I totally lost control playing as Bigby and didn't even hesitate to kill Dum. The consequences were logical and natural, but I wasn't thinking about that when I did. To me that situation is similar to the one you commented about in The Walking Dead about exiling a character from the group in an emotional outburst to regret it later.
Failbetter Game's amazing game Sunless Sea has some very interesting choices with regards to temptation - for some questlines, your character can be tempted into achieving a gameplay benefitting option (raised stats, additional options) at a few different possible costs - such as items they've worked very hard to achieve, romantic relationships your character has, or the fate of one of the cities in the world of the game. What I find most interesting in the game is the Exaltation ending, where your character essentially destroys the legacies of previous characters (Sunless Sea uses some persistent roguelike elements - achieve certain things in the game) in temptation by a mystery, rather than a moral choice. A lot of Failbetter's work actually works around being tempted not by material rewards, but by mystery and answers, which I think games are better at conveying in terms of the deep emotional tie: even if this literally will destroy my character and make this save file unplayable, I've got to Go East and find Salt's Song!
This ties back to the extrinsic and intrinsic rewards that games can offer. While the intrinsic reward, the answer to a mystery that gnaws at the player's mind for example, is a wonderful motivator that can tempt the player into doing a lot of things, it has to be balanced by extrinsic rewards, materials, that have to keep the player playing long enough to become engrossed. I'd argue that most games manage to use a player's natural sense of curiosity to great effect. There's always the temptation to see what would have happened if you played differently. This can leading to multiple playthroughs and, in some cases, tempting the player into doing something they don't want to do, like completing a genocide run of Undertale.
Failbetter's games could be an example of destructively testing that idea. Similar to Sunless Sea, Fallen London has Seeking Mr. Eaten's Name, which is, as I understand it, a large story that trades in massive permanent character penalties, up to and including deletion, in return for game lore you can't get otherwise.
I've actually completed SMEN in Fallen London - the penultimate scene directly tells the player "This will render your character unplayable forever. Also, please don't tell anyone what happens next, so we can preserve the mystery." It's a really beautiful experience - but I'm not sure the driving force for that is interest in lore. That's definitely part of it, but SMEN was created in order to satisfy the needs of players who had achieved literally everything in the game, so the head writer created an optional storyline whose theme was "Destroy your character in every way, shape, and form if you really think you have nothing better to do." It gained really cool lore along the way, but for a while it was more along the lines of competitive masochism.
Morgan J definitely SMEN is a good closing arc for players who either wants a fresh start or for those who wants to "finish" the game. Then again, I believe that SMEN is also a good example of interactive temptation. Not just by lore, the experience of SMEN itself is an enigma to those who haven't yet experienced it.
Here's an easy fix for the Bigby situation : Asymmetrical controls. Giving into temptation, the easy way, only requires hitting the X button. Resisting temptation means banging repeatedly on the B button in a race-against-time QTE, literally fighting the urge. To take it a step further, the amount of effort required could be determined by the player's past decisions. An already-good Bigby wouldn't have to struggle much, whereas a mostly-evil Bigby would make' the "spare him" QTE nearly impossible. Bam, the player actually *feels* a bit of the effort needed to make hard choices, while also feeling like their past choices are actually shaping the direction the character takes. Not to mention it would help keep characterization consistent, since characters would develop a kind of moral inertia over the course of the game and be 'drawn' towards the choices which are consistent with past choices. Jumping ethical tracks in the late game wouldn't be totally impossible, but probably very difficult.
While that would solve some of the problem, it doesn't actually simulate the internal moral conflict the character is experiencing. In wolf form, the main character actually likes killing. By giving the player a challenge to overcome, they are given only more reason to oppose the idea of killing. As far as I'm concerned, the only way to simulate temptation is to actively corrupt the player's morality, which is a terribly hard thing to do.
I don't think it's possible to simulate the same moral conflict any character is going through in the minds of players who may be sitting in their bed, wrapped by blankets, eating snacks, and otherwise completely safe. To effectively do that, the player and the player character must be normal people going through normal moral dilemmas and a lot of excellent writing would be needed to build the player up to the same moral debate as the player character. What we can try to do to take steps in that direction is mirror that struggle through the mechanics.
I don't think it's possible to simulate the same moral conflict any character is going through in the minds of players who may be sitting in their bed, wrapped by blankets, eating snacks, and otherwise completely safe. To effectively do that, the player and the player character must be normal people going through normal moral dilemmas and a lot of excellent writing would be needed to build the player up to the same moral debate as the player character. What we can try to do to take steps in that direction is mirror that struggle through the mechanics.
Also, I love the idea of "moral inertia". It's a really good term for describing the design philosophy you recommended. It'd be great if this was picked up and used, and maybe, far in the future, someone else will be exploring game design and your name might pop up for coining "moral inertia"
Yeah, I agree with Vardan. We're never REALLY going to get players emotionally involved with hard choices with even 1/10th the same intensity as the characters are experiencing, at least not until jacked-in cyberpunk sensory-replacement games are invented. Realistically, it's gotta be done through a combination of animation/performance and gameplay that in some way tries to mirror the emotions onscreen. Otherwise, the only times I can think of that even come *close* is when a game presents the option to do something so evil that it's utterly beyond the pale to the point that even simulating that action feels wrong. For example, at the end of KOTOR with Dark Side Revan forcing Zalbaar to kill Mission Vao. I've known a lot of players who simply couldn't pull the trigger on that one because it was so despicable. But games that can pull this off without, themselves, becoming viewed as abhorrent are very few and far between.
The main thing that sprang to mind was curiosity. Mostly in dialogue choices, if an option is clearly inappropriate for the situation or doesn’t make sense, a lot of people will have to struggle against what they think would be a good answer and what would be an interesting one. This isn’t applicable to everything like it of course, if a story has a very somber tone it’s just going to take you out of the experience and maybe roll your eyes, but with a more crazy or even neutral game these crazy options can be very tempting.
On an Extra Credits video about Journey they argue that the "refusal to the call" from the heroe's journey is manifested when you stray away from the path. I know that it is not a really narrative example, but there is an element of free expression in that choice that tempts you to explore outside the linear path to progression.
Regarding a "Karma" system: I'd argue it does have a place for a particular type of moral choice-specifically the type involving temptation. Essentially, there's two types of moral choices: Value Choice: Where you define good based on your own values. Being "good" isn't hard, but what's difficult is finding out what "good" is. Temptation Choice: Where good is already defined, but it's hard to be good.
LISA is the best example of this by far I've ever seen. The protagonist is a drug addict, and the player wants him to get clean, but taking drugs gives you a huge advantage in combat. There are also plenty of times when you can kill or ruin other people's lives to make the game easier.
What I hated most about LISA is that this system was handled so poorly. No matter how many sacrifices you make or drugs you don't take, there is absolutely no change in outocome. I made it to the end without limbs or Joy and the game treated me the same as if I had shot myself full of drugs and sacrificed my friends for my own benefit. I guess that was the point but intentionally making a shit system doesn't make it less of a shit system or make Lisa an exercise in anything else other than a demonstration of your own masochism.
Man - I'm really glad I found your channel today. I'm working on several visual novel ideas and was specifically looking for channels that could offer me real food for thought about narrative and choices. Subbed! In response to your prompt... (Noting that I'll be talking about Until Dawn and do my utmost best not to spoil anything for anyone who hasn't played it, but it might change your experience in subtle ways because it could change your expectations - so read at your own risk.) I personally have found watching various people play Until Dawn immensely helpful in understanding the responses players might have to choices - even more-so than when people play actual visual novels. For one, it feels oddly rare for players of visual novels to explain WHY they chose whichever of the presented options they did - at least not in any real depth. In Until Dawn, if they are presented with a choice that gives them time to think, almost all of the players I've watched (at least seven full playthroughs) used that time to go over the information they knew and come to a conclusion about which option is best. In timed choices, where they have to respond instinctively, if they don't pause out of panic to make that measured weighing of options before proceeding, they defensively justify their reaction after the fact. It's really fascinating what Until Dawn does to players and I think part of the reason they're so successful is by building mood ahead of time. At the beginning of the game, most players approach UD kind of like they're playing through an interactive "Final Destination" movie - expecting every little choice to trigger immediate and deadly punishment. This has the effect of successfully getting them to anticipate what's coming and keep them on edge through the preamble stage of the game (and distracted from noticing some other things) and also encourages them to make their choices carefully, so that later in the game when there are fewer choices they get to think about, they're already prepared to think in terms of survival. Throughout the game, the narrative builds three things: a terrible tension and anticipation of when the deaths might happen, an almost fiery loathing of some or even all of the characters, and this absolute need to figure out what the heck is going on. This sets up the temptations later in the game. (Plus, there's the possibility of boobs on top of it.) I'll cover those in another paragraph you can skip if you don't want to anticipate those choices, but they won't be direct spoilers of specifics, just generalities. [SKIPPABLE SEMI-SPOILERS] There are many temptations in the game, but the ones I specifically think of relate to the set-up I mentioned in the previous paragraph. The boobs temptation is there for trope's sake and, yes, the choices you make when playing the guy flirting with his new girlfriend do effect how much of her you get to see in a later scene. There's actually a lot of interesting responses to the "will we get to see boobs/can I get this guy in bed with his girlfriend" or even "oh my god I don't even care if these kids have sex or not, will they not shut up about how they're going to do it?" and could really be a topic on its own. Ultimately, it's not as interesting as the other temptations, though - it's just a distraction from the other tensions building. Namely - many of these characters are shitty people... or at least are on the surface. Debate is hot about how terrible they "really" are. But there are temptations to let some of them "fall behind" or that struggle about whether to protect the POV character in the scene or the person they're supposed to have a sort of relationship with. And the devs definitely play with that. Deliberately. Then there's the curiosity. The game is set up like a horror movie - so should you *really* be doing X? That is a bad idea in movies, but what if you *should* do it? Especially since it's obvious that there's new information you could learn... sometimes. [/SKIP] I would love to see you cover Until Dawn - assuming you haven't already played it and your thoughts are mentioned in another video I haven't seen yet. (In which case, you can always give me a heads-up or I can find it on my own. xD)
In mass effect there's also the problem that your choices either are "good" or "bad" or paragon and renegade, so the choice is really unimportant when you are actually thinking about how will your action affect your score instead of how it will affect the situation.
