On Karma · 10:57am Apr 25th, 2014
art by ShinodaGE
First, I want to express my thanks to all the fans and other readers of Fallout: Equestria! 
Fallout: Equestria has received over four thousand favorites on FIMfiction. 
I am honored. Even moreso, I appreciate all the thanks and feedback, especially some of the awesome detailed comments I've been getting each chapter from new and repeat readers. I have likewise been receiving some amazing private messages. In a particularly moving and cherished message, a military veteran wrote to thank me for writing a story that "captures the mental and ethical realities of combat with eerie accuracy." (The entire message was very touching and I wish I could share more, but I won't without permission -- I respect the privacy of those who PM me.) On a slightly related note, my interview with FOB, the website dedicated to bronies serving in the military, went up today. Check it out.
In addition, Lunar Echoes just did a two-hour-plus review and analysis of Fallout: Equestria. Unlike the review by AnYPony, Jim Fear, Dr. Wolf and Antony C. which I linked in my Something Old, Something New blog, this review is very spoiler heavy. (They also occasionally get it wrong. For example, Velvet Remedy's virtue is kindness and the story was never rewritten or updated to incorporate content and ideas from episodes that aired after December 2011.)
Now, on to the actual meat of the blog...
I’ll probably never finish playing FarCry3. The game suffered from front-loading all the best content. The first half of the game was superb. The second half failed to live up to what preceded it. On almost every level – villains, objectives, scenery, atmosphere – the second half of the game was like a bad sequel. But what finally drove me away was utter disgust for the character I was required to play.
Unlike a lot of games that try to implement moral choices and some sort of moral system, FarCry3 seemed utterly uninterested in whether what the character was doing was good or right or heroic, instead choosing to focus on other themes. This was ultimately to the game’s detriment, as progressing in the game often required acts that were morally unpleasant – just because the game designers don’t particularly care if something is moral or not does not mean that the players won’t.
For example, the opening of the game did a wonderful job setting up the pirates as a force that I could wipe out in good conscience – they were horrible, sadistic and murderous men who made me feel like I was saving lives when I removed them from the gene pool. Even those who may not have been so downright evil were enemy combatants in a war they had chosen to declare on me. And the game did a good job reinforcing this with many of the random encounters. Absolutely none of that can be said for the mercenaries introduced midway through the game. I expect this was intentional. The game makes a point of claiming it is about insanity, and this is a fair way of showing the character’s increasingly murky morality and perverted mentality. But in choosing to do that, the game chose to create a protagonist whom I found progressively less enjoyable to play. Inevitably, the game’s demand that I mass-murder a huge swath of these guys was more than I was willing to give it.
Fallout had the merit letting the player choose the kind of force the character would be in the world. The choices were rarely nuanced, and the moral system used by the same is both overly simplistic and mechanically absurd. But at least the game offered choices.
Of course, the Fallout games use karma, a completely black & white system based entirely on triggered specific actions (such as giving a homeless man water) or the results of actions (such as the death of raiders). I do not believe we can fault the games for not being able to factor in intention, or for being driven by consequences more than actions. But we can blame a system for allowing us to buy off a murder spree in a settlement by burying a guy in gifts of bottled water.
Most of the “good” and “bad” actions in the games are reasonable when isolated, but become morally bizarre when integrated into a larger whole. (For example, it’s okay to kill powder gangers because they are “evil”, but your karma will take a big hit if you scavenge their trailers afterwards because you are stealing from them.) And the karmic designations of people in the game will sometimes seem very questionable. (“Oh, I was going to feel bad about catching him in that explosion, but his body has a finger on it instead of an ear… so apparently it was okay?”)
I remember one play-through of Fallout 3 where I used a mod that allowed the Mesmetron to work on a wider range of human targets. I decided to play the character as someone averse to killing, who would instead use the Mesmetron on raiders and the like as a non-lethal option. Of course, the Capital Wasteland didn’t really have courts and prisons, so she would sell them to slavers where they could pay penance for their crimes by working the rest of their lives for the needs of society. The net result of this was that she had the karma of the devil incarnate, even though she completed all the quests in the “good karma” manner, leading Three Dog to simultaneously praise and loathe her. “Thank you for saving that town, you horrible bitch.”
Despite the poorly handled polar system of Karma, the Fallout games did have the occasional delve into shades of grey, and sometimes offered up stories where there were either no good choices, or where the choices that would seem to best would lead to horrible consequences. Tenpenny Tower and the ghouls in Fallout 3, the entire situation with The Pitt, and dealing with the Gecko power plant in Fallout 2 are all prime examples.
Likewise, the reputation system in Fallout: New Vegas was a considerable step in the right direction, allowing your actions to raise and lower the regard with which the game’s various factions viewed your character. The qualitative and quantitative elements of this mechanic were still wonky, and the karma system sadly remained, but it has given me hope that we’ll see something better, or at least similar and better implemented, in Fallout 4.
A game that attempts to touch on morality does so best when it presents us with choices which make us hesitate and reason what the best course would be -- situations filled with shades of grey, where each choice has merit. The Fallout games did, on rare occasions, make such offerings, such as at the end of “The Pitt”.
Also, for all the shortcomings of Fallout’s karma system, it did provide a sliding scale, allowing characters to fall between the extremes of Messiah or Satan Incarnate. Even karmic neutrality was a possibility. This gave the karma system a leg up on games such as the Metro games and the original Bioshock.
Too often, games that attempt to touch on moral choices treat good and evil as a zero sum equation. Furthermore, these games tend to undercut any quandaries about morality by only presenting starkly black or white choices. BioShock, for example, only offers the player moral choices in the way you harvest Adam, and the options are so starkly “good” and “evil” that your dilemma is “Which ending do I want?” or “How greedy do I feel?” and not “What do I think is the right choice in this situation?” Granted, you could argue that the good ones were somewhat tainted – you were choosing to either kill children for power or save them… for slightly less power. To quote Yahtzee’s admittedly over-critical review of the game:
“In the good ending, you’re a virtuous flower child with love and a smile for all the shiny-coated beasts of God’s Kingdom; and in the bad ending you’re some kind of hybrid of Hitler and Skeletor whose very piss is pure liquid malevolence. I’m sick of games that claim to have choice but that only really come down to Mother Teresa or baby-eating. All I’m saying is that a little middle ground is nice now and then.”
