What If I Don't Want to Be an Authoritarian or a Hippy? | Extra Punctuation

[@Xerberos542]

A good example of a proper morality system that could be expanded upon is Papers, Please, where the actions you take could be argued are either "Selfless", risky acts that help others but put you in harm's way; or "Selfish", keeping your head down and enforcing the rules in order to ensure the safety of yourself and your loved ones. It's important to note, though, that this system works because of the immense power gap between the player character and the system that enforces the rules. If this is to work correctly, the stakes have to be clear and defined, and the consequences have to have their own weight.

[@genericname2747]

Also, doing one good deed doesn't put you on a specific path, neither does doing one selfish deed. The things that change the ending you get are extreme actions, like shooting a man, or joining a rebellion.

[@misirtere9836]

It's an excellently crafted game because the most lucrative choice to make, the one that gives you the most money to afford better living quarters and bigger expenses, requires you to deny people at the border without even explaining why. it's faster, you can process more people and get more money, the stuff you need to keep your family warm and fed. Not to mention the numerous situations (many of which being the sources of the game's medals) where you can deliberately let someone through who needs it but has the wrong paperwork, but it'll come at the cost of eating citations, which aren't worth anything, and actively cause you to lose money if you have too many in one day. Is it worth the potential risk to your family's security to help a stranger get the medical treatment she needs? Is it worth the steep financial cost to adopt your niece and assure her safety? All questions that Papers, Please asks you, and the game will continue regardless of your answer. And none of that even has anything to do with the rebellion you can help stoke, which is a risk in its own right.

[@owenduffy5745]

LISA The Painful RPG also does a very good job of this where the morally good decisions usually result in you having to sacrifice something important like one of your arms (which makes your character permanently significantly weaker) or all of your items

[@ProxyDoug]

In an open world setting this could work if your choices ranged from becoming more powerful or pacifying the environment. By becoming more powerful, you gain the ability to dispatch enemies easier and that would make the NPCs dependent on your, maybe even hailing you as a hero, and pacifying the environment would mean to share the power with the people and making sure they have the capacity to ward off enemies from the game world, which would result in a game with less action. dichotomy

[@VonOzbourne]

@Multi Hardcore That's the thing that probably best exemplifies why Papers Please is such a great narrative. And probably what I wish most of an open world style game. Aside from the overly simplistic binary choice structure, the other failing of the "power fantasy" requirement is that every game starts you off as Survival-Mode wimp and end as Ubermensch saviour. Be nice if a AAA publisher would allow a dev to explore a game where the faction choice is more of a triangle or square [multiple allies and/or enemies depending on alignment - Like say a WWII game where you play as the Polish RAF squadron and you start off fighting the Nazis, but then after the Soviets help you fight them off, the Brits leave and you suddenly have a new enemy...] And instead of having to always having to ramp up to god-mode, maybe just have your flawed human acquire better and more plentiful [but never infinite] resources, but you can't get too cocky, because you could still be taken out by a lowly private with a well placed grenade.

[@danilooliveira6580]

I think the problem with "good vs evil" choices is that most writers kinda miss the point of "evil", almost no one is a mustache twirling villain because they like it (except of course if simply are a sadist, but that is another discussion), they are evil because being evil is easier, better, or the most efficient route to their objective. and people are not good because that is the better choice, people are good because they have a moral compass and not being good would make them feel awful. but in games we always see being good as the obvious option, its easier, more rewarding and makes more sense narratively, we only play evil when we want to thrive in sadism a little bit. but at the moment where being evil starts to become easier and more rewarding, people will start choosing evil. Dark souls is actually a good example, people just go NPC killing spree because they want the reward, they don't care about the narrative ramifications and morality of their choices, because being evil is fun, rewarding and has almost no consequence. and before anyone mentions it, I'm defining "good" and "evil" based on contemporary western morals, because if we get into moral relativism I'll be here writing for days.

[@checker297]

imo I feel way more attached to my xcom2 customised soldiers during an ironman run. There is no "difference" between the soldiers of the same rank/stats etc... but each soldier has their story of where they saved the day or died because of your poor planning.

[@Nyghtking]

Pretty much, evil tends to fall into the selfish category while good tends to fall into the selfless category. An example would be: There's unlimited power, you have two options, you can give it to the people, strengthening them and helping them while maybe helping yourself a little, or you can give it to yourself, helping you massively and no one else. If you give it to the people that can have it's own reward but it won't necessarily help you do what you're wanting to do, while giving it to yourself will indeed massively help you do what you want to do but won't help anyone else and may actively harm others. Evil in this case is the easier one as the strength it gives you will help you to progress much faster, while good may have less of an impact but may make your journey a little easier.

[@TheDoctorOfThrills]

Explained it perfectly. In the real world, making the right decision is always harder than making the wrong one

[@MechWomanWarrior15]

@@TheDoctorOfThrills Agreed. I like to say "the right thing is never the easiest thing to do." I wish more people would realize this.

[@cl114c0777498d]

in Black & White, you can gain territory by either slowly spending resources and effort convincing a neighbouring village to join your side... or alternatively simply hurl fireballs at that village till everyone is dead, then send one lone representative over to move in, at which point the 'village' (of one person) belongs to you, along with all its territory. repeat until the map is yours.

[@squidrobotgamesdesign7170]

FOR REAL. As a games writer, I'm 100% positive that other writers have ambitions of broader storytelling than Fascists vs. Nutters, but some slithering tentacle of committee consensus hacks these ideas away at the knees, terrified that players might have to engage with their own complex opinions longer than the 5 nanoseconds approved by the Great Marketing Department in the Sky.

[@pirig-gal]

FvN narrative is easy to boil down political ideology to. You may have complex positions on different matters, but most people will boil it down to Left/Right dichotomy, no matter how irrelevant it may be. I'd like factions outside this simple split. Like a guild, that only cares for it's interest, or a noble house, or a nation. Make the factions more interesting than just being "we're Left!" or "we're Right".

[@gavind351]

@@pirig-gal so basically morrowind's factions?

[@pirig-gal]

@@gavind351 ye

[@gavind351]

@@pirig-gal I completely agree. Shame it probably won't be in tes6

[@squidrobotgamesdesign7170]

@@pirig-gal New Vegas is another good example. Its not so simple as placing every faction on a spectrum. Actual ideaologies really do contain a grab bag of various positions on multiple issues. Like horsehoe theory, but with multiple, intersecting horseshoes. Im not saying its easy necessarily, but many writers are capable and really want to write stories with a depth of idealogical expressions. Every time they do, those games tend to be highly regarded. But big companies are horribly risk adverse when it comes to potentially alienating a consumer base. AAA publishing is fully aware that hardline stances against Nazis are not as cut and dry as they ought to be anymore, as their sympathizers are no longer just violent skinheads but also middle class suburbanites looking to cast blame, and thus alienating those people could lead to the latest Call of Duty selling poorly. But look at Disco Elysium, Papers Please, Undertale, New Vegas, and even the Mass Effect games to an extent (despite the clunky paragon/renegade stuff). Good writing doesnt have to fall back on FvN in an effort to be accessible.

[@benjaf1058]

Honestly, Dishonoured made me want to be villainous. Even if I was trying to save the little Princess, it felt good to become a spirit of revenge against the city that betrayed me. Especially when you got the powers that let you control rats. Good shit

[@formorian5]

Necroposting here, but Dishonored is the only game I've ever played that really did the morality system right. As Yahtzee himself has said, the evil choice is the easier but riskier option that would appeal to someone weak willed. My firsy playthrough, I was achievement hunting and wanted to get low chaos, clean hands, ghostlike, etc. So no kills, no alerts, the whole game. It kind of sucked, but I did it. Next playthrough I went full murdering psycho, killing everyone in my way and even some that weren't in my way. It was more fun, easier, and I actually got to use all these weapons they gave me! Then I got towards the end and saw all the rats and sick people and the way the final level changed, and it hit me. Being good is hard, but it's better in the long run. Being evil is tempting, but you'll pay for it eventually. Dishonored brings that across in both story and gameplay.

[@themaninthechair4338]

Fallout: NV was actually really close to breaking this with having 3 factions, and the ultra authoritarian one was the nutters for the most part. If they had given the Legion a bit more depth, didn't make them so evil, then they would have been a lot more interesting. But even then, the decision between NCR, House or yourself is still a great choice to consider when you look at everything. Wish there was more of this. Edit: to everyone saying 'There's 4 factions', I don't really consider Yes Man a faction, but an ending. NCR, House and Legion are all 'ending factions'

[@Nanook128]

It's gonna blow your mind when you realize all three factions in NV are authoritarian.

[@piemaster1288]

Agreed. Having three factions and the option to just take over by yourself was a lot of fun and led to a lot of different endings for all the minor groups throughout the wasteland. I do wish more games had the 'you're all idiots, I'm doing this myself' option. I know some people would have loved that in one of the Dragon Age games (can't remember which. Maybe Inquisition?).

[@themaninthechair4338]

@@Nanook128 fair, I would have loved to side with the Followers of the apocalypse for example, but as Yatzhee said, both House and NCR are a lot more middle ground than the Legion.

[@ogrejd]

Four factions, actually: 1) Expanding US-style republic (New California Republic) 2) Slaver empire (Caesar's Legion) 3) Capitalist Libertarian Techno-Despot (Mr. House) 4) Chaos (you)

[@Nanook128]

@@themaninthechair4338 I disagree with your idea that they are radically less worse. The NCR is an imperialist oligarchy. It makes token effects to seem democratic, but all power is in the hands of a few capitalists. And Mr House is a libertarian, which I hope would be enough said.

[@TomnPeng]

I feel like one of the fundamental issues with factions in video games is that they tend to focus on ideology as the defining differences between one faction or another. The thing is, yes, ideology is important, but at the end of the day for the average person on the street the reason why they might side with one faction or another, especially grand political factions defining the fate of the country/world, is "What exactly can this faction do for me - not merely what they promise, but what they can and have delivered?" When you get right down to it, the popular factions of the world tend to want and promise the same basic things - prosperity, justice, security. The key differences are in how they aim to achieve that goal, and who they tend to prioritize in offering benefits to. Critically, one of the important factors in who you back then is "Who can more credibly back up their promises?" For instance very few people these days think autocratic monarchy is a solution for anything, largely because it's been proven not to really work very well at all - but if the current head of the House of Hapsburg could credibly demonstrate that he and his heirs actually do have the blessing of divine powers and that any country they rule over will immediately magically increase their GDP ten-fold, there's a decent chance you might very well see a resurgence of the Holy Roman Empire. This is also part of the on-going political battle throughout various countries over time, as one party or another sweeps into power because its opponents have been discredited in their ability to fix problems, only for the faction in power to be discredited in turn while their opponents sharpen their rhetoric and methods. So fundamentally, you tend to back factions that can credibly promise benefits for its constituents, while opposing those that are actively hostile to your interests. But video games don't usually do that, as a rule - sure, sometimes backing a faction grants this or that gameplay reward, but for most people that's kinda incidental for backing a faction if you're in any way invested in the story (and you are invested if you think fascists vs nutters is a problem in gaming.) The focus on factions tends to revolve around a generally somewhat nebulous collection of ideological beliefs, and the factions are usually exactly as effective and credible as you, the player, allow them to be - the authoritarian law and order types can only actually impose said order if the player decides to allow them to do so, otherwise their promise of security is regularly perforated by the player diving in with a grappling hook and a million bullets for everyone, while the promise of freedom for the nutters doesn't actually go anywhere if the player doesn't evangelize for them with a machine gun in both hands. The only promise to credibility a given faction can have is whether or not they're capable of delivering a happy ending that the player is satisfied with when the credits roll and the player relinquishes control, but again one of the key issues with factions in real life is that this is an on-going and in some ways unanswerable question as any given faction can find a million reasons why they did well, and come up with a million excuses why any failures aren't their fault or aren't that bad. But in the context of a video game story, a faction can succeed or fail in their goals exactly as much as the writers decide they will, and frequently writers tend to bring their own biases in and have much more clear-cut cause and effect outcomes regarding any given political faction in power. As such, the credibility of any given faction relies entirely on how much the players can divine the intentions of the writers, or in how willing they are to look up spoilers. So I guess what I'm saying is that one reason why we keep coming back to authoritarians and hippies is because they're ultimately detached from the actual reasons people tend to back factions in real life, and having nothing else to latch onto in order to engage with a player they grab at broad ideological streaks instead and in the context of Western-influenced culture that tends to come down to "individual freedom vs collective security." If you want more complex and nuanced factions, you need the factions to actually tie into the game world more, to be capable of independent action without player input, to be able to both fail and succeed at their goals independently of the player driving everything they do. You need too the world to actually be comprised of people reacting to those factions, to support them or oppose them as befits their interests, with the factions responding appropriately - perhaps even evolving. You need the nitty-gritty of why one small town might back this or that faction. You need, in short, politics instead of ideology - people instead of beliefs.

[@tximistarissole]

You should look at SMAC

[@Creedonator]

This was unreasonably well thought out for a youtube comment, thanks for sharing.

[@persephoneunderground845]

I think you're right there- you get a little of this with the "trains running on time" type of defenses of more authoritarian or even openly evil groups in games, but they rarely address whether another group could do it just as well with less extremism. Dragon Age: Origins in the Dwarf bit did a really good job of discussing ideology and actual policy, and even threw in player character biases. And the one supported by the merchants and everyday people more, who comes across personally pretty badly, does end up with a better epilogue outcome. So very on point here. I think a story has to be ok being more complicated to write this convincingly, because it's the details of the world that flesh out the full politics. Skyrim did a good job of making two flawed factions with an external third faction complicating the issue by going ahead and having it be about messy politics. If no one can even agree what the argument is about, then it's a complex argument, to loosely quote a theater professor.

[@MagicCardboardBox]

Sure, except people absolutely side because of ideology. Party loyalty ain't exactly rare. The people who would change sides depending on presented evidence might be the majority, although generally come down to apathy, but ideological bullshit is a thousand times louder. And would be and has been constantly touted for any given faction in times of war, propaganda much? Vote for me because the other guy sucks is CONSTANT. It is not a small or quiet influence on things. Nobody cares which sports team is numerically the best, they just support the one they grew up with. It just actually isn't that complicated... which is sad... which is why apathy... etc.

[@Mamonar]

While I am not sure if Skeletor is the best example of good, I applaud to your choise of Mother Theresa as an example of pure evil.

[@itsgonnabeanaurfromme]

Anyone who knows how she really was would agree.

[@sb99.1]

This comment should be above the rest.

[@darktownmax1654]

Here here!!

[@__-br9ml]

Reddit Moment

[@serpentinious7745]

@@itsgonnabeanaurfromme The "hospital" she founded was literally a straight up death camp. Because she believed suffering brought the poor closer to God. Didn't stop her from getting actual treatment for herself when she needed it though. Only an evil person could look that much suffering in the eye and call it "good", not "regrettable", not "necessary", "good".

