Adam, my best friend growing up, was always really into video games. He enters and wins tournaments, masters games, studies strategies and cheat codes to maximize his play, and reflects philosophically on how gaming affected him growing up. It was a truly rare thing when I beat him in a video game. He and I always thought he’d be a game designer, or a game programmer, and I thought I’d be a writer or a lawyer or something. Turns out it’s the other way around: He went into accountancy, and I went into game development.
Only in hindsight does it make sense. Adam loves playing games, and enjoys working with stories, but some of the more hands-on work isn’t as interesting to him. Looking back, it was usually me who was crafting new games. I made board games, I had Klick & Play on the computer and would explore many half-formed ideas. Even when we’d have long walks in the park away from our TVs, and we would play imagination games, we were telling stories and he would say what his character does, while I would tell him what happens next. Yes, in hindsight, it’s not surprising that Adam became a well-adjusted hardcore gamer in his twenties who comes home from his well-paying white collar job with a paycheck big enough to provide for those he loves, then goes to load up the latest MMORPG and relax, while I became the overworked game designer who spends most of his time trying to help other people to play games.
So that’s Adam. Adam’s a smart guy, as you can probably guess from the fact that he’s an accountant. Like most gamers, he has a pretty good idea of what he likes or doesn’t like in a game, and what’s cool and not cool in games. We tend to play a bit differently though, Adam and I — I’m almost always siding with the good guys, whoever I perceive those to be, while he’ll just as often play evil characters. We both like games that let us make those choices, though.
Chaotic Stupid in Knights of the Old Republic
Of course, sometimes those choices are pretty weak. I was talking to Adam about BioWare’s Knights of the Old Republic, and he complained that his dialogue for a dark side character was just stupid. It’s all well and good to play an evil character who is into random killing, but corny lines no self-respecting evil warlord would ever utter seemed far too common. He had some particularly incisive examples that I can’t do justice to, but from my personal experience with the game, I seem to remember such absurdities as chasing off some loan shark thugs only to extort the poor old man yourself, or shooting a prisoner for no apparent reason, after a lame off-hand remark.
Adam and I aren’t the only ones who think this kind of “evil” path in games is ridiculous. It’s a pretty common sentiment. Chaotic stupid — for when your main character has no apparent motivation except to do dumb antisocial things that make other people’s lives miserable, while hamming it up for the camera. And only when the level designers scripted in situations that let you do so.
I take the complaints a bit further, though. Bad writing for evil characters is bad enough, but these “moral choices” are presented throughout the game, and yet almost nobody actually chooses when they come up. Instead, they start the game, conceive of their character as a light side Jedi, and then proceed to make good choices throughout the game. While such black and white good and evil might seem to be in the theme of Star Wars, making the choice so simple and easy to carry out isn’t. Star Wars has characters’ internal struggles with light and dark — you can choose to always be good, but the dark side is easier, faster, and the light is harder to walk. Not really so in the KOTOR games.
It’s not just that the writing isn’t built to support real moral choices, but that the game mechanics penalize any sort of roleplaying beyond the simplest good or evil choice. I don’t want to choose a fallen Jedi, because all those skill points I’ve put into light side force skills are squandered due to the increasing cost of those skills as I fall from the light. Good grief! It’s like they’re actively sabotaging their own good and evil system.
inFAMOUS karmic moments
I figured this was just an early attempt at simulating morality and choice in games, and the wisdom of game developers had advanced since then, but inFAMOUS proved me wrong. Mechanically, the game penalizes grayscale even stronger than KOTOR does, locking out whole skills if you don’t have enough (or later lose) bias in your alignment. A neutral character will not only have the weakest abilities of all, but will have their lightnight powers flitter back and forth between Evil Red and Heroic Blue as their alignment dances across the midline between good and evil. Fable already demonstrated gradient appearance changes — why didn’t Sucker Punch even bother with gradient color changes for your abilities?
Changing alignments mid-game in inFAMOUS, while not absolutely prohibited, will lock out a huge proportion of the abilities you’ve spent experience on, thereby making it a nearly untenable character development option. It’s the same problem experienced in KOTOR, only worse, because it’s literally impossible to do that move anymore.
