The Game Critique

Probably the most talked about part of inFamous is the moral choice mechanic. The idea is to split the choice between good and evil options, which can be interesting, but the criticism has been leveled at how it is handled. Reasoning in later choices makes less and less sense as you continue on. The options in the early choices are both justified, while later ones seem to prove that you have a problem with rational thought (if you choose the evil route that is). None of the choices are ambiguous (my notes say otherwise, but I cannot think of any examples and after checking the wiki my memory seems better than my notes), both options inevitably lead to the same missions and story with nary a meaningful change between them. The major options are also as smooth as a large clunk in the middle of a symphony. Using Corvus Elrod’s terminology they are closer to developer moments than player moments even if they are billed as the latter. I’d also hate to meet the person who genuinely choose to go the evil route who wasn’t trophy whoring.

This gets the major criticisms of the system (and really all major morality systems in games these days) so now we can move on to what this particular system represents. Joe Tortuga has said that inFamous equates good with altruism and evil selfishness. This is a great starting point, but I think there is a little more to it than that. Cole has the same material motivation regardless of what he does: to get him and his friends out of the city. The moral choice system is all about how you go about it and why you do it. It’s a game looking to the morality of methods rather than what you are doing. Or it is during the story moments at least. The ludic system outside of mission rewards conflicts with this assessment, because once you’ve chosen a path you have to stick with it if you are going to get all the upgrades and you’re going to need them for the later enemies.

If I can be so bold as to asses the philosophical implications of what you are doing in this super powered conflict, the choices and role you set for yourself is one between Heinleinian co-operation and protection versus Randian domination and selfishness. The good morality is where Cole seeks a path of noble co-existence and in the face of a threat protection of the weaker race. The evil spectrum, however, seeks a path of conflict and eventual subjugation by purporting your genetic superiority over the heads of the masses. Does Cole choose to follow an ideal of co-operation to foster better results through more difficult and trying means or follow the greater good through methods of conflict believing he knows best because he is superior? Or to put it in terms more of my intended audience can understand; it is the Professor Xavier school of thought verses the Magneto one.

Or at least that is the conflict as the designers try to portray. Like I said in my previous posts, the earlier sections of the game are clearer and follow a vision while the later ones tend to get muddled and lose sight of the implied objective to the mechanic. The first two choices are prime examples of this. Do you choose share the food equally to those that need it or do you keep it for yourself because you can? Do you fight the riot cops mano-a-mano because you have the strength to do so or do you sick them on the crowd and make the fight much easier and bloodier? There is no one to force you one-way or the other. To quote Ayn Rand, “The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me” seems very apt to the evil half of this dichotomy. Had they stuck to Heinlein/Rand conflict the morality meter might have made sense; it would have given us concrete attributes that we can map the morality meter to. This is a well-worn conflict, (X-Men, Harry Potter, Dragon Ball Z, Marvel’s Civil War, He-man and the Masters of the Universe) though this is the first time I’ve seen it represented within an individual instead of two opposing individuals/groups.

As it stands in the later sections of the game a host of issues come up where the morality meter loses focus of what it was representing. Why would the police help you in terms of the prison riot, after you’ve taken missions to fight and kill them? Why would people call to you for help with their surveillance problem if you’ve been indiscriminately murdering people left and right? Why would a photography student want to take pictures of you doing stunts knowing you could electrocute him just as easily? Why would you capture Alden and not kill him and remove the threat period? Why would you blow up a gas tank to weaken an enemy and harm civilians when you have already fought and beaten several of this type already? And why in the hell would people attack you, ineffectively I might add, when you could zap them into nothing?

These problems can be solved had Sucker Punch really worked out what they wanted from the morality system. At times it’s about a conflict of how you do things and at others a straight up good/evil morality play, ignoring the relativism of such a comparison. Such a good and evil dichotomy has to recognize they are two sides of the same coin differing only by margins. The margin they chose in this case is method. But they ignore that and in same cases offer two completely unrelated options. The only way for the story to reach its conclusion as scripted would be to focus on method, which is a far more interesting concept than what we ended up with. In that case when people talk to you while you are choosing the infamous path, they would focus on ends, knowing appealing to your means would be pointless. It would also bring the title into alignment with the meaning. Famous vs. infamous isn’t a question of what you do, but how people perceive you. It’s one of the reasons I find the choice about the poster to be actually meaningful rather than extraneous. Either way you are technically famous in that a lot of people know who you are. For example you can be famous for your card playing, meaning you’re really skilled, or you could be infamous for your card playing, meaning you are a known or suspected cheater. The end result is the same; it is the method and meaning of what you do that matter.

This conflict is especially interesting in light of the game’s ultimate mission. It was to make Cole capable of making the difficult choices; able to do what is needed to be done. Exploring the morality of how he does it is made even more important, because Kessler doesn’t care how you do it, just that you do. This is fine and makes him a better than average villain (for a video game). While the game’s entire premise is worked up on how you do it rather than what you end up doing. It gives you no options in that regard and recognizes the limitations of the medium, but instead of embracing that and working with it to proved an interesting how assessment, it uses it as a crutch for some subpar morality meandering.

Heroes of Might and Magic II, for those of you not in the know, it a turn based fantasy strategy game built around resource gathering and army on army combat. For a more detailed explanation, check here.

