Suddenly the difference between good and evil wasn’t so obvious. Then another follower asked me to apply a special sap, stopping his growth and keeping the oasis the safe-haven it was.
But soon after, one of his followers asked me to apply a special liniment to Harold’s heart, speeding his growth so the oasis could spread out to the Capital Wasteland. Right away I had my good and evil options. Another possibility is to use story to express the guiding morals, keeping the “karma” but ditching the “system.” (Spoilers abound for both Fallout 3 and GTA IV)įallout 3 is filled with morally vague quests, but the one that stands out in my memory is “Oasis.” Harold, a man-tree mutant who’s been rooted in place for too long to bear while surrounded by people who see him as a kind of deity, wanted me to kill him by destroying his heart, and specifically asked me not to use fire. One possible solution is adding more ambiguous choices this will naturally lead to a karma system that’s less overt, if even there at all. Players still need a set of guiding morals in order to give their choices a weight within the game world. Richard Clark on Christ and Pop Culture suggests the next logical step, “What I would like to see instead is for games to present us with these moral choices that have real consequences on the game world and the gameplay, but that don’t have an opinion on whether we did the right thing or not.” I like where he’s going, but I don’t think it’s necessary to abandon the karma system completely.
It seems that giving the player a moral choice is an ever increasing trend in gaming, but does it really make the game more interesting? It certainly did a few years ago, but since then I fear they’ve become so common that simply giving players a choice between good or evil has lost its emotional punch. I’ve recently become a bit cynical towards karma systems. There’s been news of a survey going around asking if a karma system in the next Grand Theft Auto would make the game more enjoyable.
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