Hard Light Productions Forums

Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: ssmit132 on May 20, 2009, 01:54:45 am

Title: Conscience in video games?
Post by: ssmit132 on May 20, 2009, 01:54:45 am
(I'm not sure if this belongs here or in Gaming Discussion, since it's more a psychological issue I'm talking about.)

Earlier today I was playing an adventure on Adrift where my character was stuck in a cabin of a passenger spaceship, where I had a porthole that my character had broken that showed the turbine that powered the ship. I was stuck so I just decided to have my character start throwing everything out of the porthole, which then went out through a hole in the turbine into space. This included the (admittedly unhelpful and irritating) robot assistant that was in the room. I didn't expect to actually be able to throw it out, since when you tried to 'get' it you were not able to grab him. The adventure said how the little guy actually tried to grab hold of something and screamed as it flew out - this made me feel rather cruel (its description of having a 'bow tie and a smile' didn't help). I felt like I deserved the badge that appeared saying 'I am a b***ard'. :nervous: :blah:

My point is, I was just wondering if any of you sometimes feel bad when you do something that can be perceived as cruel in a video game, or am I just being silly? Usually when I play I avoid doing stuff that's just being 'evil'. That's why I don't really like games like GTA. FPS like Quake and stuff though, I'm fine with. :confused:
Title: Re: Conscience in video games?
Post by: Jeff Vader on May 20, 2009, 02:08:43 am
Some times. When I was playing Jedi Academy as an evil person, I did feel bad about striking Rosh down, even though he was as annoying and useless as Jar-Jar Binks.
Title: Re: Conscience in video games?
Post by: blackhole on May 20, 2009, 02:09:14 am
 :lol:

That's absolutely hilarious.

The only time I tried to be evil was when I wanted to try getting the sith path in KOTOR 2, and I actually found it difficult to do all of the evil things necessary, even though it was only a game. Some people, however, enjoy the freedom of breaking rules and doing bad things. Games have a tendency to invoke your moral compass, because the entire point of a good game is that it is immersive and creates a believable world.
Title: Re: Conscience in video games?
Post by: Mars on May 20, 2009, 02:17:34 am
Bioshock anyone?
Title: Re: Conscience in video games?
Post by: NGTM-1R on May 20, 2009, 02:27:48 am
I tend to do what the game usually acknowledges as "the right thing" but frequently find that if there's a more blunt method of doing what's morally correct, that becomes preferable.

After all, there's no fun in being a yes-man. The end result is that in, say, KotoR I end up with a maxed-out lightside gauge, but I end up getting it late because I took on Bendak on Taris, or that in Mass Effect there's a full paragon and an eighth to a quarter renegade at the end.
Title: Re: Conscience in video games?
Post by: Sushi on May 20, 2009, 08:16:52 am
Some times. When I was playing Jedi Academy as an evil person, I did feel bad about striking Rosh down, even though he was as annoying and useless as Jar-Jar Binks.

Most disappointing alternate ending ever. Darkside ending of JA sucked.

Regarding the OT... I have a hard time playing as an evil dude. I still haven't seen the darkside ending of KOTOR or KOTOR2, despite making an attempt at both. :)

Title: Re: Conscience in video games?
Post by: Flipside on May 20, 2009, 08:51:38 am
Bioshock anyone?

My thoughts exactly, I could never bring myself to harvest, I always saved the little girls.
Title: Re: Conscience in video games?
Post by: Pred the Penguin on May 20, 2009, 09:10:28 am
KotORII....

The only way I could bring myself to play go dark was for the late game abilities. =/
Title: Re: Conscience in video games?
Post by: Jeff Vader on May 20, 2009, 09:20:22 am
Some times. When I was playing Jedi Academy as an evil person, I did feel bad about striking Rosh down, even though he was as annoying and useless as Jar-Jar Binks.

Most disappointing alternate ending ever. Darkside ending of JA sucked.
The storyline of the entire game smelled like feces. And not just monkey feces. Gameplay was quite good, but the story... urgh. At least in Jedi Outcast the story had a dash of sense in it.
Title: Re: Conscience in video games?
Post by: karajorma on May 20, 2009, 09:27:51 am
An incident in the original Wing Commander comes to mind. I was flying with Bossman and we'd finally whittled the Kilrathi forces down to the last two Dralthi. I managed to take out one of them and turned to see the the remaining one was directly below me with all its shields down and Bossman nowhere to be seen. I quickly switched to full guns and pumped out a stream of fire directly at it, only to watch the ship blow up before any of them could hit it. My fire then flew through the Kilrathi debris straight into the front of Bossman's fighter, killing him.

