him ushers in a golden age? While picking the honorable Harrowmont equals an age of strife for Orzammar? Neat.

 

Raonar/Karmic Acumen, writer of the legendary Dragon Age fanfiction "Crown of Thorns" lays out everything about why Bhelen isn't a competent or worthwhile candidate in this forum, http://forum.bioware...-aeducan-sucks/

 

I couldn't say it better than this guy. But long story short, any capacity that Bhelen has to rule is an informed ability and choosing him requires a great deal of meta-gaming which is somewhat cheating. At least for me.

 

If the game is going to follow through with challenging the player and making what appears to be the "right choice" turn out to be the wrong choice, it better be sure to both show and explain why things happened the way that they did. A hint that a victimized mage is more of a threat than they seem, a potential consequence that has credence, or a demonstration that the lines of right and wrong aren't so set in stone as they appear.

[BraveVesperia]

I definitely like it when games keep things varied, and you don't know which choice will be better. I always liked the Bhelen/Harrowmont choice there, since Harrowmont is more likeable and seems like the 'right' choice at first, but Bhelen is more progressive. Things like that, or the OP example, mixed in with the usual nice = right choices.

 

One thing I wasn't keen on with ME (especially the last game) is that it got really predictable what the better choice was going to be. It takes the weight out of the choice.

[9TailsFox]

I've been saying this for a while now (mostly on tumblr) that I'm fairly certain letting Varric keep the lyrium shard in DA2 is the genophage decision of DA:I.

 

Varric Keeps the Shard:

1) Goes crazy like his brother at some point during DA:I?

2) Maybe helps you uncover something to do with the Red Templars?

 

Varric Destroys the Shard:

1) Doesn't go crazy like his brother.

2) We lose out on something important- the same way Mordin could cure the genophage, but Eve dies because he doesn't have the previous information. In one of the demos, they find a red lyrium shard, and Dorian is there, and says he wants to look at it later. It's the one where Leliana is held captive.

I never considered this decision because,for me it's like will you let your friend become insane or to what every sane person would do. For me this is one of decisions I don like. You have to pick between, what is logical and everyone would do and between I am doing it because i am evil muhahahaha. Even if I play evil for the sake of evil why would I want someone who fight for me become this crazy, we don't talk about just crazy we talk advanced crazy.

[MissOuJ]

I had more of a problem with money in Skyrim, where money is all but useless since anything the shops sell is dropping randomly too. (I suppose the RP  thing to do is sink all the cash into training even though that's a Red Queen's Race, since the PC doesn't know that enemies scale either.)

 

I have the same problem in KoA: I have almost 1,000,000 gold ATM, and because the blacksmithing and sagecraft systems are not balanced (like, at all), so since I can make the absolute best gear in the game myself there's no point for me to buy anything or even keep most of the loot I get - I just chuck all that I can't salvage at the nearest merchant to make room in my inventory, hence my near-millionare status.

 

The relationship between in-game economics and morality is a really interesting question. If currency/resources are scarce and the merchants actually sell something worth having, giving any of it away would be a much more difficult decision, and if there were more people/groups you could help than there are resources in the game, the morality system would become very interesting.

 

Like, you come a region where there's a plague of some sort, plus a bandit problem. You arrive to a village which is in need of help, but you only have 1 Health Resource, and in this town there are 2 groups who really need it: the hospice and the militia. If you give it to the hospice, it would help the people of the town, keep the workers in the fields to keep the food production going and prevent the plague from overrunning the town. If you give it to the militia, they'd be more effective against the local bandits, and they'd be able to secure trade routes, making the village safer and more prosperous. There are possible bad outcomes for both decisions: help the militia, the town gets infected by the plague; help the hospice, and the bandits overrun the militia.

 

So, do you help the hospice or the militia, or do you decide to not help, because you're playing on Hard and you really, really need that resource to get health potions / a max health upgrade? Personally, I'd like to see more stuff like this in games... but balancing resources for something like that would probably be a nightmare.

