Games that do player morality right - Inspired by dog killing simulator

[wtfNeedSignUp]

Trying to do morality in games is pretty tough. The biggest problem is that acting in an "evil" way in real life boils down to doing something the easy/most beneficial way, which doesn't work in video game land where the player can try challenges over and over (and would actually prefer tackling a challenge than bypassing it).

So that being said, which games do you think pulled it off? I can only think of Papers, Please that had you risk your family members when helping others, which is stressing when you play the first time.

 

[737 MAX Stan Account]

Fable, since the game understands that Adultery is objectively ten times more evil than cold blooded murder.

 

[DumbDude42]

none

 

[CivilianOfTheFandomWars]

Papers, Please is a great example of something that feels more realistic.
What comes to mind is how Fallout: New Vegas did it. Depending on what you did, different factions thought of you in different ways. You could be the hero of the ages to one group and a horrible demon to another. I thought it was a good way of doing things.

 

[oldTireWater]

GTA?

 

[Chin of Campbell]

Banjo-Kazooie

 

[Recoil]

Escape From Tarkov

 

[TFT-A9]

Planescape: Torment

 

[Monolith]

Undertale

 

[YourMommasBackstory]

I talk too much about this game here, but Pathologic(original, not the second game).
You’re a doctor who’s stuck in rural town during a plague for 12 days. You have a tight time limit to finish main daily quests, and if you decide not to do them, or if you fail them, or if you’ll spend your whole day trying to find some food in dumpsters, which is a realistic situation on a first playthrough, one of the NPC’s, related to playable character, will do a quest for you and will get infected. And if you want a good ending for your character (there are 3 “doctors”to choose from and each have their own solution to game’s problem), you have to have all your related NPC’s alive and well, so you have to use extremely rare medicine to cure them. And you can get easily infected too, so you have to choose how to use medicine.
And if you’re good enough to help other two characters to get to their goal, you can cure their NPC’s too and it’ll unlock some interesting in-game meetings for you.

Also there’s a quest to kill a kid for a revolver. An optional one and you can save the kid.
but you will do it, and you will be happy to get that revolver.

 

[An Ghost]

Dragon age origins. You can pretty much kill or ignore any party member. Sometimes you make a bad choice and they try to kill you. You can even recruit the secondary antagonist and have him copulate with a witch and the resulting child will literally be satan, but you do it to save your own ass. Theres even a dlc where you play as the bad orcs. They spent years making the story and lore for that game and it shows.

Shadowrun: dragonfall is a smaller but excellent one also. Go all in for money or do ethical things for less. Save the day or listen to the bad guy and team up with him. Help your fellow man or help corporate greed.

And life is strange 1. Dont do what you think is best because fuck you, mind your own damn business.

 

[Foxxo]

Undertale

Dragon age origins. You can pretty much kill or ignore any party member. Sometimes you make a bad choice and they try to kill you. You can even recruit the secondary antagonist and have him copulate with a witch and the resulting child will literally be satan, but you do it to save your own ass. Theres even a dlc where you play as the bad orcs. They spent years making the story and lore for that game and it shows.

Shadowrun: dragonfall is a smaller but excellent one also. Go all in for money or do ethical things for less. Save the day or listen to the bad guy and team up with him. Help your fellow man or help corporate greed.

And life is strange 1. Dont do what you think is best because fuck you, mind your own damn business.

I found the Tumblrites, Hans! They're in the attic!

 

[Telomayonnaise]

E.Ψ.Ǝ: Divine Cybermancy

 

[An Ghost]

E.Ψ.Ǝ: Divine Cybermancy

I keep seeing people post about this like its some deus ex tier cult classic. Why?

 

[Marco Fucko]

I haven't played it yet but I saw a glowing review of Tyranny, which is like a crpg wherein morality isn't this overly simple black and white thing. One of the examples the reviewer gave is how you have the option of sparing and conscripting or executing enemy soldiers, and he tried to conscript them. Except the reality of the situation is conscripts are looked down on by native/volunteer soldiers and used as cannon fodder, so it isn't uncommon for conscripts to desert on patrols and you end up fighting them again at a later time. So any way you slice it, these soldiers you defeated are gonna die at some point and this specific nicety means nothing but the potential of falsely patting yourself on the back.

Kotor 2 as always must be recommended, lest I be stricken down by divine powers. I love how Kreia is so brutally pragmatic that she creams herself when you do these oversimplified solutions to problems. In the game there is a segment where you need to help a band of refugees from being exploited by the local chapter of an intergalactic organized crime syndicate. You can help them with all their problems to move forward, or if you're impatient, you can completely ruin their lives to get them to submit to the Exchange. "Hey my daughter has been sold into slavery, can you rescue her?" "Well why don't you just sell yourself into slavery so you can be with her?"

BRUTAL.

Papers, Please is a great example of something that feels more realistic.
What comes to mind is how Fallout: New Vegas did it. Depending on what you did, different factions thought of you in different ways. You be the hero of the ages to one group and a horrible demon to another. I thought it was a good way of doing things.

I love the game but IMO it's too easy to be a good guy. If you kill a Fiend, an npc type that is automatically hostile outside their vault, you get good karma. The opposite of this is you have to go out of your way to slaughter innocents to get bad karma, and the bad karma you get from things like stealing or accessing private property is negligible. I would have preferred if the stock game put in more options for negative karma, like killing quest crucial figures or lying to people or even double crossing people. It's pretty easy to be a good aligned courier even if you side with the Legion, honestly.

 

[MrTroll]

I've really been digging Witcher 3's approach to this. There's no obviously "right" or "wrong" moral choices that I've encountered so far, but many quests have different possible resolutions that feel more or less in line with the kind of guy Geralt seems to be, and it's up to the player to make that call. It's a pretty refreshing change from the usual 'immaculate saint or mustache-twirling babykiller' choices in games that attempt to have a morality system.

 

[Judge Holden]

I quite enjoyed that "Bob Chipman dreams about visiting the midwest" simulator from a few years back...

"My name is not important. What is important is what I'm going to do... I just fucking hate this world. And the human worms feasting on its carcass. My whole life is just cold, bitter hatred. And I always wanted to die violently. This is the time of vengeance and no life is worth saving. And I will put in the grave as many as I can. It's time for me to kill. And it's time for me to die. My genocide crusade begins here."

 

[Fascist Frederick]

I keep seeing people post about this like its some deus ex tier cult classic. Why?

It's the most Russian game ever made by Frenchmen.

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

Playing Master of Orion 2 comes to mind even if it was unintentional. One time I was playing I decided to preserve the cat people without taking them over. They had one system left and I let them stay there. Another race gunned for them so I had to intervene and shoot them down, losing an ally/peace treaty.
The cat people then built fighter ships and set out to-I shot them down then lightly bombed them to keep that from happening again, for their own safety. Then another race made a go at them again, the cat people chimped out again and threatened some other civilization, then tried to build fighters, so they got bombed again, someone then attacked my fleet that I had parked in that system, the stupid cat people chimped out again and so on.

God damn it, the cat people will survive until the game ends even if they're too stupid to live. Why? Don't know. It was like trying to keep peace in the middle east and it was fun.

 

[POWER IN MISERY]

I keep seeing people post about this like its some deus ex tier cult classic. Why?

it is