To make matters worse, alignment shifts in inFAMOUS come primarily from contrived Karma Moments, that actually letterbox the screen and display an icon to advertise “You now have an alignment choice! Choose good or evil!” It’s like if every time a moral situation came up, a little devil and a little angel popped up on your shoulders, and reminded you that your soul is riding on this next choice. Except that would be slightly cooler than inFAMOUS’s Karma Moments. Sometimes these choices aren’t even representative — one choice has a guy offering a relative pittance of a reward for a side quest, and you can either murder him and take his stuff, or accept it with humility. How about the non-murderous and quite pragmatic approach of just saying “I just saved your lame ass, you’re standing in front of a bunch of goodies, I’m a superhero who can actually use them, how about offering me some?” Well, that doesn’t fit — their Karma Moments are always binary. There’s nothing but saints and monsters in this world.
With that said, that was, to my knowledge, Sucker Punch’s first alignment system. I’m disappointed they didn’t improve on previous designs, but it’s understandable. What about BioWare, though? Shouldn’t they be doing better now, taking Mass Effect, for example?
Mass Effect’s renegade approach
Apparently not, according to most I’ve talked to. As with previous games, they pick one alignment — Paragon or Renegade — and play accordingly, always picking choices that support that alignment, always knowing the “right” choice at any juncture. It’s made super easy, because Mass Effect organizes paragon choices at the top of the dialogue wheel, and renegade choices at the bottom! How lame was that! Mass Effect becomes just another example of bad alignment systems. And it ends there, possibly with some additional comments about how the moral choices don’t matter because no in-game effects are felt for some of them.
I disagree.
I think Mass Effect is a paragon of an alignment system, at least as far as alignment systems have gone so far in games. There’s just a disconnect between what the game enables, and what players think the game enables.
Mass Effect’s Paragon is someone who follows the rules, watches out for friends, solves situations diplomatically, and sees things from the perspective of other galactic species. Mass Effect’s Renegade is someone who bucks regulations, gets the job done, solves situations by force, and sees things from the perspective of humanity first. Paragon is Princess Leia and Renegade is Han Solo. Both are heroes. They kiss in the movies. They get married and have kids in the extended universe. But they and the princess and the smuggler, and they take opposite approaches to life, to conversations, to concepts of loyalty and justice, and to conflict resolution. Many people don’t see this, and are quick to assume these represent “good” and “bad”, and that they’re mutually exclusive to the point that a character can’t be both. Not so. One is virtuous, one is viceful, and most people are a mixture of both.
In Mass Effect, alignment points to each of these go to separate pools, which only increase, never decrease. To reduce the temptation to compare their bars and see which is higher, they’re aligned in different directions and with significant space between them on the character sheet. They are orthogonal alignments in their effects on game mechanics — Paragon unlocks higher levels of charm, while Renegade unlocks higher levels of intimidate. Higher levels of Charm and Intimidate then unlock new dialogue options for getting through tough situations, but they aren’t mutually exclusive, and both are useful in different situations. These points are given out like candy, and need not be scavenged for in a metagame fashion: nearly every dialogue in the game, in addition to the usual scripted plot events, gives you the opportunity to choose Paragon and Renegade options, and it’s very easy to “keep up” with the amount of Paragon and Renegade points needed to unlock high levels of Charm and Intimidate without even trying.
Many players — even some designers I’ve talked to — don’t realize this. They build a cardboard character in their mind, push one type of point or the other to meet that preconceived character, reduce their options in dialogues to one because that’s the “right” choice, learn to charm the pants off of (or intimidate the piss out of) anyone in the galaxy, and then blame the game for this simplistic approach they’re taking. They don’t even realize it’s not the game that’s doing this; they don’t notice that the designers of the system bent over backwards to ensure that’s not how people felt compelled to play the game. BioWare thought about this and made sure you have true freedom, and the game even rewards flexible characters by offering them both skills instead of just one, and therefore the ability to get through more situations using dialogue.