[Vilegrim]

Ah, yes, like accepting that one Molag Bal quest in Skyrim where the only way to progress is to work evil.

Erm you took a quest from Molag frikkin Bal, what did you expect?!

[Burricho]

Thats the point, make the renegade choice not the stupid one. Have them over different outcomes:

Paragon = nice guy route, yields a good outcome and everyone looks at you like your a hero

Renegade = yields a better outcome but people think you're too ruthless

 

What I'm saying is that the renegade choices shouldn't be stupid and insane.

Alternatively, you can have morally grey choices where there is no 'evil' or 'good' choice which is something bioware are terrible at.

[xSammy13x]

I never considered this decision because,for me it's like will you let your friend become insane or to what every sane person would do. For me this is one of decisions I don like. You have to pick between, what is logical and everyone would do and between I am doing it because i am evil muhahahaha. Even if I play evil for the sake of evil why would I want someone who fight for me become this crazy, we don't talk about just crazy we talk advanced crazy.

 

Yes, but to be fair, with Varric he may or may not go crazy because of the Red Lyrium. I mean, the genophage cure was set up to make you not take it, too. Those female Krogan were basically tortured for medical reasons to see if it would cure them or not, and the cure his apprentice had made didn't even work. It looked like a "bad" option. Mordin only hints at the fact it may be good to keep it for later.

 

But so does Varric. He says it's the only thing he has to figure out wtf made his brother go Coo Coo for Cocoa Puffs, and it may help us figure out wtf is up with the Templars, too. 

 

Still, the decision is there...and it was the only one I really had a hard time with in DA2.

[Ieldra]

Well, well, if it isn't one of my pet peeves addressed in a thread again

 

My main observartion in this regard is that a pattern of intuitively "good" choices leading to better outcomes makes the world feel artificial. That's because pragmatic actions - the ones where you sacrifice your principles for better results to some degree - are usually taken in the real world because they *do* work, as a rule, and because results are their primary and only benefit. If they rarely worked, nobody would take them.

 

In Bioware's stories the downsides of the pragmatic choices are often pushed up to eleven, usually by associating gratuitous evil that has nothing to do with the risks instrinsic to the choice. DAO's Anvil of the Void - as such a pragmatic choice that works - is one of the best examples. The risk inherent in saving it is the possibility that it will be abused, and it would be perfectly appropriate to show that the outcome is two-faced in the aftermath. What we get instead is having to side with a power-hungry madwoman who would sacrifice anyone and anything, including her lover, to get at the Anvil. 

 

Meanwhile, also typical for Bioware's stories is to push the intuitively good as the "right" choice even when it's not nearly as good when you stop to think about it for even a moment. The genophage choice in ME3 is the primary example here - how pushy the game is becomes rather apparent by giving you three opportunities to reconsider if you choose to sabotage the cure. Meanwhile, If you take the lore at face value and use the numbers provided,  attempting to cure the genophage appears to be an outright insane proposition. Yet, it is the right one which has the best outcome unless you've already been an evil bastard and killed Wrex in ME1. While sabotaging the cure makes you feel like sh*t for all the right reasons for a change, the whole setup is an example for punishing the thinking player over the one who just follows their intuitions. I resent that.

 

Another problem Bioware has often failed to address is this: pragmatic choices are justified only if they yield better results than the principled ones, as a rule. If the principled choice works without a downside, and the pragmatic one works with a downside, who in their right mind would ever choose the latter? Of course we don't know that in advance, but if I'm thinking of taking the principled choice for no better reason than I must suspect Bioware has given it the better outcome, then something is wrong.

 

What I would like to see in DAI is this:

 

(1) A somewhat realistic portrayal of the consequences - good and bad - of the choices you make. If a pragmatic choice makes people feel you're sacrificing too much and they trust you less, that's perfectly appropriate. Maybe some companion will leave over it, that's also ok. On the other hand, it should have a tangible benefit with regard to what you wanted to achieve with it over the principled choice. Not always, of course - invariable decision patterns are bad - but as a rule.

