Moral choices in video games seem to be a big thing lately, and there are some developers that just get it right. In this blog I hope to bring to light some of the better examples of moral choices in video games (although you probably won’t be surprised by any of the choices on the list). This WILL contain spoilers for the following games: Mass Effect, Grand Theft Auto IV, Fallout 3, and Fable 2.
Mass Effect 2
The best thing about Mass Effect is its story and characters. You’ll get to know your squad as you try to save the galaxy from destruction, which makes the generic “either this person dies or this person dies” decision much better. At one point in the story, you are infiltrating a Geth base with your team to destroy it with a nuke. One of your teammates is sent to help the Salarian team (a decision that you make) and the other arms the bomb. However, while you are on the way to the other teammate, the one guarding the bomb comes under attack. However, the other teammate is also being overwhelmed. This is where you must decide who to save, and it’s not an easy decision. Chances are, you probably grew attached to both of these characters, and you may have been developing a romantic relationship with one of them. This makes the choice a difficult one to make.
Another great example is at the end of the game where you must decide whether to destroy the Reaper Sovereign or save the Council members. Sovereign is a threat to every species in the galaxy, but the Council members govern the galaxy and keep it running. So you must decide whether you want to eliminate the biggest threat and sacrifice the most important people in the Milky Way or save the Council and ruin your chances of destroying Sovereign. Even though I’ve beaten the game multiple times, I still find myself spending a lot of time thinking when I reach this part in the game.
Grand Theft Auto IV
One of the new features in GTA IV is the ability to choose who you want to kill on certain missions. The game does give you the chance to kill or save specific people, but because these people never had any interaction with you, the decision feels stale. However, one that definitely sticks out is the Derrick McReary vs. Francis McReary. Here you have two very different brothers with very different lifestyles. Derrick is a sad drunk who spends his time drowning his sorrows on a park bench. Francis, on the other hand, is a corrupt cop that blackmails Niko into doing things for him. Francis wants Niko to kill Derrick, and Derrick wants Niko to kill Francis. Both brothers are unaware of the other’s plans, and when you reach that point where the two of them are talking on a bench and you must choose who to kill, it’s a very difficult decision to make. The reward for killing Derrick is the ability to phone Francis to get the cops off you, and the reward for killing Francis is…… nothing (surely you didn’t expect to get anything from a drug addict/alcoholic). And that is probably what makes it interesting: most people will probably want to kill Francis because he’s a blackmailing and corrupt cop, but doing so gets you nothing. However, if you go against the morally right choice, you get that ability and a sum of cash.
Another great one that comes to mind is similar to this example, but it involves Playboy X and Dwayne. Both of them used to be friends, but eventually they end up at each others throats. Playboy wants Dwayne dead, and Dwayne wants Playboy dead. Similar to the last (which doesn’t make much sense to say, because this decision comes first), Dwayne is a very depressed man who had just gotten out of jail and lost his girlfriend (who you could have killed or saved during one of his missions). Playboy X, on the other hand, used you throughout all of his missions. So do side with Dwayne and kill the scumbag Playboy, or do you side with Playboy and put Dwayne out of his misery? If you kill Playboy, you get Dwayne’s special ability which allows you to call some of his boys for backup. You also get Playboy’s mansion as a safehouse, and you even get the clothes that Claude wears in GTA III. If you kill Dwayne, Playboy gives you $250,000 and never talks to you again. So unlike the last example, siding with the poor and depressed guy gives you more.
Fable 2
Because I haven’t played Fable 2 in a very long time, I won’t have as many examples. However, I would like to praise Lionhead Studios for what they did with morality. This is one of the few games out there where your alignment (Good or Evil) actually affects your appearance. If you’re a good person, your character will look beautiful and everyone will like him. On the other end of the spectrum, if you’re evil your skin will be gray and you’ll even grow horns out of your head. There are even subtle things that affect your standing, such as eating live baby chickens or lowering/raising the rent on the houses you own. One of the decisions in the game I want to point out is the choice at the very end. You are given three cards, and you can only pick one. The first card is The Sacrifice, which resurrects everyone that died during the making of the Spire (hundreds and hundreds of people) but will not resurrect those close to you. The next card is Love, which resurrects those close to you (your dog, family members) but does not resurrect all those people that died during the construction of the Spire. The final card is wealth, which gives you a ridiculous amount of money but everyone that died remains dead. Obviously the final card is for the evilest of people, but the other two do require some thought.
Bioshock
Throughout your adventures in Rapture, you’ll encounter girls called Little Sisters that are guarded by Big Daddys. After defeating the Big Daddy, you can approach the girl and then decide whether you want to save her or……*shivers*…… harvest her. If you choose to do the former, the Little Sister is turned back into a normal girl (apparently Jack has the ability to do this, not sure where he got it though) and is no longer forced to walk around sticking needles into dead bodies. If you choose to do the latter, you kill the Little Sister and take all of the ADAM from her, which can be used to buy very useful upgrades for your character. So in this example, saving the Little Sisters because you feel bad for them can actually make the game more challenging because you aren’t able to upgrade Jack as much. It’s likely that you’ll be forced to save some and harvest others so you can get better, and that alone is a pretty difficult choice.
Fallout 3
One of the things I love about this game is that one of the first quests you’ll most likely get contains the biggest moral decision in the entire game. I am, of course, referring to the Power Of The Atom quest. In this quest, the sheriff of Megaton, Lucas Simms, will task you with disarming the large atomic bomb in the middle of the town. However, your Explosive Skill will need to be a certain level before you disarm it, which forces you to go elsewhere and search for something else to do. It’s convenient that Bethesda placed Mister Burke in the saloon where you must go for the main quest. This game tasks you with disarming the bomb (should you agree to do so), and from this point several things could happen. You could side with Simms and disarm the bomb. You could give the Fusion Pulse Charge (the thing that arms the bomb) to the sheriff, which causes him to run to the saloon and arrest Mister Burke. (However, Burke can end up killing Simms if you aren’t quick enough to save him). And finally, you could plant the Fusion Pulse Charge, head on over to Tenpenny Tower, and watch as Megaton disappears from the map in a large mushroom cloud. This decision severely affects your moral standing, and you’ll lose almost every side quest from Megaton if they weren’t complete.
So in the end, it’s not necessarily what the moral choice is about. It’s more about how the developer builds up to that moment where you must decide who lives or dies, or where you must decide how the game ends. A developer can take what was once a generic moral choice (such as, “kill this guy or this guy”) and turn it into a serious situation if they are willing to build up the personality of those involved, or if they are willing to build of the personality of the world the game sets in. The games above not only offer fantastic gameplay and a great story (I guess I’ll say that Fallout 3 probably doesn’t apply to the latter), but they give players the ability to make difficult decisions that will really bring out their thought process and moral standing.