[@jacobtrowbridge7223]

If we are going to stick with the Fascists-Nutters dichotomy, a way around it might be to add factionalism into the mix. Sure, the two most significant groups in this game can be considered authoritarian vs libertarian, but they needn’t all be doing it for the same reason, the same ideology, or same end goal. Most real-life movements like this are rarely homogenous, and exploring that could lead to some interesting reflections on the whole scale. The Fascists can be a tightly-held hierarchy, held up by meritocracy, but whether the average soldier supports that system and feels safer for it or simply wants his next meal can come down to the individual. The higher echelons of the Fascist hierarchy can be a competing viper pit as the various military branches, functions of government and great offices of state all vie for power or recognition. Maybe you could have something which mimics the divide between the SS and the Wehrmacht, the former a zealous elitist group made to purge inferiors, and the other a more territorial-oriented force looking to keep hold of its’ old traditional power. And likewise, factionalism within the Nutters comes with nearly no effort. Every single person could have different motives for joining, from practical to geographic to ideological. Have one group which despises the Fascists’ ironclad order, another which hates its’ bigotry or zealotry, another which fights for democracy and another for a different kind of dictatorship. Independence fighters could band together with religious extremists from the groups that the Fascists intend to eradicate, acknowledging that they would be hated enemies in almost any other circumstance. You could even translate this to a gameplay mechanic: your chosen faction is advanced not only with expansion and capture of territory, but with an internal ‘Faction Cohesion’ indicator. It’s all well and good capturing a city, but if nobody can agree which faction then gets to administer it, you might soon lose some allies or even cause an internal power struggle within the faction itself. You could intentionally take control of one of these smaller internal factions, then splinter it off to carve out a chunk of the world for yourself. The options exist, while still adhering to the Fascists-Nutters dichotomy.

[@ThePa1riot]

Surprisingly, a game that pulled something like this off was an MMORPG. Specifically City of Heroes’ Going Rogue expansion. In the classic Earth-2 “every normal good guy is a bad guy and vice versa” dimension of Preatoria, the player characters can choose to side with the Loyalists or the Resistance but you had motivations for both sides. Responsibility Loyalists are those who side with the tyrant Emperor Cole but they do so while acting selflessly and don’t abuse their positions to get away with murder or otherwise harm the people they’ve sworn to protect. Power Loyalists are exactly what you’d expect from the super powered enforcers of a totalitarian regime. Nothing can touch them so they take what they want from whoever they want. Warden Resistance members are of the Gandhi or MLKJR school of fighting tyranny. They will still fight but they try to minimize collateral damage and try to fight the tyranny of Cole through peaceably undermining him and his regime. Crusader Resistance are the grab bag of extremists ranging from, “no cost of life or freedom is too great to oppose the fascists!” Or, “Liberty? I just want to blow things up and/or stab people!” Not super complex either but it does paint a much broader picture of how internal factionalism can make things more interesting to play as one side and oppose another.

[@nathanjereb9944]

From what I can gather from what you said, we could still have the "fascists vs nutters" desion but we devide the 2 groups into multiple groups; each with diffrent ideologys that somwhat still fits into the group they divided from. Then see how they interact twoards one another, and from our choices as a charater. Thats a really good idea!

[@omargoodman2999]

I've always had sort of an issue with "even numbers" factions. It always seems to boil down to two diametrically opposed choices, with one being *clearly* superior. I prefer either 3, 5, or (for the ambitious types), 7 factions. Nice prime numbers. And easy to set up alliances and oppositions. Consider Magic the Gathering colors for a moment. White is about purity and benevolence, but also authoritarianism and fanaticism. Blue is intellectualism and passivity, but also dishonesty and exploitation. Black is about utilitarianism and individuality, but also sacrifice and selfishness. Red is action and freedom, but also brutality and indulgence. And Green is about growth and survival, but also decline and savagery. Each can relate to one of the others in *some* way, and also oppose them. Black and Green can both represent rot and decay and death, but Green is the "natural" sort of death that follows an established cycle while Black is forced death and also suspension of the natural cycle; keeping things alive when they should die and causing death when it shouldn't happen. White opposes Black's take on death because it's impure and disorderly while Green opposes it because it's unnatural. But White and Green are better able to get along; Green is a bit... forward and impulsive at times, but it values the "proper order" of things. And White is opposed to wanton or selfish destruction, even if they may go too far in "justifying" their destructive actions and protecting the "weak" (survival of the fittest and all that). And you may ally with a color who *also* allies with one you don't really get along with. Three is trickier because it's a trifecta, but there are ways to do it. "Authoritarian Lite" is a handy one, those who are really more bent towards the "keeping order" aspect and not so much into the "corrupting power" which makes them just "evil by another name". Instead of Libertarians, who are just Republicans who can't succeed at business or politics, maybe "Classic Democracy" like they had in Classical Greece; you don't get elected, you get *selected* by lottery to govern for a term. Maybe there's also a Benevolant Monarchy in play as the 3rd faction; "rule by right" and "noblesse oblige" and all that and maybe fine _for now_ because the sitting king is an honestly good guy, but there's always corruption; if not in the leader, in the keys to power they rely on. No man rules forever, after all, and who's to say 3-4 generations down the line, the Noble King may have some "less than noble" decendents.

[@Ludician]

I'd like to highlight Disco Elysium here: in the game you have the option of defining yourself based on your allegiance to one of a few different ideologies/world factions, each with a very legitimate interest in shaking up the status quo in Revachol. However, as sensible as any particular path appears on the outset, as you go deeper the game makes a point of showing that all ideologies fall apart and are internally incoherent when put into practice. Ultimately you have to decide whether you want to ignore a factions' glaringly self-defeating leaps in logic and internalize their beliefs to reinvent yourself in a new evangelical identity - finding a purpose and peace in life with a new band of brothers, or confront the reality of your own toxic depression and existential ennui without being able to escape into the tribalism of self-assured political fantasy.

[@Andri474]

Mental gymnastics is a highly popular sport from one side of the Pale to the other. I think it's better if I just focus on detective work and let the insane radicals eat each other.

[@milangiroux]

Glory to Kraz Mazov infra materialism is real.. unprecedent levels of bean growth

[@InverseAgonist]

You can side with the moralintern (neoliberalism), which very much *is* the status quo in Revachol immediately prior to the strike. They've also, y'know, Harry's employer

[@EmperorSigismund]

Everyone knows that the best faction is the one where you spazz out to experimental music out in an abandoned church at the end of the world. I mean that without a shred of irony. To me that was a story that transcended the norms of game writing and will forever be in my history books.

[@Kevin-cf9nl]

> as you go deeper the game makes a point of showing that all ideologies fall apart and are internally incoherent when put into practice. It doesn't quite do this. It just makes it obvious that Harry, specifically, is incapable of internal coherence when putting ideology into practice because every one of them is utterly corrupted by his personal trauma and resulting worldview rendering who he is as a person. It's left as an exercise to the reader whether that's true of everyone else or not.

[@Quintuplin12]

I agree with your problem statement, but disagree with the "moderate faction" solution. The point of being made to choose is that you have to decide what lesser evil is worth your greater good. The choices may not be equally balanced, but there must be a tradeoff, because that's where a decision is made. If you can simply say "all of the good things, and none of the bad ones", that's great for a heroic victory (and secret endings, or a reversion to the "pick good or pick bad" dichotomy), but otherwise it ends up undoing the existence of a choice at all. But that's the thing. People want to think they're making choices and choosing their own paths... but they actually (generally) want to simply do some fusion of "the right thing" mixed with "the optimal thing", resulting in "the good ending". If choices clearly indicate which one will reach such an outcome, players will always pick it. If choices determine that outcome, but are hidden, then players will get angry and refer to wiki guides. And if the choices don't matter, then they'll be annoyed, because they feel like it was a waste of a decision. The only way most games attempt to make the process interesting is to either take the "everyone was a little bit right and we won't tell you who was right-est" of New Vegas, to take the exceedingly rare Mass Effect "you have enough paragon points, so you can *actually* make the decision you want to in this one dialogue"; or to take the Dark Souls replay-bait of "you have to do some pretty esoteric things to even be allowed to choose, so best look it up for playthrough 2". But the best answer is also the least feasible one; multiple good endings with large difference between them. Decisions that fork the path without rejoining. Real choice. And that's basically only done in TTRPGs like DnD, or text-based RPGs in-the-style-of. Because, well... shit's expensive.

[@davidmhh9977]

All of the issues Yahtzee pointed are, like you mentioned, due in part to technical and story limitations of games, but I still think the mechanic could be fleshed out a lot more than it has. As you mentioned, Mass Effect and Fallout New Vegas handled this dichotomy really well 10 years ago, so it's not like it can't be done. Also, in terms of cost, games can have the production cost of an entire nations GDP. Why not divert a bit more resources into fleshing out the factions a little bit more? As for the what the factions could be like, given all of the political philosophies that exist, it wouldn't be that hard to break from the Nutter vs Fascists dichotomy. If the main difference is authoritarian vs libertarian, one is going to automatically seem like the "evil" choice to most people, since very few people identify as authoritarian, so why not find a new issue to divide the factions, like industrialism vs environmentalism, protectionism vs. globalism, collectivism vs. individualism? Even fleshing out the factions could go a long way. Any political organization is going to have in fighting, so why not make that a mechanic? A faction could authoritarian to start, but be pushed more towards the middle if the right actions are taken. Also, it would be nice to consequence of each system. A libertarian faction could lead to a power vacuum and initially make things harder for the average person due to the loss of security.

[@malcomchase9777]

You could make both be "good endings", just different. Think of it like dating sims. The choice is for the kind of reward, but all paths lead to a reward. After all, you are supposed to be beating a challenge to get that ending, aren't you? Give backstory, interactions, whatever to the player.

[@minor_edit]

He wasn't pointing to the central option as a solution. It's a problem of trying to make a third faction.

[@DoveJS]

@@malcomchase9777 That's a good point. People just want multiple attractive goals to experience, whether it's dating a love interest or a group to be a part of. If it's fundamentally clear that you don't want either or only one choice is alluring but generic (whether it's evil or good), it's less fulfilling when you reach the end because you don't feel as invested in any option.

[@mattwo7]

What about Shadow the Hedgehog? The branching morality system gives you like ten different endings, which is ruined by there being another, eleventh ending, which is meant to be the true ending. The ten non-true endings though seem to be more nuanced though.

[@MrGemHunter]

One thing I liked with Fallout NV's faction system is- although every faction did fall along the line of fascists vs nutters in some way, there was nuance added by both the factions roll in the ongoing story, the bigger political ideas the game is discussing, and what they promise for the future vs what they are now. The Legion is obviously on the fascist side of things, but the NCR while technically liberal is made less so by their position in the story. They're both critiques of imperialism and consequently authoritarian in some capacity, and both make the promise to the player that they will, eventually, get better. Meanwhile Mr. House is equally mixed, Sure he's a very literal libertarian but his view of vegas as "his" makes him fascist in his own right. The three main factions are all some level of authoritarian entirely because the idea of being in charge makes them authoritarian, and as much as they talk it up all three of them are enforcing their will's over people who would really prefer to be left alone. Which leaves Yes Man to take up the entire Nutter position, the none of the above option, rejecting all forging take over but also preventing unity and, fundamentally kicking the can down the road for the next generation to deal with when someone else tries to take over.

[@friedipar]

"I prefer the term ´autocrat`"

[@smegleymunroe863]

I’d hardly call House a fascist. He is absolutely totalitarian, but he isn’t interested in cleansing the race or whatever.

[@danwhite4022]

I was literally going to go into the comments to say exactly this! It speaks volumes of New Vegas that to this day there are spirited debates as to which ending (usually between Wild Card vs NCR, at least in my circle) is the game's "good ending" because it really does come down to the player's individual beliefs.

[@ghastlyghandi4301]

Fallout new Vegas is the definition game of a ‘obviously evil faction vs. Obviously good faction’ dichotomy, sure it has an extra ending where you can basically be two kinds of fence sitter, but the factions in that gam are nowhere near as complicated as you seem to think it is.

[@godqueensadie]

Shame Anarchy always creates a power vacuum that results in an authoritarian dictatorship every time. So your choice is really not a "if authoritarian" but "when authoritarian"

[@BilingualHobo]

I'd love to see a game that basically just tells the player to save as many people as possible and then presents you with moral quandary about how best to do that. Basically the "Missle Command" dilemma, save your forces or the city. If all the cities die what was the point, if all the missles die how will you defend.

[@MattWensley1992]

Frostpunk would be your best bet, I've seen another comment mentioning it here. Like Yahtzee said about (I think) Paper's Please, it's a game where it's really difficult to be a good person, when child labour and forced overtime can be the difference between a living but unhappy society, or deaths in your settlement.

[@TheLoneTerran]

Reminds me of when we thought Mass Effect choices were going to matter. Do you save the Citadel Council to foster cooperation with the allied species or do you save your big military fleet from harm so your forces are beefier when the big bads arrive but it paints you as opportunistic power grabber.

[@1337m4n]

I'd argue the game DEFCON does that pretty well. "Officially" your goal is to kill more of your enemy's population than they killed of yours, but on an emotional level you're not going to feel like much of a winner if 12 of your people are left alive compared to 3 of your enemy's. It really sells just how potentially horrific a nuclear war could be. You feel like you ought to defeat your opponent by shooting down all of their missiles and then destroying all their silos and submarines without targeting any of their cities, and while this is *technically* doable it is really, really, REALLY hard to pull off, even against the easiest difficulty AIs. Contemporary Western morals tell us that war should just be between soldiers and that civilians should never be targeted. But the realpolitik of war is that civilians mine ore, civilians refine ore into steel, civilians shape steel into guns, and civilians deliver guns to military bases. When it's just a proxy war, sure, play nice and follow the "rules of war", but when you're desperate and your country's very existence is at stake, why *shouldn't* you do whatever it takes?

[@sunaseni]

Literally the only game I've played that did the conflicting factions story correctly is Fallout: New Vegas. Both NCR and Legion are presented with pros and cons, and both are written with a coherent worldview. The Legion's still obviously evil and morally wrong, but they had cogent criticisms about NCR's leadership failures and their catering to the rich citizens' interests over the poor. And you can even go with a Libertarian option or fully independent depending on how YOU personally feel about the situation. The writing was way more substantial than almost anything other AAA studios are able to create within that genre. So many writers imitate the aesthetics of the conflicting factions but don't actually have any themes to explore that the factions should embody. You see this similar thing in the YA Dystopia genre of fiction, where the aesthetics of the dystopia and the evil government mattered more than the themes of what the government represents. So many imitators see success and copy the aesthetics without understanding what the successful stories were trying to say.

[@DemonicEngineer]

That's because they are worried writing anything with real philosophy will make the gamers cry out "They put politics in my game!" And run screaming.

[@bobsprock]

Please give Not For Broadcast a try - though he doesn't mention it, it does at least have a solid case for either side of a truly morally grey divide. The authoritarians are quite leftist and genuinely want to and do make lives better for people, with the restriction of freedoms being a result of that.

[@the-engneer]

That is why Fallout 4 was so disappointing to me. I was expecting a New Vegas sequel, but instead got another crafting game

[@calthepal312]

The legion is neither evil nor wrong, actually talk to Caesar for once, and you might find that not only is he the correct choice, he’s the only real choice.

[@the-engneer]

@@calthepal312 That's somewhat debatable seeing as how he had people crucified.

