Morality systems: how do you design an engaging mechanic?

[trickybus]

This post is inspired by my retrospection of Dishonored (2012), an Arkane Studios action-adventure game that heavily relies on its morality system to engage the player with the story and the setting.

While I did enjoy it overall, the heavy-handed and limiting nature of morality made my playthrough less spontaneous and more tedious than I liked. If I want to play an upstanding citizen to get the best ending, my toolkit is greatly diminished. No opportunity for creative takedowns or exploiting the surroundings to my advantage. I find this kind of railroading dull and uninspired yet it's common enough that I've come to expect it from any game that touts a morality system. To an extent, I understand that sacrifice for the greater good is a heroic trope that most likely influences the decision to impose on a player's agency but an explanation doesn't make the mechanic any more fun to engage with.

I suppose an add-on to the title question is in order: is there a way to make the "good" path fun and rewarding to play while still maintaining heroic tropes or is this an archaic form of design that needs to die out?

 

[Yousef Yousef]

Oh it’s quite funny you open up with Dishonored, I was about to do the exact same thing haha! Great minds do think alike, friend. But also I’d like gush about it a bit, cuz I beat it a few months ago for the first time, it instantly became a classic in my book. I did high chaos, and I’m hyped to play bioshock too as it seems to scratch a similar itch.

Now, back on topic, I personally seldom believe the system needs any complications. I frankly feel that so long as it manages to leave an impression + it’s tied to an engaging story, then it already fulfilled its purpose. Morality, in my opinion, doesn’t need a deep gameplay mechanic, but rather just make you feel weight for your actions, like what you did had an effect or at least told an interesting story.

I find inFamous very interesting for this reason, as in InFamous 1, Good Cole and Evil Cole behave in interestingly similar ways, because well, they’re the same person, duh! Which makes sense, right? They’re not cartoonishly different. Good Cole is somewhat apathetic and stand-off-ish, but is still a good guy, and Evil Cole is a massive dick, but not one you can’t sympathize with. It’s brilliant, if you ask me.