An excellent example is Dishonored. The game gives you plenty of lethal options and not many non-lethal ones. The game is easier when played lethally and arguably more fun. But, You can still kill a few people and get the low chaos (good) ending, and the game tells you this; it just doesn't tell you how many is a few. The thought of "I know I want to, but I know I shouldn't" loomed over my head so often while playing. The game is constantly tempting you with an easy solution, but each one you take marches you one step closer to the bad ending, and you don't know which step will be the one that crosses the line. At least that was my experience.
Darkest Dungeon does this really well, making you take care of your heroes' physical and mental health but also tempting you with more loot drops and better quest rewards the more at risk you put your heroes.
One example of temptation I really like is in Mega Man Battle Network 4. In that game there are things called Dark Chips, which are extremely overpowered chips that can one shot most enemies in the game at the cost of permanently damaging your body. The cool thing is that in 4 specifically you get forced to use one to kill a boss in the story, but after that they will only show up if your in a really bad state (i.e. when you'd be most tempted to use them to not die) but a player who wants Mega Man not to be corrupted will have to soldier on through the bad situation without the super powered chips.
(Gee, I hope this doesn't get lost in the discussion) This topic has been rattling inside my head for about as long as Life Is Strange has been out, a game that somewhat triggered my interest in decision making in video games, even though I've yet to actually play it. The tendency to pit the player against rational, inconsequential, or seemingly meaningless choices has, in my opinion, made it difficult to use the medium to it's advantage. Unlike music, visual art, books, or movies, video games stand in the unique position of generating empathetic emotion within the consumer. When you listen to sad music or see something bad happen to a character in a movie, you feel sympathy for them. You can recognize the emotions a character goes through and develop an understanding of those emotions. But, when something bad happens in a video game, you, yourself, feel sad, or angry, or frustrated. This can be worked into the narrative of the games by trying to make the player and the player character's emotional states line up. In the context of the Bigby Wolf scenario, perhaps the choice to spare the dude could mechanically be made harder. Imagine pressing the button to spare him, but the button prompt changes and a timer starts. The game then randomly generates buttons for the player to press, while shrinking the window for the button press. If you miss-click or don't press the button inside the window, Bigby could lose control and kill the minor villain. If you succeed, then Bigby regains control and can spare him. This would mirror the struggle between Bigby's moral code and his instinct. Inside his head, he would think to spare the guy, but his instinct would flare up, and then he'd have to reason, and his instinct would flare up again. He'd have to bat back his instinct with rationale and morality, just like the player has to bat back the choice to kill the dude. (sorry, but I haven't played this game yet and I'm watching the video in poor quality because of internet issues, so I don't know the villain's name) As far as making the game more difficult as you choose the moral high ground, from a narrative perspective, that makes sense as choosing the moral high ground often leads to your morality being questioned and tested and strained. A rather decent difficulty curve could be structured around these choices, depending on the game's core engagement, obviously. This would be a bit easier to implement in a game like Mass Effect, where there is combat and enemies and the flexibility and familiarity to craft a difficulty curve. I imagine it'd be far harder to craft a difficulty curve for a game whose core engagement is simply making choices, a la Life Is Strange (from what I've seen of that game, at least). This would create the temptation to in the player to choose an easier path by abandoning their moral high ground. Perhaps the downside of this could be more inconvenience for the actual player. Not a lack of enjoyability, but inconvenience. Something like having to trek a fairly long stretch over and over again, or having to search a cleared level because something got left behind. While these will be less of a problem for the player's character, they could become a problem for the players, themselves. Maybe if they get easier enemies and enemy placements, they end up inadvertently holding themselves back from the fun of the combat. Maybe if they choose to blow up a town, they end up being led up a long flight of stairs to press one, (not even red), button and then rush out of the room in time to catch the explosion. I imagine that little things like that could pile up. Temptation could even be worked into the core combat loop of a game. Suppose you're low on health or ammo or mana or whatever, and you manage to kill an enemy, perhaps the player could continuously kick the corpse into the ground to regenerate those resources. Over time, the player character could come to enjoy this activity, finding satisfaction, solace, or even thrill in performing it, which could be made clear by changing the animations and voice acting to reflect those emotions. This may even end up eventually creating a dissonance with the player, causing them to stop performing the action, which could lead to the player's character realizing the weight of the disrespect they are showing. (This is actually an idea I've been thinking about implementing in my own game, although anyone is free to borrow it if you really want to. It's only an idea at this stage, after all, not a product)
Also, I'm not sure if it's irrelevant, but I'd argue that a player's natural sense of curiosity is itself a great temptation. If the game builds sufficient intrigue and impact into it's decisions, at least some players will be naturally tempted to play through the game again, but by making different choices. This can lead to multiple playthroughs of a single game, or even tempt the player into doing something they really wouldn't like to do, like do a genocide run of Undertale. By tucking away enough details and sufficient differences and acknowledging the player's choices, the game can give the player an intrinsic reason to make the other choices, their own curiosity. I think this is demonstrated rather well in games like The Stanley Parable, and even The Walking Dead does it with messages like "Chloe will remember this". While this approach does create an inherent distance between the player and the player character, in the end, the player character is still shaped by those decisions, reconciling the dissonance rather well.
Undertale does this well. The easiest thing to is to kill everything you come across, however it is possible to end every confrontation nonviolently. In order to do so you need to risk getting hit in order to find the right way to talk them down. You also don't gain experience if you don't kill them so your health will be lower and the game that much harder during a peaceful run.
I'd also like to point out the various difficulty curves that structure themselves around how you deal with encounters. They keep the game engaging no matter how you play.
Undertale has only one failure in its interactive temptation. Killing in it is the most boring gameplay mechanic, so most automatically switch from killing to sparing.
I think best temptation is mechanical. Like when you can choose something that worse for the story but better for the player as in gives him money/exp/items. But for this to work a game should have really good balance - if a player have enough money already it's not a tempting choice at all. I think alot of interesting choices like that that are intertwined with the mechanics is in Banner Saga series. A bad example is Bioshock 1-2 - in theory they should work as "it's harder to play saving the girls, but easier if you kill them" - but even if you don't kill them you eventually get presents from them that more or less makes you on the same level as a player that kills them.
I have been watching your videos for a while .So far I have loved it .It makes me wonder why you have only 13000 subs. I think you should do a literary analysis on undertale .Since the whole game changes on the players choice to either kill or forgive everything or anything in the game and characters in the game breaking the 4th wall realising that any resistance is futile since the player could just restart the game .
I think the best method games currently have for simulating temptation is to link story and gameplay elements together. One of my favorite examples of this was present in one of the MegaMan Battle Network games (MMBN4?). In it, after playing through a significant portion of the game and being familiarized with the battle system, the player and main characters are introduced to a new mechanic. Normally in the game you attack using battle chips, which let you use special attacks in the pseudo-turn-based format. But midway through the game you're introduced to "dark chips" or something like that. They're presented as "corrupted" versions of the normal chips which are *much* more powerful but also come at a cost. Every time you use one, your health is permanently reduced by one. It's a small thing, but it adds up fast, and as far as I know there was no way to reverse the health penalty. The temptation of using the dark chips on a hard fight was ever-present, and it was a really cool way of systemizing the old "deal with the devil" trope. (As a dumb kid, I used the shit out of those dark chips. It wasn't a very good idea.)
I believe that there was also a system where, when the game thought you were in serious trouble, they would force themselves to the top of the 'deck' before you draw your next hand of chips. You know, just to be more convenient and insidious... I think it's a great concept, but I'm the kind of person who has difficulty playing 'provably suboptimally' even if I want to, to the point where I often skip all or most of the 'beginner' classes when starting out in class based games because I have 'linear warriors, quadratic wizards' ingrained in my mind, even though it makes learning more complicated.
Hi Saw the video last night and I've been thinking on it. First off, on the example you gave of The Wolf Among Us, the biggest conflict is the dissonance between the player and the character the player is PLAYING as. In a Film we accept that dissonance, but in a game in order to take advantages of the game mediums strength it sort of DEMANDS the player is directly addressed which means you either A. Have to make the Avatar a self-insert for the player or B. Build a relationship between the MC and the player so they are on the same page. For example get the player to sincerely hate a guy similar to Persona 4 example. Also thought of your sexual temptation suggestion then dismissal and I can see it working maybe before the internet was usable by normal people, but I think we've been trained to not take choices like that seriously, I mean in theory when you have a good vs evil choice WITHOUT sex, something you'll end up doing a second play through just to see that outcome where you become disconnected personably from the game. So I have TWO suggestions I don't think you pointed out in the video. 1. Is rather simple, the "temptation" can be something rather universal to players and something that flies in the face of how we as gamers have been trained to think....POWER. Everyone wants power, so the temptation could be "doing the right thing" even if it gives me a distinct mechanical advantage in game, of course some players might see it as just annoying if they play games as just an obstacle course/power fantasy or they might see it as just a "hard mode" so it would depend on the audience, design, and how well your able to get players to care about the ingame characters and situations but I can see it working in some instances. 2. The other suggestion, and this is a bit more ambitious, going back to my point of EVERYTHING is available on the internet, if you can simply replay the game or watch a playthroughs of "save person/don't save person" that take the personal choice out of it. HOWEVER what if each players experience was different, what if every time you started a game the characters and situations were different each time or if their are the same characters it develops radically different each time. Basically make character and story choice more emergent and make it like either a rogue like or what they claim to be trying to do in the Middle Earth: Shadow of War coming out. That way if a character in the story dies, or you screw up their life, you don't get to see an "alternate" reality on RUclips, or save scum and replay to see what happen, it's more like real life where you only have THAT playthrough to decide what happens. BTW I know your not a fan of emergent narrative as the stories they tell aren't as nuanced as "classical" literature and story-telling but I personally see that form of story telling and interaction as the future of gaming and what really sets games apart from other media, and I think in the future emergent narrative will evolve to be just as if not more compelling than many traditional narrative. So yeah those are my suggestions.