But even while I don’t blame the designers of Mass Effect for people playing this way, I don’t actually blame the players either. These are people who have played BioWare’s own KOTOR, and other games with black and white, zero sum alignment systems. They don’t realize that Mass Effect’s alignment system is actively designed to not shoehorn them. Even after playing, some people don’t really understand what the Paragon-Renegade alignment system really represents — I’ve seen several people argue that Wrex is a Paragon character, despite his mercenary, shoot first and intimidate attitude, simply because he’s willing to sacrifice his life for his own people (exactly as Renegade Shepherd is unblinkingly willing to sacrifice his/her life for humanity). That’s a problem, but it’s not madness. Given how poor alignment systems have been up until now, it’s up to the game to prove that it’s different — not the player.
I think BioWare realizes this. With Mass Effect 2, they’ve talked of a story involving a suicide mission, the necessity of gathering the toughest thugs and assassins to join you, and multiple endings, potentially resulting in the permanent death of the main character and the entire party (complete with the need to roll up a new Shepherd after you import your save into Mass Effect 3). I hope — and I feel pretty good about this — that they fully intend to challenge your character to be ruthless and face true moral challenges that will force players to decide what they really want to do. They want to shake people out of their default stride, to make them stop thinking the choice is Luke Skywalker or Chaotic Stupid, and start thinking about the choice between Princess Leia and Han Solo.
I played a character with a roughly 3:2 Paragon to Renegade ratio, never metagaming, going only by gut feelings and roleplaying in every dialogue; I regretted some of my Paragon choices on big moral questions (not exterminating the alien mother), and I ordered the human fleet hold back and let the council be killed in the final battle. I did this because I approached the game by giving it blind faith that it would support me playing the game by however my gut said to go at any given time — and not only were the options sensible enough to support that, but the mechanics were too, and I left feeling that my character (female Shepherd, incidentally), and my story, was deeply personal and unique to me.
The rush to brush off
One of the big challenges in game design is to remember that you are not your audience. I don’t like alignment systems that present a sort of one dimensional zero-sum problem, with heavy gameplay effects that encourage metagaming your roleplaying. Adam’s not the same way, and he isn’t so worried about those things — he’s happy to play a fully evil character most of the time, and making abilities more experience because you betrayed your existing alignment is just a tradeoff to him. But he still wants that freedom to tell his story in the game, and to have degrees of alignment. He wants the option to play a good guy for half the game and turn evil. inFAMOUS essentially prohibits that. He wants the option to play the guy who wants to conquer the world — but is quick to save it from destruction.
It’s good that alignment systems and morality in games are such a popular subject for designers, then. It’s a field with a lot of untapped potential. But in the rush to point out the many valid flaws of existing efforts, I feel that many people — most that I’ve talked to, even — are too quick to overlook Mass Effect’s tremendous advances in this area. BioWare is pushing the envelope on moral choice and alignment in games, and getting precious little recognition for it. They present an alignment system that supports the freedom to play all Paragon, all Renegade, or anything in between. I want them to communicate that better so that players realize they really have the mechanical freedom to roleplay their hearts out in every dialogue, but even if that’s clear, not all players will use the opportunity, as some want a strong good or evil character that fulfills one of these alignments to the maximum.
In the end, one of the goals of alignment systems — a major selling point — is the freedom to play how you want to play, to make the character you want to make. Mass Effect gives you the freedom to do that. In our criticisms and rush to brush off the bad approaches, I want to take this moment to respect one of the often overlooked and underrated good ones.
I actually was a bit frustrated with the Paragon/Renegade system, not on the mechanical end, but because it felt like I was being given the “Be a jerk/Don’t be a jerk” dichotomy again. Sure, without the self-important trappings of “Good” or “Light Side”, it was a lot easier to swallow, but it still kinda felt binary. I do agree that it’s the farthest we’ve come and I think we should laud Bioware for that, but I’d really love to see a bit more complexity.
