Current Events > Is dialogue/morality choice actually a good feature in videogames?

(+) Yeah! (+)

I always used to think it was and I would be critical of games that attempt to give you choice but the choices are either comically binary or stupidly one sided, e.g.

A) adopt the puppy and give it your life savings
b) kick it in its stupid face and steal its food

i'd also be critical of games where the choice doesn't affect anything. I mean even recent games like Ghost of Tsushima give you the illusion of choice (be honourable or be crafty), but this never amounts to anything important and the plot just takes you down a single path anyway.

Then there's the other side of the coin. The Witcher 3. There's so much choice in this game, and a lot of it is really well played out, but I don't know if its just me but i think it fucking sucks that a dozen minor dialogue options ultimately contribute to whether you get a happy or sad endings. Like that one chat you had with a character 14 hours into the game about their favourite childhood memory will mean the difference of whether they die or not.

Honestly the tightest videogame plots (The Last of Us, as an example) are the ones with no choice. It's just a tightly written narrative where you play a character with a plot and that's it. I'm not entirely sure videogames are always better for giving you choice.

The one example where I really enjoyed choice was KOTOR too. That entire universe really lends itself to that though, and it was cool that the choices affected everything from your appearance to your moveset. So I guess choice matters if the game actually commits to it.


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Ya I feel like people should be prepared to make enough content to fill 2ish games if they really intend to make a good morality system in which choices matter

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It's almost never properly executed,thats the problem.

I only played a few hours of KOTOR but I remember one of the earliest choices was being able to shut down a cryogenic retirement home or something by cutting the power... I wondered why I would do that even if I were evil. Just didn't make sense as a choice at that point in the game

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I love games built around dialogue choices, as stressful as they can be sometimes it does add a lot to the investment and that's even true in games where it's just flavor text and doesn't effect anything.

Morality system though? I enjoyed them when I was younger but now I just find myself getting frustrated with those mechanics because it often means getting locked out of either dialogue or abilities if you're not always a saint or always a sinner (and sometimes the good/bad thing doesn't always feel like the right/wrong thing).

I preferred The Witcher 3's handle on it and heck, even the Telltale games where the game itself wasn't telling you that you did something right/wrong, but your choices would immediately piss off/please certain characters and maybe influence their own decisions in the future.

I do agree that Star Wars might be the exception to this though. At least as far as the Dark Side is concerned, it makes sense that it's something you steadily slip into as opposed to one big decision so there being a morality slider kinda works in that favor.


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I liked it in Fallout 1-3

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it went downhill when developers insisted on voicing dialogue.

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monkmith posted...

it went downhill when developers insisted on voicing dialogue.

Oh, this is another great point I hadn't considered. Even Dragon Age Origins compared to the next entries had far more variety in dialogue and choices due to the non voice-acted main character.

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A good morality implementation needs ample opportunities(repeatable or not) to shift in either direction. It would also stand that it wouldn't make logical sense to go from puppy adopter to nuking orphanages.

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I've been playing Oblivion lately and its morality system is used extremely poorly.

I suppose "fame" vs "infamy" isn't inherently bad as a concept, but it's portrayed really badly: if you contract a disease, you can pray at a church to cure it. if you try to pray at a church while your "infamy" is higher than your "fame", the god tells you that you're a fiend and an awful person, and doesn't heal you.

the Thieves' Guild is very much a "steal from the rich, give to the poor" organization. it has explicit laws against killing people that aren't hostile to you. by completing its quests, you gain Infamy.

you can gain Fame by killing people in the Arena. you can also gain Fame through Fighter's Guild quests, which are focused on killing people. there are Fighter's Guild NPCs who literally tell you to "go out and hurt some people"

I enjoy the game a lot, but its morals are extremely shitty

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I didn't even remember Oblivion having a morality system >_>

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as far as linear narratives go, I liked how it was handled in Red Dead Redemption 2.

Arthur is a bandit all the way through, but his actions affected some dialogue changes in cutscenes and the ending you got.

the changes were often subtle or minor, but they still felt meaningful, IMO.

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Hexenherz posted...

I didn't even remember Oblivion having a morality system >_>

it's not explicitly labeled as such, but its function is basically the same. and the rest of the game... is not critical of this at all

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It can be done really well, and is wonderful when it is. When it's the comical levels of KOTOR though it isn't the best though but Bioware did improve a bit on that I guess.

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