I think that the easiest way could be a mechanical temptation like in Bioshock. Farming the Little Sisters gives you a lot of help early on but if you purify them you get a really hard time but, in exchange, you get a very satisfying ending. Also, as you said, to make the temptation harder to notice (or ignore) the morality system must become invisible. The game knows which is the right option, but not the player and he will never know until the end of the game or until the consequences of his actions comes to punch/reward the player.
I think you're definitely right about Bioshock, but I'd even wonder if the "good ending" you mentioned is the true temptation. Maybe you're just referring to what immediately happens each time you make the choice, but I think it's the fact that the "good" choice is something most everyone will see as the correct one--except for the fact that in the short term, it's a loooooot easier mechanically to make the bad choice. So I'd say it might even be the individual morality of each choice, not just the end result after hours of gameplay, that made Bioshock nail that one pretty well.
I believe God Hand (Playstation 2) included a bit of a mechanic on the difficulty side. Not exactly temptation per se, however, the game was designed so the more efficiently you fought, the harder the fights would get. If you felt the fight was getting too tough, you could lower the difficulty by having your in-game avatar literally beg for mercy. You make the game easier at the cost of humiliating yourself to the game, creating that emotional drive to get better. Again, not exactly temptation, but it works along the same lines to use the players own human emotions to drive in-game decisions. (Also see the chicken hat in Metal Gear Solid 5, which made the game easier at the cost of making Big Boss look like a dork.)
found your channel after finishing the original bioshock on the collection edition for the ps4 for the first time. and wanted to know more and i founs your video. i really like your channel seen a couple vids and i really love it keep up the amazing work. also could you maybe do a video on silent hill 2
You should play The Swindle. While it's not as narratively interesting, it does pit the player's temptation and need for more cash against their need to survive and maintain their bonus multiplier. It's not a moral choice, but it is a rational one, and I've died plenty of times because I wanted to snag that last moneybag and get the Ghost bonus.
If you're taking up suggestions on future videos, might I make one? Since it's something recent, I think Nier Automata would really get your analitycal juices flowing. I've been reading and hearing people harp on own the game discusses the "human condition" by showing it and making us take it in and process it ourselves rather than clumsily making the question and giving unsaatisfactory and/ or unsavory answers. But, more than "the human condition", I think Nier Automata is more focused on the subject of purpose and how it correlates with and develops in machines, man and androids. Just food for thought or the ramblings of an internet nerd ^^"
I'm actually currently working on a game system that attempts to address this by making it mechanically difficult for the player to select the option at all. I feel like more experimentation needs to be done with the mechanical side of decision making to really explore this design space. The later Mass Effect interjection moments, specifically for renegade, I think were a great attempt at this. You know your time to choose if you do it is very limited, and you don't know the exact outcome. So there is an inherent temptation involved, and it leads to some believable and satisfying moments that abstract emotional outbursts. Another one that left a big impression is when games obscure that something even is a choice. For me it was reading an article about Deus Ex Machina (spoilers for this by the way for anyone that cares) years after playing it and learning that you can actually save your brother in the beginning and have him be a part of the story. At this point in the game though you are given instructions to flee (verbally I believe) but it's designed so you can stay and fight successfully. Especially for the time, this was a really big subversion of typical game design where any instructions are not only law, but literally the only things you are capable of doing at the time. Undertale is a recent, notable example that uses this to good effect.
I think the best games for understanding how temptation works are free-to-play or often pay-to-win games. The immediate satisfaction of overcoming a boring or challenging task comes at the expense of the player's long-term financial future. It's downright Faustian.
Oh boy, I hadn't thought of that. Not quite the kind of narrative-centric thing I was thinking of, but nevertheless it's so, SO true. In a kind of meta, actually-detrimental-to-your-real-life-well-being sort of way.
I would actually like to see moral temptation in a video game. Specifically rouge likes, they could make the story and the emergent narrative of the game more appealing. One such example could be "Death Road to Canada". In one certain scenario, one of the members of the group states that one member hasn't been pulling their own weight and needs to be kicked out of the group. Now while the game lacks on characteristic qualities for the characters that you make or are randomized for you, if the game expanded on story and character, the weight of the choices would be much greater impacting. Great video professor!
I felt like The Wolf Among Us got me into bigby's headspace enough to be able to kill Dum. I wanted him dead so he could stop doing so much damage, I felt like he was going to get away otherwise, and I wanted catharsis with the fact I hadn't been making progress against the enemy
I don't know, maybe I was able to put myself in the headspace needed during A Wolf Among Us that when that choice came around, It seemed too thematically reasonable for Bigby to take out one of the Tweedle brothers and I took it.
To me a really good use of temptain is the end of Life is Strange. Of course there's not much to say whithout gettin into spoilers, but it was really agonizing and I have to say I'm not exactly proud of my choice, but I don't regret it either.
Oh hell yes! Life is Strange resonated with me a LOT because I was in an emotional situation very much like Max. I reconnected with my childhood best friend to find her tough outside but caring inside, and we fell for each other. When I got to the end of the game I probably had that choice on pause for an hour while I thought about it. My selfish side wanted to chose the ending that would make me happy, but my realistic side knew that the other ending was the right one - plus the other ending was the one that Chloe told Max that she wanted. In the end, I had to go with the bay and not bae ending and I sat there and cried for quite a while. I'd say that was a pretty effective use of emotional temptation to present a hard choice.
When you mentioned a choice where a bad decision may reward you with titillation My first thought was Morinth in Mass Effect 2. Choosing to have sex with the deadly succubus, its gonna kill ya, the likelihood of surviving is next to nothing, you are warned by the game several times to stop, its a really bad idea, but you've gotta choose it if you've made it that far. For one reason - It's just morbidly hilarious to do something so stupid... plus you can reload and *not* be stupid this time. It's not the promise of titillation that wins you over but morbid curiosity. (of course choosing her over her mother was a very renegade idea in the first place.
Ace Combat Zero: The Belkan War has a system kind of like this. There's no major gameplay or story changes that come from it, but it does alter some mission and cutscene dialogue, as well as changing some of the enemy ace squadrons you fight in certain missions and how your protagonist is viewed by the people he fights with and against. In the game are targets marked in yelllow which offer points for their destruction, but aren't contributing to the battle at hand or the war at large (for example, a city full of factories - some are supporting the war effort, but some are just civilian factories that have nothing to do with the war (and still have civilian workers inside as the allied forces attack the city)). Since the player is a mercenary, this gives an incentive to destroy them: more points means more money, and more money means better planes, pushing you towards the "Mercenary" Ace Style. However, this makes the protagonist a more merciless and morally corrupt person in the eyes of his enemies (sometimes yellow targets are damaged enemy planes that are just trying to limp home), and makes the game put you up against harder enemy ace squadrons. Not destroying these yellow targets pushes the player's Ace Style rating towards "Knight". They earn less money and so can't afford better planes as early, but the player is seen as a much more honourable person by those around them. T The game avoids labeling the different styles as good or bad and leaves it up to the player's own morality to make the choice between being kind and earning as much money as possible. The response from the people around the player might still make one better than the other, but that's the game's writing reacting to the player's choice, not swaying the choice itself.
I always liked the choice system in Lisa: the painful rpg. more games should have choices affect how you play rather than just what you see adding a lot of weight and potential emotion when tied to the story
I was wondering if you would mention that Persona 4 moment. I confess that got me hard, and I completely sided with Yosuke the first time just out of anger.
The other important thing to remember in that situation is that it's not clearly obviously true that he wasn't the real killer. This isn't: Oh I really shouldn't do this, but I want to. It's: This is too easy.... Wait we need to examine this further. Further even if you do start deciding to spare him it's not just a simple one and done choice. You have to start questioning the situation, offer convincing arguments, and stay calm and consistent or your efforts are for naught.
Indeed. Persona 4 is a game with a very clear theme - seeking the truth, and not settling for easy lies that you want to believe. The game's been telling you all the way through the story not to settle for the surface truth and to dig deeper to the real truth, and that scene feels like the final test of that. I feel like the answers you have to give could be a little more lenient (answer wrong once and you're out and have to sit through a very long cutscene again) but overall I like it a lot.
Nah. Talking down a vengeful comrade who has been working up to ending this for months even as he's in a state of raw grief and fury after not knowing for certain your sister is safe shouldn't be easy. That would cheapen the moment so hard.
You can kill your friends and take drugs to make the game easier, but it doesn't change the story at all. I'd argue that this "moral choice" has as much weight as selecting a difficulty at the start of any other video game. The game treats dugless selfless runs the same as drug-filled selfish runs so there is absolutely no reason to do a "joyless" or play Lisa at all unless you are literally a masochist, in which case i'd suggest "Bad rats" because it's cheaper and has a less pretentious fanbase.
While I wouldn't be quite so hard on Lisa, it's true that the big, damning problem is that your choices are basically irrelevant, although using no Joy adds an extra scene at the end. Of course, the choices being irrelevant might be the point.
There is nothing wring with anger...or sandess, or any emotion, really. However, I do believe their a breaking point for any emotion, when its takes over and logic is no longer adhered to. This is true, I think, even with happiness.