What about two or three sliding scales, rather than one? Selfish versus Selfless, Forgiving versus Vengeful, and Pragmatic versus Idealist? You still get to retain the binary trait of one behavior neutralizing another, but it paints a slightly less caricatured version of your character. Bioware tried to do that with Jade Empire, I noticed. It was still good versus evil, but at least now it was shown that there were two good ways (Honestly selfless versus kind to receive reward) and two evil ways (stereotypical cheesy-dialogued brute versus a difficulty-breeds-strength outlook). That alone, at least for me, made it more enjoyable to play the evil side. My character felt the strong had a duty to rule the weak, and did so, rather than being a cheesy extortionist.
Another way is to not judge player power by net alignment, but by amount of overall alignment points gained. When the alignment points represent something mystical that gives you extra power, why not separate that from the dichotomy? Count the points gained as what gives you power, and make being good or evil merely the flavor or direction the power goes. It still rewards players for making karmic choices, without punishing them for trying to go with their gut.
Heh, sorry for the long post Jonathan, but I never see you on AIM so this is the only place I get a chance to talk to you anymore.
I haven’t actually played Jade Empire, but I probably should. I’ve mulled over the possibilities of an alignment or personality system with more scales, but I think it would have to be carefully thought out to ensure that it remains focused on some core themes the game can play up. I worry it could get diffused and superficial if not carried out carefully. Real-world personality tests are a source of inspiration here.
The net alignment suggestion you have sounds exactly like what Mass Effect does, only with more skills or abilities attached to alignment. Mass Effect rewards all alignment changes, including ones contrary to your current leaning, by increasing the Intimidate or Charm skill caps. Alignment points of either flavor improve your conversational abilities, and never undermine previous accomplishments — which flavor you are gathering determines what sort of conversation options you’re unlocking. It turns your alignment into a sort of experience pool that comes in two flavors. Perhaps there’s more that can be done here.
By the way, good to hear from you. And no need to worry about the long reply — my post was 2600 words!
RedJohn beat me to my primary criticism of Mass Effect – what Bioware is making strides in is applying moral choices to gameplay mechanics and design, not the “complexity” or “realism” of the choices themselves. That you wrapped so many different descriptors into “Paragon” and “Renegade” demonstrates the possibility of further division and refinement of personality types.
Somehow I’m sure you’ve already heard of it, but no discussion of Moral Choice in games is complete without talking about Planescape: Torment. Using the old D&D alignment matrix, it had two axes instead of one, which doesn’t sound like a lot, but it filtered through the rest of the game. Like Mass Effect, virtually every dialogue choice moved your alignment a little, but because of the extra axis, instead of two or three options there would usually be four or five. That every line was subtly hilarious and most options would open up completely different story branches was icing on the cake, but very important icing in terms of making the game enjoyable.
Planescape wasn’t without it’s problems though. Shackled to the D&D alignments, it had the same issue as inFAMOUS, where once your (invisible) total of Lawful or Good points or whatever shifted far enough, you’d flip to another of the nine alignments, usually without being told. Any powers or items that depended on being one in particular were then rendered useless. This was mitigated by making such items and powers rare, but all that really accomplished was making moral choices meaningless for the player’s abilities (though the story effects were still worth it).
The other “problem” was that, because of it’s scope, Planescape had more lines than most novels, and took a large staff of writers years to produce. Even for a player like me who loves it, I’ve never seen anywhere near all of the game’s options. I doubt any individual player has.
I think this is relevant to your criticisms of modern games is that Planescape was made in 1999, by Obsidian Entertainment, which was later absorbed by Bioware. Meaning most of it’s designers are still in the industry. Moral complexity or detail has never been beyond the abilities of game designers and isn’t now, it’s a matter of making it happen.
A cynical person might say that mainstream companies (i.e. those with a bottom line to uphold) don’t bother expending the effort to make a complicated story and integrating that with the gameplay because they know most customers won’t care that much. I don’t believe this myself, but the fact that Obsidian is long forgotten and Bioware the biggest name in the RPG business is a good argument for that. If I had to guess, I might say that designers don’t want to expend the development cost of making a complicated story, because they can’t think of how to make it integrate. Like you said, Mass Effect is the best attempt at that in a while if ever, and it’s still pretty shallow when you think about it. Even Planescape’s writers could only think to reward different moral choices with different items and story branches, which leads right back to the question of how many man-hours you’re willing to expend. Were I making a game, I don’t think I could do much better.
