Most ridiculous moral choices in video games and other fiction

[Lord T Hawkeye]

Just something that's been on my mind.  What are some of the most absurd "moral dilemas" you've ever seen in a story?  My examples are all video games but feel free to add whatever medium you like.

1. Fable 3: Pretty much the whole plot.

The silliness starts at 2:30 or so.
[yt]lawmA7O16jE[/yt]

Game gives you a pretty good idea of Peter Molyneux's political leanings as well as his knowledge of economics (hint: none)


2. Dragon Age: The priestess vs. the merchant
Early in the game, you come to a village full of refuges who fled from the invading bad guys so a lot of people are camped out here in a village not made for so many people.  Not a nice scene overall.
You come across a priestess and a merchant arguing.  She accuses the merchant of taking advantage of the refuges by "Charging outlandish prices for things people desperately need" and she threatens to have the templars seize his inventory.  Both ask you to take sides in persuading the other.
The thing is, siding with the merchant is treated like an evil action.  So a merchant charging what he wants for HIS stuff is evil yet a priestess threatening to have his stuff stolen at the point of a sword is perfectly okay?  But hey, she has a fancy title so it's okay right!
Give me a break...


3. Fallout 3: The ending (at least the original one)
This one wins just for being a moral dilema that didn't need to be a dilema at all.
Your father's dream was to create a purifier to clean the water for America (post apocolypse setting).  At the end, you've beaten back the bad guys and have the code you need to activate the purifier.  All you have to do is enter the control room and put the code in.
Problem: The code room is flooded with radiation.  Whoever goes in there is not coming out alive.
So you have to decide, go in and sacrifice yourself to activate the purifier or make this other character do it.

The thing is...my companion at the time is a mutant who is IMMUNE to radiation!  He's perfectly capable of going in and putting in the code himself but that's not presented as an option.  You have to sacrifice yourself completely senselessly to get the good ending.  Bleh...

[ebalosus]

What about the Mass Effect 3 ending? (Or so I've heard; I haven't actually played the game yet, as I have yet to reinstall my OS)

[Anpanman]

What about the Mass Effect 3 ending? (Or so I've heard; I haven't actually played the game yet, as I have yet to reinstall my OS)

Its funny because the decisions made in that game don't really matter as much as the army you gather up. The only real way to do it is to get your 'readiness' up by playing multiplayer which is a stupid. The ending itself wasn't bad but there is barely any difference in the endings no matter how you play it.

[Lord T Hawkeye]

I never played ME3.  (I played part into the first and was already bored)  Angry Joe LAMBASTED Mass Effect 3 badly for it's ending though didn't want to spoil.  Anyone wanna tell me what was so bad about it?

[FSBlueApocalypse]

The original Bioshock's endings pretty much sum up everything that was wrong with moral choice systems (nevermind its characterization of Objectivism). Either you save all the little sisters and get an ending where everything is perfectly happy or if you "harvest" even one of them you end up being the spawn of Satan.

[Anpanman]

I never played ME3.  (I played part into the first and was already bored)  Angry Joe LAMBASTED Mass Effect 3 badly for it's ending though didn't want to spoil.  Anyone wanna tell me what was so bad about it?

I don't know why he hated it since I haven't seen the video but I disliked it because like I said, there is hardly any difference in the endings no matter how you play it and the only real way to have any choices at the end is by playing multiplayer to gain more 'readiness' in your army. Anything else like your reputation doesn't even matter unless it directly affects the amounts of forces you have.

It's a stupid gimmick to make you play multiplayer and/or to discourage pirating.

[Virgil0211]

Just something that's been on my mind.  What are some of the most absurd "moral dilemas" you've ever seen in a story?  My examples are all video games but feel free to add whatever medium you like.

1. Fable 3: Pretty much the whole plot.

The silliness starts at 2:30 or so.
[yt]lawmA7O16jE[/yt]

Game gives you a pretty good idea of Peter Molyneux's political leanings as well as his knowledge of economics (hint: none)

I have to admit, that part made it somewhat difficult to enjoy the game at first. In the end, though, I just took it as a bit of a parody of political discourse and went with 'option 3' described in the video (though I tinkered with the 360's internal calender and disconnected it from the internet instead of literally leaving it on overnight).

2. Dragon Age: The priestess vs. the merchant
Early in the game, you come to a village full of refuges who fled from the invading bad guys so a lot of people are camped out here in a village not made for so many people.  Not a nice scene overall.
You come across a priestess and a merchant arguing.  She accuses the merchant of taking advantage of the refuges by "Charging outlandish prices for things people desperately need" and she threatens to have the templars seize his inventory.  Both ask you to take sides in persuading the other.
The thing is, siding with the merchant is treated like an evil action.  So a merchant charging what he wants for HIS stuff is evil yet a priestess threatening to have his stuff stolen at the point of a sword is perfectly okay?  But hey, she has a fancy title so it's okay right!
Give me a break...

In the game's defense, Dragon Age doesn't quite have the 'morality' function that most other Bioware games have. Take the KOTOR games, for example. Both games had a 'morality' function (dark and light side of the force) and companion standing function (how much your companions like/dislike you). Mass Effect and Dragon Age seem to have each taken one or the other of these functions into their gameplay (Mass Effect taking the former, Dragon Age taking the latter). In Dragon Age, this had the effect of rendering more decisions as morally ambiguous (at least from my perspective), like the choice of who to support as the next Dwarf king. The priestess/merchant thing struck me as less a choice between good and evil and more a choice between siding with Alistair or Morrigan. It was probably the most poorly done 'moral dilemma' in the game, but I didn't quite get the whole 'siding with the merchant is evil' so much as 'the merchant just happens to be a douchebag.'