I haven't seen (sorry if I missed it) anyone mention Dark Souls 1 on here, but I think FromSoftware did a good job with handling temptation in that game, in unusual respects. Throughout the game, you end up hearing two very different stories for how the world works, and what you as a player should do to fix the current problems with it. What made it particularly good in my eyes is that both viewpoints are equally valid, because we don't have any knowledge of any inherently correct worldview in-game. As such, when the time comes to make a decision on how you want to handle your "call" as the narrative hero, your choice might very well be influenced by the temptation to believe the opposing view because it makes sense, too. In a lot of ways, the fundamental narrative "crisis" of Dark Souls reflects worldviews in the real world, so whichever in-game viewpoint you are already more biased toward, the opposing argument will still be tempting to believe.
used well: Soul Sacrifice. used horribly: the Witcher Interesting to go over all the choices we had to make in games xD though in contrast to that Wolf Among Us case point, horror games in general have that very power to leave the player in paralyzing fear that more than clouds our moral judgement while the character could be calm and oblivious. In a dark, terrifying environment where you run into a seemingly innocent girl I'm way more likely to shoot her at the first sign of anything slightly unnatural when she could just as likely be perfectly innocent .__. dont know what games made use of that, though.
Fallout 4 doesn't have the Karma system of the previous games, which to me is a massive boost in enjoyability. You aren't judged by the game for your actions, but by the NPCs. Some approve and some don't. It's up to you to care about them liking you or not. That's the way it should be - people judge you, not some mechanic popup.
I've heard that elsewhere, but I've also heard the opposite opinion. I believe it generally boiled down to two ideas. The first was that a karma meter could affect how people reacted to you, and thus provide consequences that don't exist in Fo4. I agree with you about not endorsing a universal morality, but I agree with this point to the extent that it allows for consequences outside NPC's directly tied to the quest. That said, if we have a karma system I prefer 2 and NV's hybrid systems, where there is reputation based on groups perceptions of you as well as a scattering of other traits that represent abstract concepts you can gain or loose (like child killer in Fo2) that change how people react to your character. My ideal case would be having every choice tagged with various categories (illegal, selfless, intellectual, etc.) as well as any groups or individuals that could be expected to learn about this action (people in room, BoS members, just this one other guy, etc), and then people would react based on functions of the actions they were aware of (or falsely believed) that you had performed earlier. The second point was that removing an explicit karma meter (and the implicit assumption that most action would affect it) allows for more ambiguous situations. Either all the outcomes are mostly good, or all are mostly bad. This is felt to lower player agency. I guess I agree in a technical sense that player's don't get as much control, but my own tastes generally fall more towards verisimilitude, where the consequences of an action often are ambiguous or only clear some time later.
Regarding difficulty-as-temptation: Personally, if I were to design a game with morality, I would make "evil" choices result in short-term rewards for long-term penalties. By contrast, making a good option forces a temporary difficulty spike in exchange for long-term rewards down the line. Neutral decisions do neither. While not literally the same thing as morality, the mental struggle to focus on long-term rewards in lieu of smaller, short-term gains is the basic gist of how temptation works. This does turn morality into kind of a game mechanic, but I'd argue that's not necessarily a bad thing. If a moral choice gives only a plot reward at a mechanical penalty, then really the question it's asking is "Do you care more about the gameplay or story?"
I think it depends on how the choice is presented in my opinion. In and off itself, choice doesn't hold much meaning in games because of the limitations of programming. Everything in programming, sadly, is based in concrete, precise, and accurate portrayals of situations which can and cannot happen - what triggers them, what happens in them, how do they affect the story, that sort of thing. And it is made even worse by the fact that once you play a game from beginning to end, there really isn't much else to do other than restart and try a new choice tree. The best example I can think of is "Until Dawn" - very good concept, but again, because of the programming it is very much "restart to try new branch tree". So that's my two cents on interactive temptation really.
I think there's at least one very good example of sexual temptation in a video game, and that would be a moment early on in Metro 2033 when you can find a prostitute offering her services in one of the starting towns. You can take her up on this, follow her to a back room and sit down in a chair where a man will suddenly come into frame, knock you out and take a decent chunk of your precious ammo. It's a moment of seemingly low stakes and high intrigue ('Do I get to see nudity in this video game about post-apocalyptic Russian hobos?') that quickly and effectively subverts those expectations by pulling what someone might feasibly pull off in this desperate situation: a sex-charged scam.
To SOME extent Witcher 3, SOMA is a very good example, Metro Last Light and 2033 also does it well IMHO. STALKER indirectly manages some such choices. Interesting topic.
Something that came to mind that may or not be the kind of thing you're talking about here. Spoilers for Batman: Arkham Knight: Due to the events of the last game, Batman is struggling with the personality of the Joker inside his head, threatening to take over his body and assume his life. With all the stress of the Scarecrow making a bid to break Batman's spirit and amidst several other difficult and troublesome events over the course of the single hardest night in his crime-fighting career, near the end of the game the player is locked in a hallucinatory fight with the Joker that culminates in the player being prompted to snap Joker's neck. It's all in Bruce's mind, the Joker is actually long dead by this point, and all it takes is a simple press of the A button. When I first got to this point, I didn't want to do it. Killing Mistah J, even if he's not real, would mean he'd won; Batman had finally broken his one rule, a cornerstone of the character, a pivotal element that defines his entire being. Doesn't matter if he technically didn't physically murder him, it meant that it had finally come to the point that he admitted he was capable and willing to go that far. It would go against everything he ever stood for. For me, being in Batman's shoes, very admirably respecting his policy (even to his own detriment sometimes), and especially being introduced to the character through The Dark Knight, where this rule is the whole crux of the plot, I didn't want to be the one to give in. I wanted to stick to Bats' and my beliefs. I wanted to resist. But the game doesn't let you. Every other button's function barring the pause and home buttons are disabled. Joker doesn't eventually break free, nor does Bruce ever let him go. You are locked in this state until you press A and snap his neck; the game cannot move forward until you succumb to the temptation to kill, even if you're not actually doing so. I waited for several minutes for something else to happen; but nothing did. I tried mashing every other button, to no avail. I actually yelled that I didn't want to do this. But I had to. And when you do, the Joker hallucination gets right back up and taunts you for finally giving in, gleefully stating that he's that much closer to finally taking full control. Now, this only meant something to me because I identified with Batman's no-Kill code and wanted to stick to it. It's what he would do, or at least aspire to. I wanted to be strong for Bruce, but because the story literally wouldn't progress otherwise, I couldn't be. For another player, it might not have been so hard, but still, that was probably the most I've ever felt from the Batman series as a whole. Other than the pure hatred from the Cloudburst Tank battle, but that's another story.
Spoiler Alert: Tales Of Xillia 2 I think the game accomplished this really well. It gives you emotional temptation to do the worse option, namely the endings where you are given a choice: Sacrifice your daughter figure/alternate reality daughter to help save the world, or let your daughter live and screw over the world, this seems like a simple choice, but she was a constant in gameplay, she took care of your cat and the other characters had a lot of dialogue tempting you to spare her. Also, speaking of the tales games, if you have played any of them, the games would probably be great for an analysis.
Witcher 3, Hearts of stone. Choose whether or not to interfere when G.o.D comes to claim the soul of Olgierd. Now, this choice is not much of a temptation to an ill informed player; just save the dude. But if you know the possible rewards G.o.D offers you if you stand aside, it's a little different. I play using an alchemy build; my Geralt can chug down potions just as fast as the Dragonborn can down a hundred cheese wheels. I, frankly, will never find a use for the sword you get if you save Olgierd. You know what I could really use? An endless supply of alcohol. Because if I ever run out of potions, I'm screwed. Now, I carry enough alkahest (potion refills) with me that this will never actually happen. But G.o.D offers you a guarantee. To the informed player: stand aside, and you will never run out of potion materials. Your lifeblood. Olgierd is a digital man. If he's gone, it won't change the world. You can ensure that you are prepared for a dire pinch if only you do nothing. Now choose.
Man, I wish. I got my BA in English, and I'm considering going back for postgrad work if I can find the right program (and afford it), but game design isn't really what I'd want to go for. I'd be looking for a more holistic interactive art kind of thing, but that currently exists at very few, generally very expensive schools, so we'll see how that goes and where life takes me. Glad you like the channel!
Stupidest thing with choices is when a game push you to choose a way to play at the beginning - like Fable, KOTOR, Mass Effect, Bioshock 1-2. Since you know from the start if you will play as evil or good - each specific individual choice is not a choice at all, it might as well be auto. And while you can fogrive a more cartoony simplistic RPG like Fable, when it's in big serious RPG like KOTOR or ME - it's just pathetic. Isn't Dust is just a furry dick convetion?
You don't HAVE to be full paragon or renegade in Mass Effect. In fact if you only ever choose what would be seen as the paragon choice on the dialogue wheel you'll get in to trouble sometimes, and a full paragon Shepard will have a number of bad things happen in 3 that could have been avoided.
I don't want to be that guy... but I would point to the original Witcher and urge you not to underestimate the potential of sexual temptation. I personally am anything but salacious, but I think eventually all men but those with strong moral disgust eventually found themselves in Vizima's red light district (albeit with the volume turned down and the door firmly shut). Given privacy, sexual temptation is probably one of the easiest kinds for a person to give in to.
I totally lost control playing as Bigby and didn't even hesitate to kill Dum. The consequences were logical and natural, but I wasn't thinking about that when I did. To me that situation is similar to the one you commented about in The Walking Dead about exiling a character from the group in an emotional outburst to regret it later.
Failbetter Game's amazing game Sunless Sea has some very interesting choices with regards to temptation - for some questlines, your character can be tempted into achieving a gameplay benefitting option (raised stats, additional options) at a few different possible costs - such as items they've worked very hard to achieve, romantic relationships your character has, or the fate of one of the cities in the world of the game. What I find most interesting in the game is the Exaltation ending, where your character essentially destroys the legacies of previous characters (Sunless Sea uses some persistent roguelike elements - achieve certain things in the game) in temptation by a mystery, rather than a moral choice. A lot of Failbetter's work actually works around being tempted not by material rewards, but by mystery and answers, which I think games are better at conveying in terms of the deep emotional tie: even if this literally will destroy my character and make this save file unplayable, I've got to Go East and find Salt's Song!