During the following funeral scene all I could think about was how the manual had mentioned him having a wife and young daughter. :(

Even though that was actually the last mission I got to fly with Bossman I had to replay it cause I couldn't leave the guy dead due to an unlucky fluke like that.
Title: Re: Conscience in video games?
Post by: Rodo on May 20, 2009, 09:36:17 am
Bioshock anyone?

My thoughts exactly, I could never bring myself to harvest, I always saved the little girls.

over here too... I did harvest.. once , after that I think I always saved them.

also happened in GTA.. I could not beat to death Innocent people, It just felt bad.

and also in DK & DK2 I just could not torture my creatures to death... I knew I could do that but I never did... my brother on the other side he loved to do that from time to time with useless creatures like the firefly... I didn't I just threw them into the portal again jeje.
Title: Re: Conscience in video games?
Post by: achtung on May 20, 2009, 09:52:17 am
I've always had a bad tendency to do whatever I can to keep AI teammates alive.  Even in Freespace, I catch myself ordering my wingmates to depart when it becomes obvious they're done for if they stay any longer.
Title: Re: Conscience in video games?
Post by: Sushi on May 20, 2009, 10:26:51 am
I've always had a bad tendency to do whatever I can to keep AI teammates alive.  Even in Freespace, I catch myself ordering my wingmates to depart when it becomes obvious they're done for if they stay any longer.

"Get out of there Wedge, there's nothing more you can do back there..."

Dangit, FotG, I demand a trench run! :D

Title: Re: Conscience in video games?
Post by: StarSlayer on May 20, 2009, 10:38:11 am
I tend to follow the good path, though games make a nasty habit of presenting moral choices that are akin to being either 1) Jesus/Bono 2) The Devil is Loser and he's my *****.  I think it would be much more interesting to give the player more Machiavellian options or at least making the consequences less obvious.  Making a choice that seemed like the best at the time causing an epic ****storm later would be particularly delicious.
Title: Re: Conscience in video games?
Post by: CP5670 on May 20, 2009, 12:07:06 pm
Quote
Earlier today I was playing an adventure on Adrift where my character was stuck in a cabin of a passenger spaceship, where I had a porthole that my character had broken that showed the turbine that powered the ship. I was stuck so I just decided to have my character start throwing everything out of the porthole, which then went out through a hole in the turbine into space.

I haven't heard of this game, but this sounds like the kind of thing I would do. I often go out of my way to screw around with game AI and physics as much as possible. For most "minor" choices in games, I don't think of my actions in terms of good and bad consequences so much as what maximizes the hilarity. :D

I don't play many RPGs but tended to have fairly neutral characters in the ones I have played. I finished Mass Effect with roughly similar Paragon and Renegade stats, and was also neutral for most of Fallout 3, until I cleaned out Paradise Falls late in the game and my karma went up through the roof. :p In that game, it seems like the good actions usually give more karma than the bad actions, although it is easy to influence it either way.

In Bioshock, I saved most of them, but mainly because there was nothing to be gained by harvesting them. There is way too much adam in the game as it is, and I always had a huge surplus of it.

Quote
Some times. When I was playing Jedi Academy as an evil person, I did feel bad about striking Rosh down, even though he was as annoying and useless as Jar-Jar Binks.

I didn't. That guy was getting on my nerves by that point. :p

Quote
I tend to follow the good path, though games make a nasty habit of presenting moral choices that are akin to being either 1) Jesus/Bono 2) The Devil is Loser and he's my *****.  I think it would be much more interesting to give the player more Machiavellian options or at least making the consequences less obvious.

This was one thing I liked about Deus Ex, and also Mass Effect to a lesser extent. Many of the decisions you made, at least the important ones, had various pros and cons instead of being obviously good or bad.
Title: Re: Conscience in video games?
Post by: Snail on May 20, 2009, 12:37:26 pm
Weird.

