Morality: A Red and Blue Issue?

Would you like to read this blog, or look for another?
Please select a response:
Read.
Don't Read.

Okay, those aren't actual links to choices, but they are your options when choosing to read this. If you've played any games with a Morality Meter in the past decade, then I'll bet you can guess which one is the "good" option. Morality is a very complex issue, but most games reduce it to a black and white (or red and blue) decision. As Yahtzee said once in his Zero Punctuation Bioshock review, "You're either Mother Theresa, or a baby-eater. There's no middle ground." And he's quite right most of the time. You can't just be a nun with the nibbles. The games sometimes even only reward you for achieving maximum good and evil values, while leaving those with neutral views with nothing.

Some games do things a bit differently, which is to be applauded. Let's look at Jade Empire. Instead of having a Light Side and a Dark Side, Bioware used two opposing philosophies that have basically the same goal in mind, but with vastly different reasoning and execution. The "blue" path is the Way of the Open Palm. It believes that those with power have a responsibility to those without and should help them in any way they can. The "red" path is the Way of the Closed Fist. It states that by helping others you only inspire them to stay weak. After all, if their needs are met by others, then how could they improve themselves?
Here are two opposing views with the same goal, and both have merit to their ways of thinking. Neither one is strictly good or evil.

There's also the newer Mass Effect method in which your blue and orange meters are independent of one another. It's not a sliding scale like we've seen before where doing a bit of evil takes the meter closer to red and further from blue. In this system you can be a jerk sometimes, but still be an overall nice guy without having to sacrifice any of your blue meter. However there's also a quirk in the system. You can't pick certain options associated with your meters unless they're full enough. Meaning, basically, that you can't steal candy from a baby when the chance arises unless you'd also kicked a dog earlier. So, this system is a little more versatile than the sliding scale, but doesn't really allow you to play a middle ground character either.

The problem in these games is that we're still given a meter to see how much in one direction or the other we've gone. Our actions are judged by an outside third party. In the real world, no one can give you your morality. You make it yourself through the way you handle the choices presented to you. You can take inspiration from others, certainly, but that too is your decision. Now, those around you may well judge you for your decisions, but no matter which you pick it's as likely a given person will agree with you as disagree. But with the meter thrown in it's as if every time you make a choice, God pops down to say Yay or Nay. Last I checked, that didn't happen in real life.

Hmm... Perhaps I should check that one more time.
*steals puppies from a baby*

Okay, but that's not a typical occurrence.
*Returns puppies*

When the idea of making a moral decision is put into games, it becomes more about asking which stats you want your character to have as opposed to actually answering the question before you.
I can't help but think that this is another effect of streamlining for the sake of more casual gamers. It's certainly easier to make a decision when you can see all the consequences lined out before you. But doesn't that take away from the gravity of your decisions? You choose to be good or evil for what it gets you, not for how you feel about the consequences.

Let's look back at a game called Deus Ex now.
Here is a game full of moral choices, but with no meter to classify them. You're just as capable of giving a homeless person some change as you are of killing him and taking his stuff. You're also presented with the option of using lethal or non-lethal force in all your encounters. If you've been playing the game like a pure shooter, then you're in for a bit of a surprise when you find out that for a third of the game, you may have been mercilessly slaughtering your new allies.
Even so there is no drawback to using fully lethal force, and you're still allowed to join up with them because they need someone like you desperately. The only punishment is a few 'disappointed in you' comments from some characters. However, this personally bothered me enough that I restricted myself to non-lethal for a large portion of the game on future playthroughs. Fittingly enough, this got me a few 'disappointed in you' comments from other characters.

Later in that same game, I was exploring a new area that contained a closed office building. I promptly broke into it and started looking around for things I could use. As I passed by a phone sitting on a desk, it rang. Expecting to have a bit of a giggle, I answered it. It was an enemy of mine on the other end that was capable of tracking my actions and location. It pointed out that despite the fact that I claimed to be fighting injustice, here I was ignoring whatever laws I found inconvenient.
This made me stop and think a moment. I am an elite cyborg/ninja thing with all sorts of nanomodification. If I were caught doing this, then I could easily overpower or evade the local police and continue on my quest to defeat Evil. As I am on said quest, I have to be as prepared as possible. So, does that mean I get a free pass on doing all sorts of underhanded deeds ranging from theft to murder so long as the people who are supposedly worse than me are stopped?
Now, that is a moral question. We've moved out of a black and white scenario and are operating well within the shades of gray (or purple).
Contrast that with the cut and dry choices in the game inFamous, where your only real concern over who or who not to kill was what kind of powers it worked toward and trophies it unlocked.
The game that made no claim to morality did a better job of expressing it than did the game that touted it as a feature. That's not to say that inFamous isn't a fun and entertaining experience. It's just mindless fun that's trying to stick on a morality bar for extra replay value. I'm looking forward to the sequel anyway and will surely pick it up when I can. I do hope they've done a bit more with it though.