This ties back to the extrinsic and intrinsic rewards that games can offer. While the intrinsic reward, the answer to a mystery that gnaws at the player's mind for example, is a wonderful motivator that can tempt the player into doing a lot of things, it has to be balanced by extrinsic rewards, materials, that have to keep the player playing long enough to become engrossed. I'd argue that most games manage to use a player's natural sense of curiosity to great effect. There's always the temptation to see what would have happened if you played differently. This can leading to multiple playthroughs and, in some cases, tempting the player into doing something they don't want to do, like completing a genocide run of Undertale.
Failbetter's games could be an example of destructively testing that idea. Similar to Sunless Sea, Fallen London has Seeking Mr. Eaten's Name, which is, as I understand it, a large story that trades in massive permanent character penalties, up to and including deletion, in return for game lore you can't get otherwise.
I've actually completed SMEN in Fallen London - the penultimate scene
directly tells the player "This will render your character unplayable
forever. Also, please don't tell anyone what happens next, so we can
preserve the mystery." It's a really beautiful experience - but I'm not
sure the driving force for that is interest in lore. That's definitely
part of it, but SMEN was created in order to satisfy the needs of
players who had achieved literally everything in the game, so the head
writer created an optional storyline whose theme was "Destroy your
character in every way, shape, and form if you really think you have
nothing better to do." It gained really cool lore along the way, but for
a while it was more along the lines of competitive masochism.
Morgan J definitely SMEN is a good closing arc for players who either wants a fresh start or for those who wants to "finish" the game. Then again, I believe that SMEN is also a good example of interactive temptation. Not just by lore, the experience of SMEN itself is an enigma to those who haven't yet experienced it.
Here's an easy fix for the Bigby situation : Asymmetrical controls. Giving into temptation, the easy way, only requires hitting the X button. Resisting temptation means banging repeatedly on the B button in a race-against-time QTE, literally fighting the urge. To take it a step further, the amount of effort required could be determined by the player's past decisions. An already-good Bigby wouldn't have to struggle much, whereas a mostly-evil Bigby would make' the "spare him" QTE nearly impossible.
Bam, the player actually *feels* a bit of the effort needed to make hard choices, while also feeling like their past choices are actually shaping the direction the character takes. Not to mention it would help keep characterization consistent, since characters would develop a kind of moral inertia over the course of the game and be 'drawn' towards the choices which are consistent with past choices. Jumping ethical tracks in the late game wouldn't be totally impossible, but probably very difficult.
While that would solve some of the problem, it doesn't actually simulate the internal moral conflict the character is experiencing. In wolf form, the main character actually likes killing. By giving the player a challenge to overcome, they are given only more reason to oppose the idea of killing. As far as I'm concerned, the only way to simulate temptation is to actively corrupt the player's morality, which is a terribly hard thing to do.
I don't think it's possible to simulate the same moral conflict any character is going through in the minds of players who may be sitting in their bed, wrapped by blankets, eating snacks, and otherwise completely safe. To effectively do that, the player and the player character must be normal people going through normal moral dilemmas and a lot of excellent writing would be needed to build the player up to the same moral debate as the player character. What we can try to do to take steps in that direction is mirror that struggle through the mechanics.
I don't think it's possible to simulate the same moral conflict any character is going through in the minds of players who may be sitting in their bed, wrapped by blankets, eating snacks, and otherwise completely safe. To effectively do that, the player and the player character must be normal people going through normal moral dilemmas and a lot of excellent writing would be needed to build the player up to the same moral debate as the player character. What we can try to do to take steps in that direction is mirror that struggle through the mechanics.
Also, I love the idea of "moral inertia". It's a really good term for describing the design philosophy you recommended. It'd be great if this was picked up and used, and maybe, far in the future, someone else will be exploring game design and your name might pop up for coining "moral inertia"
Yeah, I agree with Vardan. We're never REALLY going to get players emotionally involved with hard choices with even 1/10th the same intensity as the characters are experiencing, at least not until jacked-in cyberpunk sensory-replacement games are invented. Realistically, it's gotta be done through a combination of animation/performance and gameplay that in some way tries to mirror the emotions onscreen.
Otherwise, the only times I can think of that even come *close* is when a game presents the option to do something so evil that it's utterly beyond the pale to the point that even simulating that action feels wrong. For example, at the end of KOTOR with Dark Side Revan forcing Zalbaar to kill Mission Vao. I've known a lot of players who simply couldn't pull the trigger on that one because it was so despicable. But games that can pull this off without, themselves, becoming viewed as abhorrent are very few and far between.
The main thing that sprang to mind was curiosity. Mostly in dialogue choices, if an option is clearly inappropriate for the situation or doesn’t make sense, a lot of people will have to struggle against what they think would be a good answer and what would be an interesting one. This isn’t applicable to everything like it of course, if a story has a very somber tone it’s just going to take you out of the experience and maybe roll your eyes, but with a more crazy or even neutral game these crazy options can be very tempting.
On an Extra Credits video about Journey they argue that the "refusal to the call" from the heroe's journey is manifested when you stray away from the path. I know that it is not a really narrative example, but there is an element of free expression in that choice that tempts you to explore outside the linear path to progression.
Regarding a "Karma" system: I'd argue it does have a place for a particular type of moral choice-specifically the type involving temptation. Essentially, there's two types of moral choices:
Value Choice: Where you define good based on your own values. Being "good" isn't hard, but what's difficult is finding out what "good" is.
Temptation Choice: Where good is already defined, but it's hard to be good.
LISA is the best example of this by far I've ever seen. The protagonist is a drug addict, and the player wants him to get clean, but taking drugs gives you a huge advantage in combat. There are also plenty of times when you can kill or ruin other people's lives to make the game easier.
What I hated most about LISA is that this system was handled so poorly. No matter how many sacrifices you make or drugs you don't take, there is absolutely no change in outocome. I made it to the end without limbs or Joy and the game treated me the same as if I had shot myself full of drugs and sacrificed my friends for my own benefit. I guess that was the point but intentionally making a shit system doesn't make it less of a shit system or make Lisa an exercise in anything else other than a demonstration of your own masochism.
There is a better ending for getting through the game without taking any Joy.
Both of the Nier games have a choice to get the best ending that simulates temptation and personal sacrifice as good as you can probably do in a game.
Man - I'm really glad I found your channel today. I'm working on several visual novel ideas and was specifically looking for channels that could offer me real food for thought about narrative and choices. Subbed!
In response to your prompt... (Noting that I'll be talking about Until Dawn and do my utmost best not to spoil anything for anyone who hasn't played it, but it might change your experience in subtle ways because it could change your expectations - so read at your own risk.)
I personally have found watching various people play Until Dawn immensely helpful in understanding the responses players might have to choices - even more-so than when people play actual visual novels. For one, it feels oddly rare for players of visual novels to explain WHY they chose whichever of the presented options they did - at least not in any real depth. In Until Dawn, if they are presented with a choice that gives them time to think, almost all of the players I've watched (at least seven full playthroughs) used that time to go over the information they knew and come to a conclusion about which option is best. In timed choices, where they have to respond instinctively, if they don't pause out of panic to make that measured weighing of options before proceeding, they defensively justify their reaction after the fact.
It's really fascinating what Until Dawn does to players and I think part of the reason they're so successful is by building mood ahead of time. At the beginning of the game, most players approach UD kind of like they're playing through an interactive "Final Destination" movie - expecting every little choice to trigger immediate and deadly punishment. This has the effect of successfully getting them to anticipate what's coming and keep them on edge through the preamble stage of the game (and distracted from noticing some other things) and also encourages them to make their choices carefully, so that later in the game when there are fewer choices they get to think about, they're already prepared to think in terms of survival.
Throughout the game, the narrative builds three things: a terrible tension and anticipation of when the deaths might happen, an almost fiery loathing of some or even all of the characters, and this absolute need to figure out what the heck is going on. This sets up the temptations later in the game. (Plus, there's the possibility of boobs on top of it.) I'll cover those in another paragraph you can skip if you don't want to anticipate those choices, but they won't be direct spoilers of specifics, just generalities.
[SKIPPABLE SEMI-SPOILERS] There are many temptations in the game, but the ones I specifically think of relate to the set-up I mentioned in the previous paragraph. The boobs temptation is there for trope's sake and, yes, the choices you make when playing the guy flirting with his new girlfriend do effect how much of her you get to see in a later scene. There's actually a lot of interesting responses to the "will we get to see boobs/can I get this guy in bed with his girlfriend" or even "oh my god I don't even care if these kids have sex or not, will they not shut up about how they're going to do it?" and could really be a topic on its own. Ultimately, it's not as interesting as the other temptations, though - it's just a distraction from the other tensions building. Namely - many of these characters are shitty people... or at least are on the surface. Debate is hot about how terrible they "really" are. But there are temptations to let some of them "fall behind" or that struggle about whether to protect the POV character in the scene or the person they're supposed to have a sort of relationship with. And the devs definitely play with that. Deliberately. Then there's the curiosity. The game is set up like a horror movie - so should you *really* be doing X? That is a bad idea in movies, but what if you *should* do it? Especially since it's obvious that there's new information you could learn... sometimes. [/SKIP]
I would love to see you cover Until Dawn - assuming you haven't already played it and your thoughts are mentioned in another video I haven't seen yet. (In which case, you can always give me a heads-up or I can find it on my own. xD)
In mass effect there's also the problem that your choices either are "good" or "bad" or paragon and renegade, so the choice is really unimportant when you are actually thinking about how will your action affect your score instead of how it will affect the situation.