I feel fine doing evil things, as long as it's what the game intends (such as killing random pedestrians in GTA). But when it's outside of the game's intention to do evil things (such as killing friendly ships in FS) I feel really uncomfortable.
Title: Re: Conscience in video games?
Post by: TopAce on May 20, 2009, 12:45:22 pm
It's not the evil thing that you do in the game that is worrying. It's the motive behind it. If it's for example trying the dark side ending of KotOR, it's all right because it's curiosity. Killing pedestrians in Carmageddon to get some score is something else.
Title: Re: Conscience in video games?
Post by: redsniper on May 20, 2009, 01:03:31 pm
I can never take the dark path in games that have one. And I can never let Meryl die.
Title: Re: Conscience in video games?
Post by: Retsof on May 20, 2009, 01:33:54 pm
I agree with most of you guys, I am sometimes curious about what would happen in the dark side path, but I just done have the heart for it.  As for saving the wingmen ... usually it's a mix of too buisy staying alive to press c-1-#-0, and "nobody's gonna let me go early,so you can just stay here with me thank-you-very-much."  Of course usually c-3-8 or c-3-5 do a fair job of keeping your people alive longer.
Title: Re: Conscience in video games?
Post by: Turambar on May 20, 2009, 01:53:51 pm
What's wrong with you guys?  I did the dark side path with glee in KotOR.

I escalated the Sandral-Matale conflict, there were no survivors
I helped enslave the wookies
I poisoned all the kolto
I took the poor woman's wraid plate and then threatened her to get more money (stranding her on tattooine forever)
I had Zaalbar KILL Mission, making Carth run away like a little pansy!

HK-47 probably even thought I was cruel
Title: Re: Conscience in video games?
Post by: StarSlayer on May 20, 2009, 01:59:49 pm
I'm somewhat interested in seeing were taking the most humorous dialog choices in KotOR would lead me.  I remember some of the funnier ones being more towards the dark side.
Title: Re: Conscience in video games?
Post by: redsniper on May 20, 2009, 02:36:07 pm
Well, I sometimes do the dark path out of curiosity on a second playthrough of such games. As for FS wingmen, if I can't leave early, neither can they. Usually a lot of empty red circles at the end of a mission.
Title: Re: Conscience in video games?
Post by: BloodEagle on May 20, 2009, 03:48:03 pm
I was just wondering if any of you sometimes feel bad when you do something that can be perceived as cruel in a video game, or am I just being silly?

I purposely gib the terrorists and gangsters in Soldier of Fortune, so....
Title: Re: Conscience in video games?
Post by: Turambar on May 20, 2009, 04:18:08 pm
I was just wondering if any of you sometimes feel bad when you do something that can be perceived as cruel in a video game, or am I just being silly?

I purposely gib the terrorists and gangsters in Soldier of Fortune, so....

I throw small animals at walls hard enough to destroy the walls in Crysis
Title: Re: Conscience in video games?
Post by: CP5670 on May 20, 2009, 04:27:56 pm
I make the animals walk up the walls and glide through the air. :D
Title: Re: Conscience in video games?
Post by: Polpolion on May 20, 2009, 06:06:57 pm
I like how Mass Effect dropped the whole "Good" vs "Evil" and went with "Pretentious Nice Guy" vs "Dick."
Title: Re: Conscience in video games?
Post by: Scotty on May 20, 2009, 09:13:11 pm
I can't stand being the evil guy.  Even when I try to to get acheivments on 360.  I'm running along, shooting everyone, just to get my karma down and then whoops, I just disarmed the Megaton city bomb.  Gigantic good karma boost.  I can't stay evil in that game, no matter how hard I try :(

Same with Kotor, both of them. 

Mass Effect is different.  Sometimes I do the Renegade things because of a slip up with buttons.  Then I find out you get more Paragon OVERALL by doing several good things as a result of a Renegade choice than the Paragon choice to begin with.  The only exception is at the end where
Spoiler:
you choose whether to save the council or not.  I always just let the bastards burn.
but I still have to choose the half-way nice option.
Title: Re: Conscience in video games?
Post by: Blue Lion on May 20, 2009, 09:21:04 pm
Sometimes I'll leave a few enemies alive. Like they aren't any threat, so I just let them live. I could mow them down, but what would it do?
Title: Re: Conscience in video games?
Post by: Dark RevenantX on May 21, 2009, 12:17:21 am
I kill anything that can be killed.  And then hack the game so that everything can be killed.
Title: Re: Conscience in video games?
Post by: Turambar on May 21, 2009, 12:30:28 am
In Oblivion, I found two women living peacefully in a chapel in the middle of the woods.