3. Fallout 3: The ending (at least the original one)
This one wins just for being a moral dilema that didn't need to be a dilema at all.
Your father's dream was to create a purifier to clean the water for America (post apocolypse setting).  At the end, you've beaten back the bad guys and have the code you need to activate the purifier.  All you have to do is enter the control room and put the code in.
Problem: The code room is flooded with radiation.  Whoever goes in there is not coming out alive.
So you have to decide, go in and sacrifice yourself to activate the purifier or make this other character do it.

The thing is...my companion at the time is a mutant who is IMMUNE to radiation!  He's perfectly capable of going in and putting in the code himself but that's not presented as an option.  You have to sacrifice yourself completely senselessly to get the good ending.  Bleh...

Yeah, that was a weird one. To be fair, though, they DID fix it in the expansion. Even gives a dialogue option where you can point out to your companion that he would be immune to the radiation, and he responds with 'Oh, yeah! I totally forgot!' or something like that.

Its funny because the decisions made in that game don't really matter as much as the army you gather up. The only real way to do it is to get your 'readiness' up by playing multiplayer which is a stupid. The ending itself wasn't bad but there is barely any difference in the endings no matter how you play it.

The decisions DO matter with how easy it is to gather that army, though. People you save (like the Zhu's Hope colonists in ME1) can join your efforts and give your 'war assets' small boosts that add up over time. They can also decide rather large ones, like whether or not you'll be able to obtain both Krogan & Salarian support [spoiler](You can only do so if Wrex is killed on Virmire in ME1. Otherwise, the attempt to get both Krogan & Salarian support will result in Wrex later withdrawing support. I'll leave it at that to avoid spoiling anything more.)[/spoiler] Personally, I liked how the decisions in ME1 & 2 added up and played out in ME3. I wasn't expecting them to have too many universe-altering qualities to them, but that they would be scaled to the interactions the characters were involved in. Individuals who ended up playing a large role in their faction's politics would have larger effects than those who weren't (Compare Wrex to Miranda, for example).

But if all else fails, there's an easy way around the war assets thingy-

Gibbed ME3 Save Editor

thread about how to use the save editor, though still somewhat sparse at this time

thread on how to use the Mass Effect 2 Gibbed Save Editor, with instructions for 360 (I know this is for ME2, but certain parts of the instructions, like how to get the saves off of the 360, should still be valid, as well as editing certain variables like hair color).

Once you've got your save on your computer (or maybe you play it on PC like I do and already have it on your computer), open it with the ME3 Gibbed Editor. Click the raw tab, go to section 3 (squad) and click the 'player' tab. Scroll down to 'GAWAssets' in the second window and click on it. A button with an ellipses should appear next to the word (collection). Click on this and you should see a dialogue box with two windows, the left one with a list of random numbers. The list is all of your GAW Assets by their ID #. Click one, and its ID & Strength will show in the right window, and be editable. Change the numbers however you like (I changed #187, the Normandy SR-2, to be 11,500 because I'm just that badass. :-P).

I never played ME3.  (I played part into the first and was already bored)  Angry Joe LAMBASTED Mass Effect 3 badly for it's ending though didn't want to spoil.  Anyone wanna tell me what was so bad about it?

The problem with the 'ending', in my opinion, was that it didn't explain enough or give enough of an epilogue. You ever see a movie where the plot and story ideas had the potential to be really good if given more time to flesh out, but they just didn't have the time? That's a bit what it felt like. There were two elements to the ending that needed to be fleshed out more- The backstory/origin of the Reapers (though that could either have been left intentionally ambiguous or be the subject of a later game) and the aftermath of the battle. The former's not too important, but the latter is what really falls a bit short and left many people disappointed. It's not an inherent structural flaw of the ending, but more one of presentation. I disagree with some who rail against it hard, as if it ruins all other aspects of the story, but I won't pretend that I thought it was perfect. It could easily be fixed with some DLC in the future (and without even resorting to a retcon), and that seems to be the likely course of action for Bioware, so I'm going to reserve final judgement until I see what they come out with next.

If you're not that big a fan of ME1, give ME2 a short try and see if you like it. I think the writing team definitely got more skilled as time went on.

[Ibrahim90]

well, here's a stupid moral choice (at least according to my brother): it is from Assassin's creed II: brotherhood.

basically, at the end of that game, the player's character, Desmond Miles, has grabbed the apple of Eden. it in turn grabs control of him, and Juno basically tells him that he must finish his quest. herein is the retarded choice Juno gave Desmond:

-should Desmond Stab Lucy Stillman to death, and then fall into a coma?
-should Desmond Stab Lucy Stillman to death, and then fall into a coma?

i.e. the choice you have is that you have absolutely no choice.

based on this, I personally conclude the following:

It's very clear that Juno and the other beings who came before were stupid, and hence deserving of extinction: couldn't they have found a slightly less traumatic way of KO'ing Desmond? at the most, have him think he has stabbed Lucy (which my brother tells me is possible with the Apple), then have it turn out that she is fine (or at least, alive)? This is especially after the whole buildup to what amounts to a budding romance between him and Lucy.

srsly, what a f****** c***block!!

[Gumba Masta]

I never played ME3.  (I played part into the first and was already bored)  Angry Joe LAMBASTED Mass Effect 3 badly for it's ending though didn't want to spoil.  Anyone wanna tell me what was so bad about it?

It ended.
Seriously, if you want to talk about ME, let's talk about ME2 and the fate of the Geth Heretics. Which you get to decide and boils down to either kill them outright or brainwash them. Now kids, can you tell me which one of these options will be counted as the "good" one?
To be fair it's also the decision that will come back and bite you in the balls the most in ME3.