[@harrymitchell3885]

SMT is definitely notable in this regard, as despite having a facists vs nutters choice, you could always stay neutral and from game to game, this decision changes. Smt 1 encourages neutrality and smt 3 had its own unique ending outside this spectrum

[@imranicanovic1154]

Honestly while SMT 3 has it's obvious Fascists and Nutters type deal it's also more nuanced since in that game it's less "Stick with a faction" and more "Stick with someone whose ideology speaks to you." Ya wanna go with Hikawa who promises a world of peace and tranquility? Or maybe you'll go with Chiaki, who is the opposite in making a world of full conflict and the strong eat the weak. And so on and so forth. While the next game in the series just gets a very simple 3 side conflict, that is still really well written. And you do get the "White" ending but like, that ending is dumb.

[@grand_tourist46]

@@imranicanovic1154 While they do dress it up in different ways from game to game, the central, underlying theme, I find, is that the Order v Chaos conflict is, in and of itself, a red herring. It's not about picking a side, but finding a middle ground between the two extremes, because such a state is where humanity prospers the most. To that effect, I feel like SMT IV Apocalypse is also worth mentioning. While the Order v Chaos narrative and their respective endings are still there, it's all but made clear from the outset that neither are in humanity's best interest. As such, both sides are more-or-less sidelined throughout the game and their respective endings are premature, arbitrary, and unsatisfying. What it ultimately comes down to is the role of humanity. Is it better to embrace what makes us human, or cast it aside? There's a compelling argument to be made for either.

[@imranicanovic1154]

@@grand_tourist46 See that's something I like about Apocalypse as well. Even if most people don't quite like it in the grand scheme of the series. It ain't a bad game at all, and it works upon the foundation that IV put down, even letting Masayuki Doi do his work as the then and current Head Artist. Even if I slightly prefer Kaneko to him.

[@thecryingsoul]

The downside is the neutral ending is almost always treated narratively as the "true" and right ending, which diminishes the nuance a lot

[@Condor2481]

But that is just even more boring as it creates a clean cut "Good Guy" faction that detatches the player from the Central Question. There is a reason why the TDE is the most popular ending of Nocturne, because is a ending that is a genuine rejection of the status quo.

[@MattWensley1992]

I think my favourite "Choose your faction" game is STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl. 1) Because it basically doesn't matter. You'd be forgiven for making it through the whole game without realising you could become allies with some over others. You can just go through your own story, making friends with your regular mission-givers. 2) Because they seem to be a bit more flexible than fascists vs nutters. Yeah, Duty fills the "Fascist" space well and Freedom are as "Nutters" as you can get, but there's also Loners, Bandits, Scientists, Military (although you can't do much with them) and [spoilers]. 3) Because I understand why someone would pick another side, and wouldn't judge them for it. In reality I'd be a Duty man - the Zone is dangerous, fact. It should probably be destroyed, fact. But pushing the Zone tends to cause it to push back, and also if the Zone was destroyed, well I'd stop playing the game. So I would respect someone's choice for any other side. And when it comes to morality, I guess Mass Effect 1 (never finished any of the others) did it best. Shepherd wasn't evil, because if he was why wouldn't/couldn't he swap sides at some point? Instead he was just Chaotic Good/Neutral, he still had the same objectives, but was willing to trample some rulebooks to get there. Or Fallout 3, because there was a reason to maintain neutrality - you got Sergeant RL-3 as a companion, who had a bug that gave him ridiculous amounts of health.

[@Nyghtking]

Yup, from what I heard from Peach Cobbler, Duty essentially think the zone is too dangerous and should be fought against as the zone is getting bigger, and they aren't wrong since stepping the wrong way can kill you pretty quick in the zone or some mutant horror can come along at any time and rip your face off, so they want to find a way to destroy it so the things inside don;t get out and the zone doesn't continue to expand. Freedom essentially are a group that believe you can't just shoot at the zone and hope it goes away, every time people push into it with violence it responds in kind with more deadly things, so they want to understand whats going on with it so that they might find a way to destroy it, live along side it, or reverse it.

[@scumhead0]

Was about to write how Stalker nailed this, agree 100%

[@felipemarques6999]

Well a little late for the party, but I would also suggest the Stalker factions. And apart from them, I think it is also valid to mention the factions in the 40k universe.

[@ExploDjinn]

Even in Splatoon 2, the final Splatfest was Chaos vs Order (the nutters won, FYI). Then again, if you ripped off some of the other themes from the Splatfests, you could start basic games around some really weird conflicts, like Action vs Comedy, Time Travel vs Teleportation, or Trick vs Treat, which might sound silly but at least branches out beyond the overdone tropes. The world ended and we need to restart civilization. Do we help the faction that wants to bring back a more retro style or the one that favors an aesthetic that was considered more modern before the apocalypse?

[@Tustin2121]

“The world ended and we need to restart civilization” reminds me of Bastion, Supergiant’s first game, where there’s the choice between “reverting” (basically time travel) and “leaving” (which is just shy of teleportation). If only the choice was something built into the core of the game instead of basically being an “Endingtron 3000”. (Still a really good game, tho)

[@MrTrombonebandgeek]

“Trick vs treat” makes me think of like a game where you’d have to pick sides between those who favor Halloween/goth/trickster aesthetic or those who prefer a more Easter/pastel/viva piñata aesthetic

[@dhinkakmed]

See this is why I enjoyed the "Magic the Gathering" approach to groups. There was always ideas represented in their colors of mana, but none of them felt good or evil. They all just had their own shit going on and alot of times, they all thought that they should be the ones in control or just had conflicting ideals that usually bumped heads against eachother. Take the 10 guilds of each 2 color combo that Ravnica introduced. Each one has their own agenda, some even working together, alot working against, but ultimately they all work towards the betterment of Ravnica in their own ways.

[@Qobp]

The original ravnica was a lot more nuanced in this sense Rakdos is just murder clown nutters but it used to be the guild for miner/laborers (yeah idk) Selesnya is just green hippies but used to have a weird culty-authoritarian angle with their whole nature knows best thing Theres a lot but those two stand out to me as the most changed

[@armedwombat6816]

I mean... black felt evil and is designed to feel evil. But then you read up a bit on it and get a better understanding: every color by itself has virtues and flaws, and when you combine it with others, their nature changes. Some combinations are more benevolent (or compatible with our own moral alignments) and some are less. Almost like... what's the word... real, living beings?

[@DaffyDecidedNot]

What are the 10 combos. Is there a good video for this?

[@bigbagofhate]

Weirdly enough, this discussion reminded me of the movie Demolition Man, where Sylvester Stallone finds himself in a fascists (an ultra-sanitized utopia where even swearing in your own car is a crime) vs. nutters (a resistant activist underground who have made ratburgers into the local delicacy) situation. I'm particularly reminded of the ending where Stallone's character tells Bob Gunton's laughably uptight police chief and Denis Leary's scuzzy resistance leader, "Why don't you (the police chief) get a little dirty? You (the resistance leader) a LOT clean, and somewhere in the middle... I don't know, you'll figure it out." That may be something a dev/studio may want to consider... making the goal not siding with one and trouncing the other beneath the polished boot or the duct-taped trainer, but uniting the two sides against a common enemy or at least improving their society through a united application of the better parts of their core philosophies.

[@Condor2481]

The world of Demolition Man is far from fascistic, if anything its how right wing nuts perceive having social welfare.

[@bigbagofhate]

@@Condor2481 I can agree there and admit the direct analogy is flawed. I think I zeroed in on the potential of using the trope for a purpose other than the player's goal being choosing one side and with them stamp out the other. Fair play.

[@EmperorSigismund]

Don't rag on rat burgers. It was best damn burger he ever had in his life.

[@PepperKatLancer]

@@Condor2481 and the Left wing nutters wrote that one. Who do you think Holly wood is? How were they funded ? That Hammer a sickle aint far form it. theres a little hint.

[@anthonydeadman]

Ok....but you're missing the important question here. Do you know about The Three Seashells?

[@Sharkster_J]

Honestly the original inFamous did a really good job of the good vs evil path as long as you view it as a story of how an ordinary man given great power could either rise up to be a hero or descend down the path of villainy. The initial story choices are appropriately small but do a good job of setting up the good choices as being selfless actions that are the right thing to do but come at a small cost to Cole. While the evil actions provide an immediate benefit to Cole but are mean spirited and cruel. As the story continues and the paths further diverge, the costs and sacrifices Cole has to make on the good path become greater (sometimes literally accepting physical harm so he doesn’t endanger others) as his resolve to be a beacon of hope and a hero strengthens, while the harm evil Cole inflicts on others escalate to being crippling and even fatal as he cares less and less for the lives of others. I don’t think any of the other games that had morality systems (including the sequels to inFamous) did quite as good a job of making the choices escalate as your character’s character develops. Of course, the disconnect of the gradual escalation of Cole’s actions in the story vs how you as a player act fundamentally the same gameplay wise is pretty noticeable so it wasn’t perfect by any means.

[@landotucker]

I'd love to see an RPG that actually punished you sometimes for being "good", for example letting an enemy live means they cause some tragedy later in the story. Was it worth having a clean conscience? But there would need to be a balance. "Evil" or pragmatic actions would need to backfire sometimes aswell.

[@alexgrunde6682]

I’d like to see one where equipment and supplies don’t just drop out of slain slimes, the protagonist has to go into debt in order to fund their adventuring. So the game becomes a trade-off of, lucrative but ethically bad and reputation tarnishing quests, versus noble but heroic quests where you risk being short on your interest payments and the debtee’s goon squad shattering their kneecaps.

[@landotucker]

@@alexgrunde6682 Exactly, things to make it more difficult being the good guy. Like rescuing someone but they're poor and have very little to give you.

[@BMVfilms]

Griftlands does a decent job at it, where killing someone often gives you late-game advantages, but short-term immediate disadvantages when related NPCs hate you and penalize you. But if you let them go, you'll be liked, BUT they'll come back stronger sometimes and betray you.

[@Phourc]

I always thought the whole point of doing the "good" thing should be that it's hard. It's not like games _don't_ try this occasionally, but "side with the evil businessman because he pays better than the peasants he's trying to evict" is usually about as far as it goes. (And it's not like the payment is ever _that_ much better, either!)

[@darkrootgabriel]

@@ichijofestival2576 Yep, Detroit: Become Human has at least one choice where if you are the nice guy, it can come bite you later on.

[@jordanj809]

Something I think about a lot whenever Yahtzee mentions this subject is Fallout: New Vegas. A staple of the Fascist vs Nutters template is that the fascists are always evil and the nutters are the plucky underdogs. Except in the case of New Vegas the Legion are the ones that are cartoonishly evil and the NCR are the ones looking at the player with puppy dog eyes saying “Please help us. We can’t do this without you”. I think makes both endings effective because in one, good triumphs over evil and a legitimate threat is dealt with and in the other the status quo is disrupted and established powers are toppled

[@theatomiclemon1]

Not just that, but you can also side with the CEO that saved New Vegas and has humanities interest and rebuild in mind, but doesn't really give a shit about anyone outside his vision. The other option is anarchy, which is what will inevitably happen when you take over New Vegas and the Courier eventually dies. I personally go with House. He might not be the friendliest guy, but he saved New Vegas and maintains security with the securitrons and the forced alliance with the NCR, which the Courier probably sorted out along the way. Siding with the Legion is a crapshoot, Ceasar holds the whole thing together, and when he's dead, the Legion is going to eat itself and fall apart, because you can't sustain a faction by just conquering and plundering your way through everyone, you'll run out of those at some point.

[@fighteer1]

Fallout 4 gives us four factions to side with, and they fall on various parts of the scale. The Brotherhood is authoritarian but were the "good guys" of FO3, the Institute is authoritarian but actually has amazing technology and could fix the world if led properly, the Railroad is notionally democratic but is willing to do really extreme things to get its way, and the Minutemen are a "live and let live" bunch that happen to be horrifyingly racist. These are interesting choices. It's too bad that Bethesda doesn't really explore what could happen if the Sole Survivor leads them and tries to make them better. I'd side with the Institute any day if I could smack some sense into them, but as it stands the only moral option is to nuke them and just carry on with life.

[@theatomiclemon1]

@@fighteer1 Racist? Towards whom? Weren't it the Brotherhood that hated ghouls and mutants?

[@CannonGerbil]

Honestly I'd say that both NCR and the Legion are both different flavours of facists, both of them are large expanding empires seeking to impose their rule over a newly discovered territory, and frankly calling the Legion nutters is strange considering that they practice literal slavery and their ideal vision of society is to have a few strong men rule at the top while the rest of the world exists only as slaves or servants. In fact, I'd argue that there are no true nutter faction in New vegas, every faction leans more towards the facist end of the scale than the nutter end, with the possible exception of you if you decide to go with the yesman ending.

[@squidrobotgamesdesign7170]

@@CannonGerbil NCR arent fascists. They have an authoritarian bent, but they aren't fascist. Its worth being careful with those definitions so they dont lose meaning.

[@1337ijs]

Infamous 2 actually managed a nuanced final choice, imo. The question of which method will actually save humanity from the super-powered radioactivity caused by advent of man-made superhumans is handled with naunce. There's no guarantee that the Good option will actually work in the long term, while the Evil option has proven to succeed, even if there's lots of collateral damage. The NPCs who represent Good and Evil also flip their representations on this issue. The concerned-about-civilians-and-straight-arrow government agent is now advocating for allowing mass casualties for the sure thing, while the self-interested anti-authority rebel calls bullshit on that level of sacrifice. It's still openly framed as Good amd Evil, but the problem itself is much more complex.

[@GodOfOrphans]

InFamous 1 actually did a better job than most games with the sort of internal monologues for cole when met with a moral choice, it still frames it as binary good and evil but at least it tries to actually show the mentality behind taking the evil choice as something logical and not moustache twirling villainy.

[@ThePa1riot]

Also one of the only games that makes choosing the evil path actually make you feel like a total piece of garbage. In the good option, the final boss is an airborne, electric storm spectacle against the Beast like the superhero version of Zeus going round two with Typhon. With the evil option, the final boss is slowly executing your best friend who knows full well how powerful and indestructible you are but has to try and stop you anyway.

[@kingsleycy3450]

Infamous 1 remains one of the few games that rationalize your “evil” choices and have moments where your character is introspective of his choices. That's really how video games should do moral choices.

[@benclements4357]

I think infamous 1 does it great because. Evil choices have benefits. The evil choice is often times avoiding a self sacrifice, and putting someone in your stead.

[@elhazthorn918]

One thing that really bothered me about Infamous was labelling something evil, that's clearly not. Spoilers. That one part where you save your doctor girlfriend vs. saving ten doctors. Going to save your girlfriend when you're not able to save everyone isn't evil. It's self-serving, yes, but not evil. Evil would be killing all eleven of them yourself.

[@anthonybowman3423]

@@elhazthorn918 I mean, it's certainly MORE evil. It's not mustache twirling bad, but you are sacrificing 10 people's lives to save the 1 life that you personally will be affected by. It's a strictly selfish choice that is explicitly and obviously harmful to the world, to the extent that if you do it your girlfriend will condemn you for it.

[@ItsTatLive]

@@elhazthorn918 and on top of that the choice doesn't matter cause choosing either options ends with doctor girlfriend being in the option you don't choose. plus the final boss just arbitrarily decides if you were evil or good when fighting.

[@CurlyHairedRogue]

@@elhazthorn918 I think a bit of dialogue in the second game actually takes what you did in the first into consideration regarding that, and the guy in the audio log actually says something like: “I mean… I can’t say I wouldn’t have done the same. He chose to look after the people he loved, and got the bad end of the stick for it.”