 

(2) Principled choices should not only not always have the better outcome, sometimes they should have a really bad outcome. Just as you can't know the outcome of a pragmatic choice and it can sometimes backfire, the same should apply to the principled choice. Neither should happen often, or the player will feel deceived, but it should happen here and there. The main point is that intuitively good decisions should not be protected from backfiring just because they are intuitively good, while pragmatic choices should not backfire more often just because they're pragmatic.

 

(3) People feel strongly about morality, but morality is not just - and for some not even primarly - an emotional matter. Particularly when things get difficult, we use moral reasoning to find the most acceptable alternative. Thus, the story should not punish the thinking player over the one who just follows their intuition. The intuitively good and the rationally good are often at odds, particularly when it comes to intangible evils. I resent being punished for rejecting the concept of intangible evils because they don't hold up to scrutiny.

[PhroXenGold]

Interestingly, I always thought the far more morally upright choice was to grant the heretics a proper death instead of essentially making them mind-wiped slaves. The morality of the paragon option, to me, was always just pure bonkers. 

 

Personally, I always thought that decision should not have had a "paragon" option - both should've been marked as renegade as neither is "good" in any way. Though I do agree that killing them was marginally less worse from a moral point of view.

 

 

As for the OP's thoughts on good always (or at least usually) working out, I do rather agree that there needs to be more cases of trying to do good but making things worse. Conversely, it shouldn't be a matter of "good never works", but a balance. Sometimes doing the "right thing" works out, sometimes it doesn't.

[Applepie_Svk]

Life isn`t fairy tale and so it should go for RP games like this one, but I think that DA:I will be more benevolent in terms of punishing you for doing what`s seems to be good choice or wrong choice, or better said - in doing a choice. Nevertheless I think that there is even possibility to either suffer or gain from certain choices no matter the moral imperative, what could be a key to your inquisition in terms of damage control, could be the sacrifice of XP gain in quests to gain possibile allies, it could ballance your morally right choices, by sacrificing bit of your moral highround, but it depends on quantity of those quests.

[PillarBiter]

My moral playthrough always is based on 2 simple principles.

 

1) At the end of the day, the solution which kills the least people wins out

2) Said solution needs to make you be able to sleep at night

 

I don't know if this will work out in DAI though. It depends on the inquisition's goal. That'll complicate things. The PC will make decisions based on that.

[sylvanaerie]

Light Side/Dark Side choices in ToR also have an ambiguity to them.   

In the first instance you can do on the Imperial side, you have a choice to slay the helpless, wounded turncoat general.  This is the Dark Side Choice.  Presumably because 1) you kill him 2) he's helpless and not even a combatant.  Yet, you know taking him alive (the Light Side) will mean a torturous interrogation at the hands of the Sith Council and a probable messy public execution--that's if he survives the torture in his condition.  It's a dilemma because the morally right answer is ambiguous (at best), making it a 'damned if you do and damned if you don't' option.  Killing him isn't required but it could be seen as almost a mercy.  Since he's a cyborg, the quest is resolved either way you choose as they can extract the information they need from his cyborg enhancements.  To compound the confusion, depending on what class you play, your companion evinces a lot of disapproval/approval for the choice you make, depending on their general mindset.

 

In a quest line on the Republic side, you encounter a man responsible for the slaughter of thousands of innocent alien slaves.  The Light Side choice once you beat him (he is a mini-boss, though an easy one) is to capture him.  He will make a deal to turn in the location of other places like the one you just shut down.  You have on the other hand the ISS agent who sent you to deal with him (a Togruta) saying "Waste him!"  Is he lying to save his own hide?  Is he telling the truth?  At this point I had to let my RP take over.  My trooper (who I see as a figure of Law and Order) and Jedis (don't give in to the Dark Side, Luke!) let him live to be questioned.  My Twi'lek smuggler wastes him because he was Imperial, and a racist killer of aliens.  And of all things, the smuggler companion approves!  

