I have always wished the stories in games dealt with the differences between ethical views. It seems that most games, instead of focusing on ethical problems of any kind, merely try to end at a culturally positive moral result. When the player helps an "evil" character, there is always a retraction; a justification for doing so. When a player is given the option of being "evil", it is always "pure evil", without any justification beyond self-interest or greed.
Where are the games that are murky and grey in their dealings with morality and ethics? Or at least interesting in some way? I completely lost interest in Fallout 3 because of its ridiculously bland story. Even the impact of detonating a nuclear warhead, leveling an entire city loses its punch when you play through it. It’s all stupid, all laughably “evil”.
In writing for my game, I am using morals and ethics in a very personalized way. The world is fucked up, and people do fucked up things. Some societies are virtuous, some are empty. Some worship greed to an alarming degree.
The people who write game storylines must be afraid to do anything really edgy, or they are just so unimaginative that they don’t know how to be. But that is what I would like as a player. Not the predictable good and evil, and not the 180-degree twist that ends up being ridiculously planned. These things need to be more realistic.
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