[@anagoth9]

Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction did factions fairly well for an open world shooter. Several factions, none being either essentially good or evil but all having their own agendas within the region. Each faction was unique in personality and motive and offered different styles of rewards for completion. Gaining favor with a faction granted you a discount when buying their airdrops as well as access to their restricted areas while becoming hostile enough would prevent you from buying at all and turn their roaming forces against you on sight. Playing between each faction throughout the game was a balancing act as different factions were in direct competition and doing a mission for one would often directly piss off another. Being a PS2 era game, it was still rather limited and you could still end the game with all of their side quests completed and max affiliation with all of them, but tweak it so that your choice of alignment carries more permanency and I think it would be a perfect system for factions.

[@SeverenCinema]

Yes, one of my favorite games of all time. It seriously needs a re-release.

[@charles2703]

It needs a sequel, maybe by Volition if Pandemic can’t be put back together

[@ThePa1riot]

Also reinforces the thematic core of the game. You’re a mercenary, it’s right in the title. You’re not looking for which side is in the right, you have your own personal objective and you take jobs from whoever will get you closer to that.

[@Silverfishv9]

@Charles Richardson - It did get a sequel, and I only played that and not the original. Mercernaries 2 Also has multiple factions, featuring an Oil Company and Guerilla rebels in the beginning that seem very "facist vs nutter", but expanding later to the even more nutter Pirates, and the Allies from the first game (Still basically the US) and China getting involved at the midpoint. Each of the two new big factions has soft ties encouraging you to stick with the allies of the old one but in a way that actually inverts your decision to some extent; The rebels work with the far more authoritarian China while the UP Oil company is aligned with the Allies, who are the relatively more libertarian of the two new factions (But still very authoritarian world police). You're put in a situation where you might want to abandon your former allies, or simple keep trying to do some work for every faction. And unlike the first one you can't really go down the paths of every faction, you're bound to piss off at the very least one of them, but you can also be a true mercenary and work for all of them at some point, even undermining the faction you just worked for for another payday.

[@DeeHaychGee]

“See that status quo? Disrupt that shit booooiiii” had me in stitches, thank you Yahtz

[@Flying-Maytree]

Modern game writers should take some inspiration from the various factions in Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri. They had a nice variety of societal organizing principles to choose from: religious fundamentalism, atheistic uber-communism, uber-capitalist, military fascists, SCIENCE!, humanitarianism, and eco-nutters. Each had different strengths and weaknesses, and you had to adjust your play style to suit.

[@felixdumbravescu2725]

And the best part was the leaders of each faction had a considerable amount of personality and even logic and sense. When making research for something you hear one of the leader's thoughts about it, one them stuck out the most was when inventing Artificial Intelligence and the over zealous religious wacko asks "Are we rely making false gods now?" implying that we are rejecting god but we are still creating a man made god to take care of us.

[@Krysnha]

Indeed, also there is now good or evil, but it is to you to see who are or more or less vage idea of what is it, it was amaizing

[@SparkSovereign]

@@felixdumbravescu2725 I definitely gained mad respect for Miriam in the late game as she starts pointing out the nightmares created by such technologies. I also really appreciate how their personalities and interests manifest in game; you might shape your gameplay based on who you want to ally with politically rather than just what's most practical, because they'll punish or reward your *methods* not just who you shoot at. So many games have allegedly good guys not caring that your standard combat approach is "torture everyone to death" as long as you go on their fetch quests.

[@knitkat5846]

I love how morally ambiguous all of the factions are in that game, especially if you read all the flavour texts and references as to what would have 'cannonically' happened. For example, Gaia's Stepdaughters (who some people might consider a 'good' faction), controlled mindworms and used them to overthrow Spartan territory (according to The Secret War). Mindworms are horrific, and their use in battle should be considered a war crime considering the excruciating way they kill people. And of course, all of the technological breakthroughs come with little videos and flavour texts just to remind you of the nightmarish ways they're being used. The Self-Aware colony anyone?

[@Domdrok]

The Great Khans story line in FNV was intricate. There were so many ways to go through and resolve the faction drama.

[@williamrutherford553]

You don't necessarily need to have a third, middle-ground faction. Just allow players to pick and choose parts of both. Sometimes, they will be tempted to do something authoritarian for their own benefit. Instead of having a sliding scale where things go one way or the other, have unique interactions between choices. Maybe one choice contradicts a previous choice, and that creates conflict. It shouldn't be "you need to be this Good to do the nice interactions, and you need to be this Evil to do something cruel" where it's essentially a checklist without consequence. I think overly gamifying the system ultimately weakens the message. A strict dichotomy with two extremes is difficult to be nuanced.

[@Sorain1]

Setting up a situation where the endgame can be "The Player Character was a political manipulator who killed off all opposition on both sides before negotiating a merger between the remains." could be a pretty fascinating angle to take. Especially because if the player executes on it, it's not hard to point out what they just did sounds really sinister from the outside.

[@Milquetoastfireball]

Honestly, if you know anything about Mother Theresa's actual legacy, the dichotomy between her and Skeletor gets a lot more complicated.

[@lued123]

Yeah, wasn't she pretty much the "faith will heal you so you shouldn't take any medicine" thing dialed up to 15?

[@Milquetoastfireball]

@@lued123 That, plus a healthy dose of Catholic Hegemonism. Her true objectives (which she never denied) were to convert as many people as possible. She "cared" for the dying mainly to convince them to convert on their deathbeds.

[@uppishcub1617]

@@Milquetoastfireball but by the logic of a catholic, that's saving their souls.

[@macuma5533]

@@uppishcub1617 HA! logic...good one

[@alibushell6762]

She also would take donations for the sick and divert most of it back to the Vatican. She was effectively a religious fraudster.

[@scytheseven9173]

Why can't we have a game conflict about two factions, one representing utilitarianism and the other deontology? The deontological faction could be inflexible and inefficient, but also less susceptible to doing wrong in the name of right. The utilitarian faction could be more concerned about the well-being of everyone, rather than a prioritization of family and close people that, in the deontological faction, could lead to nepotism.

[@TheGreenScout]

Love it, though you have to admit 'fascists vs nutters' is basically 'deontology vs utilitarianism' taken to the extreme end of both. Maybe that's the solution though - dial in there extremeness of the factions a bit to make both more reasonable

[@beancheesedip8337]

I think your comment points out the thing missing from a lot of modern faction stories: The factions rarely have any nuance. It's just authoritarian or libertarian, no greater ideology, political view or end goal beyond that. Often times, the story never presents them as both flawed, allowing the player to weigh the pros and cons of both. A problem with nepotism, how far a player is willing to go before they can't justify their actions anymore, who works for the factions and for what reasons, etc. It's just two sides of the same coin, as far as the player is concerned.

[@scytheseven9173]

@@beancheesedip8337 One problem I suspect is that companies don't want to alienate people by creating fictional factions that are like the real-life political factions they hate or support.

[@beancheesedip8337]

@@scytheseven9173 absolutely. That's why the AC games, which used to be interesting with how the antagonists always represented the stifling establishment of the time period it was set in, i.e. the church in 1400s Italy, the British Crown in 1700s, America, the capitalist monopolies of the 1800s, and the powerful corporations of almost rivaling power of modern governments of the modern sections, have gotten so toned down that the most recent game was about a selection of loosely connected feudal lords being supplanted by the radical political system of a selection of loosely connected feudal lords. Edit: reminds me of when Ubisoft claimed the Division 2 wasn't political when the literal first spoken words of the game was about how only a well-armed citizenry was able to avoid being overtaken by roving bands of gangs after the government collapsed.

[@nathanp5711]

First we would need Art schools to stop teaching polarized politics, and start teaching philosophical discourse and nuance.

[@Brisarious]

funnily enough, I think your example of the dark souls speedrun is a better representation of what "evil" looks like than almost anything else you mentioned. Evil doesn't usually happen for principled idealistic reasons. It happens because kindness and fairness are slow and because it just isn't a high enough priority for the people doing the evil.

[@TheCreepyLantern]

i remember the moment i found out all speedruns of Bloodborne murder the Doll on sight 'cause no diologue with her makes leveling up faster by default. And the very idea of murdering the Doll was horrible to me. a world that fucked up and up to the many many eyeballs in evil and monsters and etc etc etc.... the Doll is more or less the one and only consistent bright spot in that world. one of the only people who gives a shit about you, and will never turn on you or come to some tragic end.... and i realized i dont ever want to play Bloodborne to the point where "killing my only friend because yay better numbers." becomes the default.

[@fritzophrenia3146]

Best faction design ever has to be Starsector, sorry for any other contenders All the factions are reflections of their material conditions, and they act differently accordingly. They all have depth and nuance, and while they're not always sympathetic, they're at least understandable. Post collapse society was ravaged by rogue AI? Sure, a religion popping up that seeks to rationalize those events as some sort of divine punishment for having AI in the first place makes sense. The Hegemony are authoritarian assholes that can't have fun, but cmon, their founders were all former military, how else do you expect that to play out? I think the important thing is that these factions aren't defined by one overarching Thing, they have complex motivations and relationships based on their environment. Also, there aren't really any moral judgements passed on them in-universe; the fiction acknowledges that the current situation kinda falls outside the normal moral constraints, everyone is just trying to survive. So yeah, go play starsector, it's good

[@pascalausensi9592]

Then there's the Sindrian Diktat. Which only exists because of a single man's ego.

[@fritzophrenia3146]

@@pascalausensi9592 And I love that shit, I bet you could name a dozen tinpot dictators like that in the real world, too. He represents one of the ways things can go when the status quo and all the traditional support structures of a society breaks down. A man prone to, and I quote, "narcissistic excess" who finds himself in a position to take power is going to do so. In the sector, the clever and the brutal rise to the top, and the Lion is both God its just so fucking good

[@danielhild9448]

I remember one of ZP's first videos covering Infamous which he summarised every choice by either being Mother Teresa or baby-eating Hitler. I only played a bit of that game but boy howdy was he spot on. Whether it's catering to the masses where they need such a steep dichotomy and/or if it's because making a branching story with choices that matter is exceptionally hard with today's graphics, it makes me reel in disgust when new games hype up that aspect. The reality of humanity is that there is very little good and very little evil in the world. Most things are in the grey, where motives might make sense for some, while other's can't emotionally bring themselves to do what most people could. I think both the 3x3 alignment chart and political quadrants fall into this where people see evil, or right or left-wing and it automatically gives a hard bias. If it would read AltruisticSelfish I think more people could understand characters better, but it wouldn't be as snappy as GoodEvil. Like most problems today in gaming, this is not meant to be meaningful. It's supposed to create hype to move boxes. Narratives aren't able to get any more nuanced than this if they are wanting to sell 5+ million copies. I do think that they best AAA will do with narrative is From Software games, not saying there's any room to grow but when AAA developers want to reach the broadest possible audience, nuance is not their friend. I hope smaller studios continue to try to push narratives in different ways that only they can.

[@DemonicEngineer]

Skyrim also suffers from this. I almost always pick the Empire over the rebel Stormcloaks. The empire is generally good (as long as you don't read any of it's older lore) but they are forced to work for the clearly evil Thalmor. The Stormcloaks want Skyrim to be independent, but with that comes a widespread hatred of anyone who's not "a real Nord". Imperialists are almost always met with Nationalists. But you're not siding with the Racists or the even more evil racists, because you can't join the Thalmor. You can only join the Empire, which you notice doesn't actually like the Thalmor and wants to get rid of them as well. The Stormcloaks wants to get rid of the Thalmor and anyone who looks like them and then invade Summerset Isles as revenge. The Empire is generally a boring choice, but they don't even wanna do anything bad when maintaining their order. The Stormcloaks aren't any less Facist, but they sure do hate immigrants.

[@animatrix1490]

I also agree with the guy in Riften who says that Ulfric cares most about Ulfric. Honestly, it would have been more interesting to me if he had genuinely had some connection to Talos. Like, if they'd said he talks to Talos, and then you see that he very clearly does. Then it becomes kind of a question about what a god is in Tamriel, can Talos be a god and be wrong, if he is a god will he support his followers, etc. Are he and the other gods of the pantheon even aligned with their supposed factions? Do the elven gods really see a big divide between him and them, or is that their mortal followers' hubris? I think that's actually more interesting than whatever this or that government is doing, especially when, as you pointed out, the Thalmor are the actual villains period. I even remember reading notes between Thalmor that Ulfric was a net positive for them since he was weakening the empire.

[@DemonicEngineer]

@@animatrix1490 That would indeed have been interesting. The only Jarl who talks about Talos is Skald the Elder. And his theory about Talos bringing the dragons as punishment for not worshipping him anymore is just straight up wrong. If you complete the civil war, the Dragons are still around. And regarding Ulfric, Brunwulf Free-Winter straight up tells you that Ulfric only sends reinforcements to Nord villages, rarely if ever sending help to anyone else.

[@anna-flora999]

The problem with the stormcloaks is that if they win, they lose. Immediately.

[@DemonicEngineer]

@@anna-flora999 Good point. The Stormcloaks' goal isn't just independence, but taking vengeance on the Thalmor by traveling to the Summerset Isles. If the entire Empire (which the Stormcloaks were part of) couldn't win against the Aldmeri Dominion during the Great War, how's a smaller former section of the Empire supposed to compare? And that's after they have to fight the rest of the empire that weren't just Nord who already lived in Skyrim. Cyrodiil never sent reinforcements during the Civil War.

[@dewot1256]

@Меѳодїи The stormcloak holds are racially diverse in the same way the American South was racially diverse pre-1865. The main Stormcloak city is racially segregated with the other race confined to slums and a barracks outside the city walls. In Riften the majority of the non-Nord similarly sleep in a workhouse. The only non-nords I can think of that own property in these cities are the Argonian couple that own the Inn in Riften.

[@E1craZ4life]

I’m of a mind that games that judge players by their actions should judge them on multiple spectra; there should be both a good vs evil spectrum *and* an order vs chaos spectrum, and maybe a happy vs unhappy spectrum where the player inputs their satisfaction with the choices they make.

[@blueB0wser]

I found it interesting that Dishonored 1 was on the "boring evil vs good" section, when that one was really "get revenge or get revenge, but arguably more evil". Also, a lot of games limit themselves to only two factions, when having three or more opposing (or sometimes cooperating) factions would be a much more interesting way to go about it.

[@SeanARooney]

Dishonored's problem with its morality system was that the good ending discouraged use of most of your cool abilities and left you with a much more limited tool set. If you were going for no kills, your options were basically just the stun dart or sneak close enough to choke them out, everything else was lethal.

[@Kris-wo4pj]

Dishonored good choices felt much more evil to me. Especially in the first one. I'd rather just kill the people than kidnap them and deliver them to their stalker or have their tongues cut out and put them in slavery or shock them so much they become brain dead. At that point just kill the poor bastards.

[@blueB0wser]

@@SeanARooney Yes, the gameplay promoted a boring playstyle, but that wasn't my point. As @Kris pointed out, the "good decisions" were much more sadistic, in that they were generally much crueler. That's a hair more interesting than authoritarian and libertarian, in my opinion.

