Black or White: Making Moral Choices in Video Games

PaladinHeart said:
Deadman87 said:
I recall there beeing this one guy in bethesda (quest designer or something) that went against the moral restrictiveness the company put forth (like how a npc can NEVER lie to the pc.), and how he got fired for doing so (though he didn't really say that in his departing post, but one can put the puzzle together).
Click to expand...

That doesn't really make sense, considering the Overseer can deceive the player. [spoiler:4f23782b68]I'm not sure if it's a direct lie or not, but he does lead you to believe that he'll have a nice long chat with you if you just surrender and hand over your weapons. At which point he says, "Thanks, that makes this easier!" and then proceeds to use your own gun to shoot you.[/spoiler:4f23782b68]
Click to expand...

I found the interview I was talking about.
http://www.rpgcodex.net/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=10403

"...I wanted to have NPCs betray the player in a few quests, but Ken had a "no-betrayal" rule..."

I had to look pretty hard to find it. It's from 2005, and seems to portray some differences between some of the quest designers there. Lot's of drama, and I'm not sure if my previous statement applies any longer, seeing as both the involved is not longer working for bethesda.
 
Lexx said:
This brings me to the point... why the fuck there are no better graphics. If the games really have so many fans, shouldn't it be possible to get some good graphic artists together?
Click to expand...
Once you get 30 minutes into a Spiderweb game, you realize how unimportant graphics really are to a cRGP. Don't get me wrong, I like nice graphics, but they're the icing on the cake, not the cake itself. If you're suggesting the fans get together and mod better graphics for Avernum...I don't know. Maybe they have.

As far as moral ambiguity goes,
[spoiler:c55071f6d2]in Avernum 6 there is a massive food shortage. The player can react to this in different ways. You can take pity on individuals even though it might hurt the population as a whole, or you can not help individuals because the well-being of the whole is more important than the individuals, or you can outright exlpoit the situation for your own personal gain. It's not so much grey morality as realistic morality, since different NPCs will react to your decisions.[/spoiler:c55071f6d2]
The important point is that a lone guy working from his house does it better than Bethesda.
 
The important point is that a lone guy working from his house does it better than Bethesda.
Click to expand...

Meh, that's why books are generally the most in depth..because with fewer people you have a better chance at creating something deep than many people working on something...

Books only have a couple people working on them at most while movies and now games have substantially more..

Of course, there are exceptions but I think what I say stands for a majority of cases....
 
when you have more people working on a project the secret is to keep them all together working in a coherent direction.

I dont blame any of the employes of Bethesda for the errors and bad designs in either Oblivion or Fallout 3. They do not tell in which direction a game has to go they just do what someome told them.
 
Crni Vuk said:
when you have more people working on a project the secret is to keep them all together working in a coherent direction.

I dont blame any of the employes of Bethesda for the errors and bad designs in either Oblivion or Fallout 3. They do not tell in which direction a game has to go they just do what someome told them.
Click to expand...

So they were just following orders, eh? where have we heard that before... :P

Nah, but i agree, the general crappiness of both those games stems from a lack of quality design and/or careful planning (and way too much caring for "kewlness" and "awezuumness").
 
That interview just sounded like a dev who argued quite a bit with his co-workers. I do agree Ken Rolston was a bit of a jerk, but everybody jumps on Kirkbride because he got mad because he wanted the interview down and the person wouldn't take it down after he asked nicely twice, and he expected to get something, the greedy bastard. And I think the person who started the topic was a bit rude. Morrowind is a bad game? Bad game my ass. Only thing I had a problem with was the combat. Felt like rolling a dice to me. I'm more into real-time action without the DnD-esque calculations.
 
OakTable said:
That interview just sounded like a dev who argued quite a bit with his co-workers. I do agree Ken Rolston was a bit of a jerk, but everybody jumps on Kirkbride because he got mad because he wanted the interview down and the person wouldn't take it down after he asked nicely twice, and he expected to get something, the greedy bastard. And I think the person who started the topic was a bit rude. Morrowind is a bad game? Bad game my ass. Only thing I had a problem with was the combat. Felt like rolling a dice to me. I'm more into real-time action without the DnD-esque calculations.
Click to expand...

It certainly wasn't a good game let alone a good rpg.
 
Hamenaglar said:
OakTable said:
That interview just sounded like a dev who argued quite a bit with his co-workers. I do agree Ken Rolston was a bit of a jerk, but everybody jumps on Kirkbride because he got mad because he wanted the interview down and the person wouldn't take it down after he asked nicely twice, and he expected to get something, the greedy bastard. And I think the person who started the topic was a bit rude. Morrowind is a bad game? Bad game my ass. Only thing I had a problem with was the combat. Felt like rolling a dice to me. I'm more into real-time action without the DnD-esque calculations.
Click to expand...

It certainly wasn't a good game let alone a good rpg.
Click to expand...
Opinion, buddy. I thought it was great as a game and RPG.
 
Personally I'm sick of the 'black' in black or white. I challenge you to find me a single person who actually considers themselves evil. As the saying goes, "Everyone is the hero of their own story." So many of the 'evil' choices in video games are not only inconsistent with eachother, they come across as if the character is specifically choosing them with the meta-game concept of lowering his/her charisma.

I largely blame 1600 years of church influence on the language, adding capitals to Good and Evil; back in Roman times they only had words for good and bad; 'virtuous' in Latin meant something closer to 'Manly' in modern parlance. It's resulted in a stunted moral development amongst modern populations on the individual level.

Furthermore, I'd like to see a moral system where your future dialogue opions were based upon previous behaviour. Nobody goes from being a saint in town A to a psychopath in town B - it would have to be a gradual development. For example, let's say you were playing a Paladinic character: at first you're inexperienced, and naive about the world - you don't get to choose super-self-sacrificing options, and you can still backslide towards 'evil'. But if you consistently choose Lawful Good, then eventually your only choices with the beggars asking for water are "Here you go," or "I'm sorry, my supplies are too low," - and if you continue to be a paragon, you're eventually forced to give them water, no matter how desperate you are.

Good choices should punish you by depriving you of resources - not the BS slap on the hand of today, but seriously make the game difficult (and not by having bounty hunters trying to kill me because I was polite to 8 people). Evil should be 'easier, more seductive' like the Dark Side in the original Star Wars (not the Angst Side from the modern ones). You might choose evil because you're selfish, or maybe you're just really bitter and hateful.
 
Atomic Cowboy said:
Personally I'm sick of the 'black' in black or white. I challenge you to find me a single person who actually considers themselves evil. As the saying goes, "Everyone is the hero of their own story."
Click to expand...
I agree wholeheartedly with this.
Atomic Cowboy said:
I largely blame 1600 years of church influence on the language, adding capitals to Good and Evil.
Click to expand...
Funny, I blame it on it being difficult and time-consuming to create complex, branching, consequence-laden gameplay choices.

As much as I bitch about they lack of good moral/karmic systems in games, have you ever looked at the dialogue files in, for instance, Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines? To quote some developer, "It's exponential!" But I mean it literally. Every time you add another moral branch to the dialogue tree, you increase the number of possible iterations exponentially. (This is tempered somewhat by looping and repeating choices.)

I think that a clever new system has to be developed.

Misteryo
 
Misteryo said:
Funny, I blame it on it being difficult and time-consuming to create complex, branching, consequence-laden gameplay choices.
Click to expand...
It is not, and I assure you of that. It so freaking is not. It's just lack of talent, or at least not trying to find a decent approach. And I can prove it to you, if not in a couple of years, then at least with some material. It is hard to create complex branching quests, yes, but it's not as time consuming as one may think.

And I blame it, yeah, on lack of talent and creativity.
 