However, BioShock’s absolute wealth of glorious qualities more than make up for its implementation of moral choices and outcomes. If anything, I’d say this is one of the game’s few flaws that keep the game from being too perfect. Where the game fails with morality it succeeds with philosophy. It is a rare and precious gem of a game that gives you so much to think about when you are not playing – and not in terms of tactics (that’s the price of admission), but in terms of philosophy, sociology, economics and more. The game distinguished itself by being a deeply though-provoking philosophical piece, and the morality system was the one discordant note in an otherwise breathtaking symphony.
The same, sadly, cannot be said for Metro: Last Light. Metro: Last Light is gorgeous, perfectly atmospheric and has truly impressive stealth mechanics. But sadly, Metro: Last Light’s amazing offerings in the realms of stealth FPS cannot make up for having one of the most egregiously shoddy morality systems in recent gaming. The game’s points of morality rarely line up with any discernible moral choice. Instead, if you as a player find the world interesting and stop to listen in on conversations, the game rewards you with good guy points. Even worse, no matter what bloody swath you carve through hundreds of opponents, many of whom are just soldiers unfortunate enough to have been born in the wrong parts of the metro, so long as you spare two specific people, you’re on the side of the angels.
Likewise, you can spare every person you come across, acting with mercy and compassion, but if you take out the guy who massacred a town after stealing a bio-weapon, you get the bad-guy ending. Never mind that the man is both a mass murderer an unrepentant, morally-void threat to society…the “good” option is to just walk away and leave him free to hurt more people – making that choice a top contender for the most morally offensive and stupid mechanic in PC gaming history. In fact, the “good” choice should logically lead to the bad ending. If the lesson you teach your companion is that the lives of strangers are so worthless to you that you will set free an unrepentant mass murderer when you have the chance to stop him, then how does that translate to your companion convincing his people to stop the bad guys from killing you?
For an extreme example, I’ve recently been replaying a very old set of games called Might & Magic (a series of RPGs not to be confused with Heroes of Might & Magic), and Might & Magic VII’s moral duality is practically parody. You eventually must choose whether to follow the “path of light” or the “path of darkness”, aligning yourself with sides that drape themselves in over-the-top affectations of GOOD and EVIL. The critical choice is completely devoid of deeper morality – you choose who to appoint to a political position, the guy with the good-sounding name or the guy with the evil-sounding name. Your previous ethical and political decisions have no bearing on the outcome.
However, the consequences of the choice are game-altering, not merely determining which forms of magic your characters can learn, and which zones are hostile, but what quests are available and how each character progresses in their class. For example, choose to follow the path of “light” and your sorcerer will eventually be able to progress to the status of Archmage. Choose “dark”, and your sorcerer will instead progress to the status of Lich. (For added fun, even the skin of your user interface changes.)
Might & Magic VIII takes this a different step, making the choice between “light” and “darkness” a largely amoral one. In order to save the world, you have to build an alliance of factions, some of which are at war with each other. You have to choose which sides of each war you will woo, and your decision will determine your path, but no side is presented as ostensibly moral or villainous. Likewise, the game does away with the idea of branching character development based on path as the paths themselves are no longer representing a moral mechanic.
Of the games I have played, perhaps one of the most interesting modern games at delivering moral consequences has been Dishonored. By eschewing “good” and “evil” for a stability-vs-chaos scale, the game avoids making overt moral judgments (although, honestly, it still does treat high chaos as evil in the end). Plus, the results of your choices influence the makeup of the world around you with each progressive level, creating subtle (and not-so-subtle) changes to the environment. For example, if you go on a slaughter spree in the streets of the plague-ridden city, the number of rat swarms will increase. These changes will affect gameplay and further decision making – your actions have consequences that are not relegated to an ending film. Even better, the game offers non-lethal, satisfyingly just options for the elimination of each principle target. And it makes you work for these options.
However, the game that probably did the best at challenging my ethics was Divinity: Dragon Commander. In stark contrast to Metro: Last Light, the gameplay is lackluster in both the strategy and combat phases; but where Divinity: Dragon Commander really shines is in ethical decision-making during the diplomacy phase – the phase of each turn where you take a step back from world conquest to deal with management of your empire through the enacting of laws and policies. Your empire has racial factions, each with their own dominant political, social and religious sensibilities. Sure, their representatives are largely caricatures of modern political stances, but they still manage to bring arguments to the table that push you to evaluate your choices.
Every decision will have consequences – in the very least, they will alter how favorably each faction views you, and can have other (sometimes quite unexpected) impacts as well. Displease the dwarves too often, and you might find your royal coffers running on empty. Make the imps happy enough, and they’ll offer up the opportunity to gain a fantastic and horrible new bomb… if only you’ll allow them to mine in the one place where the mystical material they need can be found (despite, you know, the whole “sacred elven burial site” nonsense). Divinity: Dragon Commander was surprisingly good at making me examine if and when I would embrace practicality or expediency over my personal sense of right and wrong.
As the above examples probably indicate, there are a lot of games that I haven’t played, including many which should probably be touted or panned for their moral systems and how they attempt to implement them. Which games and systems do you think are noteworthy, and why?
When reading this, the first example I could think of for a game with more or less black and white morality choices would actually be one from the past; The Suffering on Xbox (I think it might also be on PC) was a game set in a highly different setting from most games, and allowed you the choice of morally right or wrong actions, which in the end affected two things, the final boss's form (something I have never seen for the evil path) and how the sequel treated you (they did honestly implement a carryover for the morality when they finally made the sequel The Suffering: Ties that Bind). That being said, despite it being somewhat black and white in nature, you aren't going through the game without repercussions, nor are you going to go through it without being reminded, a couple other aspects of the game take care of THAT quite nicely.
Which brings me to the other reason I touched on...its setting. Its not like most games where your either out in the world fighting forces of evil or the like, but a highly specific setting that establishes from the beginning that in the end, there's one thing that matters above all else, and you will have to make peace with it one way or another.
On a second note, I have to admit,the karma system in F: NV seemed a bit...weak, it no longer mattered as much what your ACTIONS meant to the denizens of the Mojave, but how your standing amongst the various towns and factions were instead. I think at one point I had a vile decrepit evil witch of a character, but was highly regarded most anywhere she went because of how the various factions saw her. (For the record she was my only allowed evil character who in my headcannon had wandered west from D.C....where she was JUST horrendously satanic and wanted something more challenging. I rarely allow myself to handle immoral characters unless I have a reason for it...like exploring all possibilities in Mass Effect, another game of somewhat obvious morality choices. Top Paragon, Middle Neutral and Bottom Renegade)
With that all being said, I do not know if you can acquire a copy of the game I was originally talking about anymore, but its worth the experience, even once.
You know, I honestly do find the entire 'Morality' concept -- in real life mostly -- quite difficult to discern and act upon. Things are never really simple, not like how we viewed them when we were kids. Killing a man is bad; helping your mom do the chores is good. Things were black and white.
Now, I am quite befuddled at times. There's a whole pantheon of good moral values people can abide by, but even though these values belong to the same 'good side' of things, even then I find they can conflict. Like the age-old battle between, say, Order and Chaos, some values, I find, come to blows more often than others. Mercy and Justice are two such examples. They almost always cross paths -- after all, as dictated by nature, an action will always yield an equal and opposite reaction. That's justice: in my mind, it's when people get what they rightfully deserve. Then there's mercy, that inkling that stems from the hope that a kindness thrown the way of someone who may not deserve will bear fruit and, perhaps, lead to a good that could far outweigh whatever detriment an individual posed to society.
Perhaps my views on things are not correct -- if there is such a thing as correct in matters as highly subjective as morality -- but for the sake of being able to attempt to sift through the convolutions, let's say we can segregate morality into empathetic and logical halves. Logically, upholding an economy will allow a nation to thrive and survive in the long run -- even if that maintenance requires actions that may be ethically questionable. Empathetically, I may spare the man who hurt someone I loved simply because two wrongs don't make a right.
Now, I don't claim to be an expert on anything. Those two halves up there are what I alternate between in my real life, depending on what I feel can yield a proper balance between being able to live with myself (in the case of logical morality that can require dubious methods -- maybe sometiems even empatherical morality, which can require me to make decisions based more immediately on feelings), and being able to withstand consequences thrown my way in an increasingly murky world.
So yeah, ultimately those are the two things I alternate between -- my conscience and society. In fact, in a personal attempt to discern the profundities behind the true 'evil' of Chaos and the absolute 'good' of Order, I've made my current story a kind of project to delve into those truths. The answer may surprise me, depending on what my head comes up with. But no matter what, the truth is just that no matter what we do, sometimes hard choices are the only way to move things forward. Of course all these reflections are just based on my young, developing consciousness. Thus I would very much appreciate being able to read your own view things, Kkat. Maybe a diagnosis on what makes a choice moral, and if it's a good one or a bad one.
Slight edit:
The games whose moral decision making systems I found enthralling were those of Mass Effect and Dragon Age (basically the Bioware games). Unlike games like Fallout wherein the majority of consequences for an action were short term, Bioware's games had long-term effects. Companions could leave for good, maybe even turn against you if you did something they felt was wrong. And so a lot of my decisions were swayed based on what I believed my companions would choose -- simply because I felt my companions were people I could actually respect and love, and I'd hate to lose them. The fact that the entire form of the story of those games could be shaped by your actions makes them, in my opinion, as the games that do the best job at representing morality.
This was an excellent blog! Morality is always a strong point in every bit of the games I play and I can admit that growing up with games, (Fallout especially
) it taught me about the weight of choices I make in life. Granted the results of choices you make in life don't become evident as quickly as some games do it, but again the difference of real life to virtual life
. Anyway, in the end I can attest to the fact that morality in gaming was fundamental in my understanding of how to be "good" in real life. 
Karma, as a mechanic is both uniquely right and uniquely flawed in so many ways. But yet, its a shame that no one game really gets good, evil, law or chaos right. It all comes down to perspective.
The game, Of Orcs and Men, by cyanide studios, brought this little revelation. You play an orc, the big hulking hulk of what is likely 600 pounds of muscle. A bloodhand, his tribe and well known as a particularly savage orc tribe. Starts you off a stones throw away from extinction, and everything you do, from the start of the game, to the end, with your goblin companion styx has a lovely way that shows morality in games is ultimately flawed as a mechanic.
The reason for this, is ultimately because these are irrelevant, you go through the game on one simple tenet, you are trying to survive. Good and evil, even law and chaos, stem from your choices on how you survive. And that's something to why as a mechanic it fails. A good being, may only be good because he is never in danger for surviving, he has plenty, and so, his options are open. That same man may be viewed evil, because he chooses to hoard what he has, or take from a position of some strength in a setting.
Orcs and men, has no money, no gifts, but cuts out all what is irrelevant to actual living, if you wanted something, you could try and take it, or steal it, or simply barter a favor for a favor. Its simple, but in cutting out so much, and making everything about how you choose to live. That brings a better morality system than anything you could do in other games because you create what you sow. (And of that, i've yet to manage through any means to actually have him emerge unscathed by this in playing through many times)
But something all too true, life brings scars. And some bear them far better than others ever do. Look about, and ask,
How much of your life is shaped by what and where you grew up in?
How much of who you are, is based on what hardships you endured?
How much have you truly lost in surviving as you are now?
Do you wear your scars with pride, or with humility?
I hope something reaches any whom read this, and in a little introspection, find clarity of some sort. I hope that this day finds the rest well, as I bid farewell to family who passed away in the night.
You do realize how bad Hoyt's mercenaries are, right? They're just as, if not more evil than Vaas's pirates. The three main differences: 1) They're trained, 2) They're not always on drugs, and 3) They appear and sound more like white Americans.
I just wanted to clear that up. I wholeheartedly agree that the first half of the game was far superior. To be honest, the endings to the game kind of left a bad taste in my mouth, to the point that I just wouldn't do it sometimes.
(Post-writing alert: Incoming, incoherent rambling! You've been warned.)
This, I love.
Someone's probably going to say Knights of the Old Republic. I can't really agree. You basically come out as a horrible, baby-eating sith lord and conquer the galaxy, or you're an incorruptible bastion of the light side and preserve the current order of things. There isn't really a point in falling anywhere in the middle of the light-dark spectrum, and it might actually be detrimental to your character's powers.
Instead, I kind of enjoyed Fallout 3 and New Vegas (with some obvious problems to them as well), but you kind of covered that already. I'm still way too early in exploring the options in Dragon Age: Origins, but I've heard it's pretty interesting? Those, and the Civilization games actually offer some flexibility based on whether you're a friendly leader or a warmongering dick-tator, influencing gameplay a fair bit (some folks won't have dealings with a player who habitually breaks agreements, or may be willing to sign pacts or trade with peaceful, honest players).
Really, though, this isn't a lot, nor does it have much depth. "Moral choices" in games end up being patently obvious or ringing hollow to me in almost all cases (even sometimes when they're not to other people), and everything tends to lose its value when you see not only what you're doing to people, but also how it's likely to shape things. Might just be me, though.
