Subjective List of Best Morality Systems in Video Games
Morality is like... well, everyone has their own. The morality systems in video games also come in various shapes and sizes. However, not all of them can be called interesting. Here, I list all my favorite ones.
Table of Contents
- Subjective List of Best Morality Systems in Video Games
- Demon's Souls
- Red Dead Redemption 2
- The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
- Disco Elysium
- Dishonored
- Mass Effect 2
- Black Geyser: Couriers of Darkness
Demon's Souls
- Genre: Action RPG
- Release year: 2009
The game that actually inspired us to write this piece Demon's Souls remake. Interestingly, I completed it almost without noticing that there was some sort of moral system here. It wasn't until I reached the final showdown and became interested in completeng the remaining achievements that I realized what I was missing.
I quickly started researching how the system works. It turned out to be surprisingly complex. In short: our actions have various consequences. Death in body form is seen as evil, but death in soul form isn't. Killing demons and invaders is seen as good, but killing defenseless NPCs has a negative effect.
The consequences of these actions are manifested through the tendencies of the worlds and characters. They can take various shades, too – from completely white to pure black, with intermediate states between the two extremes. The latter mainly affect the statistics of enemies and the hero controlled by the player. On the other hand, extreme values have some more obscure effects. In the case of the world tendency, it could be the appearance of new NPCs or unlocking of new paths, often leading to unique items. As for the tendency of the characters, it influences, among others, the attitude of certain NPCs or the number of HP in soul form. Moreover, the most powerful weapon in the game scales with this stat.
POSSIBLE RETURN
Unfortunately, a similar system hasn't appeared in any other game by FromSoftware. This developer went more towards quests, the completion of which unlocks, among others, different endings. Apart from a few exceptions – such as Shura from Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice – it's difficult to indicate among them the endings that are clearly good or bad. As for the Demon's Souls morality system, taking into account the fact that the developers like to go back to solutions from their previous games, one can hope that it will retur in some form in one of their future games.
