Bioshock Infinite will fix the faults of its predecessor's system of choice - Polidicks

well Dishonoured sort of had gameplay representation of your morality, but really only because if you were violent and vengeful you saw extreme violence and death. If you were forgiving and didn't hurt people when you didn't need to, it weighed less heavily on you, but that's if the violence effected you. which even for me after playing the shit out of Max payne 3 and shooting many a fool in the face, it shook me a bit to violently murder many many many more fools with a knife and some god like powers at some level. it made me think a lot for sure.

[QUOTE=mopman999;39327137]dishonored? you can kill the people who probably deserve to die, or in the end just do it without death, but it plays against you because you actually want them to die killing them changes what happens in the world, just as saving them changes what happens[/QUOTE] That's still a binary "shoot dudes/don't shoot dudes get good ending/bad ending" kinda thing

[QUOTE=latin_geek;39326538]I think the original Bioshock did a fine job at the morality thing, even if it was binary and influenced gameplay directly. Getting an ending just makes you play it a second time just to see the other ending. I don't see why the devs think people should play it until they "become numb" Morality systems have always been introduced in really ham-handed, ways, with most being plain binary "kill orphans/be the dalai lama" kinda stuff, but eventually a dev's gonna figure out how to properly introduce a "sliding scale" morality system in a game in a way that it both affects the actual gameplay and the player's feelings about their actions. Could that dev be Irrational Games, could that game be Bioshock Infinite? Maybe.[/QUOTE] if i were to implement binary choice it would be an easier, but somewhat grey choice, for example, killing a certain enemy to end a confrontation quicker, or non-lethally subduing them, which takes longer, but is far less darker a choice. [editline]23rd January 2013[/editline] and even then it wouldn't affect the ending, the ending would solely balance on how you have interacted with characters thus far, and thus how you have portrayed your character to that point.

[QUOTE=latin_geek;39326538]I think the original Bioshock did a fine job at the morality thing, even if it was binary and influenced gameplay directly. Getting an ending just makes you play it a second time just to see the other ending. I don't see why the devs think people should play it until they "become numb" Morality systems have always been introduced in really ham-handed, ways, with most being plain binary "kill orphans/be the dalai lama" kinda stuff, but eventually a dev's gonna figure out how to properly introduce a "sliding scale" morality system in a game in a way that it both affects the actual gameplay and the player's feelings about their actions. Could that dev be Irrational Games, could that game be Bioshock Infinite? Maybe.[/QUOTE] I liked how in fallout 3 you always had a "cynical neutral" option that let you do both good, bad or be totally indifferent without falling into utter asshole/dalai llama territory. You could always make it clear that you're helping someone for purely and simply money, but still save his ass at the end of the day when you get the choice to. [editline]23rd January 2013[/editline] Also Metro 2033 did a great job at morality because the karma system is, well, actually karma : doing good deeds and NOT being an asshole (so you can't balance both like in fallout 3 where even though you can be neutral you can also just kill everyone in town then give 50 bottles of water to a beggar to balance things out) will lead you to a hidden, alternative ending with no indications of it whatsoever. No hints of it throughout, no tutorial about it, not even a morality bar. [editline]23rd January 2013[/editline] Ideally a game with a perfect morality bar would be a game where eventually the ending does not depend on how good or bad you are, but the rest does. Deus Ex did that by giving you several morally equal choices with various motives, and it's through the game that your choices really had an impact. [editline]23rd January 2013[/editline] In my opinion you can't really include a morality system directly like that. A reputation system would be a bit more fitting : act like a good guy and your average dude will like you. Act like a criminal and some criminals will like you (or fight you as concurrence). Act like a rich dude, and rich people will like you, etc. Associating characters with Manichean sides is too simple and implies way too much things. which is why in Fallout 3 I loved how helping out the ghouls at Tenpenny Tower seems like a good choice at first, but how it horribly backfires really fast even if you go for the diplomatic, peaceful option. It's a huge slap in the face for thinking in a purely binary way.

Why is it that in some promotional art the character's faces look completely different? Why does Elizabeth look instead of this: [img]http://thetacticalitysquad.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/elizabeth_bioshock_infinite.jpg?w=593[/img] Like this: [img]http://i167.photobucket.com/albums/u151/dolphinwings401/ice_age_sid_comp_2l.jpg[/img]

[quote][B]"There's nothing that we do on accident."[/B][/quote] Oh boy. That's just asking for something to go horribly.

She... doesn't?

I could never take Bioshock's moral choice seriously because it was so ridiculously ham-handed. You could harvest the first Little Sister out of pure desperation, because Atlas is telling you to (and he's been helpful so far, right?), and then never harvest again and save every other Little Sister- but then you get the bad ending and whoops, guess I decided I'm 60s MegaHitler five minutes into the game and it's time to go take over the world. There are some games with good moral choices, like Dishonored, Spec Ops: The Line, or even Deus Ex. The best moral choices are the ones that are subtle, not PRESS X TO STAB THROAT OR PRESS Y TO GIVE FLOWERS- THINK CAREFULLY NOW. These are games with a little more moral ambiguity, where nothing is clearly the right or wrong choice. Bioshock disappointed me, because what the previews promised was a game about how far you'd be willing to go to stay alive, that wouldn't shirk from showing the horrific consequences of your actions. What we got was a binary decision where you can choose between more Adam now or more gifts later, dehumanized Little Sisters, and a clean and sterilized process either way with little impact. Hopefully they can do a little better this time.

[QUOTE=thisispain;39326715]yeah i dont think cod would be improved if after every mission the characters would cry and ask themselves what the meaning of war is[/QUOTE] Seemed to work for spec ops the line

Just gonna bump to say that I found an AmA made by Kevin Levine on Reddit. [url]http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comment..._bioshock_and/[/url] I say it's worth a look.

Edited to comply with the new rule. [editline]24th January 2013[/editline] [sp]Also if you want to see the articles but not click the source to see it, then get Greasemonkey, and use this script, http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/157368 Kinda like how the news bots work.[/sp]

[QUOTE=thisispain;39327049]hmm? i think other mediums have done just fine with engaging the audience to explore themes?[/QUOTE] Some people aren't as engaged by movies or books as much as some people aren't engaged by video games. The idea of morality in any work of media is really hard to portray since we all have very different perceptions of what's moral.