Quote:
Originally Posted by Squinky
Oh man, imagine the fun I'm going to have once people discover that there are many cases in the game in which self-sacrifice isn't rewarded. *cackles*
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That's good to hear. Nothing is as destructive to moral relativism as consistently rewarding the "good" choice; even moreso since it invites people to make the "good" choice based only on their expectation of a reward. I see a lot of this in games, and it always makes these parts seem very shallow.
To achieve total moral relativism, the consequences of your actions should be independent of their moral standing. In fact, you could argue that realistically immoral acts should be rewarded, since simply picking the acts that are best for you without regard for their morality is typically perceived as highly immoral.
Getting back to that example with the guard: I hope you also stress the cost of letting the guard live. Hating you even more after you pulled a fast one on him, he'll cause you as much trouble as he possibly can later on. Or maybe if you try to trick too many guards eventually one of them will pretend to go along only to trick and capture
you. (I mean, really, sweet-talking the guard to get past seems like something that only works in games and movies anyway. Having the habit backfire quickly would be nothing more than realistic.)
One very likely risk you want to avoid is for people to read a moral viewpoint into your game, assuming that the choices which are rewarded are therefore the "good" ones. Other than not "rewarding" as such, the best way to avoid this would be to often pursue the negative consequences of any choice the player makes (the player will be much more aware of the positive side already, since that is the reason he made the choice in the first place). In a morally relative setting, it would be good to stress that often there either is no good choice or making the good choice doesn't benefit anyone.
I'm sorry for going into lecture mode like this, especially since I get the impression you're well aware of all of this already. I'm very interested to see how this works out, that's for sure! I don't look for morality in games (or anywhere, frankly), but any story that has an ethical and/or philosophical component with actual depth to it is a rare gem, even moreso if it doesn't promote any single view as the ultimate truth.