An excellent example is Dishonored. The game gives you plenty of lethal options and not many non-lethal ones. The game is easier when played lethally and arguably more fun. But, You can still kill a few people and get the low chaos (good) ending, and the game tells you this; it just doesn't tell you how many is a few. The thought of "I know I want to, but I know I shouldn't" loomed over my head so often while playing. The game is constantly tempting you with an easy solution, but each one you take marches you one step closer to the bad ending, and you don't know which step will be the one that crosses the line.
At least that was my experience.
Darkest Dungeon does this really well, making you take care of your heroes' physical and mental health but also tempting you with more loot drops and better quest rewards the more at risk you put your heroes.
Just discovered your channel and I'm incredibly impressed. Subscribed and looking forward to seeing more, congratulations on the hard work.
One example of temptation I really like is in Mega Man Battle Network 4. In that game there are things called Dark Chips, which are extremely overpowered chips that can one shot most enemies in the game at the cost of permanently damaging your body. The cool thing is that in 4 specifically you get forced to use one to kill a boss in the story, but after that they will only show up if your in a really bad state (i.e. when you'd be most tempted to use them to not die) but a player who wants Mega Man not to be corrupted will have to soldier on through the bad situation without the super powered chips.
Wow. Great video. Really made me think about it. Looking forward to your thoughts on Dust!! Keep up the great work!!
(Gee, I hope this doesn't get lost in the discussion)
This topic has been rattling inside my head for about as long as Life Is Strange has been out, a game that somewhat triggered my interest in decision making in video games, even though I've yet to actually play it. The tendency to pit the player against rational, inconsequential, or seemingly meaningless choices has, in my opinion, made it difficult to use the medium to it's advantage.
Unlike music, visual art, books, or movies, video games stand in the unique position of generating empathetic emotion within the consumer. When you listen to sad music or see something bad happen to a character in a movie, you feel sympathy for them. You can recognize the emotions a character goes through and develop an understanding of those emotions. But, when something bad happens in a video game, you, yourself, feel sad, or angry, or frustrated.
This can be worked into the narrative of the games by trying to make the player and the player character's emotional states line up. In the context of the Bigby Wolf scenario, perhaps the choice to spare the dude could mechanically be made harder. Imagine pressing the button to spare him, but the button prompt changes and a timer starts. The game then randomly generates buttons for the player to press, while shrinking the window for the button press. If you miss-click or don't press the button inside the window, Bigby could lose control and kill the minor villain. If you succeed, then Bigby regains control and can spare him. This would mirror the struggle between Bigby's moral code and his instinct. Inside his head, he would think to spare the guy, but his instinct would flare up, and then he'd have to reason, and his instinct would flare up again. He'd have to bat back his instinct with rationale and morality, just like the player has to bat back the choice to kill the dude. (sorry, but I haven't played this game yet and I'm watching the video in poor quality because of internet issues, so I don't know the villain's name)
As far as making the game more difficult as you choose the moral high ground, from a narrative perspective, that makes sense as choosing the moral high ground often leads to your morality being questioned and tested and strained. A rather decent difficulty curve could be structured around these choices, depending on the game's core engagement, obviously. This would be a bit easier to implement in a game like Mass Effect, where there is combat and enemies and the flexibility and familiarity to craft a difficulty curve. I imagine it'd be far harder to craft a difficulty curve for a game whose core engagement is simply making choices, a la Life Is Strange (from what I've seen of that game, at least). This would create the temptation to in the player to choose an easier path by abandoning their moral high ground. Perhaps the downside of this could be more inconvenience for the actual player. Not a lack of enjoyability, but inconvenience. Something like having to trek a fairly long stretch over and over again, or having to search a cleared level because something got left behind. While these will be less of a problem for the player's character, they could become a problem for the players, themselves. Maybe if they get easier enemies and enemy placements, they end up inadvertently holding themselves back from the fun of the combat. Maybe if they choose to blow up a town, they end up being led up a long flight of stairs to press one, (not even red), button and then rush out of the room in time to catch the explosion. I imagine that little things like that could pile up.
Temptation could even be worked into the core combat loop of a game. Suppose you're low on health or ammo or mana or whatever, and you manage to kill an enemy, perhaps the player could continuously kick the corpse into the ground to regenerate those resources. Over time, the player character could come to enjoy this activity, finding satisfaction, solace, or even thrill in performing it, which could be made clear by changing the animations and voice acting to reflect those emotions. This may even end up eventually creating a dissonance with the player, causing them to stop performing the action, which could lead to the player's character realizing the weight of the disrespect they are showing. (This is actually an idea I've been thinking about implementing in my own game, although anyone is free to borrow it if you really want to. It's only an idea at this stage, after all, not a product)
Also, I'm not sure if it's irrelevant, but I'd argue that a player's natural sense of curiosity is itself a great temptation. If the game builds sufficient intrigue and impact into it's decisions, at least some players will be naturally tempted to play through the game again, but by making different choices. This can lead to multiple playthroughs of a single game, or even tempt the player into doing something they really wouldn't like to do, like do a genocide run of Undertale. By tucking away enough details and sufficient differences and acknowledging the player's choices, the game can give the player an intrinsic reason to make the other choices, their own curiosity.
I think this is demonstrated rather well in games like The Stanley Parable, and even The Walking Dead does it with messages like "Chloe will remember this".
While this approach does create an inherent distance between the player and the player character, in the end, the player character is still shaped by those decisions, reconciling the dissonance rather well.
Undertale does this well. The easiest thing to is to kill everything you come across, however it is possible to end every confrontation nonviolently. In order to do so you need to risk getting hit in order to find the right way to talk them down. You also don't gain experience if you don't kill them so your health will be lower and the game that much harder during a peaceful run.
I'd also like to point out the various difficulty curves that structure themselves around how you deal with encounters. They keep the game engaging no matter how you play.
Undertale has only one failure in its interactive temptation.
Killing in it is the most boring gameplay mechanic, so most automatically switch from killing to sparing.
man ive said this twice already but i just need to say it again. you deserve way more subs.
I think best temptation is mechanical. Like when you can choose something that worse for the story but better for the player as in gives him money/exp/items. But for this to work a game should have really good balance - if a player have enough money already it's not a tempting choice at all.
I think alot of interesting choices like that that are intertwined with the mechanics is in Banner Saga series.
A bad example is Bioshock 1-2 - in theory they should work as "it's harder to play saving the girls, but easier if you kill them" - but even if you don't kill them you eventually get presents from them that more or less makes you on the same level as a player that kills them.
an example of this is witcher 3... you could take siri to meet emir for a large sum of money but it can lead you to get the really bad ending.
I have been watching your videos for a while .So far I have loved it .It makes me wonder why you have only 13000 subs. I think you should do a literary analysis on undertale .Since the whole game changes on the players choice to either kill or forgive everything or anything in the game and characters in the game breaking the 4th wall realising that any resistance is futile since the player could just restart the game .
I think the best method games currently have for simulating temptation is to link story and gameplay elements together. One of my favorite examples of this was present in one of the MegaMan Battle Network games (MMBN4?). In it, after playing through a significant portion of the game and being familiarized with the battle system, the player and main characters are introduced to a new mechanic.
Normally in the game you attack using battle chips, which let you use special attacks in the pseudo-turn-based format. But midway through the game you're introduced to "dark chips" or something like that. They're presented as "corrupted" versions of the normal chips which are *much* more powerful but also come at a cost. Every time you use one, your health is permanently reduced by one. It's a small thing, but it adds up fast, and as far as I know there was no way to reverse the health penalty. The temptation of using the dark chips on a hard fight was ever-present, and it was a really cool way of systemizing the old "deal with the devil" trope.
(As a dumb kid, I used the shit out of those dark chips. It wasn't a very good idea.)
I believe that there was also a system where, when the game thought you were in serious trouble, they would force themselves to the top of the 'deck' before you draw your next hand of chips. You know, just to be more convenient and insidious...
I think it's a great concept, but I'm the kind of person who has difficulty playing 'provably suboptimally' even if I want to, to the point where I often skip all or most of the 'beginner' classes when starting out in class based games because I have 'linear warriors, quadratic wizards' ingrained in my mind, even though it makes learning more complicated.
Nice to see a little of Long Live The Queen in the beginning
I felt that way, at the end of The Last of Us. the scene with the doctors and Ellie..
I was so emotional that I shot all the doctors.
Hi Saw the video last night and I've been thinking on it.
First off, on the example you gave of The Wolf Among Us, the biggest conflict is the dissonance between the player and the character the player is PLAYING as. In a Film we accept that dissonance, but in a game in order to take advantages of the game mediums strength it sort of DEMANDS the player is directly addressed which means you either A. Have to make the Avatar a self-insert for the player or B. Build a relationship between the MC and the player so they are on the same page. For example get the player to sincerely hate a guy similar to Persona 4 example.
Also thought of your sexual temptation suggestion then dismissal and I can see it working maybe before the internet was usable by normal people, but I think we've been trained to not take choices like that seriously, I mean in theory when you have a good vs evil choice WITHOUT sex, something you'll end up doing a second play through just to see that outcome where you become disconnected personably from the game.
So I have TWO suggestions I don't think you pointed out in the video.
1. Is rather simple, the "temptation" can be something rather universal to players and something that flies in the face of how we as gamers have been trained to think....POWER. Everyone wants power, so the temptation could be "doing the right thing" even if it gives me a distinct mechanical advantage in game, of course some players might see it as just annoying if they play games as just an obstacle course/power fantasy or they might see it as just a "hard mode" so it would depend on the audience, design, and how well your able to get players to care about the ingame characters and situations but I can see it working in some instances.
2. The other suggestion, and this is a bit more ambitious, going back to my point of EVERYTHING is available on the internet, if you can simply replay the game or watch a playthroughs of "save person/don't save person" that take the personal choice out of it. HOWEVER what if each players experience was different, what if every time you started a game the characters and situations were different each time or if their are the same characters it develops radically different each time. Basically make character and story choice more emergent and make it like either a rogue like or what they claim to be trying to do in the Middle Earth: Shadow of War coming out. That way if a character in the story dies, or you screw up their life, you don't get to see an "alternate" reality on RUclips, or save scum and replay to see what happen, it's more like real life where you only have THAT playthrough to decide what happens.