 

There don't seem to be a lot of consequences for the choices (things turn out, if not okay, at least not as bad as I anticipated).  You can finish the quests regardless of choices, and you get a follow up correspondence shortly after from either the person you rescued or some higher up in the command commending your decision (or condemning it) but nothing more comes of it.

[MissOuJ]

[snipped for lenght]

 

What I would like to see in DAI is this:

 

(1) A somewhat realistic portrayal of the consequences - good and bad - of the choices you make. If a pragmatic choice makes people feel you're sacrificing too much and they trust you less, that's perfectly appropriate. Maybe some companion will leave over it, that's also ok. On the other hand, it should have a tangible benefit with regard to what you wanted to achieve with it over the principled choice. Not always, of course - invariable decision patterns are bad - but as a rule.

 

(2) Principled choices should not only not always have the better outcome, sometimes they should have a really bad outcome. Just as you can't know the outcome of a pragmatic choice and it can sometimes backfire, the same should apply to the principled choice. Neither should happen often, or the player will feel deceived, but it should happen here and there. The main point is that intuitively good decisions should not be protected from backfiring just because they are intuitively good.

 

(3) People feel strongly about morality, but morality is not just - and for some not even primarly - an emotional matter. Particularly when things get difficult, we use moral reasoning to find the most acceptable alternative. Thus, the story should not punish the thinking player over the one who just follows their intuition. The intuitively good and the rationally good are often at odds, particularly when it comes to intangible evils. I resent being punished for rejecting the concept of intangible evils because they don't hold up to scrutiny.

 

I mostly agree with your post, but I think the problem with your argument here is that you differentiate very strongly between a pragmatic choice and a principled choice, when in reality it's not always that clear-cut in games, since principled choises are usually also pragmatic ones because a principled choise often comes with gameplay "perks" (ie. morality points for either affinity, allies, loot). RPGs in particular come with an almost inherent pro-altruistic slant because of the grinding mechanic that is present in almost all RPGs. For example, helping an NPC with X/YZ: you're making an altruistic desicion to help, but it is usually motivated by a reward or XP - or more commonly both. Even if you do care about the particulars of the quest, the gameplay mechanics involved make accepting the quest a calculation (accept quest: get currency, XP and loot. Result: progression. Don't accept quest: no currency, XP or loot gained. Result: no progression), not a principled desicion. The results is a pretty wonky morality system, as illustrated in that rather infamous PA-comic.

 

I also might be misunderstanding your point, but I think differentiaring between "thinking" and "intuitive" players is a bit problematic, because we're often influenced by both intuitition and rationality, particularly when we're making decisions based on incomplete information - which is to say, pretty much all the time. And this is not even taking into account personal and cultural bias, which distorts both rational thought and intuition.

 

Other than that, I very much agree. I'd actually like a semi-randomized outcome system where all choices - whether "good" or "bad" or just various shades of grey - have a chance to produce either a good or a bad outcome. The added replay-value would be amazing, particularly storywise. Then again actually building that kind of system - particularly if it were dynamic and outcomes affected other outcomes - would probably be, if not outright impossible in a triple-A RPG, then at least horrendously difficult.

[Gothfather]

That's just a gotcha choice. It's a gotcha choice because there's no actual way to predict or inform yourself - you either do the quest or don't, and if you do, you get trolled. 

 

Oh I could tell that Roy was a bigot. I am always suprised when people are shocked he kills all the humans.  I did the quest the first time and i was like something bad is going to happen but instead of trusting my gut I was like no its a video game we'll all live to gether in peace because thats how games work. When all the humans are dead I'm like yeah I knew it and i should have trusted my gut.

 

I was only shocked that bethesda wrote a non everything lives happily ever after quest. It is one of the best written quest in fallout 3 because it shows you that not every issue is broken down into one good guy and one bad guy sometimes there are two bad guys or two good guys.