Well, those are my thoughts on the Morality issue. What are yours? Let us know in the comments.

Gamers Getting Ripped Off

Today I logged into Reddit.com and was greeted by this post here. A single post from a forum that got me instantly ticked off. For those of you terrified of the Link Monster, (it's more afraid of you than you are of it, I swear) I'll spell it out here. It shows a link to a hacked save file from the PC version of Dead Space 2 that "not only has all that stuff (some previously bugged 'elite suits'), but all the console-only DLC items as well. About to test this myself, and will confirm once I reach the store. EDIT: Confirmed. Enjoy."

This means that everything they're asking you to pay to unlock on consoles is already on the disc you bought. If you gave them a single penny for a new suit or weapon, then you've been ripped off. You shelled out money to downloaded an unlock code for something you'd already paid for. This is completely unacceptable. It's related a bit to my post a couple weeks ago about the recent emergence of a dependency on patches to fix known problems post release instead of fixing them before shipping. Only here you're not getting a broken product (that I'm aware of; any DS2 owners feel free to chime in in the comments), you're getting charged multiple times for a finished one.

I understand the need to make money. The lousy state of the economy has raised the sale of used games, which means that fewer new copies are being sold, and that translates to less money for the game's devs and producers. That's a problem for them and I get that. But this isn't the way to fix it. I loved the first Dead Space, and am still interested in playing the sequel because from all I've heard it's a quality title. Before hearing this I would gladly have dropped the money on a new copy of this game. Not now though. They've assured I get my copy used. I have no problem paying full price for everything that's on the disc, so I'll make certain to get it for a low enough price to compensate for all those additional charges.

Now, I think DLC is a great idea. The premise is that the developers spent extra time and money creating something in addition to the normal game. For a truly excellent example of DLC done right, look no further that the game Borderlands put out by the company Gearbox. They listened to feedback from fans and decided that there was something more to be done with the game. They put in time and effort to make a quality piece of work that made me want to pay them more just to get more time with their game. And look how much more money they made because of this. Initial game cost $50 USD. DLCs were $9.99 each for the four of them. All told, Gearbox and its publishers made nearly $90 from me alone off that one game and its DLC, not to mention that coinciding with the release of the last DLC they also put out a Game of the Year edition that contained all $90 worth of game and DLC for $50. Compare that with the amounts that the Dead Space 2 guys (I can't say for certain if it was the devs or EA who was responsible for this debacle) will be getting trying to nickel and dime their customers. Borderlands kept putting out quality work and asking their customers to pay them for it. Dead Space 2 put out quality work, then asked their customers to keep paying for it. Tell me, which do you think is going to make more in the long run?

These locked away suits and guns in Dead Space 2 are also an example of so-called Day One DLC, which may or may not be a ripoff depending on how its done. Day One DLC is downloadable content that's available from the time the game hits shelves. Whether or not it's a ripoff depends on two things.
1. Is the content included on the disc the consumer bought, (as is the case here)?
2. Is the content actually additional content and not content that was held back intentionally so that consumers could be charged more for it?
If it meets either of those requirements, then the consumers are most definitely being taken advantage of by someone.

It's especially sad when good games do this. It's hard to be angry at them and yell "No one buy this!" because the game itself is good and you want others to enjoy it too. All I can say again is to vote with your wallet. Support the game, but don't support this type of business model! Give the game rave reviews (if it deserves them) and great praise. But don't spend a cent on their DLC, and maybe this this type of thinking will eventually disappear. Might be a slim hope, but it's the only one we've got.

Mass Effect 2 PS3 Review

I finished this game recently, and I think it's safe to say that I'm ready for more. And I mean that both ways. What was here was great, but despite sinking just over 40 hours into it, I can't help but feel like there should be more. Let's get to the breakdown.

Presentation: 8
Bioware tells us that this PS3 version of the game is running with the same engine created for its upcoming successor. The effect is somewhat lost on me because I don't have an HD TV. So for me everything looks fine. Not great, but fine. Only real complaint is that the subtitles blend in with the backgrounds far too often and I can end up missing conversation, or not being able to read my dialog choices.
The sound is really very nice. Everything is crisp and clear, and the voices are mostly very well done. Only a few lines are delivered in a cheesy fashion. The rest all come out quite nicely, the female version of our main character (often referred to as "FemShep") in particular. The music in the game is adequate, but nothing really stands out for me.

