A lot of games have a morality system, where an action is good/evil, and defines the player character morality. This is is not a moral choice. It's more like a multiple ending plot choice. The morality of anyone, always changes with the situation.
Just because somebody does something "evil" does not make them a evil person.
Just because somebody does something "good" does not make them a good person.
There are two stages of morality, or is it three? What a person privately believes, what other people believe he is, and what the situation makes available.
Mass Effect is probably one of the better examples of this. There is no morality system, rather there is a "harsh" and "soft" approach to all situations. Where does the morality fall into that? Well, it's individual situations, because if you where mean to a character in Mass Effect 1, then that character's actions or re-encounter in Mass Effect 2 will be completely different.
In Mass Effect 2 it's even possible for the main protagonist to die as part of the actual story due to your choices and actions, what happens after that and into Mass Effect 3 I have no idea, a new protagonist? I have no clue.
But what an huge and dramatic cause and effect based result it is, based on your real morality. The Mass Effect trilogy focuses on harsh and soft approaches, every action has a cause and effect repercussion, either later in the game or carrying over into the sequel in the trilogy.
Unless BioWare manage to screw up the trilogy, I think that the Mass Effect trilogy might end up as a case study in Good/Evil/Morality/Cause&Effect in interactive entertainment.
And I truly hope they are starting a new trend with this. Because morality is not Good vs Evil actions, even BioWare's Star Wars: Knights of The Old Republic suffered from the Saintly vs Evil Bastard personality disorder in it's Good/Evil morality, a condition that many game protagonists seem to have suffered over the last few decades in games.
Knights of The Old Republic 2 begun to slightly move in the direction that Mass Effect now is experimenting with, I truly hope the Mass Effect trilogy succeed as it will set the stage for a new way of thinking about cause and effect, even for games that will not have direct or story continuation sequels.
If you do good things when people see you, but evil things when people do not see you. Or you get rid of all evidence, living or not. Then no characters in the game world will know you are evil. They will think you are good, but the player is purely dark in their motives and morality.
It's also possible for a good moral player to do the wrong things at the wrong time, and despite being good, the characters in the game would perceive them as being evil. And depending on the game world it's also possible for a region to praise the player as a hero, while in another region they think he's a demon, but the player themselves simply made realistic, rational and neutral choices so far.
But how many games like this have we seen?
Mass Effect trilogy seems to move into this territory in a lot of these aspects.
And the Fable games are dabbling in this area as well, but beyond that I can't really think of any others currently. Can you?
If you have some comments about this, why not share it with the Mass Effect community in this thread. |
