Showing Your True Colors

“The first thing a God masters is itself” – Legion, Mass Effect 2

Let’s take a moment to talk about morality in games.

Hey, sit back down, dammit!

Okay, yes, I already know that practically everyone else on the internet has been beating this dead horse for a while now. The good/evil system just artificially extends game time by forcing a second playthrough, it railroads players to make certain decisions for certain outcomes, your choices boil down to either being Mary Poppins or Caligula, yadda yadda yadda. Yeah, we’ve all heard it, and believe it or not I agree with it. Hell, I even take issue with it in the Mass Effect series, which I’ll openly admit to being a fanboy of. Sure, for the most part ME doesn’t commit the sin of locking out certain endings based off of an arbitrary morality “score”, but it does still restrict certain dialogue options and actions based solely on you not being enough of an asshole.

Also, being a jerk to people in this universe makes you look like Techno-Satan. Or possibly the Terminator.

That’s not either here or there. Today we’re not here to talk about meters or the morality of characters. We’re here to talk about you. Yes, you.

Let me run a scenario by you. Imagine that you’re an omnipotent and all-powerful whatever just floating in the sky over a happy little village. The villagers pretty much live unremarkable lives. They eat, they sleep, the work, they gossip about their neighbors and throw insults back and forth over the fence. That kind of thing. Still, these are a people that are, at least to a point, dependent on you and your influence. They worship you, their belief strengthens you, and they rely on you.

Now, let’s be honest here, about how long do you think it will take you before you start smiting people with bolts of lightning from the sky?

This is a question indirectly asked by Black and White, a series made by Peter Molyneux before he had his studio Lionhead hunker down and do nothing but churn out sequels to Fable. Like everything else Lionhead has ever made Molyneux got a little… “excited” about both the original and the sequel. “You’ll get to adopt a Creature and help it learn,” he said. “You’ll be able to interact with all of your villagers on a personal level,” he said. “Rubbing the game disc on your genitals will cure all major STDs,” he said. You know, his usual shtick. Still, it was a unique and good game for what it was and, personally, both games are still among my favorite games of all time.

Why is any of this important? Well, B&W was a “God game”, and I don’t mean like The Sims is allegedly a “God game” in which you do things like seal a Sim into a room to slowly watch them die like you’re reenacting Saw on a budget.

You could at least put some wallpaper on those walls, you sick, demented bastard.

No, you are literally playing as a God. The God as far as your people are concerned. You are a non-corporeal entity that can do pretty much anything from control the movement of the Sun in the sky to making earthquakes scar the land. You are all powerful… within your own influence. You’re literally as strong as how many people believe in you, and naturally the end goal is to make everyone believe in you.

… and how you do that is entirely up to you.

You have only one overall end goal; make everyone in the world believe in you, and while you may have individual objectives from land to land the game never tells you how to do it. You can either be nice an benevolent, an utter bastard or anywhere in between, and there aren’t any alternate endings or achievements or little bonuses for a New Game+ for favoring one over another. No, how you choose to do things is, in the grand scheme of things, completely irrelevant. You just have to win. Whatever means to an end you use is entirely on you.

This brings me back to that little scenario from earlier. Exactly how long is it going to take before you start raining meteors down from the heavens on the unbelievers? How long is it going to take before you start grabbing your followers to sacrifice them just so you’ll have the power to launch your next attack even faster? How long will it be before you’ve won purely because there isn’t anyone left to believe in something that isn’t you?

“Thou shalt have no other Gods before me, lest you be smote by my giant doom ape, Mr. Pickles.”

The next time you hear the morality system discussion come up anywhere be sure to point at Black and White as an example on how to do it right. This game’s system is one that by today’s standards doesn’t even exist. Sure, depending on your alignment you get little cosmetic things like fields of happy flowers appearing on the very ground you touch or the blades on your windmill being made from stretched human flesh, but that’s it. No rewards, no incentives beyond one relatively simple thing. The evil way is often easier and gets far quicker results, but you end up squandering much of what you could gain and ultimately hurt yourself in the long run. The good way is slower and more ponderous, but all of that hard work pays off in the end. Both methods are completely valid and you’re never pushed into one path or another. You’re just told to win, no matter the cost, and when you start making decision about whether to win by offering an outstretched hand or the point of a sword it’s when your true colors starts to come out.

It’s just you. No outside rewards, no factors pushing you to do anything other than your own leaning to take a certain action for the sake of doing it. This is one of those rare games where it doesn’t try to get a player to make decisions based on a character’s morality, but their own. In a way it even forces the alert to take a step back and look at exactly what their choices have been and why they’re making them. Are you doing things the way you are because it seems easiest? Because it seems like the right way to do it? Simply because you can?

So stop and ask yourself, in our little hypothetical example how long did it take you to smite that little villager? Hell, how long did you think about it, if at all? Regardless of what your decision was, if you decided one way or another without even having to think about it you’ve just been shown what kind of person you really are on the inside.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is what it looks like when the subject of morality is done right. Not through points or a meter, but by being prompted to take a look at yourself.

~V

Max "Vanguard" Phillips is a freelance photographer, occasional writer and a long-time gamer. He has no idea where that giant volcano currently destroying that quiet little mountain village came from, and he's horribly offended by whatever it is you seem to be implying.