How do you feel about video games that utilise a "morality"

New Vegas?

>>383872140
I like how it is implemented in Fable but hate it in Watchdogs.

Kotor 2 sort of thinks outside the box for the choice a choice b branching path morality system sometimes and even goes out of its way to call out your bullshit and how stupid the idea of light or dark only is.

Witcher 3 in a way.

Few things will change depending of your choices but none are really good or bad.

It's all shade of grey and it's awesome for it.

The perfect anti-Mass Effect

>>383872140
>Any examples of where this is done right

not really. most games either lean towards full good guy morals or mustache twirling edgelord morals. kotor2 had a decent concept of playing it gray but you're still either driven towards full light or dark despite the game teaching you that both are flawed. alpha protocol has great choices where you can really play it fast and loose with no morals at all.

the problem is most games have a reward/skill system and people just bend towards whatever rewards interest them instead of rp flavor for a character they're playing.

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Although it was sorta minor I guess in the grand scheme of things because 2 more games got shit out either way, Infamous 1 and 2 I liked it. You got different powers and dialogue based on moral chooses, it was ight.

>>383872140
Alpha Protocol
There are no good or bad choices, only choices.

The problem is, most "Moral Systems" are essentially reinforcing Moral Therapeutics. Moral in the sense that it preaches "be nice to people" and therapeutic in the sense it asserts the most important thing is "being happy".
Ostensibly the "moral system" in Jade Empire was between Social Darwinism (Closed Fist) and Altruism (Open Palm) but at no point do you see anyone who thanks you for forcing them to confront their own fears and emerges stronger for it, nor do you take any time to actually preach anything or seemingly have an actual moral code, instead basically acting like a dick and expecting people to learn some lesson from it, seemingly.
A game with a good moral system should have actual moral codes, each with their own strong arguments for what Humans are and how they should be treated, and none merely being a derivative of "be nice to people."
Imagine a game set in a pseudo Ancient China setting, where the morality "sliders" are between Legalism, Confucianism, and Taoism? Legalists rewarding you for essentially following the law to the letter (to the point of punishing people for OVERperforming), Confucians admiring your sense of discipline and filial piety, and Taoists siding with you if you simply intervene the least in peoples' live and make non-emotion based decisions.

The first Infamous I guess. Being a moralfag usually made things harder for you, like you could use a mob and avoid a fight or recruit the terrorists if you were red enough. And ar the end you have to choose between connors gf or a group of civilians, that was neat.

>>383872854
Infamous was a bad example because you could only be completely bad, or completely good. There was no neutral path, and if you tried to bounce between good and evil, all it did was lock you out of each side's more powerful abilities.

>>383874304

It was even worse than that, the plot is preset and it only changes your powers and how civilians think of you. So the plot is written around following the orders of characters who vaguely want to be good and all the missions are built around being vaguely heroic. The evil path doesn't reconfigure the plot in any way except at the very end, so you aren't even really "evil" in the traditional you're just a randomly malicious asshole. The evil endings don't feel like "evil" endings either they feel like bad ones.

For a series called Infamous they really haven't done anything with the concept. What I really want is to play a game as a character like Constantine from Second Son, where you do morally questionable things for a greater purpose.

>>383875507
The reveal at the end that constantine was actually only covering her own ass and just liked being on top killed the ending for me.

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Anachronox doesn't really have a morality system but I think it has good moral choices. And it's probably for the best because having a giant bar on the menu makes everything feel so cheap. You want to go back to the bounty hunter who's arm and leg were eaten by sewer worms and pay for her surgery because she's a friend of a friend, not to get more good boy points. And it doesn't make you a super villain to help the police profile a certain race of aliens for week long torture sessions, but you get the feeling that the long term repercussions aren't worth a little extra cash here and now.

>>383873264
It was really disappointing because when those guys explain the two philosophies it seemed pretty even. But in reality open palm is being a reasonable human being and closed fist is draining the lake that is the sole water source for a major city and marooning every boat in the harbor so one merchant will share 20% of his profits with you.

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>>383872140
>game punishes you for killing degenerates

>morality system
That term has always held negative connotations for me. It implies reducing moral choices to a clearly labeled status bar, making them as dull, and artificial as the armor, or weapon stat system. Ideally a game's moral choice 'system' should try to adhere to the level of abstraction present in real life. You make a choice, and you see the consequences simply through sight, and sound, not through viewing a disembodied menu that displays objective stat bars. In other words I like how it's done in games like the witcher, and dragon age, and hate how it's done in games like fallout, and mass effect.

>>383878406
I generally agree except for the fact that this means you can be a perfect hero the entire game and then suddenly at the very end for no reason become a complete asshole. Dont even get me started on party member approval systems, where your character has to become a split personality abomination to get every single party member to like them

>>383878639
>Dont even get me started on party member approval systems
Forgot about that part of DA. To be fair in some cases you simply can't present everything in a real life manner, and as a result have to raise the presentation to an artificial level of abstraction.