One feature that is prominent in many modern roleplaying games is the choice of morality affecting the decisions that your character makes. While a game like World of Warcraft isn’t the vessel for ethical decisions, single-player games are ripe for putting the person in situation to take a particular action, one that they will probably never have to (or get the chance to) make in real life.
If you have played Mass Effect, Dragon Age, Fallout 3, Knights of the Old Republic, and countless other games, you’ve seen the systems I’ve been referring to.
Did you linger a little too close to the dark side in your Jedi dealings, or were you a beacon of shining light? Also, relevant.
Perhaps you told Jack to suck it up in Mass Effect 2 or perhaps threatened the Turian council member with genocide in the first game?
As I’ve played all these games, I have come to learn one thing about myself.
I am absolutely terrible about being terrible. Despite my best efforts, I have never actually played through either Mass Effect as a Renegade. I was never a seething ball of anger in Knights of the Old Republic. I was nice to everyone in Dragon Age.
Fallout 3, however, it was easy to be bad. You just had to shoot people. That I could do. It seems as soon as I actually had to talk to someone and make a mean decision, that’s when I went weak and ended being the nice guy.
It was easy to pick off the lady in the Wasteland from 100 yards away then loot her caps and bullets. But if you give me one line of dialog about her troubled life and I would be willing to run off on a quest to find her dead husband’s wedding ring or something.
What does that say about me? I am not sure. Am I overly empathetic towards people? Or at least people I have to interact with? With video games, the writers try to establish some kind of emotional connection between you and other non-player characters.
And I take it; hook, line and sinker.
Only in games where I can opt to skip dialog all together do I find myself with the ability to be mean or ruthless.
My latest revelation was while I was playing some Assassin’s Creed last night. As the game states, “performing illegal actions will make you notorious.” Well, every red dot I came across on my map ended up dying. I was less of an assassin as a one-man slaughterhouse to anyone aligned with my enemies. Notorious was achieved with flying notorious colors.
But I never had to talk to them either. No remorse. I even got a kick out of poisoning one guard out of a pack of four and then waiting for the rest of the guards to pick a fight with me. And then ending them all.
While there is a difference between a nameless guard and a core character in another game, I am sure there is something to be said about that behavior. But I am definitely not a psychologist so I really couldn’t tell you what it means.
I have a good friend who plays through games multiple times just as I do, and has no trouble picking the mean and/or evil responses during his games.
And I know it seems silly, as I know it’s just a game, but I still have the hardest time doing it except in the most extreme circumstances. I am playing another Mass Effect 2 playthrough because Jack died in my last one, and this will be my 5th Paragon game.
Now I wonder if I am the only person like this? Or do other people have trouble taking the low ground in video game morality?
Typically I play through a game once as righteously as I can, and then play through on evil. This was especially fun in Fable and KOTOR, because I think that evil powers are usually more fun. I haven't tried evil on Mass effect though, because as far as I know, your powers are pretty much based on class, not alignment. Maybe I'm wrong there.
Taking the low ground is easy because games don't do a good job of creating realistic humans. They don't even do a good job on the ones you're supposed to kill. If someone gets shot, they're going to be screaming and writhing in pain. They don't just ignore it or flinch for a second and keep shooting. If video games can portray an accurate reaction to inflicting violence, people would be a lot more reluctant to commit those acts. More recently, I was playing S:S&S EP and I thought the part with the Grizzled Boor was a surprisingly refreshing moral choice. The way they portrayed him actually triggered a strong emotional reaction when I was given the chance to kill him (I spared his life).
I think you make an excellent point. When someone dies in a video, outside of a main character, their deaths are quiet and unobtrusive. And as you said, let's face it, most of the time people get shot do not die quietly.
The absence of the agony of death does make it much easier to be evil in most cases.