[Gothfather]

Renegade shouldn't always yield a better outcome either. A better approach would be to have some paragon choices backfire, and in other situations some renegade choices backfire. It should be well balanced, and the player should be forced to actually think about their choices rather than always spamming the blue or red option to get the best outcome.

 

Renegade needs to be handled better in the next game however. Far too often in the Shepard trilogy it strayed into stupid evil or pointless jerkass territory. 

 

 

I think that Bioware needs to abandon the whole idea of Renegade vs Paragon morality. It reduces complex moral choices into, "what is my game mechanic bonus for choice a or b or C?" There is no benifit for a player not to min max their moral choices because you LOSE access to content if you don't take an almost all Paragon or all most all Renegade appraoch to teh game, in the form of losing access of interupts.

 

The best moral choice in the series is Legions Loyalty mission.

 

Spoiler

Do you mind contol a vast number of people for the greater good of the galaxy or do committ mass murder? Assuming your shepard things killing AIs is murder even.

 

There is no right or wrong answer to that, either choice is "wrong" in terms of what we classically view as right and wrong. The developers do assign a paragon vs renegage value to it which cheapens the choice as people pretty much desided their  choice based on it to game the mechanic.

 

I am of the opinion that games should drop morality meters and let the player deal with the concequences of each desision.

[Ieldra]

I mostly agree with your post, but I think the problem with your argument here is that you differentiate very strongly between a pragmatic choice and a principled choice, when in reality it's not always that clear-cut in games, since principled choises are usually also pragmatic ones because a principled choise often comes with gameplay "perks" (ie. morality points for either affinity, allies, loot). RPGs in particular come with an almost inherent pro-altruistic slant because of the grinding mechanic that is present in almost all RPGs. For example, helping an NPC with X/YZ: you're making an altruistic desicion to help, but it is usually motivated by a reward or XP - or more commonly both. Even if you do care about the particulars of the quest, the gameplay mechanics involved make accepting the quest a calculation (accept quest: get currency, XP and loot. Result: progression. Don't accept quest: no currency, XP or loot gained. Result: no progression), not a principled desicion. The results is a pretty wonky morality system, as illustrated in that rather infamous PA-comic.

To me, most gameplay benefits like XP or equipment are completely irrelevant. How well I the player can play the game has nothing to do with who my character is, and ultimately nothing with the story - unless it's some kind of signature gear or innate abilities which become part of the story eventually. Also, helping people if it costs you nothing is something I can rationalize for almost all of my characters. Who wouldn't appreciate a little goodwill from people for no price? Even a villain can benefit from good publicity. That doesn't result in an altruism bias - you can do it pretty much for your own benefit.

Ultimately, decisions like these are non-controversial and don't present a problem unless you want to play an evil bastard (as opposed to a ruthless pragmatist). I have no problem with the games not catering to the former overmuch in a story that ultimately is about being a hero. I very much appreciate being able to be an anti-hero. A villain, not so much.
 

I also might be misunderstanding your point, but I think differentiaring between "thinking" and "intuitive" players is a bit problematic, because we're often influenced by both intuitition and rationality, particularly when we're making decisions based on incomplete information - which is to say, pretty much all the time. And this is not even taking into account personal and cultural bias, which distorts both rational thought and intuition.

The difference is this: based on insufficient information, will you make the decision that "feels right" or the one that evaluates to the least risk of resulting in an undesirable outcome? I think that in those cases, the player's predisposition usually decides what action is taken unless they're roleplaying a specific character trait.

Anyway, if there is little information this does not present a problem since whatever you do, you don't need to feel stupid or bad about it. Things become problematic when the decision that "feels right" comes with significant information that indicates it might be a really bad decision, such as in the genophage cure. Pushing the intuitively right decision in such cases and making it the right one comes across as punishing the player for thinking about it.