BTW I know your not a fan of emergent narrative as the stories they tell aren't as nuanced as "classical" literature and story-telling but I personally see that form of story telling and interaction as the future of gaming and what really sets games apart from other media, and I think in the future emergent narrative will evolve to be just as if not more compelling than many traditional narrative.
So yeah those are my suggestions.
I think that the easiest way could be a mechanical temptation like in Bioshock.
Farming the Little Sisters gives you a lot of help early on but if you purify them you get a really hard time but, in exchange, you get a very satisfying ending.
Also, as you said, to make the temptation harder to notice (or ignore) the morality system must become invisible. The game knows which is the right option, but not the player and he will never know until the end of the game or until the consequences of his actions comes to punch/reward the player.
I think you're definitely right about Bioshock, but I'd even wonder if the "good ending" you mentioned is the true temptation. Maybe you're just referring to what immediately happens each time you make the choice, but I think it's the fact that the "good" choice is something most everyone will see as the correct one--except for the fact that in the short term, it's a loooooot easier mechanically to make the bad choice. So I'd say it might even be the individual morality of each choice, not just the end result after hours of gameplay, that made Bioshock nail that one pretty well.
I believe God Hand (Playstation 2) included a bit of a mechanic on the difficulty side. Not exactly temptation per se, however, the game was designed so the more efficiently you fought, the harder the fights would get. If you felt the fight was getting too tough, you could lower the difficulty by having your in-game avatar literally beg for mercy. You make the game easier at the cost of humiliating yourself to the game, creating that emotional drive to get better. Again, not exactly temptation, but it works along the same lines to use the players own human emotions to drive in-game decisions.
(Also see the chicken hat in Metal Gear Solid 5, which made the game easier at the cost of making Big Boss look like a dork.)
found your channel after finishing the original bioshock on the collection edition for the ps4 for the first time. and wanted to know more and i founs your video. i really like your channel seen a couple vids and i really love it keep up the amazing work. also could you maybe do a video on silent hill 2
You should play The Swindle. While it's not as narratively interesting, it does pit the player's temptation and need for more cash against their need to survive and maintain their bonus multiplier. It's not a moral choice, but it is a rational one, and I've died plenty of times because I wanted to snag that last moneybag and get the Ghost bonus.
The Swindle is a really well designed game and I love seeing it get recommended.
If you're taking up suggestions on future videos, might I make one?
Since it's something recent, I think Nier Automata would really get your analitycal juices flowing. I've been reading and hearing people harp on own the game discusses the "human condition" by showing it and making us take it in and process it ourselves rather than clumsily making the question and giving unsaatisfactory and/ or unsavory answers. But, more than "the human condition", I think Nier Automata is more focused on the subject of purpose and how it correlates with and develops in machines, man and androids. Just food for thought or the ramblings of an internet nerd ^^"
I'm actually currently working on a game system that attempts to address this by making it mechanically difficult for the player to select the option at all. I feel like more experimentation needs to be done with the mechanical side of decision making to really explore this design space.
The later Mass Effect interjection moments, specifically for renegade, I think were a great attempt at this. You know your time to choose if you do it is very limited, and you don't know the exact outcome. So there is an inherent temptation involved, and it leads to some believable and satisfying moments that abstract emotional outbursts.
Another one that left a big impression is when games obscure that something even is a choice. For me it was reading an article about Deus Ex Machina (spoilers for this by the way for anyone that cares) years after playing it and learning that you can actually save your brother in the beginning and have him be a part of the story. At this point in the game though you are given instructions to flee (verbally I believe) but it's designed so you can stay and fight successfully. Especially for the time, this was a really big subversion of typical game design where any instructions are not only law, but literally the only things you are capable of doing at the time. Undertale is a recent, notable example that uses this to good effect.
I think the best games for understanding how temptation works are free-to-play or often pay-to-win games. The immediate satisfaction of overcoming a boring or challenging task comes at the expense of the player's long-term financial future. It's downright Faustian.
Oh boy, I hadn't thought of that. Not quite the kind of narrative-centric thing I was thinking of, but nevertheless it's so, SO true. In a kind of meta, actually-detrimental-to-your-real-life-well-being sort of way.
It sure would be interesting to make a game that takes advantage of this thematic parallel in its narrative.
I would actually like to see moral temptation in a video game. Specifically rouge likes, they could make the story and the emergent narrative of the game more appealing. One such example could be "Death Road to Canada". In one certain scenario, one of the members of the group states that one member hasn't been pulling their own weight and needs to be kicked out of the group. Now while the game lacks on characteristic qualities for the characters that you make or are randomized for you, if the game expanded on story and character, the weight of the choices would be much greater impacting. Great video professor!
I felt like The Wolf Among Us got me into bigby's headspace enough to be able to kill Dum. I wanted him dead so he could stop doing so much damage, I felt like he was going to get away otherwise, and I wanted catharsis with the fact I hadn't been making progress against the enemy
I don't know, maybe I was able to put myself in the headspace needed during A Wolf Among Us that when that choice came around, It seemed too thematically reasonable for Bigby to take out one of the Tweedle brothers and I took it.
To me a really good use of temptain is the end of Life is Strange. Of course there's not much to say whithout gettin into spoilers, but it was really agonizing and I have to say I'm not exactly proud of my choice, but I don't regret it either.
Oh hell yes! Life is Strange resonated with me a LOT because I was in an emotional situation very much like Max. I reconnected with my childhood best friend to find her tough outside but caring inside, and we fell for each other. When I got to the end of the game I probably had that choice on pause for an hour while I thought about it. My selfish side wanted to chose the ending that would make me happy, but my realistic side knew that the other ending was the right one - plus the other ending was the one that Chloe told Max that she wanted.
In the end, I had to go with the bay and not bae ending and I sat there and cried for quite a while. I'd say that was a pretty effective use of emotional temptation to present a hard choice.
When you mentioned a choice where a bad decision may reward you with titillation My first thought was Morinth in Mass Effect 2. Choosing to have sex with the deadly succubus, its gonna kill ya, the likelihood of surviving is next to nothing, you are warned by the game several times to stop, its a really bad idea, but you've gotta choose it if you've made it that far. For one reason - It's just morbidly hilarious to do something so stupid... plus you can reload and *not* be stupid this time. It's not the promise of titillation that wins you over but morbid curiosity. (of course choosing her over her mother was a very renegade idea in the first place.
Ace Combat Zero: The Belkan War has a system kind of like this. There's no major gameplay or story changes that come from it, but it does alter some mission and cutscene dialogue, as well as changing some of the enemy ace squadrons you fight in certain missions and how your protagonist is viewed by the people he fights with and against.
In the game are targets marked in yelllow which offer points for their destruction, but aren't contributing to the battle at hand or the war at large (for example, a city full of factories - some are supporting the war effort, but some are just civilian factories that have nothing to do with the war (and still have civilian workers inside as the allied forces attack the city)).
Since the player is a mercenary, this gives an incentive to destroy them: more points means more money, and more money means better planes, pushing you towards the "Mercenary" Ace Style. However, this makes the protagonist a more merciless and morally corrupt person in the eyes of his enemies (sometimes yellow targets are damaged enemy planes that are just trying to limp home), and makes the game put you up against harder enemy ace squadrons.
Not destroying these yellow targets pushes the player's Ace Style rating towards "Knight". They earn less money and so can't afford better planes as early, but the player is seen as a much more honourable person by those around them. T
The game avoids labeling the different styles as good or bad and leaves it up to the player's own morality to make the choice between being kind and earning as much money as possible. The response from the people around the player might still make one better than the other, but that's the game's writing reacting to the player's choice, not swaying the choice itself.
I always liked the choice system in Lisa: the painful rpg. more games should have choices affect how you play rather than just what you see adding a lot of weight and potential emotion when tied to the story
I was wondering if you would mention that Persona 4 moment. I confess that got me hard, and I completely sided with Yosuke the first time just out of anger.
The other important thing to remember in that situation is that it's not clearly obviously true that he wasn't the real killer. This isn't: Oh I really shouldn't do this, but I want to. It's: This is too easy.... Wait we need to examine this further. Further even if you do start deciding to spare him it's not just a simple one and done choice. You have to start questioning the situation, offer convincing arguments, and stay calm and consistent or your efforts are for naught.
Indeed. Persona 4 is a game with a very clear theme - seeking the truth, and not settling for easy lies that you want to believe. The game's been telling you all the way through the story not to settle for the surface truth and to dig deeper to the real truth, and that scene feels like the final test of that. I feel like the answers you have to give could be a little more lenient (answer wrong once and you're out and have to sit through a very long cutscene again) but overall I like it a lot.
Nah. Talking down a vengeful comrade who has been working up to ending this for months even as he's in a state of raw grief and fury after not knowing for certain your sister is safe shouldn't be easy. That would cheapen the moment so hard.
Lisa the painful rpg. so many times are you tempted to kill your friends just to make the game easier
You can kill your friends and take drugs to make the game easier, but it doesn't change the story at all. I'd argue that this "moral choice" has as much weight as selecting a difficulty at the start of any other video game. The game treats dugless selfless runs the same as drug-filled selfish runs so there is absolutely no reason to do a "joyless" or play Lisa at all unless you are literally a masochist, in which case i'd suggest "Bad rats" because it's cheaper and has a less pretentious fanbase.
While I wouldn't be quite so hard on Lisa, it's true that the big, damning problem is that your choices are basically irrelevant, although using no Joy adds an extra scene at the end. Of course, the choices being irrelevant might be the point.
There is nothing wring with anger...or sandess, or any emotion, really. However, I do believe their a breaking point for any emotion, when its takes over and logic is no longer adhered to. This is true, I think, even with happiness.