[@floricel_112]

2:40 you'd think that, but after playing through the sith campaigns in SWTOR, I learned something: it's *mad fun* BEING that totalitarian bad guy people sh*t their pants over whenever *you* walk into a room

[@feral_orc]

that game is special, if you have the time for it. The counter-point to this is good too, if you play as a light side Sith everyone meets you expecting you to be an asshole, but you can show them you aren't, that you're actually trying to improve the Empire from the inside and you can earn their loyalty.

[@NegotiatorGladiarius]

You know, I can't help but think of real history, when things were neither as simple as "authoritarians vs nutters", nor "good vs evil." In fact, it kinda turns out that to commit the greatest atrocities, you kinda have to believe you're doing good. One conflict that sprang to mind recent-ish was the one in the real history behind Kingdom Come: Deliverance. The game kinda shoehorned into "Czechs = Good, Hungarians = Evil" and I suppose it kinda makes sense from the protagonist's point of view. (You're not gonna side with the guys that just murdered your parents, right?) But the real history is more of a story of twat vs bigger twat. Short version is basically: two brothers start on good terms. Sigismund gets Hungary, Wenceslas gets Bohemia, third brother is nominated for German emperor, and dies before he could take the crown. Wenceslas is the next in line, can't get bothered to even go see the Diet (parliament) about his nomination, and makes himself as popular as a fart in a spacesuit with the church by actually throwing a high ranking clergyman off the bridge into the Moldau for little more than trying to make him take a decision when he was in a bad mood. Most nobles (including the baldie that kills your dad in the game) make Wenceslas sign that his bro Sigismund should be his regent. (You only got a regent if you were incapable to rule, by being away, underage or plain old mentally unfit. So yeah, that's what Wenceslas got to sign.) But he still gets to be king and have banquets and whatnot, so he's not even putting much of a resistance. For now. A few years pass, and a bunch of nobles start to miss that they could put any paper in front of Wenceslas and have him sign it, while Sigismund is actually a strong leader. Meanwhile Wenceslas is also getting pissed off that his bro Sigismund isn't campaigning for him (Wenceslas) to become the next emperor. Which was kinda impossible, since it involved an election, and Wenceslas, as I was saying, couldn't even be arsed to move his royal arse and talk to the electors. So, anyway, Wenceslas and some nobles and burghers try to pull a coup d'etat and put Wenceslas back in power when Sigismund is militarily busy somewhere else. Turns out he still can hire a crapton of mercenaries (Crusader Kings style;)) and deal rather brutally with the rebellion. Damned if he's gonna let a few unruly nobles challenge his honour like that. THEN he lets Wenceslas have his crown back. Who's the authoritarian and who's the nutter in that conflict? Well, kinda both are both, though I'd be inclined to say Wenceslas was more of both. Who's good and who's evil? Well... kinda neither? Both sides are thinking they're in the right, and even atrocities like massacring a town at the start are actually normal and "good" medieval warfare. It was actually common practice to kill some noble's peasants if you couldn't get him otherwise. Kinda like WW2 carpet bombing cities, except done up close and personal with swords and bows. Especially the burghers (which the most powerful were on Wenceslas's side) LOVED to do that. It's really a setting which doesn't have either good-vs-evil sides, nor nutters vs nazis. It's just the chaos of a stupid war that didn't even make any sense to be happening in the first place, nor made any lasting impact. (The whole thing is such a footnote in European history, 99% of people never even heard of it until KC:D came out.) AT BEST it's a prequel to the Hussite Wars, if you want to have a look at one reason why the Rebels got to hate Empire. But throw in a personal story instead of having to save the world from Evil or Chaos or such, and it turns out it still works as a setting.

[@pagatryx5451]

This is why I hate many aspects of education. Even higher education. The number of times the past is just handwaved as 'evil' is ludicrous. It's quite a religious concept really, one that you wouldn't expect to see so often in places of 'learning'. For a simplistic good/evil to exist, humanity would have had to exist due to creationism, not evolution. Because when you consider our history as one long evolution of animal instincts with the curse of understanding our own morality, good/evil fails to hold as much weight.

[@NegotiatorGladiarius]

@@mintmess Funny thing is, even Hitler (and no, I don't like him), if you look at the mainstream science and historiography in Germany at the time, he may have actually believed that he's saving the future of western civilization. Eugenics ideas like that the retarded are not just a burden on the state, but will outbreed anyone else and bring forth... well, a sorta Idiocracy... was not just eventually mainstream in Germany, but it was actually imported mainstream USA eugenics at the time. The idea than only Indo-Europeans can build empires, and empires (including the Roman Empire) crumble when they have too many subhumans, was again actually mainstream historiography in a lot of places. It was what drove, for example, anti-miscegenation legislation, such as forbidding marriages between whites and philippinos in the USA. Now, mind you, that might have been rationalization for him and other people for their own being bigotted a-holes. Quite probably in fact. BUT -- and that's a big jiggly BUT -- that's kinda the POINT. People don't set out to be evil. They rationalize, even to themselves -- in fact ESPECIALLY to themselves -- how they're the good and righteous guys, and their doing their bigotted a-hole stuff is the right and in fact righteous thing to do.

[@NegotiatorGladiarius]

@@mintmess Well, anyway, be that as it may, my original point was just about this particular war. I'll geek out about history like the next history geek, but in this case it's just that Sigismund had been actually invited by his brother and a majority of the nobles to be the regent for his "incapable" brother. From there on, any attempt to do a coup d'etat by force by those nobles, as opposed to them and his brother negotiating an end to the regency contract, was simply WAY outside the medieval rules of honour. If he just folded without a fight, he'd majorly lose face, including in his own kingdom. It doesn't really matter if he was an a-hole or not (and in all fairness, he kinda was in many ways), he HAD to crush it or lose respect.

[@FortressWolf97]

Something interesting that's been on my mind was in Assassin's Creed Rogue where, as the name implies, you play as an Assassin who's switched to becoming a Templar. Basically, it puts emphasis on the assassins being nutty, however it actually depicts the Templars of that era to be more benevolent instead of tyrannical. You're basically encouraged that having tons of money can be a good thing if it's in the interesting of bringing up the wealth of those less fortunate and giving the necessary tools to a community so that on their own, they can become more sustainable. You're basically the colonial era version of Batman in this instance.

[@Archone666]

Warframe actually does an interesting job with this, on multiple levels. For starters, the three main enemy factions are the Grineer (cloned cyborg fascists, under the command of Queens who suborned their original workers' revolution), the Corpus (the low-paid employees and robot proxies of uber-capitalists who literally worship profit above all else), and the Infested (what "the Thing" would be if it had escaped the polar facility and spread). Beyond that, there are six "syndicates," each with very interesting philosophies and goals. Most of them are guaranteed to appeal to the player... but each syndicate is allied to one other, and opposes two others. So if you join the Steel Meridian (ex-Grineer fighting to liberate their comrades from the fascist tyranny of the Queens), then you're going to piss off the Perrin Sequence (morally enlightened Corpus who use capitalism as a force for good for all, rather than self-centered parasitism).

[@faustineli375]

I thought the moral dilema presented in Persona 5 Royal's new story arc was interesting because it upends the narrative foundations of the story up to that point. The story of the "scrappy underdogs rebeling against the status quo society that does everything to beat them down" is a pretty pedestrian concept, but its reflected into something different when the main antagonist wants to change the world and actually has the means to do something about it. Now it's the rebel team that has to find reasons to fight for the status quo which sounds a little nonsensical and antithetical to the themes of the base game, but makes for some interesting philosophical tension. Yes it's utimately a freedom vs secuity debate, and the game gives you enough push to chose the "right" choice, but it was certainly the most morally conflicted I felt while playing a game.

[@breakinggreens]

I'd say that the status quo in Yahtzee's examples and in P5R are not really the same, the facists's status quo is about restricting freedom to maintain an order or survival, but persona's is much more about maintaining freedom in all forms. I'd say P5R's final conflict is about escapism, or more accurately, anti-escapism. A world that provides no conflict to grow from or tragedy learn from. It's all about being happy in a single moment, not realising all the other moments you could be happy with. It's almost anti-fandom in that way, asking the player to move on from the game, "it's over, you're done, the characters have moved on and so should you..." Then they made a pseudo sequal ;)

[@royalfrost1]

As gamers, I feel we're hardwired to take the best and ditch the rest when it comes to choice within video games, so the key to making better dilemmas is to make it so the best choice isn't obvious. A better dilemma than Fascists versus Nutters would be to make it between being Lawful and Good, where the conflict comes from the disagreement on what the right way to do the right thing is, or the Lesser of Several Evils instead of being Good or Evil, where no choice is perfect or even good.

[@xTxCxMx]

I actually really dislike the "lesser of two evils" choice in a videogame because in the end it isn't actually the player making the choice, it's the developers. Most of the time when I encounter that I just ask "Well I'm gonna singlehandedly win this war and enforce an ideology anyways, why do I have to pick between two turds? If my choice """matters""" so much why can't I say "fuck both of you" and actually try to not be a piece of shit?"

[@royalfrost1]

@@xTxCxMx That's precisely what I'm talking about and also a good caveat. If walking away is the best option even when not given to the player, that's how you know the choices in your game are unbalanced. Even if the two choices aren't perfect, there probably should be SOME redeeming quality to them that makes you want to stay and choose. You can also set up a lesser of two evils choice as a sadistic choice like Mia vs Zoe in RE7.

[@SuperGreenSmartie]

If it’s not obvious people are either gonna look up guides on how to get the best ending or they’ll be frustrated with the game’s story.

[@GustaveXIII]

I'll just add my voice to all the people going "what, SMT as an example?" Sure, they depict the extremes rather neatly, but they almost always make out that they *are* extremes and that taking the neutral path - which typically involves sticking to the status quo we're used to rather than being subjected to angelic Nazism or demonic Darwinism - is the better option, since even if the world as we know it ain't perfect, it's sure as hell better than...Hell. Special call out to Strange Journey Redux's neutral ending where humanity learns nothing, but gets to live on in peace since the main character becomes Doom Guy and keeps on reliving and putting down the apocalyptic event forever. What better philosophical stance to take than Doom Guy

[@dyldragon1]

What I find interesting about Shin Megami Tensei games' multiple endings, is that the game usually has a "true" ending that wraps up the themes of the game in the most concise way possible. LIL SPOILERS FOR ANYONE WHO HASN'T PLAYED YET: SMT 4's true ending was its neutral ending as it was about the spirit of humanity overcoming its desire to dominate or to destroy, SMT 3's was a true chaotic ending to signify the protagonist's loss of humanity through conquest, so on and so on. It's interesting that you brought up Strange Journey. Since that game doesn't really lock a true final boss or another dungeon behind certain narrative choices, it's hard to really call one ending an intended "true" ending, yet I bet most of us would still go with neutral. There's always something bad happening in all three endings but neutral's return to normalcy, on top of the main character's pledge to defend humanity, feels heroic. The Remake was really ambitious in making the new "true" route compatible for all three endings, where the characters receive a vision from the future they're working towards, and since they're all still human after all, seek to change it to become an idealized version of each alignment. It seriously had me questioning if I preferred the Law or Neutral ending for those.

[@HeadsFullOfEyeballs]

_"that taking the neutral path - which typically involves sticking to the status quo we're used to rather than being subjected to angelic Nazism or demonic Darwinism - is the better option"_ This is the implicit stance of all "here are two extremes, both equally bad" games though. It's part of the problem, both ideologically (framing the status quo as inherently "neutral" and "balanced") and narratively (maintaining the status quo is boring).

[@Condor2481]

> angelic nazism Actual Fascism is associated with Demons tho, the Angels are a strawman of American Intervention.

[@PsychicWars]

Yahtzee doesn't know what he's talking about on the subject of JRPGs, film at eleven.

[@GustaveXIII]

@@Condor2481 YHWH as the leader of the angels is a fascist dictator. Those who protest against the regime, those who are deemed abnormal and those who pose a threat are all purged, with the promise of "protection" for all those who obey. On the flip side, Lucifer's the "leader of the demons" in that he's the strongest amongst them, but their whole principle is a reading of "survival of the fittest" as survival of the strongest, might makes right, etc. Their discrimination of the weakest being seen as natural, with the accrual of wealth and benefits in life solely being afforded to the strong since "that's what they deserve". If we're talking America, that's the American dream for you right there. (But if you really want to pick apart things, interpretations of Darwinism led to Social Darwinism which led to National Socialism which basically means that your standard law and chaos options are ultimately two sides of the same coin.)

[@jambott5520]

I think the most interesting moral thing a game could do is in some kind of war scenario, where you are told your are on the good side through propoganda. Good, fairly subtle propoganda, but through a combination of the missions you do, the acts you commit, and the stuff you are told about your country and those you are fighting against, you can sort of get that what they are telling you is not accurate. This would all be subtext, and to actually go against the regime you would have to actively find a situation where you are on your own in a mission or something where there are insurgents or enemy fighters and get to talking to them. Something that would not be picked up by most players as an option they could commit to. The nation wouldnt be some obviously evil nation like nazi germany, just a side in a messy war or something. Or even if it was something that obviously evil, you wouldnt be able to realise it due to the propoganda you are given. I imagine that if a game told everyone that the whole world is full of countries that are full of evil people who regularly commit war crimes, most players would willingly go through the missions and 'free' the countries from their old rulers. And that could be a very interesting commentary on the power of propoganda, or how players just go down the road given by the game, not straying to find some alternate route. I think this would be interesting at least

[@TheDeathstyk]

I think the issue is they feel they need to give you a justifiable reason to side against each faction, but the easiest way to do that is make them an extreme in either direction. It also helps them (usually) avoid getting too close to current real world analogies.

[@PrettyPurpleness]

I feel like it comes down to world building. In a well realized world it’s unlikely that any society would be that simple. Factions are more of a rpg element that doesn’t do well without focus and forces the storyteller to say something. Games that have this liberal vs authoritarian struggle don’t want to say anything and they don’t want put resources towards anything they don’t think is 100% necessary. Adding a third option might help but it has the chance of feeling entirely useless and unsatisfying.

[@TopKunt]

Yeah, DL2 is just narratively soooo painfully safe and mediocre. Which is a damn shame, because everything else (for the most part) is great.

[@Quandry1]

Plenty of those games that make you make those choices... just the way they present the stuff that you get from making certain choices (usually one side has much better stuff that's going to cause more to lean that way) is the message. It's not overly complicated because the message isn't overly complicated. It's just to support the side that the dev's want you to support by choosing the rewards. From what I've been hearing. Even the new Dying Light 2 does that to you to some extent. Putting certain kinds of rewards on a certain faction, And then throwing in certain scenes to just blatantly tell you "these are the bad guys no matter how either side treats you." Which seems to cause plenty of people to side with the faction that the Dev's decided arbitrarily were somehow the good guys. And if you don't accept and follow their choice on good guys. your going to get a bad ending no matter what.

