The Escapist Bulletin: Choose No Evil

This week BioWare announced that it was possible to get an ending in Mass Effect 2 that results in the death of Commander Shepherd, and that ending would be the result of the player’s choices throughout the game.

This is hardly new, though. Choices are dime-a-dozen these days – from the little choices like whether you stick with the default name or replace it with your own, to the big stuff like whether or not to detonate the atomic bomb at the heart of the town.

It’s quite telling that a lot of the games we regard most highly are the ones that offer the most compelling choices. But all too often those presented, compelling as they may be, are simple binary choices or eleventh-hour decisions, where the other options are just a quick load away.

The real problem with the ‘pick-your-own-path’ school of narrative progression that is ever so common in modern games is that they are presented as ‘moral’ choices, when there is very little moral about them. Electing to wipe Megaton from the face of the Capitol Wasteland for a handful of caps isn’t really a moral choice; it’s blatantly evil, in that absolute sense that only exists in fiction.

It’s distressing to see developers fall into the trap of making their games the stuff of Saturday morning cartoons. If a game isn’t asking you to choose which of two evils is the lesser – if there’s no dilemma to solve – then a choice can hardly be described as moral. When a choice boils down to moustache-twirling villainy or mawkish virtue, it loses any impact it might have had and just becomes another playthrough.

This is why it’s such a treat when games start to take the choices it offers seriously. The Witcher, despite the bugs and the game’s horrible attitude towards women, actually makes the choices you make matter. Do you stand with the humans who only grudgingly accept you, or do you aid a coalition of oppressed Elves and Dwarves to take arms against them? In Fable II, a choice you make in your childhood changes the fate of the people of Bowerstone forever, and the Fallout 3 DLC The Pitt asks you to choose whether freeing the slaves of Pittsburgh justifies kidnapping an newborn baby.

It’s this kind of decision, where the right thing to do isn’t immediately clear, that developers should be embracing. Video games are unique amongst entertainment media in that they can offer the visual polish of movies and the depth of books, and make the whole thing interactive as well.

Games are starting to address increasingly complex and adult themes but too few titles challenge the player to make a tough choice. Don’t ask us to forsake our friends and join the Dark Side, ask us whether or not we gun Greedo down in cold blood. Don’t ask us to fight crime, ask us if we’re willing to sacrifice a million lives to save a billion. But above all else, make our choices matter.

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