I haven't seen (sorry if I missed it) anyone mention Dark Souls 1 on here, but I think FromSoftware did a good job with handling temptation in that game, in unusual respects. Throughout the game, you end up hearing two very different stories for how the world works, and what you as a player should do to fix the current problems with it. What made it particularly good in my eyes is that both viewpoints are equally valid, because we don't have any knowledge of any inherently correct worldview in-game. As such, when the time comes to make a decision on how you want to handle your "call" as the narrative hero, your choice might very well be influenced by the temptation to believe the opposing view because it makes sense, too. In a lot of ways, the fundamental narrative "crisis" of Dark Souls reflects worldviews in the real world, so whichever in-game viewpoint you are already more biased toward, the opposing argument will still be tempting to believe.
used well: Soul Sacrifice.
used horribly: the Witcher
Interesting to go over all the choices we had to make in games xD
though in contrast to that Wolf Among Us case point, horror games in general have that very power to leave the player in paralyzing fear that more than clouds our moral judgement while the character could be calm and oblivious. In a dark, terrifying environment where you run into a seemingly innocent girl I'm way more likely to shoot her at the first sign of anything slightly unnatural when she could just as likely be perfectly innocent .__. dont know what games made use of that, though.
Fallout 4 doesn't have the Karma system of the previous games, which to me is a massive boost in enjoyability. You aren't judged by the game for your actions, but by the NPCs. Some approve and some don't. It's up to you to care about them liking you or not. That's the way it should be - people judge you, not some mechanic popup.
I've heard that elsewhere, but I've also heard the opposite opinion. I believe it generally boiled down to two ideas.
The first was that a karma meter could affect how people reacted to you, and thus provide consequences that don't exist in Fo4. I agree with you about not endorsing a universal morality, but I agree with this point to the extent that it allows for consequences outside NPC's directly tied to the quest. That said, if we have a karma system I prefer 2 and NV's hybrid systems, where there is reputation based on groups perceptions of you as well as a scattering of other traits that represent abstract concepts you can gain or loose (like child killer in Fo2) that change how people react to your character. My ideal case would be having every choice tagged with various categories (illegal, selfless, intellectual, etc.) as well as any groups or individuals that could be expected to learn about this action (people in room, BoS members, just this one other guy, etc), and then people would react based on functions of the actions they were aware of (or falsely believed) that you had performed earlier.
The second point was that removing an explicit karma meter (and the implicit assumption that most action would affect it) allows for more ambiguous situations. Either all the outcomes are mostly good, or all are mostly bad. This is felt to lower player agency. I guess I agree in a technical sense that player's don't get as much control, but my own tastes generally fall more towards verisimilitude, where the consequences of an action often are ambiguous or only clear some time later.
Regarding difficulty-as-temptation: Personally, if I were to design a game with morality, I would make "evil" choices result in short-term rewards for long-term penalties. By contrast, making a good option forces a temporary difficulty spike in exchange for long-term rewards down the line. Neutral decisions do neither.
While not literally the same thing as morality, the mental struggle to focus on long-term rewards in lieu of smaller, short-term gains is the basic gist of how temptation works.
This does turn morality into kind of a game mechanic, but I'd argue that's not necessarily a bad thing. If a moral choice gives only a plot reward at a mechanical penalty, then really the question it's asking is "Do you care more about the gameplay or story?"
I think it depends on how the choice is presented in my opinion. In and off itself, choice doesn't hold much meaning in games because of the limitations of programming. Everything in programming, sadly, is based in concrete, precise, and accurate portrayals of situations which can and cannot happen - what triggers them, what happens in them, how do they affect the story, that sort of thing.
And it is made even worse by the fact that once you play a game from beginning to end, there really isn't much else to do other than restart and try a new choice tree. The best example I can think of is "Until Dawn" - very good concept, but again, because of the programming it is very much "restart to try new branch tree".
So that's my two cents on interactive temptation really.
I think there's at least one very good example of sexual temptation in a video game, and that would be a moment early on in Metro 2033 when you can find a prostitute offering her services in one of the starting towns. You can take her up on this, follow her to a back room and sit down in a chair where a man will suddenly come into frame, knock you out and take a decent chunk of your precious ammo. It's a moment of seemingly low stakes and high intrigue ('Do I get to see nudity in this video game about post-apocalyptic Russian hobos?') that quickly and effectively subverts those expectations by pulling what someone might feasibly pull off in this desperate situation: a sex-charged scam.
To SOME extent Witcher 3, SOMA is a very good example, Metro Last Light and 2033 also does it well IMHO. STALKER indirectly manages some such choices.
Interesting topic.
Something that came to mind that may or not be the kind of thing you're talking about here.
Spoilers for Batman: Arkham Knight:
Due to the events of the last game, Batman is struggling with the personality of the Joker inside his head, threatening to take over his body and assume his life. With all the stress of the Scarecrow making a bid to break Batman's spirit and amidst several other difficult and troublesome events over the course of the single hardest night in his crime-fighting career, near the end of the game the player is locked in a hallucinatory fight with the Joker that culminates in the player being prompted to snap Joker's neck. It's all in Bruce's mind, the Joker is actually long dead by this point, and all it takes is a simple press of the A button.
When I first got to this point, I didn't want to do it. Killing Mistah J, even if he's not real, would mean he'd won; Batman had finally broken his one rule, a cornerstone of the character, a pivotal element that defines his entire being. Doesn't matter if he technically didn't physically murder him, it meant that it had finally come to the point that he admitted he was capable and willing to go that far. It would go against everything he ever stood for.
For me, being in Batman's shoes, very admirably respecting his policy (even to his own detriment sometimes), and especially being introduced to the character through The Dark Knight, where this rule is the whole crux of the plot, I didn't want to be the one to give in. I wanted to stick to Bats' and my beliefs. I wanted to resist.
But the game doesn't let you. Every other button's function barring the pause and home buttons are disabled. Joker doesn't eventually break free, nor does Bruce ever let him go. You are locked in this state until you press A and snap his neck; the game cannot move forward until you succumb to the temptation to kill, even if you're not actually doing so.
I waited for several minutes for something else to happen; but nothing did. I tried mashing every other button, to no avail. I actually yelled that I didn't want to do this. But I had to. And when you do, the Joker hallucination gets right back up and taunts you for finally giving in, gleefully stating that he's that much closer to finally taking full control.
Now, this only meant something to me because I identified with Batman's no-Kill code and wanted to stick to it. It's what he would do, or at least aspire to. I wanted to be strong for Bruce, but because the story literally wouldn't progress otherwise, I couldn't be. For another player, it might not have been so hard, but still, that was probably the most I've ever felt from the Batman series as a whole.
Other than the pure hatred from the Cloudburst Tank battle, but that's another story.
Spoiler Alert: Tales Of Xillia 2
I think the game accomplished this really well. It gives you emotional temptation to do the worse option, namely the endings where you are given a choice: Sacrifice your daughter figure/alternate reality daughter to help save the world, or let your daughter live and screw over the world, this seems like a simple choice, but she was a constant in gameplay, she took care of your cat and the other characters had a lot of dialogue tempting you to spare her. Also, speaking of the tales games, if you have played any of them, the games would probably be great for an analysis.
my interactive temptation is right asking you to do video of p.t. and what it means
Ha! I'm not entirely confident I could unravel that one. :P
Witcher 3, Hearts of stone. Choose whether or not to interfere when G.o.D comes to claim the soul of Olgierd. Now, this choice is not much of a temptation to an ill informed player; just save the dude. But if you know the possible rewards G.o.D offers you if you stand aside, it's a little different.
I play using an alchemy build; my Geralt can chug down potions just as fast as the Dragonborn can down a hundred cheese wheels. I, frankly, will never find a use for the sword you get if you save Olgierd. You know what I could really use? An endless supply of alcohol. Because if I ever run out of potions, I'm screwed. Now, I carry enough alkahest (potion refills) with me that this will never actually happen. But G.o.D offers you a guarantee. To the informed player: stand aside, and you will never run out of potion materials. Your lifeblood.
Olgierd is a digital man. If he's gone, it won't change the world. You can ensure that you are prepared for a dire pinch if only you do nothing.
Now choose.
Hi, do You have a phd in Video Game Design? Im planning on doing mine soon. Please feedback as I think what You are doing on Your channel is lit.
Man, I wish. I got my BA in English, and I'm considering going back for postgrad work if I can find the right program (and afford it), but game design isn't really what I'd want to go for. I'd be looking for a more holistic interactive art kind of thing, but that currently exists at very few, generally very expensive schools, so we'll see how that goes and where life takes me.
Glad you like the channel!
Stupidest thing with choices is when a game push you to choose a way to play at the beginning - like Fable, KOTOR, Mass Effect, Bioshock 1-2. Since you know from the start if you will play as evil or good - each specific individual choice is not a choice at all, it might as well be auto.
And while you can fogrive a more cartoony simplistic RPG like Fable, when it's in big serious RPG like KOTOR or ME - it's just pathetic.
Isn't Dust is just a furry dick convetion?
You don't HAVE to be full paragon or renegade in Mass Effect. In fact if you only ever choose what would be seen as the paragon choice on the dialogue wheel you'll get in to trouble sometimes, and a full paragon Shepard will have a number of bad things happen in 3 that could have been avoided.
If it (Dust) was, do you think he'd be doing a literary analysis of it?
I don't want to be that guy... but I would point to the original Witcher and urge you not to underestimate the potential of sexual temptation. I personally am anything but salacious, but I think eventually all men but those with strong moral disgust eventually found themselves in Vizima's red light district (albeit with the volume turned down and the door firmly shut). Given privacy, sexual temptation is probably one of the easiest kinds for a person to give in to.
Don't push the red button
Iji can be argued to be less fun if you try go pacifist
In regards to sexual temptation would you consider Jack from mass effect 2.