Planescape: Torment is another game that I haven’t played but probably should at some point. From what I’ve seen, it’s one of the most well-regarded RPGs of its era, and that’s a genre I’m interested in, as demonstrated by my having played Mass Effect and KoTOR, and to a lesser extent by my work on LCS. I wasn’t aware of its handling of alignment, so that’s a very interesting addition to the discussion of the more modern games I described above.
While Dungeons and Dragons has a venerable and practiced alignment system, I’m not personally fond of it because it’s such a stark, good and evil system. That can be interesting for providing players the chance to be something they can’t in the real world, or someone better than themselves; I don’t want to dismiss the drive to play a “bad guy”, which is something my friend Adam does himself. But if we want to go for complexity or realism in moral choices, I don’t think good and evil is what really divides people in the real world; law and chaos is closer, but it’s still to harshly framed and usually relegates chaos mostly to criminals and maniacs.
I take inspiration from what people get divided up about in the real world. Personality tests and political parties seem like the two sides to this. Personality tests judge how people solve problems, while political parties divide up roughly by what values and principles people have. Video game alignments rarely touch either of these with the sensitivity they have the potential to.
You could argue that people want escapism, rather than the complexity of the real world, but I’ve seen (and written a long paper about) many cases where real-world moral issues have been couched in fantastic terms to make them palatable to players. For example, Arcanum and Warcraft III both use orcs as a way to deal with racism, by tapping into preconceptions of orcs as stereotypical evil beasts, and then challenging those preconceptions. These inclusions of moral complexity in fantasy worlds are generally well-received by players, just as explorations of the moral issues underlying modern insurgency and terrorism were taken fairly well by viewers of Battlestar Galactica. If dealt with using care and common sense, and set in a suitably fantastic setting, I have confidence that real moral complexity in alignments and choices presented to the player can easily enhance the experience beyond the standard good and evil or law and chaos that are the bread and butter of such attempts today.
Really, Johnatan S. Fox, you should play the sequel to KOTOR, The Sith Lords. Made by Obisidan and the same people who made Planescape: Torment. Its moral delimmas and problems are much more convicing. A lot of cut content exist though.
Guess I should add something though. TSL has an Influence system, allowing you to slowly change the alignment of your followers by manlipuating them. You can gain DS points in a variety of manners, also via manlipuation. Playing the Dark Side in The Sith Lords is very sastifiying, and not like you’re some Chaotic Stupid warlord in KOTOR.
I just don’t want you to just think KOTOR and that be the end of it all. Its sequel tried to make advances in moral delimmas, and I at least like you to review that soon.
I do remember playing The Sith Lords, but I don’t have a clear memory of its writing. I know that some of the more structural issues were still there — it still encouraged polarity, for example — but the writing may very well have been superior.
While I don’t have any useful points to bring up myself, I did want to pop in and say I particularly enjoyed reading this post. Keep up the interesting work.
Thanks for taking the time to say that — I really appreciate the feedback and encouragement, especially as I’ve struggled to find time to post in the last week or so.
[…] The mechanical problem comes when a game gives incentives to the player to adhere to a specific alignment. The worst offender that I’ve seen for this was inFAMOUS, which punished the player for inconsistent alignment choices by stripping the player of access to abilities they’ve already paid to unlock. Other games, like Knights of the Old Republic, take a less severe stance, but still give a mechanical effect to your alignment choices that dissuades inconsistent decision making. Why is supporting inconsistency important? Because most of life — and most moral choices — are not black and white. If all moral choices in a game are whether to mug beggars or save children, you’ve not put real moral choices in at all. You’ve put a class selection into the game, and allowed the player to decide whether he or she wants to be good or evil. Good writing will allow believable characters to make choices have inconsistent alignment effects, and if the mechanics discourage that, you’re just punishing the player for exploring the moral space the game creates, which sabotages many of the ideas behind having an alignment system in the first place. I won’t talk too much more about this, since I already have. […]