Sunday, July 9, 2017

Warframe and Failed Moral Choice

Warframe is a pretty awesome game. Being a space ninja flying all over and destroying thousands of enemies feels good. And then they did something weird. They added a moral choice system. Certain story quests offered choices the player could pick from and it would align then toward the Sun (good), the Moon (evil) or stay neutral. And while the stories themselves are still pretty good, the moral choices present are a complete failure.

I think this is best represented in the Glast Gambit quest. Through the quest, you learn that a society lives among the Infection due to the protection of a child born with the infection but staying human, a hybrid. This allows them to harvest special material and continue their way of life. At the end of the quest, after you rescue the special child, a girl in this case, you care given three choices of what to do. The Sun choice is to cure the girl of the infection so she can live a full life on her own. The Moon choice is to send her home to her people. And the Neutral choice is to let her decide. Maybe you can already see a problem with this.

The game is saying that the "good" choice, the more moral choice is to cure the girl. The "evil" choice is to let her society run as it has been. So the game is telling you that it is better to send the girl away from her family and friends so that she can be cured without necessarily her consent and let the whole way of her people die away. How is that the good option? It is a totalitarian option. It says that you the Tenno know better than the girl, her parents, and her people. That it is better to let a whole way of life die out than let the girl stay infected, which by the way, she considers an honor. It asserts you as the arbiter of what is right and wrong.

And the "evil" choice has such a better ending. The child sends you a letter explicitly telling you that she knows you don't understand their ways, but they value their traditions. The evil choice validates you as respecting that other people can have conceptions about life different than your own and that maybe it's better not to force people to do things your way. The good ending is a letter from the girl only talking about her treatment, it makes no mention of her hone, most likely because she has no idea what happened there. They probably got infected and turned into monsters since their shield was taken from them.

And the worst part? The best ending is probably the Neutral ending. In it, the girl chooses to go home, but her father, as the community leader, decides she will be the last of these special infected and they will change with the times. So by making no choice, you have created the most influence on a society. And you know what you're reward is for this quest line? A warframe with the powers of the infected. It basically tells you that it's okay for you to use the infected for your gain, but not for others to.

These are usually how the moral choices come up, one is obviously what they want you to chose, but the other two often make more sense. Either you take an "aggressive" action and it seems to be to protect someone, or you find the middle road and try to minimize loss. Both of those options typically have a more realistic outcome as far as the story is concerned, while the "good" options always come across as weak or self-righteous. According to the developer's own data, more people chose the evil options than the good. If I would hazard a guess, it was because those options were often more proactive or belayed more power in the answer, not even in-game power (as of yet the moral system has no real consequence) but in the Role-Playing sense.

It seems that the moral choices paint a picture of the players that isn't fair to how a person might reasonably respond. It takes a hard line on right and wrong in such a way that you would only meet those requirements if you thought exactly as the developer. Instead of using it for nuance or for really tough choices, the questions pigeonhole the players into playing the archetype they want.  I wanted to be Moon so I chose mostly Moon answers. If I really wanted to go with my gut, I would mostly choose neutral as they seemed the most sensible. The system currently in place has really no choice at all. Once you've chosen what side you want to be on, that's the only way to stick. And that is the failing, it doesn't challenge the players to think or reason, it takes a "my way or the highway" approach that many players have rebelled against.

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