It seems now that recent games are obsessed with implementing “moral” decisions. Bioshock, choose whether to kill a small girl or harvest her for resources. Far Cry 2, where you can heal a wounded buddy or put him out of his misery. And, more recently, Infamous, which gives you “good” or “evil” choices at certain parts of the story.
One thing I’ve never agreed on, is that these choices shouldn’t have to be so explicit. If someone in the real world is given two choices, and is then told which are the good and evil choices, they will take the good(mostly). Unfortunately, this doesn’t happen, and we have to judge the consequences ourselves. Not only do we decide which results are evil, but often we have no good action, and we have to decide the ‘lesser of two evils, ‘ a common occurrence in reality but missing in games.
Games also have a compulsion to keep themselves the same for everybody, no matter the player choices. This was most evident in Bioshock. When the player has to make their first choice, killing or saving a little sister, the helpful Dr Tenenbaum informs us that saving the little sister will give us some Adam and the possibility of a reward later, while killing her will give us more Adam and no later reward. This nearly equalises the choices from a gameplay(and player) point of view, and players no longer have the need to make any real decisions, no weighing up costs or benefits. They simply choose whatever story they want to see, good or evil. What Bioshock does what so many previous games didn’t, in regards to morality, is make it at least a hard choice to kill these girls.
But a decision in a game cannot simply be boiled down to a ‘choose your own adventure’ narrative split. Players have to be involved in the decisions, and be rewarded or punished themselves, not just the characters. Infamous did this very well for the most part. At many points in the story are explicit choices the the player must make, one example would be stopping poisonous tar flowing through a pipe. The player is offered the choice of turning the pump off themselves, but then getting hit with the harmful tar, or getting an innocent bystander to do it, but staying free of the tar. This decision is both with the narrative, but also gives the player the chance to weigh it up. The ‘good’ choice puts a temporary handicap on the player as Cole is disorientated, while the ‘evil’ choice does not harm the player.
Decision making has always been a core part of game playing, and now that we are finally able to make convincing enough narratives, we seem stuck to them. Decisions must have two parts, the narrative(most explicitly good or evil choices), and the gameplay. Interactivity is what separates games from traditional narrative, and by rewarding or punishing the player over ‘story’ decisions more powerfully effects them than other media ever can.