Story: 8
As a PS3 player, you're coming into the game missing a very large part of the story, and you can definitely tell. There are many points where certain events happened that I could see were significant, but I couldn't tell how. However, by the end of the game you're mostly up to speed, though I was personally left a little confused with too many unanswered questions. I get the feeling that some of these same questions were also unanswered in the last game. Building tension is fine, but don't drag it out too long or you risk loss of interest. Hopefully there will be some answers forthcoming in the next game.

The central story of the game is actually pretty short. Most of the game's story comes from the side missions which have you recruiting new party members, and subsequently doing another mission of about the same length to secure their loyalty, thus unlocking their best abilities and upping their chances for survival. Each of these smaller stories is a welcome bit of character development. But after the first few the formula becomes a bit stale. This is something I hope they can improve on in ME3. Just a matter of preference, I guess, but I'd rather be picking up party members as I pursue the main mission rather than have my mission be to get party members.

Gameplay: 7
I went into this game expecting something like the Star Wars: KotOR games, but ended up with something closer to the Uncharted series. This left me with mixed feelings. You see, in Uncharted you do a lot of cover based combat (that is, most of the time your objective is to get behind a wall or small obstruction, only peeking out for a moment to shoot when the enemy pauses), but it doesn't feel like it. There is tons of cover around, but it just seems like part of the scenery that happens to serve as cover. In this game you can always tell when you're about to enter combat because of the sudden appearance of waist high walls, whether or not there is any reason for them to be there. It really stands out and makes the game predictable. The only thing that really changes up the gunplay at all is the different types of bars you'll be depleting. Enemies can have Barriers, Shields, and Armor in addition to their health that must be depleted before you can begin damaging them. You and your party can have special powers to help with that, but most of the time it's faster just to burn through them. Ammo usually abounds, and when you need it enemies drop it.

Outside of combat things are a little better. You never know when you'll stumble on a sidequest. Conversations are handled nicely too. It's great that your character is not a silent protagonist with few lines of written text. Instead you select a short general idea from a wheel of options and then Shepard has the actual conversation aloud while elaborating on the selected idea. This way Shepard actually has character instead of being a boring blank slate.

ME2 also has an interesting new take on the morality meter mechanic. Instead of being either Good or Evil, you can be as much of both as you want. Selecting certain dialog options or doing mini-QTEs (pressing L2 or R2 when prompted during cutscenes) allows you to fill your Paragon and Renegade gauges separately. This lets you make choices later that tend more to extremes of those views. These choices can effect things later in the game, as well as in the sequel. How? Well, we don't know yet. But it should be interesting to see.

The low point of the entire game is the tedious mining mini-game. It's just boring, and, as I found out after completing the story, largely pointless. I ended up using perhaps a fifth of what all I mined. Sadly, by that time I had already mined every planet in the game dry. When ME3 rolls around, I should have enough raw materials to have built my own space armada. Let's see how the enemy handles 5,000 Normandys!
Seriously though, if I don't get something out of that I'll never play again (until later).

The PS3 version comes with a few extras. If you buy the game new, you'll get a code to download a DLC pack priced at $15 USD for free. So, if you're interested in this title, then get it new while you can. You'll want the Operation Firewalker, Operation Overlord, Zaneed, Kasumi, and Shadow Broker DLCs. They add a much needed bit of diversity to the gameplay.
Perhaps more importantly, you'll get an interactive comic that allows you to read along with the story of the first game and make the same major choices.

Characters: 9
I could go on about these guys and girls (and indeterminates) for a long while, but I'm going to keep it brief to avoid spoilers. I will say that these characters are very well developed and interesting. Fun to talk to and learn about. By the end of the game you'll be wanting to do your best to save them all.
That's right, any and all of the main characters in this game can permanently die...including Shepard. How will they handle this in the sequel? No idea.

Replay value: Fairly high.
This one's tricky. See, what you do here will have a big effect on things in the next title. (Massive, one might even say.) No matter what you do here, you don't know how it will carry over. That means you'll likely want to replay the game. Just not until you see how it all plays out in the sequel.

Overall Score: 8 out of 10
There's more to like here than not, but the parts that do need work really need it. Fortunately those are few. If they spice up the gunplay and make the environments more sensible, then I'm sure ME3 with have no trouble claiming a perfect 10 score.