How do you play video games with bad morality mechanics?

[FrolicsomeQuipster]

Lots of video games have a karma bar where being generally nice for a while can make up for burning down an orphanage.

Now there may be some Mumbojumboists who are perfectly fine with that but I'm guessing most of you aren't.

How do you play them?

I used to find it a lot easier on the nerves to go with a generally super jebus path where my character sometimes ends up frigging glowing.

If I did try out the bad road I'd turn down the sound so I wouldn't have to hear everyone wailing about it.

But lately I've been finding it easier to stomp on fictional characters that talk back to me the same way I'd used to build death-coasters in roller coaster tycoon.

If only Sith deal in absolutes and Objectivists only deal in absolutes, then hello fellow dark knights!

[Hairnet]

I find that morality mechanics in video games are annoying and destroy the subtlelty of the art.

In the end morality mechanics create a sort of moral relativism. If they create a set of "good" and "bad" choices, both paths have to be a valid way of reaching the end of the story, meaning that good and bad players remain equal in power (get equal rewards from the game). The only thing that makes the bad choices bad is the arbitrary ending added on after the game play or people whining about it during the game.

The only decent morality system I can think of was Mass Effects, becaus Renegade and Paragon didn't just mean "kick puppy" and "feed orphans". They were competing world views and leadership styles that both work in the real world to some extent, and even cross over some.

It would be cool to see a game where if you choose enough bad choices the game became unplayable. That would reflect real life more accurately I believe.

[FrolicsomeQuipster]

Personally I thought that Mass Effect's mechanic was one of the worst ones cause just being somewhat rude got you Renegade while being polite got you Paragon.

As if etiquette is part of morality.

I do like the idea of a system where previous choices determine future options.

Maybe in a game with fable like time-skips where if you were a total Toohey as a kid you don't get the choice to keep certain treasures to yourself if people ask you to share.

Edited July 21, 2012 by FrolicsomeQuipster

[Dániel Boros]

I have played Mass Effect one, but I don't remember being either renegade or paragon as having much impact on me or the story.

KOTOR 1 and 2 on the other hand had a rather strong impact. I usually played the light side. I tried to play the dark side as well, but I couldn't last long on that path. Probably because I always had light side Jedi in my group all the time, and they kept complaining about victims and greed and whatnot.

In The Elder Scrolls Oblivion I managed to play an evil character probably because of the lack of teammates and moral system. I have to admit it was quite fun to play a remorseless assasin from the Dark Brotherhood once I got used to it.

What strikes me about the Kotor type moral point systems is that the dark side isn't all that different from the good side. One is materialistic survival of the fittest the other is altruistic self sacrifice.