[@DaSkyBoss]

Just as a note smt actually does have a neutrality option and it is often pushed by the game as the most fair and generally best one

[@deepfriedicecream576]

ive been binging these videos because the topics are always interesting and the one game i keep thinking about and referencing is New Vegas, only because its the only game im aware of that actually follows most of these video topics. New Vegas' faction aren't "nutters vs fascists" but instead every faction has its own ideas and philosophies, and the people within those factions all have varying opinions on other factions and their own. so you can kinda see all sides to every faction just by talking to their leaders, and more importantly, listening to the opinions of the regular fellas. random civilians talking about the politics of the wasteland, each having their own reasons why they support or condemn the other factions in the game. some people have a nuanced take on the Mojave, and others speak ignorantly or flat out spread rumors and lies to disrupt the flow of information. New Vegas is the only game im aware of where the flow and spread of information actually feels real, and makes the faction reputation system all the more engaging. you also can contribute and disrupt the flow of information in major and minor ways. while not everything is explicitly described, a lot of it is implied, and left up to your imagination, which i think is the best rather than giving the player objective truths.

[@KingPK]

I just think that there is a general lack of wanting nuance or context in society at large right now. No matter what the topic (political, movies, TV shows, games, whatever), too much of it devolves to X vs. Y. Right vs. left, Marvel vs. DC, WWE vs. AEW and so on. If you are on one side, then the opposite side is completely wrong and needs to sit quietly while the adults talk. That basically does two things: makes people dig in WAY too much for their "side" and completely turns away those who say "Well, I kinda think both sides have good points and bad points and would like to discuss things and absorb different viewpoints". People tie certain things into their identities WAY too much nowadays so that any inkling that they might not be 100% correct and pure is perceived as a personal affront and must be fought against.

[@GodOfOrphans]

THIS^ SO MUCH THIS^ it's contagious too, if one side antagonizes you repeatedly even if you were neutral before it drives you into that tribal mentality as a defensive reflex.

[@cybertramon0012]

Something that might add some needed depth to this argument (but might anger players a bit) is more games where choosing the 'save as many as you can' choice actually hinders you. Like you have a harder time defending an important area later down the line. Something I think of when I watch this is a decision in the show RWBY where an invading army of monsters if heading for a two city state, and the good guys have to make a choice. The military leader is all for taking the flying city up into the sky, keeping a powerful magic item out of the hands of the enemy, arguing that his forces can't defend both cities. But the heroes want to stand their ground and save everyone, because it's the morally right thing to do. The show tried to convince us that the heroes were in the right by making the military leader go crazy with things going his way, but personally I feel that the general had a good point that they can't save everyone. And that's a nuance I think needs to be in media more. Do you go for the moral choice, aware that you could fail or hamper yourself because you risked everything? Or do you cut your losses, and try to walk away with what you can?

[@alexandragermann2559]

I bid you Pathologic 2. The remake of an almost unplayable game that has maintained a fanbase for over 15 years because of it's plot. There you decide between nature magic and inovation.

[@kylermcvoy2760]

This is why Disco Elysium is such a masterclass in not just video game writing but writing a compelling narrative in general. There are many different ideologies and "factions" at work that are all at different levels of being reprehensible and it works so well because its realistic and there is depth to each character's motivations.

[@Winlaw459]

I've grown to love these much more than the standard reviews please keep these coming!

[@Master30006]

Working off the Diogenes vs Alexander idea, what if you had two sides based off Restraint vs Achievement? One side encourages the player to be bombastic and pull-off large scale achievements and rewards them through flashier equipment and items, while the other side encourages small-scale, more personally challenging goals, like only using one of something to complete an objective, and then rewards you with something like more skill points to unlock abilities via “personal growth.” Maybe that’s what the game is questioning you through your decision, less “authoritarian vs anarchy”, and more “what do you consider personal ambition to actually be, wide scale recognition or self-betterment?”

[@kryptonianguest1903]

Battletech tends to be authoritarians vs slightly more tyrannical authoritarians. Whether that's Federated Suns vs Kurita or the whole Inner Sphere vs the Clans. And the more authoritarian side tends to have combatants with more military honour, who are horrified by the despicable tactics that the less-tyrannical side is willing to use.

[@feandil666]

As you said it's down to the motivation, if the factions goal is only to take over the world you always end up in this trap. In Mass Effect 2 the Geth and the Quarians only want to survive, and they both think they want to destroy the others to do so. Once the player starts to understand the reason for the strife he can actually heal the rift or take an utilitarian choice and choose one over the other only for his own purpose (who's got the biggest army to help against the big baddies)

[@TheElephantChumpkin]

I really liked mgsv for this reason. It wasn't about destroying an evil government necessarily and it wasn't just about beating the metal gear. It was simply about making sure people didn't just destroy their own species. The online nuclear disarmament really nails it home. Not trying to control people or the way they live. Simply trying to ensure they don't destroy themselves and everyone else along with them and never striving for recognition.

[@JohnDoe-my5ip]

Yahtzee wants a Syrian Civil War game where there’s 1000 factions and they’re all monsters.

[@jamesharrison658]

it's funny he mentions SMT because I think the 3rd one probably has the most interesting choices the game revolves around recreating the world after the apocalypse leaving you with the options; 1) side with one of the factions who have such unlikable leaders that you would only agree to it if you believed in their vision 2) return the world to how it was originally 3) reject the rebirth entirely

[@Condor2481]

That's just a even more boring dynamic as it makes you directly reject the premise of the choice itself.

[@jamesharrison658]

@@Condor2481 ​ if you refine the premise I think it could work better; - show how their ideologies work in a microcosm to show why they believe theirs is the correct way - show a group trying to mediate all three groups being neutral get bodied, to show that sitting on the fence isn't necessarily the right thing -introduce a point of no return for the opposing groups without demonising them to muddy the waters - show their is a way to return to the status quo but give it a high price to achieve - selfish route can show how your thriving in the ensuing chaos and that you don't want things to change that gives you sacrifice, selfishness and whatever ideologies the other factions follow as options

[@Condor2481]

@@jamesharrison658 making a route hard to obtain just encourages players to search it, as it's a videogame, you have tries and gaming pride

[@jamesharrison658]

@@Condor2481 thats very true maybe not make the route hard to obtain mechanically, but emotionally difficult; removing the affliction on the world which is keeping your character or close friends alive, side with the group you know will fuck you over personally but will restore the status quo, sacrifice your closest companion to gain the power to destroy the bbeg even though everyone knows its temporary. either way, I think it's a more interesting premise than far-right stereotypes vs far-left stereotypes

[@srkrakenjack]

This is one of the reasons I like Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines: Not only do they subvert this trope by making the authoritarian option surprisingly reasonable in comparison to some of the other options, they also give you enough factions that it doesn't feel like you have to side with one or the other. You can even say "screw everyone, I'mma side with myself" if you really want to.

[@Mernom]

2:33 'Mother Theresa vs Skeletore isn't a very complex dilemma' Well actually... Much more than you'd think.

[@GrandArchPriestOfTheAlgorithm]

I don't know, Skeletore seems like the obvious lesser evil choice.

[@DragoSonicMile]

@@GrandArchPriestOfTheAlgorithm Well, Skeletore was against gay/bisexual rights. That's about as evil as you can get in this day and age, according to the LGBTQ+ Alliance.

[@SuperGreenSmartie]

@@DragoSonicMile lmao since when was Skeletor homophobic?

[@DragoSonicMile]

@@SuperGreenSmartie His enemy is He-Man, correct? Well, there you go.

[@redgeoblaze3752]

What you said about people liking when an "evil act" is justified somewhat reminded me of a dilemma I had in Fallout 3. Yeah, the game's main story is rife with a ton of simple morality, and doesn't really take a lot of thought to figure out which side you better align with, but at a few points the game really does test your decision making skills. This one is the quest where you return to vault 101. The choices you have are to either talk down the Overseer to get him to allow the residents to come and go from the vault as they please, kill the Overseer to meet the same end, or the "bad karma" choice to disable their life sustaining systems forcing everyone to leave the vault whether they want to or not. Also, the first option to talk down the Overseer isn't available if you kill him in the Tutorial because then later on he's replaced by someone a lot more volatile. The moral questions come into play when you realize that the Enclave has their eyes on vault 101, and a vertiberd parked out back. The Overseer has been getting messages telling him that he could either join them, or everyone could die. They're sitting ducks holed up in the vault, and they will be taken prisoner and experimented on or worse if nothing changes. We even see someone from Vault 101 kidnapped in the Enclave if you go off the story path in the Enclave section of the game. There's also the options presented in Skyrim. While on the surface you could boil it down to Racists vs Authoritarians, it boils down into a surprisingly deep political question where you're weighing the benefits of cultural identity with guaranteed security, and whether causing short term suffering of the innocent for a possibility of a long term victory is a wise choice to make, or even a choice anyone has the right to make for someone else.

[@thejackal007]

I noticed some time ago when I played the FPS remake of Syndicate that when I mowed down everyone in sight, NPC's included, it felt very hollow and not enjoyable. Not having any kind of repercussion to being that completely evil made it feel rather without worth to take the lives of everything around me and it felt so distasteful that I went back into the level and played in a more normal way. It felt more enjoyable after that.

[@gogeterdone]

What about 4 different groups that represent alternatives to liberal and facist. Like one is theocratic faction, believing the gods should be in charge, a socialist democracy, a supernatural but caring oligarchy, and misunderstood hive mind. Tons of interesting potential, especially if you do the skyrim thing where you don't have to side with any of them.

[@juanfranciscovillarroelthu6876]

Those are basically the factions in Apha centaury... To Bad that is a strategy Game and You chose your faction before You start the Game, playing as a character on that world and having to side with one of the faction would be interesting, not going to lie.

[@armedwombat6816]

Religion in games never draws me in. Maybe because I'm areligious myself, but I guess part of it is also that games rarely take enough care to come up with an actual religion. Some do (mostly rpgs), but most just use vague phrases like "I follow the light!" or "The side of the angels" and the let the players own predispositions fill in the blanks. Since you have no clear definition what that means, the writers can't put it in direct ideological opposition to the other choices, beyond broad strokes like "god of puppies vs god of puppy-kicking". So basically it all devolves into your stance on the seperation of church and state. That rarely makes for a satisfying conflict. But then again, games often shy away from anything even remotely referencing the real world, because that could shy away customers. I remember when Far Cry 5 came out, some right-wing nutjobs claimed it was a game about murdering conservatives. And most game studios want to avert such a scenario.

[@GodOfOrphans]

@@armedwombat6816 Farcry 5 managed to piss off all the wingnuts as I recall. The rightoids you already covered and the leftoids were mad that it had positive portrayals of right leaning folks and wasn't just a partisan circlejerk. Good point about religious depictions in fiction though, once you notice that it's kinda hard to unsee and the few that don't fall into that trap tend to focus almost too much on the actual metaphysics and how the pantheons work to actually develop the on the ground doctrine of the churches.

[@destroyerdan6945]

You know, Shin Megami Tensei specifically does usually provide some alternate path for you, which is neutral. But first off, Neutral endings are next to impossible to get without some sort of guide because you have to pay attention to almost every little dialogue choice you make. But what they end up doing is introduce some sort of alternative, just getting rid of the conflict altogether because of the idea that humans can exist without constantly fighting over it. Lore-wise, neutral endings aren't always considered the best, as they end up just being more of a temporary solution so that the next game can pick up where they left off last time and start all over again. And overall they don't do enough to show the bad sides of the chaos alignment. Because in reality, a world like that would fucking suck. Half of us may wish for it over an uber-religious authoritarian hellhole (or heavenhole I guess because angels), but we forget that most of us wouldn't last like 5 seconds in a world with no order. Plus the fact that the actual demons that you find that are chaos aligned seem to have their own different ideas of chaos and often range from the ones that just care about free will, to these disgusting violent abominations wanting nothing more than to have the freedom to cause as much suffering as possible. But they never really show any of that, and mostly focus on the appealing aspects of chaos while showing all the angels being either these mind-controlled slaves or the ones that just constantly pester you about siding with god like that one overly-religious grandma who would get mad that we didn't all say our prayers at the family gathering before we started eating. To put it simply, most of these games are way too biased towards chaos and don't really show much of the upsides to law. I still love these games to death, but this is something I've noticed as I go through a lot of them.

[@artofthepossible7329]

Oddly enough, 2 and 5 are Law games, 1 and 4 are Neutral games and only 3 votes Chaos. I guess Luicifer is just that charismatic.

[@theonewhowrotethis5681]

There are some other games in the series where Chaos is viewed as the worse option between Law and Chaos. Strange Journey comes to mind as the Chaos side is portrayed as murder-hobos (Chaos is the worst ending in SJ by far) while Law at least has some merit to the humans (though they would end up brainwashed in that scenario unless if you get the New Law ending in Strange Journey Redux) and Neutral kicks the can down the road. SMT:Nine also does portray Law in a favorable fashion as that game had Yaldaboath as the main villain that Law, Chaos, and Neutral all hated while having Maria being a pretty solid Law representative (Lucifer was the Chaos representative in that game, but he remained frozen in ice for most of the game). The Law side of things also tends to get a decent rep in the Devil Survivor games from what I hear (haven't played them). I'd argue that 4 also portrays Law more favorably than Chaos as Chaos has not real goals in the game besides being murder-hobos, but Law does end in you having Tokyo getting sucked into a blackhole, so it's not much better either. But yeah, most of the more modern SMT games do portray Law and Chaos as irredeemable and Neutral as the only non-crazy option.

[@nathanp5711]

I was going to comment about how Chaos often turns out to be a cringy survival-of-the-fittest meme in some of the newer smt games, but you guys expanded on your points so well and with such well expressed detail that I'm really adding nothing of substance to this conversation.

[@tjofcarolina1776]

Out of the main series I've only played Nocturne and I assume that's the exception to the rule there. Chaos seems like the very obviously bad choice there because its tiered around survival of the fittest and only the beautiful getting to exist. I don't like chaos in the game because there's no positive to it whatsoever and I kinda wanted a nuanced conflict Law in that game (Hikawa) is more nuanced because you have the positive that everyone comes together in harmony and no inequality but on the other hand nobody has emotions anymore. Ended up going with Hikawa The neutral route in Nocturne is just very boring to me, just returns things to before the plot occurs, always a boring narrative choice. Here though its treated as a bad choice and cowardly in a sense, with the possibility of the conception happening again later without you around to choose. I wouldn't choose this ending but it kind of lends weight to the others I guess. Haven't done a true demon run

[@avataraarow]

The trails series (trails in the sky and trails of cold steel) has some more interesting nuance to its politics and factions. You don’t get much choice about which side you’re on, but the organizations are quite complex with many factions who do good in some games, bad in others, and always having their own damn agenda

[@AuroraFirestorm]

Don't forget the Crossbell games! They exist!

[@avataraarow]

@@AuroraFirestorm and they’re amazing! But they’re not well known, officially translated, and also they don’t have a nice name for themselves lol, so I figure for a first recommendation it’s easier to just name the series you can actually play in English without downloading Japanese copies of the games and patching them

[@ivanwilliams7413]

I haven't played many, but from the LP's I've watched, Romance games/Dating Sims have been destroying that status quo for much of the last decade. Hell, that Chtulu one does one better by allowing you to make mostly horrid choices, all things considered.

[@postapocalypse0763]

Has he played one even if ironically?

[@nybxcrotona]

Romance games/dating sims I think focus solely on relationships between individual characters, so it makes sense to focus on one character over others within a game world, and usually you don't deal with repercussions of not having chosen someone (unless it's the loner/didn't focus on any one person enough ending)

[@ivanwilliams7413]

@@nybxcrotona You're right, for the majority of the genre. I was thinking more along the lines of DDLC, Sucker for Love, Boyfriend Dungeon, Dream Daddy and others that have handily subverted the usual tropes while still presenting, at the very least, a similar Illusion of Choice that many of the games described in the video do.