The campaign starts off with a cutscene explaining the premise of The Succession War the game is subtitled for. The old king that had united the continent under his rule has died and left two heirs: Roland the good guy and Archibald the not so good guy. Normally the royal seer would choose, but several ‘accidents’ happened and Archibald accuses Roland of killing and conspiring to take the crown. Roland runs off, fearing for his life and Archibald ‘influences’ the new seer and gets crowned king. Roland doesn’t like that and the two end up going to war. You are then given the choice of which lord to serve, nothing too complicated. The rest of the campaign is a series of missions set up by intermediate cutscenes that give an over arching flow to the campaign.

The game came out back in 1996, long before the industries present fixation on moral choice. Heroes of Might and Magic II starts off with a choice. The implications between the two men are rather clear in deed and imagery. One man offers a clean conscience and a place in the kingdom and the other monetary reward and a place in the kingdom. This is the truest sense of a moral choice, because yes there is an offer of reward, but it doesn’t happen within the mechanics of the game. The choice has no connection to ludic elements whatsoever. The only real difference between the two campaigns is which of the six castle types and therefore which troops you have access to. Each side gets three, an early martial based castle, a midlevel castle and hard hitting late game castle. The choice is between which man you are going to work for and given they offer the same thing it really is about which man are you going to help rule the kingdom.

Roland’s campaign has you starting out in the far corner of the continent with limited money to fight with so you have to gather allies by subduing the local lords, saving the Dwarven kingdom, and gathering resource rich areas before moving on to engage Archibald’s forces. A few extra missions to gather the additional forces and magic for the final assault against the capital where you’ve forced Archibald to hole up in.

Archibald’s campaign is directly opposite in tone, but mirrors the strategy. He forces any reluctant lords to accept his rule and crushes those that will not submit like the Dwarven kingdom. He then engages Roland’s forces and puts down any opposition he faces. A few extra mission as he gathers up additional forces and items before the final assault on Roland’s forces at his summer palace in the remote regions of the continent.

The campaigns mirror each other. The gameplay within the missions of gather gold and resources, build and recruit monsters is the same in both campaigns, so where is the moral choice? What exactly makes working for Roland different from working for Archibald once you’ve started? In this I think Heroes of Might and Magic does it better than Bioshock, inFamous, or KotOR.

The moral choice is in the context. For those who bother to pay attention and see the context the campaigns have set up you will see what your use of the game’s mechanics actually mean within the game world. Nothing is different mechanically, but the means is very different between the two campaigns. In fact, some of the missions themselves mirror each other. In Roland’s campaign you are give some forces to protect a number of Dwarven villages under siege that cannot be upgraded scattered across the map, while in Archibald’s campaign you are given a castle and more resources to go and conquer the Dwarven kingdom.

In Roland’s missions you never feel uneasy about the goal you are given, because the context never make you question what you are doing. You are courting allies, not subduing them. You are gathering resources, not taking them. And most importantly, you are defeating enemies, not destroying them.

In Archibald’s campaign you are working for the bad guy. Sometimes it’s cheesy, but it is never hidden right down to the maniacal laughing and the chained up Dragon king next to his throne. The mission that stands out most to me is the one where you have to put down a peasant revolt and are told to make an example of them. There are groups of peasant of wandering monsters armies that number in the thousands. They are the weakest creature in the game, but are powerful in such numbers. The only real strategy to defeating them is to build up some archers and keep your distance as they try to cross the field and cut them down. Then your hero’s necromancy ability comes into play after the battle by turning a third of those you killed into skeleton soldiers. Halfway through the mission I felt sick, realizing what I was doing in the context of the world. I was slaughtering thousands and then desecrating their corpses by having them fight their comrades who were fighting a totalitarian king. Yet there was nothing really different in my actions from when I played Roland’s campaign.

The title to the post refers to the Aesop fable “The Farmer and the Stork.” In it a farmer want to stop the cranes from destroying his crops and so sets up a number of nets to catch them. When he goes to check the traps he find along with the cranes, a noble stork. The stork asks to be released for he is not a crane, nor there to harm his crops. The farmer responds that the stork is as bad as the crane for being with them. The moral of the story is “choose your friends wisely.”

The story highlights another interesting point in that you are not playing as either Roland or Archibald, but a general who chooses to follow either one or the other. In this manner you are not good or evil, but are only a tactician ordering troops and working on strategy. There are only two moral choices in the whole game. The one at the beginning and one about halfway through before the fifth mission, aptly named ‘Turning Point’ for both the point in the war and your own choice. In both campaigns after you are given your orders from the lord you are following you are given the opportunity to change sides. Roland will appeal to your sense of decency and Archibald will appeal to your greed and sense of self-preservation. Should you change sides you are sent a message from your former commander, one of rage and threats by Archibald or one of profound disappointment from Roland.

Beyond those two decisions the only other choices you make are tactical. You are just doing your job. Like the stork caught by the farmer with the cranes you are judged by the company you keep. You are good or evil not by what you do, but by your association with Roland or Archibald.

There may not be more of a message about morality in Heroes II, but the game sets up a structure for examining ones own actions. Looking at your actions in the context given is what morality is about and trying to emphasize that in game is a better way to seek a message about morality than an arbitrary dichotomy within the game.