Bethesda`s odd moral - karma (some spoilers)

[Kashrlyyk]

I realize you aren't responding to me here, and I've definitely 'played' it. Cannibalism 'for fun' IS exactly what they are doing. They dress and act like Vampires! They are cultists, brainwashed by Lance (who even pretty much admits it). They are playing dress up.

Vance is brainwashing them so he can keep them in line.. keep them from running off and eating people. He is trying to help them, albeit in a misguided way. But in a world that is shoot or be shot there isn't much choice. Vance is a good guy, like it or not. He may have some screws loose but he isn't a psychopath, he isn't a cold-blooded murderer and he isn't a thief. He wants to live and to help people like him live and if he can do it without harming any 'innocents' then he is more than willing to do so.

Calling him evil just shows you don't understand him at all.

Seriously, it's not about not liking the idea, or the story or whatever.. but it's not that hard to grasp. At least not for me. Not sure why people would struggle to understand this. It's not a clear cut good/evil like you want it to be and it confuses you?

I have to ignore your answer, because you ignored the last part of your quoted answer, which shows they are clearly evil.

 

[Elandarex]

I realize you aren't responding to me here, and I've definitely 'played' it. Cannibalism 'for fun' IS exactly what they are doing. They dress and act like Vampires! They are cultists, brainwashed by Lance (who even pretty much admits it). They are playing dress up.

Vance is brainwashing them so he can keep them in line.. keep them from running off and eating people. He is trying to help them, albeit in a misguided way. But in a world that is shoot or be shot there isn't much choice. Vance is a good guy, like it or not. He may have some screws loose but he isn't a psychopath, he isn't a cold-blooded murderer and he isn't a thief. He wants to live and to help people like him live and if he can do it without harming any 'innocents' then he is more than willing to do so.

Calling him evil just shows you don't understand him at all.

Seriously, it's not about not liking the idea, or the story or whatever.. but it's not that hard to grasp. At least not for me. Not sure why people would struggle to understand this. It's not a clear cut good/evil like you want it to be and it confuses you?

The problem isn't that people can't deal with moral grayness (which this barely qualifies as), it's that the game clearly states that it considers an act that could be on either side of the moral coin (killing off the Family) as evil, through and through. Beth's karma system, as it exists now, is completely inappropriate for the setting of the Fallout universe. Good and evil may still very much exist in a post apocalyptic world, but the lines will become far more blurred than they are now, and they're pretty blurry to begin with in all honesty.

Ultimately, the karma system adds nothing to the game, but detracts from it quite a bit. If the folks over at Bethesda were better designers, they would have recognized this and removed it from the game completely. And let's be honest, good/evil checks in games are nothing special nowadays and really need to evolve in many ways before they can be more than simple curiosities.

Are we asking a lot to have a robust karmic evaluator in Fallout 3? Definitely. It would not be an easy thing to implement. But should we be content with what we got? Definitely not.

 

[Ninjerk]

Yet the Family continues to hunt for fresh blood, while they could sustain their "physiological needs" with a few blood packs. Their leader even admits he did drink blood from this kind of supply at some point of his life, but stopped for a reason I can't seem to remember precisely. I think he and his "pack" didn't like the taste, all I remember is that it was quite stupid. Even more stupid, you can convince them to go back to this food supply without too much effort.

In this situation, the Family deliberately chose to hunt other humans to drink their blood, instead of collaborating with the settlements and manage their needs through other means, which they *knew*. This is not gray, this is evil. Yet killing them and their newest spawn makes *you* evil. Does it make sense to you ? It doesn't to me.

To be honest, the whole quest doesn't make sense. Who the hell is still manufacturing blood packets? Furthermore, who can afford to donate that blood? If we want to fall back on the concept of, "They can scavenge blood packs," whose blood did they take whose unrefridgerated shelf life is easily over 100+ years?

 

[DOF_power]

At least not for me. Not sure why people would struggle to understand this. It's not a clear cut good/evil like you want it to be and it confuses you?

That's the truth and also why I believe that karma should have been split or maybe eliminated altogether.

 

[DOF_power]

The problem isn't that people can't deal with moral grayness (which this barely qualifies as), it's that the game clearly states that it considers an act that could be on either side of the moral coin (killing off the Family) as evil, through and through. Beth's karma system, as it exists now, is completely inappropriate for the setting of the Fallout universe. Good and evil may still very much exist in a post apocalyptic world, but the lines will become far more blurred than they are now, and they're pretty blurry to begin with in all honesty.

Ultimately, the karma system adds nothing to the game, but detracts from it quite a bit. If the folks over at Bethesda were better designers, they would have recognized this and removed it from the game completely. And let's be honest, good/evil checks in games are nothing special nowadays and really need to evolve in many ways before they can be more than simple curiosities.

Are we asking a lot to have a robust karmic evaluator in Fallout 3? Definitely. It would not be an easy thing to implement. But should we be content with what we got? Definitely not.

Well I applaud you post, but some players truly can't deal with moral grayness.

 

[Daimyo]

This thread goes to show how much better a reputation system is far better and more realistic than a karma system. If I steal 1000 plates from poor people, but NO ONE sees me, why do people hate me? If I bomb an entire settlement, leaving NO witnesses, how will people know that I did it?

Mr Burke would spread the word

Fo2 way of having both reputation and Karma was a good system and worked rather well, but Beth cant even get karma right. sigh

Spoiler warning about Mr Burke!

Mr. Burke is another good example.

In my game Mr. Burke is not spreading anything; after having tried to intercept him to save the sheriff when Burke shoots him in the back, I simply shot him in the head prior to the sheriff initiating dialogue in the first place.

Good karma for me and not a soul in the bar reacted to me killing him in front of them for no obvious reason.

Totaly unrelated: How does Burke get into his house if he does not have the key on him? Another silly detail ...

 

[ferrety]

Well I applaud you post, but some players truly can't deal with moral grayness.

I can't deal with badly designed quests that feel artificial and have a misplaced sense of moral right and wrong.

Seriously, let's stop calling The Family quest 'morally gray' in the game because we're giving it credit that Bethesda doesn't - they clearly rate helping The Family as morally good, and killing them (despite their crimes against humanity) as morally evil.

I'd LOVE for the issue to be morally gray, but Bethesda seems unable to do that. You can save Megaton, home of mostly candy coated good people, or you can help the ridiculously evil Burke.

You want morally grey? Hmm...

Let's take The Family quest and convert it into something better.

Let's see... you discover Arethu, and find the town slowly starving to death. Their Brahim were recently stolen, and you're quested with finding the Brahmin and returning them.

You search out the thieves, and discover another small town XYZ that has discovered a way to produce important medicine with Brahmin milk. They are trading away this medicine to other towns, and hadn't realized anyone owned the Brahmin.

You can:

1. Kill them and return the Brahmin

2. Decide their actions, goals, and overall positive impact on the wasteland outweighs the hunger of the small town of Arethu.

3. With high intelligence and charisma, convince them to either:
a) return the Brahmin
b) return some of the Brahmin
c) send some of their trade proceeds to Arethu

4. With high charisma, Go back to Arethu and convince them to settle elsewhere

Without high intelligence, town XYZ will refuse to return the cattle, as they believe their medicine is too important.

Without high charisma, you can't convince the weathered souls at Arethu that they should move.

Thus, without certain stats you're forced into making a major decision that totally impacts these (and possibly other) towns, though with high intelligence/charisma you might be able to come up with a comprimise that limits some of the negative (and positive) impacts.

End Game: If Arethu doesn't end up with their cattle, or part of the proceeds, or move, they end up dying off.
If you cause the medicine to stop being produced, a small plague takes out Megaton and Rivet City.

Etc. I'm making this up off the top of my head, but the point is - this is what morally 'gray' feels like. No decision is perfect. No decision makes everything right.

Getting good karma for enabling a protection racket between a victimized town (with slaughtered Brahmin) and their oppressors is NOT morally gray, it's pure stupidity.

I swear, it's like Vance has 15 charisma and convinces YOU that it's a good idea to give him bloodpacks and walk away, trusting him to protect the citizens of Arethu, despite the fact that you know he's bat shit insane and willing to kill for blood.

Sure, because Bethesda makes the plot so goofy (protection racket for blood packets) one could argue there is some 'good' in this outcome, but only if you ignore all the stupidity (psuedo-vampires in the wasteland, trusting vance, a kid that murders his parents because of 'the hunger')... i mean, seriously, if it was a movie you'd be throwing popcorn at the screen it's so stupid. At least The Lost Boys really were vampires.

EDIT TO ADD:
I designed the above quest in the few minutes it took me to type the post. Bethesda had years to design this game. And the best they could come up with is junk like 'go get irradiated and tell me what it feels like'.

It's junk. I enjoy playing the game because I like exploring and some of the dungeons have cool self-contained stories, but the quests themselves are garbage.

 

[Mapex]

The karma is definitely... odd.

I'm playing a 'good' character. After meeting the family, what I wanted to do was:

1. Send the boy to his sister, since he said his sister suppresses his 'hunger'

2. Kill The Family, since they are.... well, cannibalistic, murdering, idiot cultists.

But if I killed one of The Family, not only did I get a karma hit, but it would make me an enemy of Arefu at the same time! What?!?! Arefu sent me to destroy them!

In my view, The Family is as bad as, if not worse than, Raiders -- Raiders are at least honest about their murdering ways, they want your stuff. But The Family is obviously well stocked and just wants your blood because they can't be bothered to eat anything else.

Sure, I can convince them to guard Arefu for 'blood packs', which is ridiculous and moronic.

This very well may be the stupidest quest I've ever been part of in a RPG, taking setting into consideration.

Err, I'm not sure how much in depth you paid attention to the Family. They are not murderous at all. In fact, they think very lowly of people who do murder others, especially out of cold blood. They have this strict system of principles where they only do what is needed to keep sustaining their vampiric (not cannibalistic, by the way) means. Vance, the leader, also wrote on a terminal about how bad the "Arefu incident" was, the one regarding the slaughtering and the consuming of the blood of the Brahmin, and that it should have never ever happened in the first place.

The Wests were killed because Ian West had an uncontrollable frenzy, not because of the Family. The Family doesn't convert people into their cult (not all cults are bad, before anyone says it), and doesn't force them to stay or be killed. They try their best to feed from non-humans, hence the Brahmin incident. The Arefu people don't know any better so they think the Family is harassing them, but none of them were ever directly harmed by the Family.

The Family is probably some of the only "good" people in the whole of DC. A lot of Brotherhood don't even care for civilians, even though Elder Lyons dictates they should keep civilians protected from Super Mutants and Ghouls. The BoS simply like killing Mutants and Ghouls; the fact that it helps people is just a good consequence. The Family is probably more "good" than the BoS.

 

[ferrety]

The karma is definitely... odd.

I'm playing a 'good' character. After meeting the family, what I wanted to do was:

1. Send the boy to his sister, since he said his sister suppresses his 'hunger'

2. Kill The Family, since they are.... well, cannibalistic, murdering, idiot cultists.

But if I killed one of The Family, not only did I get a karma hit, but it would make me an enemy of Arefu at the same time! What?!?! Arefu sent me to destroy them!

In my view, The Family is as bad as, if not worse than, Raiders -- Raiders are at least honest about their murdering ways, they want your stuff. But The Family is obviously well stocked and just wants your blood because they can't be bothered to eat anything else.

Sure, I can convince them to guard Arefu for 'blood packs', which is ridiculous and moronic.

This very well may be the stupidest quest I've ever been part of in a RPG, taking setting into consideration.

Err, I'm not sure how much in depth you paid attention to the Family. They are not murderous at all. In fact, they think very lowly of people who do murder others, especially out of cold blood. They have this strict system of principles where they only do what is needed to keep sustaining their vampiric (not cannibalistic, by the way) means. Vance, the leader, also wrote on a terminal about how bad the "Arefu incident" was, the one regarding the slaughtering and the consuming of the blood of the Brahmin, and that it should have never ever happened in the first place.

The Wests were killed because Ian West had an uncontrollable frenzy, not because of the Family. The Family doesn't convert people into their cult (not all cults are bad, before anyone says it), and doesn't force them to stay or be killed. They try their best to feed from non-humans, hence the Brahmin incident. The Arefu people don't know any better so they think the Family is harassing them, but none of them were ever directly harmed by the Family.

The Family is probably some of the only "good" people in the whole of DC. A lot of Brotherhood don't even care for civilians, even though Elder Lyons dictates they should keep civilians protected from Super Mutants and Ghouls. The BoS simply like killing Mutants and Ghouls; the fact that it helps people is just a good consequence. The Family is probably more "good" than the BoS.

I'm not going to respond in full to this, because if you read through this thread you'd see I've researched 'The Family' fully, know of their laws, etc.

However, their 'laws' and their 'actions' and 'the reality of the situation' all conflict.

a) Unless I missed something, they already severely harmed Arefu by killing their Brahmin.
b) The amount of blood required by 7 adult 'vampires' that refuse to eat anything else due to misplaced psychological reasons would require them to be on a constant murderous spree.
c) Even if they 'rarely' kill humans for blood, which doesn't seem possible given nutritional needs, how does this make it any better? If a serial killer only kills once a year to feed their 'need', do we excuse them because they're a good family man?

More to the point, even if we magically assume the best for The Family - they're still brainwashed idiots, and Lance is still a tool taking advantage of the local outcasts to feed his own ego.

And Ian still killed his own parents.

 

[Elandarex]

EDIT TO ADD:
I designed the above quest in the few minutes it took me to type the post. Bethesda had years to design this game. And the best they could come up with is junk like 'go get irradiated and tell me what it feels like'.

It's junk. I enjoy playing the game because I like exploring and some of the dungeons have cool self-contained stories, but the quests themselves are garbage.

This really kind of nails it on the head. Obviously, in making this huge game, Bethesda was anything but lazy. The sheer scope of it requires vast commitments of time and effort that other games simply won't receive. However, they were extremely lazy creatively and intellectually, and they seemed to fall back on the fact that they were making a Fallout game by relying on meaningless fan service in order to hide this laziness rather than putting in the creative effort to live up to its forebears.

In my view, The Family is as bad as, if not worse than, Raiders -- Raiders are at least honest about their murdering ways, they want your stuff. But The Family is obviously well stocked and just wants your blood because they can't be bothered to eat anything else.

The raiders being unrealistically psychotic aside, it's obvious that in a post apocalyptic setting where the focus is on survival above all else, it isn't so much about how evil a person or group of people is so much as it is about what they are contributing to humanity's continued existence. Regardless of what you may think about the Family's supposed altruism in regards to reigning in their cannibalistic tendencies, it cannot be denied that they offer nothing valuable for humanity. After all, why in the world would we want to preserve a race of bloodsucking deviants?

And no, the fact that you, as the main character, can convince them to protect a small village doesn't count when you take into consideration their apparent abhorrence of daylight (which is so stupid) and how ineffectual that would render them as guardians. Besides, if they didn't need to prey on other humans in the first place, which includes preying on their livelihoods, then why the hell would they lair so close to an established settlement? I think it's pretty obvious that Vance is nothing more than a murderous conman and it isn't at all surprising that he can paint himself and his cause as noble crusaders for the greater good. That's simply what conmen do.

 

[Roflcore]

They are not murderous at all.

No they just wander to the wastelands and wait till they find people which allow them to suck blood and eat flesh eh?

seriously, stop defending this nonsense.

 

[Kyrgsh]

Spoiler warning about Mr Burke!

Mr. Burke is another good example.

In my game Mr. Burke is not spreading anything; after having tried to intercept him to save the sheriff when Burke shoots him in the back, I simply shot him in the head prior to the sheriff initiating dialogue in the first place.

Good karma for me and not a soul in the bar reacted to me killing him in front of them for no obvious reason.

Amen to this quote, brother! I was standing in the bar when Burke murdered Simms, the sheriff AND mayor of Megaton. Not a _single person_ in the bar raised an eyebrow. So I took it upon myself to kill Burke. The ghoul cleaning the bar didn't even look up from his damned radio.

Did the developers not think that rational, thinking gamers would purchase this game and look for something even _marginally_ realistic coming out of what is for all intents and purposes the first "real" quest of the entire game?

 

[Fenner]

I agree that Bethesda (I've personally taken to calling them Bethsuck, rather than Bethsoft) takes a very strange look at Karma.

People can argue the moral greyness of Vance, Roy, or even Tenpenny and Burke, but in the end, it doesn't matter, because Bethsuck is the one that places a good or evil connotation to each of them. Vance is good, and so are his men. Roy is good, even when he kills every human. Tenpenny and Burke are evil, even if you just burst in and splatter them in front of a crowd.

This is exactly what I said earlier to someone I know and often discuss Fallout 3's failings (Failout 3?) with.

"People argue whether something in F3 is morally gray, when it completely CANNOT be, as it gives either Positive or Negative Karma, thus meaning the act, or the situation, is, in Bethsuck's eyes, good or bad with no gray at all.

A good example is Tenpenny. I blew him away without even meeting Burke. Good karma. The guards are all gray, no karma. One dude in the tower took a shotgun and started shooting, he was Bad karma for me, even if I was defending myself in that particular instance.

So if I let the Ghouls come in peacefully, I know they will kill everyone there. A bad act. But killing Roy is also a bad act.

Which is retarded.

Basically, what I'm saying is - I and my Magnum are the judge, jury, and executioner, screw anyone else's ideas of good, bad, right, or wrong."


So pretty much, at this point, I don't even listen to what Bethesda thinks is good or bad, little of it makes real sense. I just let my gun do the talking, just like when I cleared The Den and New Reno. Except those were actually considered good - in Bethesda's Fallout, I almost wonder if killing crime families and slavers is all Bad karma, because they had ill-conceived good intentions.

 

[Erny]

Im sure Burke is OK to kill - he wanted to blowup the bomb afterall.

And people not reacting, well maybr they are used to it In fo2 there were some cases like that, where you could kill some guys and others didnt care.

 

[Fynn]

Wow, so many people killed Burke without a reaction? I had him kill the sheriff, and when I popped Burke in the head, everyone in the bar went ballistic and tried to kill me. I had to wait until he was at the edge of town to kill him without drawing attention.