[@drdca8263]

@@postapocalypse0763 I think he reviewed DDLC (or possibly explained why he wasn’t going to review it, but in a way that was akin to a short review? Idr. One of those two I think. I’m fairly sure he played it at least..)

[@martinvaux9843]

One of the things TV and theatre do so much better is the honesty part of the equation. Most tension in the best shows and plays comes from dramatic irony, i.e. the audience knowing things the characters don't. Games are normally dreadful at this, largely because their 'characters' are effectively quest dispensaries. Most of them could be replaced with vending machines. Even if you're playing a nutter or fascist, there's not often very much scope to lie within that framework, or to pursue an agenda that runs tangential or anti rather than parallel, or to try and change an NPC's mind about something. If you think about Walt's relationships in Breaking Bad, for example, or Don's relationships in Mad Men, or the Jennings family in The Americans, or even - to pick up on a word you used - Raylan's relationships in Justified, they're interesting because the protagonists are lying. Often to themselves. Same with many of the great plays in the English literary tradition. From Doctor Faustus and Macbeth to A Streetcar Named Desire or The Crucible. And, of course, many of the best novels do this as well. Frankenstein, Gatsby, Lolita, Jane Eyre, etc. It's something games do badly because they're normally badly written, basically, and don't have very interesting narrative perspectives. We're some way off The French Lieutenant's Woman in video games, for example. Or, you know, To The Lighthouse. Or even A Christmas Carol. Furthermore, the games people tend to think are better written are usually the ones that are more linear, where revelation and exposition and betrayal are carefully scripted and mandatory, rather than, say, the equivalent of ordering up a Serving of Decency by paying 10 Side Missions then pressing E19 on the Quest-o-Bot 5000's keypad. Still, you can blame Choose Your Own Fiction books for all of it. Everyone seems to think that's how game stories should be told, but - while novel in the truest sense - nobody thinks those books were *good books* as much as they seemed incredibly exciting to many of us as children.

[@BoatSoccerPlayer]

Disco Elysium had good ‘factions’ on an economic bent. A mob like union on one side and the powerful and corrupt corporation on the other, with your character in a third group (police) that is both separate from and tied to each side.

[@heathpetrie6850]

i think a larger issue that emerges in these games is how inherent the 'chosen one' trait is to all of them. in every single game like this, the endings feel so hollow because the only answer to who would win is whoever the player backs, and it makes the world less believable as a result. in other words, its limiting their writing options quite a lot and contributing to the sameness that western games have right now to an even greater extent than may be initially noticeable.

[@ShahStark]

It be interesting to fuck with our expectations or account how each side may be unreliable. It would be more interesting if the pros and cons weren’t just “one keeps us safer but is MEAN the other is free but not safe”. Maybe the authoritarians have for more progressive beliefs whereas the rebels are far more regressive. That’s just an idea but it’s far more interesting when the player has to weigh harder pros and cons, ironically far cry 4 is the best example of this because the choice is between the rebels and their competing philosophies on how they wish to rule a free nation.

[@FictionRaider007]

Your point reminds me of the Stormcloaks and Imperials in Skyrim. Imperials are authoritarians oppressing the people of a nation they've invaded, but they are generally more diverse (with an empire spanning such a large range of cultures and races) and hold more progressive beliefs. Meanwhile, the Stormcloaks are trying to defend their homes and way of life, but are quite racist towards non-humans and enforce traditional behaviour.

[@ShahStark]

@@FictionRaider007 really good example too

[@anna-flora999]

@@FictionRaider007 which nation have they invaded? Skyrim has been part of the empire for centuries by the time the stormcloaks start their little thalmor sponsored uprising.

[@Leppter]

I find myself most conflicted in say games like Mass effect, Dragon Age or Knights of the old republic, when you don't chose between faction A or B, but you have a team of people with different thoughts/ideas. You have the choice to pick all the 'good' team members and play very morally right, or go pure evil. But I always picked the characters I liked/enjoyed on my team and had to adjust to some sort of middle ground where I didn't piss off anyone too much. Bonus points to games where each party member is not purely good/bad and actually have some sort of depth.

[@TheLastIshbalan]

Yahtzee should play Disco Elysium again now that the political endgames have been added. He should also look at New Vegas again.

[@KicsiSzabi222]

Whaaaat? They added extra content to disco elysium besides the voice acting?

[@DemonicEngineer]

He doesn't care about Bethesda RPG's. I love Fallout NV but he's not gonna start liking it just for that. It's not as perfect as so many of us believe.

[@gfyusebfsbguidng]

The first Witcher game took a rather interesting approach to this kinda "pick a side" branching paths, by letting you choose not to fight. On one side there's the Order of The Rose (crusaders basically, but they hate elves and dwarves instead of muslims) and the Scoiatel (elves and dwarves who fight back by being just as extreme). Both are trying to get rid of the other, and both have members Geralt can befriend and empathize with. Because of that, they'll ask for your help in exterminating the other. You can help if you feel it is right to do so, or you can very reasonably choose not to fight, because: A. Geralt is a Witcher and not supposed to get involved in politics. B. Their struggle is tangential to what you're trying to accomplish, so you have goals beyond fighting other people's wars. I thought that was interesting and done pretty naturally for a 2007 game (and SMT does this too, most often the preferred ending is somewhere between Law and Chaos (though it can be pretty obscure how to get it)).

[@DarthChocolate15]

Been a while since I've played it, but isn't Skyrim kind of like that too? You can join the Empire or the Nords, but don't have to do either to complete the main story quest (or do you?) And its neither blatantly good v evil, nor freedom v faciscts.

[@andrewmurphy2093]

@@DarthChocolate15 Yeah, that's pretty accurate. There's one point where you have to meet the leaders of both armies in the main story, but all you have to do is talk to them and have no reason to get involved in the war if you don't want to.

[@matthuck378]

Agreed. The choice to "not choose" is an excellent choice that too many games leave out.

[@KatamuroTheFirst]

second game also has something like that. I liked both games having such a thing but at the same time some of the choices you make to keep Geralt neutral are a bit weird and it's kind of hard to reason them out on the first go. Witcher 3 kind of makes you go one side then the other side a bit.

[@veggielord5550]

I've always appreciated that Shin Megami Tensei lets you go neutral and not side with either law or chaos.

[@joshy541]

Notably, in SMT 1 the Neutral route was written to be the golden ending you reach by refusing to side with the other groups even if your current task is mutually beneficial. It feels like the game was designed to tempt you to irrevocably join a faction based off of a single dialogue. One of the first major alignment choices in the game is going to both factions' leaders, and having them tell you how bad the other is. The second leader you go to will ask for your help to stop the first leader. If you agree to help, you are no longer neutral. You have to refuse, and then he asks if the first leader should be allowed to do as they please. Again, you have to say "No" and go off to kill him yourself. The entire game was littered with these choices of "help us, we want the same thing!". It keeps pressuring you to choose a side as if its something you HAVE to do before the end of the game. It feels kind of weird and wrong to keep refusing everything, like the game is giving you leeway for being indecisive rather than being an actual alignment. The old man gave you an explicit hint that neutral was possible, but you barely ever see him compared to Law and Chaos. Its an old game, but it had some neat ideas.

[@thomasyokum1070]

Also, SMT has been doing Law/Neutral/Chaos since the first game in 1992. It's not unfair to give it a pass on that history alone, whereas newer franchises really ought to push the boundaries more.

[@danilooliveira6580]

the problem again is what Yatzee mentioned, if there is a middle ground, why would you even chose the extremes ? in megaten the neutral choice is almost always the right choice.

[@AuroraFirestorm]

But then it becomes a thing about "fuck the system, I don't have to pick a route" which is kind of the impetuous child's choice. I never liked that SMT's stances was "sides are stupid"

[@joshy541]

@@danilooliveira6580 (In my opinion) In SMT's case, its usually less about filling a spreadsheet with another committee-designed mechanic, and more about exploring the inconsistency of being "Law" or "Chaos". That and the whole philosophy of Buddhist vs Christianity thing, that and the whole reverse slippery-slope fallacy thing, that and the whole "Neutral path ends with the most named characters dead because tribalism is easier. Would you associate corruption with "Law"? Is leading through threats of death and violence with promotion by murder "Law"? Its technically "Chaos" but there's organization, right? A side quest in SMT 5 had me try, and fail, to explain the difference between Law and Chaos for about 10 minutes. Most NutterVFascist games tend to have a pile full of extremists that happen to not have the unique flavor of extremism that the other faction has. Not really adding anything new to the table. I've had really long talks with my brother and my dad using SMT's brand of nuttersVfascist, more than any other alignment system of any other game since its so ripe for English research paper material.

[@extrudersfx4571]

One of the most obvious solutions would be to add real advantages and disadvantages to BOTH sides. The “nutter” system could be riddled with crime, substance abuse, and violence which isn’t being addressed due to poor organization, or even ideology, while ALSO being more free and humane in all other ways. Or you could have the authoritarians having a generally more sympathetic ideology or moral compass overall, while enforcing these morals in an insane and/or repressive way. Or the anti-authoritarians could be extremely racist. The sky is really the limit, here, if the people writing this stuff were not stupid, hamstrung or both.

[@randomsandwichian]

Wasn't there a time when stories had several factions with varying degrees of "is okay, but ..." that players can choose from? I wonder who decided to swap that out?

[@user-pu6pn8vt5d]

DO NOT QUESTION MORALITY. CONSUME PRODUCT.

[@starburst98]

I think it is because giving fully rendered models to 2 entire factions is already a pain in the ass, imagine a game with 5 factions and each one has a different style, it would be expensive as hell.

[@drdca8263]

@@starburst98 use the same model, different colors on clothes. Justify it by them being clones.

[@jacobbalensiefer3846]

New Vegas did a pretty solid job back in the day. NCR was a bloated bureaucracy, Legion was ridged authoritarian but effective, House was sort of a libertarian (but actually wanted all the power for himself), or you could just flip the table and destroy everyone.... maybe not the most moral depth but at least each side was interesting.

[@TeenoGames]

I like the Skyrim route, where initially appearances indicate an authoritarian rule oppressing the native population vs the uprising of the common people, but if you investigate further into the situation you find that the authoritarians are themselves under the oppression and are the only thing standing between the common people and a much much worse oppression, and the "man of the common people" leading the uprising is effectively a white nationalist, fighting against the higher power while also forcing the war's refugees into poverty if they aren't nords themselves.

[@anna-flora999]

As well as the rebel leader being a pawn of the worse oppression waiting at the other side.

[@weirdtyrant6274]

I always thought that a solution to the faction problem would be to have the factions defined less in terms of ideology and more in terms of what they think of each other (e.g. being forced to pick a side in a blood feud between families akin to Romeo and Juliet). Of course this may make the factions too similar but I am certain there are ways around that.

[@hondshoven8477]

It's kind of weird seeing Yathzee add SMT of all games in the "lazy fascist vs nutter" bag when this franchise has been discussing this dichotomy and its flaws for decades. Both sides are nutters since they're led by demons and gods with no interest in traditional human ethics / morals. Both sides share elements of fascism (one is the classic "order above all", the other goes more for the "Might makes right" side of fascism). Games like Dying Light 2 goes Fascist vs Nutter so they can add it on a features list, SMT is built from the ground up around its factions.

[@queengames8421]

Yeahhhhhh, I think it's more of an SMT V specific issue, rather than the series as a whole. Although a lot of people have rightly pointed out that "law" as a faction tends to get the short end of the stick in SMT games, and Neutral in particular is usually the "right" option.

[@TemLightKiBlade]

@@queengames8421 Yeah in most SMT's (I don't know V but assuming it works like the rest) Chosing either law or chaos feel like fancy bad ends with written ends. Neutral is the only one that feels like it actually leads to something more and isn't about not picking a side but telling both sides to shove it by killing them both.

[@christophergarcia9022]

I think he puts it in here because they kinda fit. They may not fit 100% but you have two sides of stupid extremes that would make you wonder why you would want to pick them, and then you have the middle ground that is the obvious "best path". Like, I love all smt games but while they do kinda put out some good themes to discuss in their story, the discussion usually falls kinda flat.

[@grand_tourist46]

@@TemLightKiBlade I think what Atlus is trying to drive home with their treatment of the endings, as you describe, is the idea that the Order v Chaos narrative is a red herring in and of itself. It isn't REALLY about picking one or the other. It's about finding a middle ground between the two extremes because such a place is where humanity's growth is nurtured to the fullest possible extent.

[@hondshoven8477]

@@christophergarcia9022 Except everytime we get an SMT direct sequel, the setup is always "We tried the best path and it failed HARD", back to nutters vs fascists it is ! The best path is always the one that ends on the note "We restored the status quo... For now" which makes the extremes and the discussion surrounding them a lot more tempting since they're often long term solutions. The best path fixing nothing in the long run is even the entire setup for SMT IV's world. SMT V is one of the rare exception where neutral achieves something beyond restoring the status quo.

[@CeliriaRose]

To me what would be good is to take it away from necessarily siding with one faction or the other. Instead focus on a bunch of characters, give them all various motivations and then make the player have to choose between said characters. And not always where the two sides are opposite ends of a dichotomy. For example say in a questline you have retrieved a big pile of gold and you have to decide who to give it to among three options. None of these options necessarily need to be opposed to each other they can just be different groups. Like it could be a nun at the local church who has been trying to treat the sick from a plague, and old man running an orphanage taking care of the orphans from said plague, or the local town leader trying to bring in supplies to aid the suffering city. Add some extra flavor based on different personality traits of those characters to maybe add some doubt or debate as to whether they would be the best to receive the money and how effectively they could use it and you have the set up for a great choice that could have varying consequences without automatically falling into the good evil or fascist nutter dichotomy. This to me is also the key to more interesting story telling. Good evil is fine I'm not going to say stories shouldn't ever be about that but a lot of the time I feel like these clear dichotomies are used as a crutch by writers looking for an easy conflict for their story. It's just so nice and simple to just fall back on the tried and true tropes rather than having to figure out a story around something else.

[@unironicallylikesranger7122]

I zoned out for a second and we started talking about star trek, and when I refocused I realized Yahtzee pointed out one of the problems with New Trek: the only morally dubious part of Star Fleet is the designated Dubious Morals Division, section 31

[@AscendantStoic]

Or maybe it's time to introduce our lord and saviour the great Cathu...ahm...I meant to introduce more factions with orange/alien morality that have unusual goals or bizzare motivations, but that of course requires a hefty dose of creativity to pull off. Two examples that come to mind are Planescape Torment and Disco Elysium, the first has a multitude of interesting factions each with their own unique philosophy and worldview and the second has you dealing a lot more with different portions of your own psyche than with factions in the world...both are very creative and interesting takes on morality/factions in videogames as well as writing in general.