On a more random note, I have yet to allow myself to play a really evil character in a game where moral choices matter. In a game like Skyrim, sure, sometimes I'll murder an entire city or steal so much as to reduce the population to standing around nude, because nobody cares in the slightest; but in any game where it actually makes a difference, I can't force myself to choose evil options. I guess it's just that any time anything tries to act like a personality, I can't be mean to it. Probably for the best.
This ramble is what I get for trying to post without sleep... oy vey.
But both this blog and the past few responses (probably a few future ones, as well) have been excellent reading.
Edit: Oh, and Mass Effect 2's morality seemed ridiculous to me. Besides changing the color of the star at the end, it's basically a tool for getting extra companion powers ... and sex, because apparently, why not.
I want a game where you begin doing good things, but as the game progresses the choices you make begin to get more and more questionable then at the end of the game you're sitting at the screen clutching your mouse and keyboard with the realization you were the bad guy all along.
The Karma system in Fallout 3 and New Vegas (the only ones I've played) is just far too black and white for my tastes. With the fourth installment, there needs to be a more elaborate system of Karma that isn't so black and white.
Also, and this is a random aside, but there doesn't seem to be a single goodly-aligned group of slave owners anywhere in the wastes of any Fallout I've experienced. Slavery is almost universally brutal, and towards bad ends. I'm not sure how an ex-raider slave working for the kinds of people actually seen with slaves is a benefit to society.
You know in my only New Vegas play through I attempted to be the worst person I could, ended up being more like a mercenary, whoever helped my interests the most got my assistance. Ended up finishing the game (with a wildcard ending) as 'Savior of the Wasteland'.
I take it you haven't played Spec Ops: The Line?
Play Spec Ops: The Line. You're never going to get a better discussion on video game morality.
The moral choices in Papers Please are also really interesting because they're grinding against the millstone of bureaucratic inertia and petty reprimands. If there's any game that can get you to see how horrible systems perpetrate, it's Papers Please.
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Spec Ops The Line. Trust me on this. I stake my reputation as a guy who has taste on this.
After reading this, I really would like to hear your thoughts on three games WITHOUT actual moral systems and are more with the story and allows you to choose or is left up in the air and lets you pick your path . Those games are Spec Ops: The Line, FTL: Faster Than Light and Papers Please.
Spec Ops: The Line is a third person shooter taking place in Dubaiafter a sandstorm hit and buried the city. Morality, nationalism, and the true horrors of war are all heavy themes and very important to the story. It's hard to explain why this is noteworthy without spoiling it so I'm not gonna
do that.
FTL: Faster Than Light does morality without actually doing morality. That is a weird thing to say but It's true. You are given choices in everything you do. From where you go to who you fight and who you spare. You could easily kill everyone that dares cross you path and get more scrap, the game won't hurt you for choosing to be a little bad and kill everyone that crosses your path but will hurt for letting people go and giving you things away to others in need. Sometimes doing the right thing will make it harder on you. For example, you can finda ditress signal and it's some ship that's ran out of fuel. They have nothing to offer you and they need 4 fuel. You only have 5, so do you give them the fuel or not. You'll never see them again and you make the next jump and be stuck without fuel in the middle of space and then get hit by a huge ship which then tears you apart. Sometimes doing the right thing can be the death of you.
And lastly, Papers Please. You are a immigration officer and you have the final say of who gets into your country of glorious Arstotzka. I can't even begin to explain this one. So I'll just let Nerdcubed take this one. That video is also of the unfinished beta and the game has since been released.
And there, i'm done. Do check those games out if you already haven't. You won't regret it
I highly recommend playing Mass Effect series if you have time and will, it's a role-playing game but in third person perspective.
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Nope, I'm going to say Star Wars: the Old Republic. There you can create your own character, who stars off on either Republic's side, of Empire's side, and you can still chose to do either good deeds or bad deeds. Now, I still haven't finished it, so I don't know if all of those deeds finally catch up with you once you finish the storyline content. But they do cause your followers to either like you more or not, and affects your looks: the Light side of the Force (Good) makes you look okay; the Dark side of the Force (Evil) and you became pale, have dark rings around your eyes, and the eyes themselves change to red. Overall, though, I can't say those deeds have a visible outcome on how you're viewed...
Like, for example: there was this one planet, which both the Empire and the Republic were still fighting for, which had a gigantic Republic's prison on it. As a Sith Inquisitor, I had a quest to go there and release some of the more dangerous criminals, so that they could gather the other prisoners into an army. In there, I was presented with a choice: either I could release the criminals who were mass murderers, who would be sure to cause chaos and mayhem, or some gang leaders, who would establish some semblance of order. I chose the latter, but I didn't notice that having any impact on the planet or the Sith's forces. Those prisoners newer came up again.
So... I dunno, it's kinda neat that you can play for the evil team and still be a good guy, but it's rather disappointing that your choices don't seem to have a bigger impact. I suppose that's rather expected from a MMORPG, but this game souldn't be a MMORPG to begin with, it would have worked fine as a normal game.
While we're on it, I think it would be cool if in the next Fallout game we could actually chose were we begin, like, for example: you're from a Vault, from the Brotherhood of Steel, a tribal, an ex-Enclave, and so on...
Actually, you know what? Scratch that, it would be really cool if there was a Fallout: Equestria game!
Seriously? No one mentioned Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar? That game set a standard for Karma Mechanics, and made it's goal to become a champion of morals become one of the best possible people in the world.
hi hi
Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar. I can't think of any game that has a more in-depth and natural feeling morality system. It independently tracks nine different virtues, which can increase or decrease depending on the character's actions. Honesty, Compassion, Valor, Justice, Honor, Sacrifice, Spirituality, Humility. All of which are taken into account to judge the character in certain aspects of the game.
It's an old game, but its definitely worth checking out.
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I agree it was a good one for morals, but also spent a good bit being a Guide Dang It moment for you when raising one virtue can also causes another to fall. It was a different take on morality overall, and a good one for the ultima series. Its not a bad game, and I liked the full suite of what it tried, in its defending.
I completely agree with the comments you made on Bioshock. That, and the lousy boss/wave rush endings. I had wished there was something more epic building up to them. Like how they did with the ending in Mass Effect 2. And speaking of Mass Effect -- I think it did a good job incorporating a decent Karma system that sort of balanced itself.
That's just my opinion. Loved the Blog Kkat.
- Noakwolf
I love stealth-themed games most of all from how the main character had to deal with their own choices and reprecussions of their desisions time and time again. (Far Cry and Dishonored I honestly play for the gameplay rather than the "painful desision-making").