[PhroXenGold]

Something I suggested in another similar thread was actually to make some of the outcomes for "moral" choices more random. Maybe not for major plot centric choices, but, maybe to take a simple example, a group of refugees are under attack, and you have to option of sending troops to protect them or conserve your forces and leave them to their fate. Sometimes, doing the "right" thing and sending the troops will work, they'll save the refugees, and bring them to the Inquisition's stronghold, thereby giving you more human resources. But then next time you play through the game, you again chose to send troops to help, but they are overwhelemed and not only to the refugees die, but your forces are weakened.

[sylvanaerie]

You'd feel a lot better about it if you were a Dwarf commoner Uplifting your brother in law and ensuring the future of your Nephew and sister is a no brainer, plus he's nice to you the whole time.

That's the only time that choice fully worked for me.  Bhelen seems to actually care about Rica (that much I think was not just for my DC's benefit) and I rationalized that my DC would have thought Harrowmont would just cling to the old ways and returned Rica and little Endrin to Dusttown.  I avoided any reference to Bhelen's sleazy side and when he ordered Harrowmont to be executed my DC just kind of shrugged.  She was from Dusttown.  She knows you can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs.  

 

Aside from my King Cousland, she was my most practical warden.

[MissOuJ]

The difference is this: based on insufficient information, will you make the decision that "feels right" or the one that evaluates to the least risk of resulting in an undesirable outcome? I think that in those cases, the player's predisposition usually decides what action is taken unless they're roleplaying a specific character trait.

Anyway, if there is little information this does not present a problem since whatever you do, you don't need to feel stupid or bad about it. Things become problematic when the decision that "feels right" comes with significant information that indicates it might be a really bad decision, such as in the genophage cure. Pushing the intuitively right decision in such cases and making it the right one comes across as punishing the player for thinking about it.

But won't a choice that evaluates to the least risk of resulting in an undesirable outcome "feel right"? If so, what do we evaluate as an undesirable outcome, how probable we deem it to be and how we evaluate the risk-reward -ratio is how we arrive to the conclusion. How we make these calculations is relevant here, and its there where our morals, personal and cultural biases lie. I'd say that because of this, deep down, none of our decisions are independent from our personal ethics and biases. Our rational decision making is almost never free of individual and cultural bias, and our intuition is almost never free of rational thought. They are so dependent on each other I find it problematic to try and differentiate between the two.

[Ieldra]

Something I suggested in another similar thread was actually to make some of the outcomes for "moral" choices more random. Maybe not for major plot centric choices, but, maybe to take a simple example, a group of refugees are under attack, and you have to option of sending troops to protect them or conserve your forces and leave them to their fate. Sometimes, doing the "right" thing and sending the troops will work, they'll save the refugees, and bring them to the Inquisition's stronghold, thereby giving you more human resources. But then next time you play through the game, you again chose to send troops to help, but they are overwhelemed and not only to the refugees die, but your forces are weakened.

It's an interesting idea, but it would clash with one of my preferred playstyles. I like to craft specific kinds of stories with my decisions and their outcomes, and for that I want to be able to determine the outcomes from a meta-perspective. Also, a random outcome would make it difficult to implement a story impact. I prefer a *pattern* that appears somewhat random, but would like the single outcome to be deterministic. A hidden variable is ok, as long as I can eventually discover how to influence it.

[DooomCookie]

Yeah, as some have said, I think your example is a bad one, since it takes control away from the player.  The player isn't informed as to what will happen, by the sounds of it, and is basically surprised.  And I think Anders taught us we don't like surprises.

 

That said, I'd like to see a few more 'what must be done' options, where the more ruthless, even evil, choice logically produces the 'better' result.  Of the 'big dilemmas' in DAO, the only one that was kind of along this line was Bhelen/Harrowmont.  Saving the mages, brokering peace with the elves, destroying the anvil, saving Redcliffe and killing the dragon cult are all 'good' options that produce better outcomes.  You could even argue Bhelen was the good option, despite his uh... morality issues.

 

The reason these are tricky is because the 'good' action is good because it we can predict it will produce a good outcome.  So inherently there is a strong correlation between morally good choices and good outcomes.