[@wariyoshidirector]

Maybe you should have multiple factions at different ends of the scale to kind of fit everyone's beliefs and let you choose what you believe in, but they all lead to drastically different results. Maybe choosing the authoritarian or hippy routes make EXTREME impacts on the world which cause new problems for you to solve, but fixing other problems that the more moderate factions can't solve. I think the main problem is that your faction gives you choice but not, like, a LOT of choice. And it gives you impact but not, like, a LOT of impact. In most of these stories it's just the two factions against one another and when one side wins you literally just change the colors of the banners around, see no more than 3 scripted events around the environment showing the negative aspects of life (maybe the authoritarian soldiers are bullying a shopkeep or whatever), and hear the gripes of people around town complaining about the new change in status quo. If you select an alternative route then it should cause some shocking twists and make the story completely unrecognizable from other routes (although they can all take place in roughly the same environments to keep the dev time down).

[@Draconzis]

I really like this idea of which side you choose causes some problems but fixes others. Perhaps if you side with the more authoritarian faction, there will be less crime and people will be protected by outside threats... but then you have to deal with rampant corruption of officials and peacekeepers. While a more anarchist faction will have a nearly opposite effect, with no/readily-replaceable leaders making corruption nearly nonexistant, but is too decentralized to have an effective police or defense force. Think of the possibilities when you add multiple and more nuanced governing principles!

[@nicholasrpatton]

Picking between two diametrically opposing options in a game is part of why I liked the original Bioshock, but the departure from and further depth facilitated by Bioshock 2 yields a profound respect from me, yet most games don't live up to that.

[@jazzy4830]

Not that supporting any faction makes narrative difference there but Just Cause 2 has 4 factions with different pros and cons: The anarcho-capitalist crime bosses pf the Roaches, the esoteric nationalist primitivist Ular Boys, the Communist Reapers, and the existing dictatorship. They were all portrayed as somewhat bad being supported only for their use to the CIA (also bad guys), but gave more of a spread to the four corners of the political compass (auth left reapers, auth right dictatorship, anarchist left ular boys, anarchist right roaches) by including an extra axis.

[@nybxcrotona]

IIRC, you kinda had to work with each faction for story's sake, as you needed to gain their support to overthrow the dictator of that game. So even though these factions existed, it sucked that there was no consequence really with being with any of them.

[@SorceressWitch]

Roaches were not anarchists. They were drug cartel. Anarchism is very different ideology that runs things horizontally without rulers. Roaches are led by a boss who wants power to rule, which goes against anarchism. I see many people mistaking things as anarchist but anarchism has always opposed rulers. Roaches have a top down hierarchical structure, whilst anarchists prefer a horizontal one done from the bottom up. Actual anarchists are people like Emma Goldman, Errico Malatesta, Benjamin Tucker, Renzo Novatore, Émile Armand, Petr Kropotkin, Lucy Parsons, Voltairine de Cleyre etc. Anarchist societies existed in Ukraine, Spain and Manchuria where they were ran co-operatively. Roaches want to control things with a drug lord up the top. He also lives in a mansion if I remember. Ular Boys are ethno nationalists, they're very xenophobic and want to deport everyone else.

[@jazzy4830]

@@SorceressWitch True Anarcho-Capitalism leads to a sort of corporate feudalism anyway as power/capital will concentrate if left unchecked and the capitalists or CEOs depending on it's specific execution will act as the new leader and ruler determining the rules within their area of influence. A crime syndicate or cartel is the contemporary analogue for what that would look like, especially with the criminal element as in pure anarcho-capitalism any kind of moral or ethical compunctions will limit your ability to gain power at the fastest rate meaning crime bosses rise fastest and highest. Therefore the roaches are a decent example of the power structure of an ancap society, ancap has very different connotations from pure anarchy or anarcho-communism etc. I already said the Ular boys were nationalists, but their philosophy hasn't really been developed to include a specific genetic/racial aspect but includes an appeal to the historic traditions and spiritual practices of the island thereby including an appeal to esotericism and a rejection of modernity so my classification fits. They may not be left wing culturally but they are certainly not economically very right wing being against globalisation and corporatisation.

[@jazzy4830]

@@nybxcrotona yeah, no matter how you play you need all the missions will remain playable for all factions and to 100% the game you need to do all the faction missions anyway. It might have been nice if you could actually influence the next government of the island or if there was an effect in game if you supported a certain faction.

[@carthienesdevilsadvocatenr2806]

Dragon Commander did a good middle-of-the-road option. There are five factions that you can theoretically side with, and dozens of decisions that affect the game as a whole (typically in fairly small ways, but still) but at no point are you locked into supporting any one faction. Each decision, and it's impact, can be affected in isolation if that's what you want; and the result is to build your own faction manifesto point by point.

[@Asaski09]

And that is why he is more nuanced than just either 'based' or 'woke', and that is why we love ya, Yahtz.

[@spacefaringyoshi]

A good example of 'factions with conflicting agendas' can be found in Pillars of Eternity Deadfire. At least 4 factions vying for control of the game's setting and each with its pros and cons that are more complex than just fascist vs nutters (though there IS a Pirate faction for us nutters). Thing is, this is (sadly) one of the reasons for the game's commercial failure, the lack of a clear good guy narrative option left a lot of players upset with the ending, since there was no way to improve the lives of everyone in the Archipielago.

[@Kirbysuperstar44]

I remember playing Fallout 4 and having a hard time deciding which faction to go with, the Brotherhood or the Institution. The Institution being more technologically advanced and having tons of clean resources would do wonders for the nuclear blasted surface world. However, the concerns of the robots and cult-like behavior is a bad thing. The Brotherhood is more militaristic and violent but can offer the best protection from monsters and make it safer to rebuild society. Both sides would prefer destroying and killing everything and everyone associated with their enemy rather then coming together, combining their tech and resources and making strongest chance for society to rebuild. I could decided who to side with and I wandered aimlessly in the game trying to justify who is the better option. Until my game crashed in a loading zone, wiped my save and I stopped playing forever. Funny enough, it was more reliving to be unable to make a choice at all.

[@landotucker]

You can side with the minutemen at the end, despite it being slightly unbelievable that they would have the means to launch an attack on the institute.

[@arellajardin8188]

Unfortunately, the Institute (as written in the game) are absolute idiots, and have zero interest in helping anyone but themselves. Most of their actions are detrimental to people on the surface, in spectacular fashion. They say they want to save humanity with advanced technology, but the only mean the humans living in their underground compound. Everyone else are meaningless to them. Bethesda really dropped the ball with them. The BoS are an amazing faction, in contrast. Yeah, they’re jackasses who impose their own ideology and authority on whomever they choose. But they do what they say they will, and do it efficiently. Their goals and their actions align perfectly.

[@Nyghtking]

@@arellajardin8188 I usually side with the railroad, my sticking point with the brotherhood basically comes down to their perception of synths, specifically the gen 3s, i'm fine with everything else, though i'm a bit iffy on their thoughts on ghouls, though theoretically all ghouls eventually go feral due to brain damage from radiation exposure so I guess it's understandable. I don't usually side with the minutemen because they always come off as lazy, needy, and weak, even when they do fight they have the shittiest gear of any faction late game, and i'm asked to do basically everything for them while getting the impression if I wasn't there nothing would get done at all.

[@arellajardin8188]

@@Nyghtking Oh, the BoS aren’t “good guys”, but I think they’re a well implemented faction. They are racists, no doubt, and that’s a solid reason to not join them. But for me, they’re the better version of the Legion from FNV. FO4’s BoS aren’t comically evil slavers who crucify people for fun and use women as breeding stock. The BoS are authoritarian, and morally questionable. But they’re completely believable. The Minutemen, I like them too, but I agree Bethesda went overboard in showing them as ineffectual if you aren’t involved. What I like is that they’re a non-faction. They don’t have any major ideals beyond protecting each other. They are a militia. Their strength is building in numbers and acting together in defense. They only seem useless because of how the settlement system relies totally on you. I think the Sim Settlements mod fixes this, as it has settlers building their own homes and defenses.

[@Nyghtking]

@@arellajardin8188 True, of the factions the two best ones are the BOS and the Railroad, because they can actually get shit done and don;t need you to handle every little thing for them. The institute are just evil and stupid, they're making a slave race and father even says he believes gen 3s to be more then machines, but he pushes the agenda they're just machines to keeps things orderly and unified, and they don;t seem to have any issue with abducting and killing people to replace or wiping out whole settlements for some pointless data or to keep control. The institute replaced Mcdunna and had him turn the town into and anti-ghoul zone specifically because ghouls can't be replaced with synths, they had a synth infiltrate a commonwealth meeting that was going to be used to create some order and make the commonwealth better for the people who live in it, and had the synth murdered everyone there so there wouldn't be unity and it would be easier to abduct people, and they destroyed and entire settlement for the sake of some pre-war geological survey data or something that was literally pointless, they just wanted it because it was information they didn't have and the people of the settlement didn't sell it to them, and finally they were running and experiment with food that can grow without suffering radiation or something like that, one of the few good things they've done, and still they planned to kill everyone in the settlement when the experiment was concluded.

[@simonhede4381]

I think that to make an interesting faction split, you have to make a world and it's history first. Many AAA games seem to settle on having a faction split, then invent a reason for it to be a thing in the world. An indie game that has a slew of different factions each more interesting than the last is Starsector. Breif context: It's the far future and humanity settled the stars in a golden age using big portals, one day all the portals just shut off, leaving humanity scattered and cut off. The game takes place in one of these isolated pockets called The Persean Sector. The biggest 'main' faction is the Hegemony, a military dictatorship because they are the remnants of the military, the fourteenth battlegroup to be precise, who crawled back and used their big fleet of warships and their military background as legitimacy to declare martial law. Their goal is more or less just to keep law and order until we get the portals back up... IF we get the portals back up. The main antithesis to this faction is the Tri-Tachyon Corporation, which is a mega-corp dealing in AI and advanced ship systems, who 'accidentally' unleashes not one but two AI wars, the remnants of which can still be found. They're turbo-capitalists and just want to do AI experiments which totally won't lead to a third AI war. Then there is the Persean League, which is a loose group of people who looked at the Hegemony and said "fuck taxes", they're pretty libertarian in the sense that they just want to rule their individual planets however the owners of them sees fit, so Persean planets range from sit-com monarchies to slaver guilds. Then there is the Luddic Church who sees advanced technology as sinful and wants everyone to go back to ploughing fields by hand, They also view AIs as the literal devil and the collapse of the portals as god's punishment. Then there's a few smaller factions, like the Sindrian Diktat, another military dictatorship which splintered off from the hegemony, they only have a single world but it supplies a lot of the sector's fuel. There's also pirates, which have a history of creating warlords who go on murder sprees only to be stopped by some navy hero. Then there's the Luddic Path, which is a radical arm to the Luddic church, who preach more or less the same thing just by warship rather than sermon. And lastly there's the independents, which is just all the undecided or unaffiliated. None of these factions are boring, none of them are without flaws, but none of them are without merit. Even the religious extremist Pathers make some sense considering there have been 2 wars wrought by AIs and advanced technology and Tri-tach doesn't seem terribly interested in stopping what lead to the first two AI wars.

[@JPH1138]

"The first thing a good story should do is disrupt the status quo" Um, what? No, the first thing a good story does is establish the status quo. That's why it's called an 'orientation'.

[@Pineappolis]

I think just slightly misleading choice of words from Yahtzee, there, given that it's logically impossible for disrupting the status quo to be the first thing you do in a story because, as you say, what status quo would there be to disrupt? As such, I assume he was using the word, "first," as its used in the phrase, "first among equals." I'm actually struggling to come up with a better word, honestly. "Most important," is a little too strong for the point he's making, while, "primary," reads a little strangely. You could obviously modify the former with, "one of," but that doesn't really suit his rhetorical style. ...can you tell I'm a little bored?

[@FretboardToAsh]

Age of Decadence did a fantastic job providing a story that can be experienced from various different angles, not just two, and your 'siding with factions' is not so much 'good/evil' or 'chaos/order', since the factions have goals they want to achieve beyond simply 'rule the world'. I wholeheartedly encourage everyone to play it. (edit: And be sure to play it twice, or you won't even realise just how many angles there are in this story, it will NOT be the same experience between the 2nd, or even the 3rd playthrough.)

[@Sayiism]

Shin Megami Tensei is actually a good example of this. There is the Good vs Evil routes which are clearly presented as two very extremes of the side, but there are at times neutral and other endings that you can get. SMT4 has 4 endings which are Law, Chaos, Neutral, and the Nihilistic ending where you literally destroy the world so that nobody wins. You do have a great point though where I wish more games would just entertain the idea of a middle ground. Even Star Wars rarely uses the idea of a Grey Jedi, who are technically Jedi but they don't follow the extremes of either side.

[@Kohdok]

I like games with smaller, more personal moral choices which don't involve a Prick Pushover mechanic. Like a certain game where you learn a friend has told his little brother that HE was the hero of the previous two games(It was actually you) and, due to coincidence, said little brother goads said friend into a public spectacle against you. The choice emerges: Do you flatten your friend to punish him for lying, or do you let him win so he can look good in front of his kid brother? There is definitely a path that gives you a lasting mechanical benefit, but the game remembers how you handle this situation and brings it up later. Oh, this was from a Mega Man game, btw. Battle Network 3.

[@SingingSpock]

And any game that focuses on a personal morality meter generally forces you to be either Saint Francis or Cruella De Ville, with any middle ground punished mechanically.

[@hendrikrasmus]

My personal gripe with such systems is that along with creating your own character, that tends to go with similar games, the writing for the protagonist looses all the personality most of the time. Despite what devs claim they can't write interesting characters that stay consistent and compelling over broad player choices.

[@BenDeHart]

I think a lot of this comes down to cowardly story writing - if you create a villain who has a good point about the world's inequality, inevitably you'll see them shove a bag of kittens down a volcano to show that they're "morally grey" and it's okay to kill all their lackeys. A braver story would have faction leaders make reasonable and understandable tough choices and the choice about who to join would come down to real interrogations of the character the player is choosing to play as. That would require a spine to write, however, and it's more likely we'll see the victims of countless years of imperialism create the puppy kicking faction so it's not obvious that the authoritarians are the baddies

[@bort6459]

The bigger issue is, most people fall on an authoritarian or libertarian spectrum (and neutrality is a luxury position to hold). With hundreds of millions of dollars going into budgets, publishers can't risk offending somebody's real world politics lest they lose a broad share of the market.

[@Jeedan]

Bioshock Infinite had a terrible example of this.

[@GodOfOrphans]

@@bort6459 At the same time do you really want your entertainment to definitively pick a side politically and include such messaging in thscapist media? in a choice between what we have now, stale as it is getting, and actual propaganda becoming normalized I'll take the status quo as the lesser evil.

[@Keira_Blackstone]

While there's no moral choice system in the game, Neir: Replicant is basically about the fact that who the 'good guy' is can often just be a matter of perspective.

[@franzfanz]

I think one of the better factions themes were the affinities in Civilization: Beyond Earth. You could choose one of three affinities, Harmony, Supremacy, and Purity which basically describes your philosophy and strategies to survive the new world. Harmony is based around genetically modifying your people to adapt to the environment, Supremacy is technologically augmenting your people to allow them to survive, and Purity is about forcing the world to adapt to the people. None of these are good or evil but rather describe different ways to interact with the world you find yourself in. Of course the system suffered a few weaknesses, like a specific resource was required for each affinity with the other resources being next to useless and the, other than a negative debuff to diplomacy between factions, there wasn't really anything that drove conflict. It would have been better if dominate affinities made it harder for less dominate ones, like Purity making it harder for Harmony to survive with their alterations as they change the environment to be more earthlike.