I would be lying if I said that it is possible to incorporate a perfect morality system into a game. No system can truly be perfect: there's always been this area of grey in between the black and white distinctions between good and bad. In fact, most of it happens to be grey.
~Oh no, Raiders are attacking you and your crew! Better put them down cause they're bad!~
Not wanting to go into a giant convoluted mess of what's moral or not, the crew shoots them,they die, wee...
Was that a bad moral choice to make, to kill to survive? Out in the Wastelands, that's hard to tell.
I like to bring attention to another game though: Skyrim.
Now, you're pretty much stuck with either chosing: The Empire, the Stormcloaks, or nothing and lose out on all that exp and achievements that what truly matters
The Empire wants everyone to be united; the Stormcloaks want Skyrim to be a seperate nation. The story continues on the benefits and reprecussions each faction would have from winning, plus you get to speak to many people who have their own personal views on the whole war situation.
Bethesda is really good at what they do. "OH COME ON, I STOLE 1 CUP BECAUSE I LIGHTLY TAPPED A BUTTON! Stop attacking me citizens, I am your king!"
I also recall a paper I once did about Niccolo Machiavelli, the ends justify the means and whatnot. Hope to send a PM or something for further discussion, though I understand how busy you must be and don't want to clog up any important messages you needed to get back to.
Remember: a clean inbox is a happy inbox
I am wholly indifferent on karma. For instance: On one of my play throughs of Fallout 3, I covered every flat surface of megaton in plasma, pulse, and frag mines, and seeing as I still had over a thousand left, I made a massive pile of them outside my house. I then proceeded to detonate them all. And that is the story of why I needed to buy a new X-box 360.
Eh... I don't know... Overlord? Black & White? *Shrugs* Its not something I have thought of much when playing games, I admit. Although I do tend to go for the "good guy" angle, if I can choose.
2045272 Not to mention the vast amount of lovable characters there are.
It's a great trilogy to play where the choices do matter for what happens in other games within the series and within the games themselves.
Love it love it love it, sometimes all you need is a good gun and someone there to calibrate it for you
2045262 Totally agree with Papers, please and FTL, you can even finish this games
in 1 day and i assure you will not regret it Kkat
In Papers, please you chose between national progression or your morality and ethics, every choice you do every day ALWAYS have consequences and many of these can lead you to one of the 20 different endings, heck, the game is beautiful itself, many have requested a sequel but the creator says that he need to take a break from the game, and why they want a sequel? because actually there is no other game like it in at all, it's a unique game that even has 30 awards including "Best indie game of 2013", "Best game of 2013", "Top games of 2013" and "Pre-Approved" Jorji
IT'S DEFINITELY WORTH YOUR MONEY
FTL: Faster Than Light...........i don't even know what to say............................it is just one of the BEST indie games i've ever played!!...................... maybe it's because i love spaceships and all that stuff, or maybe because i always wanted a game with this management gameplay. Not eveyone likes it, but many do. (Not mentioning it is very hard to reach the end and beat the final boss)
) and you can play it too on ipad
It's a more like a strategy game rather than a game like Papers, please but you'll need to play both of these to know how they are.
Sadly there is no demo if you want to test it, but if you ask me, i would buy it again, 1 or 2 weeks ago the "Advanced" DLC was released (it's free!!
I've never played Spec Ops: The Line or Mass Effect because my pc is a potato
but if i could i would play them
2045484 I remember killing every one in the wasteland.
It took a while. I think about 6 months.
Kkat, I`ve been meaning to ask this, but what system do you play on. Xbox 360, Playstation 3, or PC. Also, which next generation console did you buy, if you did.
2045614 I did that once as well. I also had plenty of free time as I was relatively immobile for several months thanks to dual knee surgery. Ah the pain crouching brought on. I wish it not on even my greatest enemy.
I have never wanted to try something so much before!
I don't think you'll find a game that will really satisfy you. The main reason I found Fallout:Equestria so interesting was its approach to ethics. It was unlike anything else because writers of printed fiction aren't allowed to mix action & adventure, moral confusion, and a non-cynical worldview, a belief in the possibility of a happy ending. They have to choose a complete pre-packaged set, e.g.,
Literary fiction: Morally ambiguous, no action sequences.
Epic heroism: Morally clear, non-cynical worldview.
Dark fantasy, noir: Morally ambiguous, cynical worldview.
Usually when I say this, people tell me that Games of Thrones or The Black Company is morally ambiguous and non-cynical, but I don't see it. 20 years ago they would have cited the Amber Chronicles, Michael Moorcock, or Urth of the New Sun, and I don't really see that either. The world is always a little more morally convenient in printed fiction. People may have to make awful choices, but the person who must be sacrificed is generally aware of the issues and consents heroically.
Videogame publishers are even more conservative than book publishers, so I doubt any of them are going to try to push that envelope.
Thinking about games that are solid "good and evil" choices, I am surpised no one has mentioned the Infamous games. I like the morality system in there and yet do get annoyed by how black and white it truely is. You are either the savior or the villian;however,that said I do like the more subtle approach it has to the two sides. This is in mainly the way it comes to the player and how you achieve both sides. In good, you can choose to be a Superman, saving everyone and making sure that the people don't die even the villians. This is accomplished in a really nifty way. You are given the chance to bind your defeated enemies to the ground. Alternatively, you can be the punisher, killing your enemies and feeding off their essencance. Guess which is the more easy to do?
The killing.
Now I like that, because it add something to your approach to heroism. It reminds you that killing is the easy part, you can use all of that power to devestate your opponent. It takes a lot more effort to become a savior and protect people.
Dues Ex, in my opinion, has a really good subtle system. In there you can choose to be stealthy or guns ablazin (I try to be stealthy, I really do, but the weapons are just too much fun and darn it! I have cyborg powers, I am going to use them!) However, this has a secondary effect not really seen until the ending. See, the way it treats all of your kills and wanton murder is that, its a sign of you loosing more and more of your humanity. You have lost all signs of basic empathy and the moral choices are no longer yours.
After reading this the first two games with morality systems that popped into my head were Fable and Mass Effect and while I haven't played either of the series for a while I still remember some of the basics of them.
Fable (especially 2 which I played the most) was interesting with it's two layered system of Good vs Evil and Pure vs Corrupt i.e. you could be pure good, corrupt good, pure evil, or corrupt evil. The system works similar to Fallout where your actions would influence sliders, because of this it has the same issues as fallout (eating a dozen live baby chickens to suddenly become evil) and the system seems more aesthetic than meaningful. However I did enjoy the fact that no matter what your morality is every available option is still an option so an evil character can choose to save lives. The endings of both 2 and 3 had morally gray choices near the ends, especially in 3 where being the good guy in the situation could potentially lead to a negative outcome, while becoming a tyrant could save everyones lives.
