i really dislike morality systems. their entire concept disturbs me and makes for an overall worse gameplay experience for me. to clarify, the type of system i’m talking about is one that attempts to describe a character by the actions they’ve taken through the game.

red dead redemption 2, mass effect, fallout 3/NV, fable, and a ton more all have these types of systems and i dislike them all.

the first and most immediate issue is context. since these systems analyze an independent action, they fail to consider most factors leading up to that point. sure: an npc can be marked “evil” and killing them nets positive karma, or maybe they can even change the karma points based on who aggressed first. in some cases, it will even consider why the NPC initiated aggression and still deduct karma from the player for killing them (what if the player broke into their home and refused to leave after repeated warnings?).

the problem is that this still misses so much nuance and context that exists within the game but isn’t accounted for. what if the player ran into the nearest house that’s owned by an npc because they’re being chased by something horrible? what is the “moral” option here? this is necessary if the system is attempted to describe the character by their actions.

unfortunately, i’m not sure that morality systems are meant to be entirely descriptive. often it feels as though they’re prescribing morality to an action and guiding the player through their own ethical framework. and of course, judging a single action irrespective of its surrounding context is very moral objectivism. this leads to my other major complaint.

morality systems are not disconnected from the real world ethical views of their authors. i don’t want to be judged by a bunch of game designers for how i play a video game. it wouldn’t be an issue if it were just some numerical value on a stat sheet, but this almost never is the case. chances are good that it influences gameplay or dialogue or the ending somehow. that fucking sucks a lot.

i love the idea of exploring morality and ethics through video games, but attempting to gamify it by attaching a number to it ruins the entire thing

@rowan I'm glad that it doesn't have much effect in NV (in contrast to 3) in preference for the faction affiliation system, which honestly is fair game, a fictional faction can love or hate me for whatever reason they feel aligns with their sillylittle computer values and it worldbuilds. but a generalized morality scale is, yeah nahh like you said it's just the designers imposing what they feel is the "right" and "good" choice on the player regardless of context and is always without exception terrible