Morbus said:
Misteryo said:
Funny, I blame it on it being difficult and time-consuming to create complex, branching, consequence-laden gameplay choices.
Click to expand...
It is not, and I assure you of that. It so freaking is not. It's just lack of talent, or at least not trying to find a decent approach. And I can prove it to you, if not in a couple of years, then at least with some material. It is hard to create complex branching quests, yes, but it's not as time consuming as one may think.
Click to expand...
Hmm...I'm between the two positions on this. When ZeniMax/Bethesda make a game, they're looking at it as a financial investment. The only real criterion for success is the difference between revenue generated and cost of production. Graphics and hype sell. Great writing develops a cult following. They want to sell, sell, sell as many copies as possible as fast as possible, so great writing is not a priority. It takes more time and talent than it can justify in revenue. You can't capture great writing in a screenshot or a demo clip, so you can't advertise it. If you tried no one would take your word for it.

Even if Bethesda had a team of gifted quest writers, they wouldn't be allowed to explore their full potential. That would require a rare, fortunate confluence of circumstances - either inattentive management, or management with a creative vision and a dedication to artistic integrity. Rare. The first never lasts and the second is completely reliant on elightened individuals.
 
one thing I dont understand is the course of Emil Pagualierowhatever. I mean I played all of the Thief games and I quite liked the story and content. Writing was quite good for that game and setting. From what I remember Emil was very heavily involved in the game. And now he is responsible in some way for Fallout 3 and some of the plot holes?

I dont know. I really have no clue what happens there. I mean either they have really only people working without talent (which I doubt) or as Wolf already said the people responsible for the game just dont care about quality writing. And when you look how much units they sell it seems that they earn a lot with it.
 
Misteryo said:
Atomic Cowboy said:
Personally I'm sick of the 'black' in black or white. I challenge you to find me a single person who actually considers themselves evil. As the saying goes, "Everyone is the hero of their own story."
Click to expand...
I agree wholeheartedly with this.
Atomic Cowboy said:
I largely blame 1600 years of church influence on the language, adding capitals to Good and Evil.
Click to expand...
Funny, I blame it on it being difficult and time-consuming to create complex, branching, consequence-laden gameplay choices.

As much as I bitch about they lack of good moral/karmic systems in games, have you ever looked at the dialogue files in, for instance, Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines? To quote some developer, "It's exponential!" But I mean it literally. Every time you add another moral branch to the dialogue tree, you increase the number of possible iterations exponentially. (This is tempered somewhat by looping and repeating choices.)

I think that a clever new system has to be developed.

Misteryo
Click to expand...

I don't think he was referring to the number of choices, more the lack of believable, realistic dialogue and characters. Why does everything have to be black and white? Reality is a subjective experience. PS:T did a great job at avoiding the whole blatant good/evil BS, leaving the player free from external judgment. Bioware is on the other end of that spectrum, in love with cartoon dramas, which give you interchangeable and ultimately meaningless binary choices.
 
OakTable said:
I don't think Emil really worked on the MQ. I think it was some other dude.
Click to expand...
No but he said in a interview "They knew about the errors in the story, but feelt fine with it".

Even if he wasnt responsible for it directly (I dont know it) his standarts as writter pretty much droped.
 
The problem with the industry and the big "teams" is that they only care about the money, as said. They don't care about games. Because if they did, and without ever disregarding profits, they'd set up smaller niche oriented studios and milk the smaller sections of the market that cannot be milked with AAA titles. It would work like a freaking charm on MMOs (it works now, only with different companies), it would work perfectly for Adventure games (possibly having some episodic adventures, together with heavier adventures and whatnot) and it would work veru well with RPGs. I think. A Fallout sequel is a sure sale, for example, and it wouldn't sell half what it sold if it was a sequel, sure, but it sure as hell wouldn't cost half what it cost to make! That's my point: you don't need to spend zillions to milk the niche markets, specially when you have the experience, the assets and the team.
 
Crni Vuk said:
one thing I dont understand is the course of Emil Pagualierowhatever. I mean I played all of the Thief games and I quite liked the story and content. Writing was quite good for that game and setting. From what I remember Emil was very heavily involved in the game. And now he is responsible in some way for Fallout 3 and some of the plot holes?
Click to expand...
According the the credits on Mobygames, Emil was only a voice actor in the first game, was a voice actor and a design team member in Theif II, and is only in the Special Thanks section for Deadly Shadows.

As for Morrowind, he was a part of the Writing / Quest Design team for Bloodmoon.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top