Then there is Mass Effects system of Paragon or Renegade which basically meant (in most cases) doing the same actions peacefully or aggressively, and while they did influence certain parts of the story they tended to matter little compared to the no-paragon/renegade options where you decide which friend you will sacrifice and who of which faction to save (the paragon and renegade options were usaully the easy way out where everyone or no one wins). Of course the end of Mass Effect 3 was you get the choice of the red/blue/green ending and which are all almost exactly the same, but in saying that the worst part of the greatest stories are all ways the ends.
So that's my 2 cents now time to finally sleep a 3:02am.
Ahh, the choices and dilemmas of karma. It's so clear cut in some games, but those aren't always the games that have it work effectively, while in others where the line between good and evil is blurred proves to show something else. I know most of these posts will talk about either Fable, Farcry, Mass effect, etc. but why don't I say a possible lesser known part of the game that I feel may have actually worked as well, despite the fact that it will probably have a disagreement.
Army of Two, that game series had one game that involved karma choices but in a strange way as the decisions may be a right one but in the game 40th day, the right decision isn't always the one decision to make things better. In fact, one of the choices is to spare someone and even though I did, the future event showed him being killed by someone anyways. So that made me think about how good choices actually work today. Now another example wasn't much of a choice, but it was a stellar example of how things could be different, same series but a different game.
The Devil's Cartel. In that one of the characters decides to save someone which resulted in his partner being killed, only to find out that the same partner has turned against you. This is one of the best examples of how not only someone's morals can change, but how they view morals as being right as well.
Now I love the Fallout games and the Fable games, but they make too clearly cut moral choices. It may make things easy, but it doesn't always allow for the best form of immersion in the game as some people would agree that the mass effect series could. But I feel that there may be a game that could possibly have made moral choices different. I may be wrong but when there comes a time where even the good choices lead to horrible consequences, but sometimes what seemed to be a bad mistake can become the focal point of redemption. I may have morals, but when it comes to choices, I do not want to use morals as the solve all solution.
no infamous?
great post btw!
Great blog that touches morality perfectly except for one point, in my opinion.
With regards to Metro, the point giving system is more than a little odd in how it dispenses morality points but once you get your companion, the system more focuses on Artyom showing them that people are different from what is perceived. The points are still given out at completely random times but with sparing those two people, it is just to show your companion that humans do indeed have compassion. That was the moral lesson in the two bits where he saves those two specific people.
Also the endings are not defined as good or bad. There is either life or martyrdom; being a savior or making the ultimate sacrifice. That ties into Artyom showing that human beings are capable of more than just killing eachother.
That's just my take on it at least.
Personally, I've never been more invested in any game's morality system than in inFamous 2. It probably has something to do with playing both games, as I doubt that a person jumping straight into the story without playing the first one will enjoy it much. Without giving spoilers to anyone who hasn't finished the game but still wants to, I'll say that while Good is my preferred path, the Evil ending to 2 was significantly more moving in a philosophical sense.
I was very amused to see Far Cry 3 show up in your blog, because it is one of two games that I played (The other being Spec Ops: The Line) that I immediately drew parallels with to Fallout: Equestria... and neither of them fared well for the comparison.
They both tried to do a story about the effects of violence on a person and morality in combat situations, and I immediately made a "find/keep your virtue" parallel in my head between them and your story. They both had entertaining enough gameplay. There were even certain elements that were very similar: Far Cry 3 had a reasonably "innocent" protagonist thrust into a violent situation, who had to learn to fight and kill in order to survive, and ended up getting really good at it. Spec Ops: The Line (supposedly) had a character that was (supposedly) badly affected by a scene of carnage they wrought, which made me think of Arbu, complete with the killed-them-with-fire bit (But more on that later...). But then they both started up these weird caricatures of insanity that really ruined any attempts at realistic portrayals of mentality, and made the moral choices that they were supposed to highlight as being so bad not choices, railroading you into doing these things to progress any further. Basically... they started out fairly good, but they both got really dumb at the end. And I mean really dumb.
So you didn't really miss out on anything not finishing Far Cry 3. The beginning of the game was easily the best, before all the drug-trip morality WTFness showed up. I vaguely remember the mercs being pretty bad guys as well (I think there may have been some ethnic cleansing stuff going on, or at least violent repression, can't remember specifically), but it didn't really matter to me. The game would have been better without all the druggie mystic nonsense and really ham-fisted (And largely mis-aimed) attempts at morality near the end. No, I don't feel sympathetic for the lady who just tried to murder all of my friends and likely planned on murdering me; I would have killed her myself if the game didn't insist on its carefully sculpted plotline of nonsense and refused to let me have any meaningful agency in what happens outside of a pretty clear "dumb" and "less dumb, but still pretty dumb" one-button choice at the end.
Similarly, while I see people recommending Spec Ops: The Line, I can't possibly recommend against it strongly enough. The gameplay was fairly entertaining, and it started out feeling pretty good. Then it started crapping itself. It tried to make a big deal over how you're making hard moral choices and how that affects your character, but as it ends up, you're not making choices. You have to do certain things to progress. The first time I encountered this involved a friendly-fire incident where a different US unit mistakes you for someone else, and you have to self-defense the entire squad to death. The first time I did this, I felt kind of bad. They died because of a mistake, so I tried to avoid it. I hid while the guys walked by. Didn't work. They were scripted to spot you at that point, even though full cover, and you had to kill them to advance through the game. The entire plot wouldn't work if you avoided contact, or if you managed to talk, so the game didn't give you that option. It set down the rails, and you were expected to follow them.
The most egregious example of a lack of choice also featured what was supposed to be the biggest moral choice of the game. You get to the point where you need to get past an entire camp of enemies to get to safety. You have two options: either fight them straight-up, or use a mortar with white phosphorous rounds to take them out. Except you don't really have two options. If you try to fight them straight-up, they spawn a whole slew of invincible snipers overlooking your position and massacre you (Or maybe it was the ground guys that were invincible and they just kept spawning new snipers faster than you could kill them). You have to use the "bad choice" and mortar them, and that results in a number of civilian detainees (That you didn't and couldn't know about before hand) getting killed by your bombardment. Even if you know about them from a previous playthrough, there is absolutely no way to get past this point without killing them. You monster.
And it just gets worse from there. In fact, I'll just give you a big spoiler and tell you the ending, so you can save a lot of time: your elite Delta Force operator had a psychotic break after seeing a few bodies, and has been hallucinating since fairly early in the game. Several events that appear to be real to you when playing are actually hallucinations, including people who were not there and events that never happened. The voice on the radio that you're following throughout the game is entirely in your head. Your team-mates know you're nuts and talking to a radio that has its power cables dangling uselessly from it, but they follow you anyway because apparently Delta Force is full of imbeciles. Several scenes don't even make sense with that revelation (Such as how you can be killed by apparently nonexistent). Then you get to choose whether to kill your hallucinatory reflection (Killing yourself) or the hallucination of the guy you were looking for. Do the later, and you're rewarded with a scene where you can either go with the US soldiers that show up to rescue you or kill them all because why not. I don't think I've ever felt so insulted by the ending of a game. What Fallout: Equestria handled through character development, interpersonal relationships, and internal anguish, Spec Ops: The Line handled with the blunt instrument of badly stereotyped TV-style mental illness and a twist ending that would ashame even M. Night Shyamalan.
The developers did make one comment that I think is particularly noteworthy. When someone pointed out that there was no choice, that you either do this bad thing or you can't progress, they said that you always have a choice: you can stop playing the game. They say that would be the moral choice, and that failing to do so says something about you. Nevermind that I find it insulting that they expect people to pay full price for a game they think we shouldn't play all of, or that it's absurd to label people moral or immoral based on decisions they make in a fictional setting (Which would be akin to saying you're an immoral person for orchestrating the "genocide" of Equestria). If they think it's more moral to never finish the game, I'd personally recommend being a paragon of virtue and never even starting.
Seriously:
As for recommendations... I saw someone mention Papers Please, and I'd agree, that has one of the better moral systems... in that it doesn't actually have a moral system, it just has consequences that result from all your actions. It also doesn't try to impose gameplay mechanics to enforce these moral choices. While many of them affect what will happen later, others really just affect how you perceive yourself, without attempting to categorize it. For example, you can save money by turning off the heat in your apartment and strictly rationing your food, leaving your family hungry and cold, but alive and with a roof over their head. So much of the game is a gray area, and it doesn't try to impose some cumbersome morality mechanic on top of that.
Though to tell the truth, the Fallout games always seemed like a good way of doing it. Not so much the karma meter (Though I think the earlier ones were less "gameable" than the later ones? Can't remember for sure), but the end-game summary, where it showed the impact that you had on the world. That, and having the world react differently to you depending on what you've done, seem like the sensible way of handling morality in games, not just some sliding scale that determines what powers and/or ending you get. I think the faction system in New Vegas is a step in the right direction, but I think it would be most interesting to see it taken to the extreme; to have every single person react to the knowledge of events in certain ways, and have the knowledge of certain events passed from NPC to NPC. No morality system, per se, just a bunch of people who react to what you've done based on their own opinions and values. Of course, that's a HUGE amount of work compared to just incrementing a single variable, which is why the later is so common.
2046106
Don't look at it as insulting or nonsensical. Look at it as avante-garde.
Granted, the execution seems like it could use some work, but in a way the game is giving you a world where the only moral choice is to destroy the world, or at least lock it forever in stasis, by refusing to play anymore. It's at least trying to set things up so that game-world morality is controlled by a purely real-world choice. And that's interesting.
Shadow of the Colossus.
I want to discuss on the two games you reviewed. That being Metro Last Light and Far Cry 3.
I will admit that Far Cry 3 did make things a bit too complicated, or rather too simple. There was no ample free choice to actually choose good or bad, except in the end.
You could choose to let go of your friends and head home or, kill them all, and let Citra, have sex with you, and then kill you. Because she thought you were a worthy warrior as she describes it. (Now that woman is truly insane. Reminds me of a black widow.)
The game isn't about morality, but about the effects of insanity and what it brings, and how some actions have their cause and effect on insanity. Like Vaas, he was either insane before he started doing drugs, and heroine and such, or after. Might also be his upbringing.
Metro Last Light however, I like to imagine it's about forgiveness. Even though Pavel or Letsnitski were bad men, and did you wrong. You were however, able to forgive them and let them live with the guilt of the actions they did.
I don't know if you discovered it, but when you meet the big bear, and after defeating her, you have the choice to save her, again a choice of forgiveness. She may have attacked you and planned to kill you, but it was because she was protecting her cubs. You could also have it as a choice of Karma there, you choose to forgive than to rather kill in blind rage and a want for redemption.
Those two are my pointers on that.
I think what you said about Divinity: Dragon Commander applies to most well made Strategy RPG's. For example, in my favorite game Crusader Kings 2 (a Grand Strategy RPG) sometimes I might feel the need to murder a family member so they don't try and take my throne. The problem is if I get caught killing them everyone will hate me for kin slaying and will be much more likely to attack me and the Pope is more likely to excommunicate me. A lot of the decisions that could be defined as "morally wrong" often have side effects to them, generally on diplomacy and relations. But at the same time, if you play your cards right you can get away with being a douche bag.
2045221
"1) They're trained, 2) They're not always on drugs, and 3) They appear and sound more like white Americans."
Are you suggesting that just because the mercenaries are trained, do not use drugs, and are white, automatically they're more evil than pirates?
I don't play a lot of video games but I do like to play RPGs because with a good GM the game takes a sharp nosedive into the moral gray area and never really leaves. Like this little story, can you tell me if the Palidan can still be considered good at the end of this.
i.imgur.com/SImQVfD.png
This might be kind of hard to read, so you should probably just copy/paste the URL into a different window.
2046366 Then again, I belive that what BioWare did with ME3, AFTER they introduced the extended ending was somewhat rewarding...
If you use the Blue Ending, the seemingly best and "goodest" one, the outcome depends on the amount of Paragon and Renegade points you acquired. If you had more Paragon point, Reaper-Shepard became a caring force of a builder's soul, even opening the Citadel back for the galactic races.
On the other side, if you were more of a renegade, your Reaper-Shepard becomes a brute force bent on dominating the others for their safety and sets himself to protect them from any and all dangers. Even from themselves.
I often heard, that Warhammer 40k, as it is a grimdark setting, is a bad example for this kind of moral disputes... People say, that everything is painted in black and white in there and most people see that the only "white" guys were the Tau Empire with their philosophy to unite the stars, whatever they look like, and most of people don't see the darker side of that race, shown, for example, in the non-canon ending of Dawn of War: The Dark Crusade... If the Tau win on a human populated Kronus, they force the ex-imperial citizens into single-sex camps and they technically sterilize the population, forcing them to go extinct in the matter of one generation.