They were my very first murder victims.
Title: Re: Conscience in video games?
Post by: NGTM-1R on May 21, 2009, 01:28:06 am
I kill anything that can be killed.  And then hack the game so that everything can be killed.

I did end up killing everyone in Morrowind when I was done with it. And I do mean everyone.
Title: Re: Conscience in video games?
Post by: karajorma on May 21, 2009, 03:15:00 am
I did manage to scare the hell out of my friends once by cackling maniacally as I torched innocent civilians in Syndicate. :p
Title: Re: Conscience in video games?
Post by: Dilmah G on May 21, 2009, 03:43:51 am
In games where there's character development done well I tend to care a lot for my characters, or really any game which named characters. My worst is Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter and GRAW2, my mum's given me many, many weird looks from the kitchen when she catches me shouting at the screen. I don't try to do the morally right thing, just the logically right thing, which usually is the morally right thing in most RPGs. Mass Effect being one of them.
Title: Re: Conscience in video games?
Post by: ssmit132 on May 21, 2009, 06:15:35 am
I haven't heard of this game,
Adrift (http://www.adrift.org.uk/) is a text-adventure game platform that allows people to create and share their own adventures. For the record, the adventure I was playing at the time is here (http://ifwiki.org/index.php/Jonathan_Grimshaw:_Space_Tourist). :)

I have an example from the other end of the spectrum, too; when I play games like Need For Speed or Midtown Madness I usually don't care about the traffic cars if I smash into them. In Midtown Madness especially, it's hilarious to hear the drivers yelling things at you when you crash into or otherwise interfere with their trip. ;)
Title: Re: Conscience in video games?
Post by: Dilmah G on May 21, 2009, 06:36:30 am
Yeah, but once the characters become 3-D I start to care a lot.
Title: Re: Conscience in video games?
Post by: Colonol Dekker on May 21, 2009, 07:03:35 am
Fallout 1, Childkiller title........cathartic release of stress buildup caused by crying toddlers on buses.

IE- being bad in games = not being bad in RL. :yes:

Also is fun ;)
Title: Re: Conscience in video games?
Post by: Ransom on May 21, 2009, 10:39:04 am
I don't really enjoy being a bastard in games, but in things like RPGs where you're invited to create a character I tend to roleplay personalities very different from my own. I already know what I might do in a given situation. So I find it far more interesting to invent than to project. They tend to be a mixed bag, but I never play a perfect goody-two-shoes - that ****'s boring.

But yeah, I feel uncomfortable doing anything morally bankrupt. If it fits my character, though, that's what I'll do. By the same token I'll never do anything that doesn't.

Half the fun of those games for me is trying to form a compelling three-dimensional personality for my character over the course of the story. The Baldur's Gate series and NWN2/MotB are particularly good for this because the extended narrative allows for some interesting character arcs.
Title: Re: Conscience in video games?
Post by: BloodEagle on May 21, 2009, 01:38:52 pm
I was just wondering if any of you sometimes feel bad when you do something that can be perceived as cruel in a video game, or am I just being silly?

I purposely gib the terrorists and gangsters in Soldier of Fortune, so....

I throw small animals at walls hard enough to destroy the walls in Crysis

I'm pretty sure that the animal doesn't lose a leg, and start wailing in pain as it crawls its way away from me. (No, joke. This happens in the game.) :nervous:

---

Fallout 1, Childkiller title........cathartic release of stress buildup caused by crying toddlers on buses.

Damned Brits, getting the real thing. The U.S. release removed child-killing.  :(
Title: Re: Conscience in video games?
Post by: Flipside on May 21, 2009, 01:45:18 pm
I did manage to scare the hell out of my friends once by cackling maniacally as I torched innocent civilians in Syndicate. :p

Must admit, I was the same, Citizens were often collateral damage, or, on occasion, comic relief ;)
Title: Re: Conscience in video games?
Post by: Ghostavo on May 21, 2009, 02:44:31 pm
"Worshipers need food!"  :mad:
Title: Re: Conscience in video games?
Post by: Flipside on May 21, 2009, 03:00:57 pm
Oh yes., Black and White 2.... Multi-grab + Lots of Citizens + Cliffs = Hilarity ;)

This was a great way of getting rid of pensioners :nervous: