Windows Moral ambiguity and choice of destiny.

[LordeKrull13]

After checking out Lunatic Dawn, I'm curious about RPG titles where the player can choose to become either a hero or a villain.
Any suggestions?

 

[Sorion]

The mainline shin megami tensei games are quite interesting in therms of moral ambiguity, because none of the factions are strictly presented as good or evil, none of them are perfect and it's up to decide who you want to help, Law, Chaos or perhaps neither, and the decision you make affects which ending you get. I really like this setup because it usually provides good commentary on politics, philosophy and religion while at the same time it really makes you think about your choices and values instead of just letting you pick between the goody good guys and the evil bad guys.

 

[jon2]

Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together

Choices will bring a storyline split and different party members and endings

 

[Burzuru Burzuru]

if you want moral extremes there's always the fable games.
for example: lets say you come across a bully harassing a homeless man. here comes the moral dilemma do you assault the bully, the homeless man, or both? really its like the trolley problem but more in depth.

also hey microsoft, how about you port fable 2 and 3 to steam already, k?

 

[DinoRexMax DinoRexMax]

if you want moral extremes there's always the fable games.
for example: lets say you come across a bully harassing a homeless man. here comes the moral dilemma do you assault the bully, the homeless man, or both? really its like the trolley problem but more in depth.

Alright, that's the first NPC encounter right out of the Hero Academy in Fable 1. There's a bully harassing a homeless vagrant who just wants to be left alone, but the homeless guy also asks you to teach the kid a lesson. You can either bother the young man by acting gross (farting/belching in his face), or, beat the homeless man within an inch of his life. Just, utterly pound his hairy ass into the dirt, until he's begging for mercy, sputtering blood and viscera from the savage and brutal beating you visited upon him.

+10 moral points in either direction.

Peter Molyneux is a hack, and a scam artist, and the fact that he's somehow managed to maintain a career in this industry is shameful. Fable 3 was so awful, how is there anyone still hyped for the upcoming game at this point?

Another game that's a hollow lie, are the Overlord games. They advertise themselves as being the premier game where you can plays as the villain, but they rugpull you and make the "heroes" you are fighting even worse than you are. So, you're not REALLY the villain. Sure, you're trying to conquer the kingdom, but your also incidentally cleaning it up and making it better for some reason?

I've heard people vouch for the Infamous series, but Cole McGrath never really flies off the deep end all that much. I played Second Sun for a little bit, and the evil route in that game pulled a Fallout (where the Vault kicks you out for being corrupted by the outside world) where the MC is kicked out of his reservation for all the shit he pulled out in the world, and he just straight up nukes his grandma. That was kinda hardcore.

The problem with any game based around moral choices is that they can never truly protray the chaos the require. Ignoring mandated censorship (you can't kill kids without raising your rating to A-O), the game's scenario can't go off the rails to actually LET you be the villain, as that would probably have to be completely seperate game in scope.

 

[Bandini]

Catherine
lol

 

[Ikagura]

The issue is that many games that tells the player they could "choose their path" are either flawed or that the game would imply that the good path is the best one.



I liked BioShock for allowing you to choose to save the little sisters or not.

 

[Appiplyer]

You can also try and play Valkyrie profile Covenant of Plume

But as said above the good route will always be the better ending.

But another thing i can recommend was devil survivor 1 the evil ending are pretty well made there

 

[Tsukishima]

The issue is that many games that tells the player they could "choose their path" are either flawed or that the game would imply that the good path is the best one.



I liked BioShock for allowing you to choose to save the little sisters or not.

I remember reading such an interesting article on the concept of saving Little Sisters or not created a ludo-narrative dissonance in the main story.

Excerpt of it here:

Spoiler: Bioshock Spoilers

Hocking brought up the concept of ludonarrative dissonance in regards to the original Bioshock. He pointed out that the underwater utopia of Rapture had its philosophical roots in the Randian concept of objectivism. This objectivism, or acting in one’s own self-interest, manifested itself in gameplay as the choice to either rescue or harvest the little sisters throughout the game. The big carrot in this instance is whether the player will accept objectivism and act in their own self interest (harvest) or reject the notion (rescue).
The ludonarrative dissonance in Bioshock, according to Hocking, is that that same choice cannot be applied to the overall direction of the story. You are only given one direction: side with Atlas to take down Andrew Ryan. If you break the story down into two parts, one either sides with Atlas or with Ryan. Hocking surmised that if the player rejects the objectivism of Rapture, they will naturally side with Atlas. But if they fall into the belief of acting in self interest, siding with Ryan is clearly the philosophically sound direction to take. Hocking continued to say that by nature, single player games exist entirely on the (ludo) rule of acting in one’s own self-interest, falling into line with Rand’s philosophy. But since the narrative of Bioshock forces the player to stray that philosophy, it created a dissonance.

 

[Burzuru Burzuru]

Peter Molyneux is a hack, and a scam artist, and the fact that he's somehow managed to maintain a career in this industry is shameful. Fable 3 was so awful, how is there anyone still hyped for the upcoming game at this point?

i've stopped caring about how bad peter molyneux is a while ago. fable 3 i agree isn't the best of the series and i really disliked how they changed the magic in that game (as well as in the 2nd game) from how it was in the fable 1. i agree that the remake doesn't look very good.

 

[Graw]

Knights of the Old Republic 2 lets you choose between being a Jedi or a Sith. The first game does too but the choices felt less meaningful compared to the second one. In the first one, even if you picked the bad choices and chose dark side powers the game still played out mostly the same. In Kotor 2 the different choices feel like they have more of an impact on the story. The original Neverwinter Nights campaign uses alignment in its story too as well if I remember right. But it's been so long since I played through the stock campaign I can't really remember.