You can go on. Coming back to Mass Effect, was the choice of Krogan Genophage really a mistake or necessary? People often do horrible things out of fear. They often don't see the consequences. It's much like with self-defense laws in my Country. If someona breaks into your house with a Knive and wants to kill you, you cannot open fire at him (considering even if you have a gun) even, if you are much more afraid of him and can't defend yourself better, as it will be the overstepping of your self-defense rights.
In Fallout: New Vegas's DLC, Honest Hearts, Joshua Graham says, that when faced with a direct threat and need, killing enemies is a chore in Lords eyes, just like any else. There are things that we do, that normally would be an atrocity, then again, sometimes it happens, that they are a necessity. The point is to try to build a place, where it won't ever become a necessity.
I've never actually played it, but maybe The Witcher 2? As far as I know, there's no morality system, but there are many different branching points throughout the story (16 different endings), and apparently there are no black and white choices. My guess is that it's probably similar to Might & Magic from your description of the game. I'd have to play it myself to confirm though.
As for FTL being recommended in some other comments, I don't think it would fit as a game being touted for its moral system. The game operates more on a risk-reward system. Sometimes helping others will result in good things, other times you'll get horribly betrayed, and there's ultimately no issue with being an asshole every possible chance--basically you'll get a medium reward instead of the potential of a bigger reward.
2046106
I think your statement is insightful. But I think you're approaching Spec Ops: The Line in the wrong light. I think you're trying to see it as a commentary on morality on a grander scale, and in that light it suffers because frankly, I don't think that's what the dev team was going for. I think in the light of a harsh criticism of Call of Duty 4-like games with a secondary focus on looking at the policy of U.S. military interventionism is where it shines the most.
I will say that I do have a game that approaches morality in I think a better, more mature way, don't get me wrong. But you'll have to trust me here before I get on that one.
Here is the part where thar be huge spoilers. Do not read the next paragraph if you don't want to be spoiled on the twists and turns Spec Ops gives. Ready? Cool.
The point that you can link Fallout Equestria and Spec Ops: The Line on isn't the hard work and perseverance on maintaining a virtue through trial and tribulation or any greater moral lesson like that, but it is learning to accept a complex situation before trying to solve it. And that's where it shines. Littlepip comes off as obsessed with trying to learn about the world around her, but it never comes off as wrong, just quirky. It gets her in trouble at least once when she realizes her pipbuck tag is in the system on one of the terminals that she hacked, but it's also what wound up saving Equestria in the end. In the end, the thing that damned Walker is that he /didn't/ know all that was going on, and he didn't act responsibly because of that fact. His biggest failing wasn't an act of rage or evil, it was an act of ignorace for the people he mortared, it was an act of ignorance, not an act of evil that he continued down his road past the injured soldier at the airplane. It was an act of ignorance, not an act of evil that lead him to destroying many tons of water that would've saved a bunch of survivors. And he wanted to be a hero, but the entire frame of the story was that he was damned from the start because the frame of the story itself narrowed his vision to that, and the only choices you got were the ones that didn't really matter anyway. The whole "The goodest thing to do is put down the game" angle isn't itself because "hey, you're allowing these bad things to happen, you are a bad person", it's pointing out the fact that you're continuing to perpetuate these actions wanting to be assured that he's the good guy in this situation when you know you have no context on the situation that shows otherwise. It's making you want to see the situation more complexly. Which is why it has it in so bad for Call of Duty series past 4, where you nuke the entire US of A, shoot an entire airport of innocent people down, shoot bombs at farmhouses and other stuff because enemy soldiers regardless of who actually lives there, shoot prisoners of war, and lead a mercenary group to kill someone who in any other story would just be easily replaced while killing everyone in the way, and still be considered the good guy in all of those situations because... uh. Reasons.
But, honestly, my favorite game that encapsulates some sort of morality system is Dark Souls. First off, humanity in Dark Souls is a thing that exists, and all it does is activate the multiplayer element. Which is actually a pretty cool remark. Being human means sometimes being screwed over by other people and their ambition to take from you, sometimes for good reason. But it also means being able to cooperate with others with gain to both you and the cooperator. There are NPC's you meet in the game that seem helpful at first, but turn into a huge problem later. There are NPC's that start off as a huge problem and then turn into something pretty useful later if you don't kill them for their transgressions. There are NPC's that you love, and then by helping them along, you damn their souls. There's a few NPC's in the game that you would really want to save, but there's no way in hell you'd be able to given what you would know on your first play through. There are NPC's that you can kill to benefit yourself with very useful items, but at the cost of making the world that much more of a hollow place. And in the end, it offers you a choice that in any other game would frame as a stereotypical good or evil thing, but here, it becomes a genuine issue of debate. That's real karma, not in the binary choice way, but in how you understand and deal with a complex situation. It has a rightful place of being a hard game. But what ideology can be reasonably called such if it isn't tested?
2046493
Not even slightly. If you recall my words, I said "They're just as, if not more evil." I said that they're either equally evil, or more evil. The fact that they're trained merely makes them more dangerous. The fact that they're not on drugs ON-DUTY (I never said they "do not use drugs". I'm not sure they do) means they're of more sound mind when you fight them. The fact that they look and sound like white Americans is merely a fact, nothing more. I didn't mean anything by it, especially considering I'm a white American, myself.
Hoyt Volker is emphasized as being much more evil than Vaas, and his mercenaries are stated as being "bloodthirsty". Personally, I think it's safe to assume that killing the mercenaries isn't somehow "immoral" compared to killing the pirates, because both groups are god damn murdering psychopaths.
Instead of assuming I was just going out of my way to make 3 judgmental, mean-spirited statements, why not attempt to interpret it from more than one angle? Sheesh.
Personally, my favorite "karma" system was from Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. How you view yourself (sith, Jedi, or somewhere in between) affected how you'd make choices. As one who followed the way of the sith, I'd focus more on which choices would make me stronger as a whole, and not strictly dark side specific most of the time.
This is very true, but as I'm a heartless bastard, I always go for the "evil" ending in every game I can.
2046773
My apologies, it wasn't entirely my intention to be mean spirited. I tried to sound as neutral as I could, thinking I could be interpreting it incorrectly, but I probably did a poor job at that.
And to be honest I have not played enough of Far Cry 3 to get to the mercenary part (the game mechanics to me are just ... meh), but by the way you describe them in your later post yeah I could see how they'd be more threatening.
2047049
Ahh, I get it. A misunderstanding on both of our parts, I'd say. No worries.
2046851
You and me both, bro. At least the second game actually let you be fully neutral in the end fight, though...