. . . is not possible. Sorry for the bait and switch, but Simon Parkin has posted an editorial at Gamasutra about this very issue. His main point is that, although the postapocalyptic RPG Fallout 3 has a fairly open world that leaves you free to be as noble or horrible as you like, the game makes special exception for the sanctity of young life and this ostensibly moral design decision says something sinister about games as a medium.
The problem boils down to this: without the designers’ invisible hand, the game doesn’t make a very convincing argument against killing kids. There are a lot of reasons why making the argument would be difficult, but most of them revolve around the idea that games are entertainment, and being punished for murder isn’t very entertaining. More subtly, the idea that designers need to police your moral behavior suggests that they think you’re learning morality from the games you play.
Cynical readers could probably argue that the designers are only really worried about how they’ll be perceived, rather than by the consequences of their design decisions on players. However, it really does seem like there should be some serious problems (gameplay or psychological) with being a horrible person. Go give the article a read and post some suggestions for what to do with this problem if you have any ideas.
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Tags: Fallout 3 · Gamasutra · murder2 Comments
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I personally like games that bring up moral questions. That might be due to my being an Ultima fan. Most of those games had a specific scenario that put the player in a situation where killing a child would be the easiest solution. But not the only solution.
The Fallout series has a long history of bringing up moral questions, and I believe you could murder whomever you wanted in Fallout I and II. This is truly disappointing.