作者：Eric Schwarz

大多数RPG玩家都希望能够掌控自己在游戏中的命运，而很多开发者正是利用这一优势创造出更具个性化的游戏体验。通常来说这也是一种重要的卖点，而如果游戏中缺乏任何道德系统，便会让玩家感觉游戏是过时的内容。尽管RPG游戏《阿玛拉王国：惩罚》中没有正式的道德机制，但是它却是我看过的所有游戏中拥有最优秀道德决策的一款。它打破并超越了其它游戏的标准设置，创造出非常有趣且具有吸引力的选择。

为何要提供道德选择？

尽管很多开发者都在游戏中设置了道德选择，但是通常情况下玩家都会认为这是游戏本身所自带的一种功效。玩家总是喜欢作选择，也喜欢进行角色扮演，那么你为何不提供给他们这些内容？现实情况是，这么做比让玩家简单地做出选择或者不让他们进行选择复杂得多，更别说这种做法还会明显增加开发时间和复杂度。

通常情况下，道德选择和道德系统并非一种自然而然的设置，而是开发者希望以此让玩家体验到主导游戏世界的成就感，更重要的是，创造出一个受能力控制的奇幻世界。特别是在西方游戏中。每一款西方游戏（以及其它媒体）故事可以概括为：来自社会底层的英雄历经重重困难并最终打败大坏蛋。西方游戏世界重视玩家的自我实现，需要你发挥自己的技能，自立自强，并凭借着自己的意志力和能力获得最后的胜利；而这些要求同样也适用于我们自己的游戏故事中。

龙腾世纪：起源(from gamasutra)

（《龙腾世纪：起源》提供给玩家关于肯定与否定等不同强度的选择，虽然这些选择通常都是扮演修饰作用，但却也不是那种能够预先猜到结果的简单选择。）

在现代游戏中，道德选择非常重要。这并不像日本游戏中陈述一个故事，而是更侧重于创造一个故事。玩家总是希望能够控制自己的游戏体验，这就是最近很多射击游戏升级了内置系统，并且开放世界游戏兴盛不衰的重要原因。通常情况下我们并不需要过多地考虑选择类型及其结果，光是选择行为便能让玩家感受到自己对故事的控制权，让他们认为是自己在操纵故事发展而不是作者或设计师。

很多游戏经常因为提供过于愚蠢，不合逻辑且非现实的道德选择而遭受抨击。《神鬼寓言》便因为提供给玩家荒谬的情节和回应而屡次遭到批评——或是提供给玩家卡通式且无意义的内容，或是创造出一些模棱两可的“正义”和“邪恶”选择。《神鬼寓言3》便是我过去一直抨击的一款游戏，主要是因为它在看起来极为逼真且严肃的世界中用过分简单且幼稚的方法设置道德选择。

然而我们还必须意识到，不能直白地呈现出实际的道德选择内容。它们的存在并不是为了鼓励玩家进行思考，有时候这只是一种单纯的选择行为，并不足以让玩家拥有控制游戏体验的能力。就像单纯的修饰决策，如决定游戏角色的发型，这种选择便具有很大的吸引力，所以我们不能忽视选择的修饰价值。

道德选择涉及哪些内容？

这个问题较为特别，值得我们加以陈述：如果你为玩家创造了一个草率，无意义或愚蠢的道德决策，而玩家也注意到了这一点，他们便会觉得自己被骗或者遭到侮辱。这是一种糟糕的设计，因为如果你仅仅想创造一种只有修饰价值的道德选择或者只是想以此创建超级受能量主导的奇幻世界，那么只会让玩家产生幻灭之感，并让他们不愿再重返游戏。创造有趣且复杂的道德选择非常困难。虽然让玩家与一些可爱的角色互动或者让他们操纵Emperor Palpatine（游戏邦注：《星球大战》中的角色）尝试一些反直觉的有趣行动并不困难，但是除此之外的其它内容则需要开发者投入更多的时间和精力。

为了避免道德决策的失败，我明确了以下几大准则。尽管这些内容不够明确，但是我还是确信它们经得起考验。

1.构建背景。大多数优秀的道德决策都有自己的背景。例如在《质量效应2》中，Krogan和Salarian之间的冲突一直隐藏在故事和游戏玩法的各个场景中，并且有时候这种冲突点也会突然变得非常明显。缺少稳定的游戏空间设计以及背景设置便不可能创造出任何选择。如果你希望玩家能够关注两个不同的派系，或者面对一大群外形奇特的外星生物，你就必须提前告知他们这么做的原因以及他们会因此面临何种危险等。

2.明确选择。一个优秀的道德选择必须是玩家能够预见的内容，而不需要涉及太多具体细节，而同时也需要明确选择的性质。与设置背景一样，游戏必须让玩家在真正做出决策之前清楚自己将面临何种新决策。如此，玩家在正视最终决策之前便拥有足够的思考和准备时间，从而避免“玩家坐在屏幕前浪费15分钟的时间去琢磨如何下决策”的问题。

3.预见结果。这并不是指告诉玩家按下红色的大按钮时会发生什么（游戏邦注：这是一些游戏的败笔之处，尤其是在游戏结尾），而是给予玩家相关暗示。一个优秀的道德选择并不是“让玩家决定自己的冒险”并能够翻转页面预知发展结果；也不是在玩家玩了10个小时的游戏后莫名出现一个行动结果。《巫师》在这方面就做得很好，游戏适当地暗示了未来将会出现的事件，如巫师那些被偷走的秘密和供应品将会导致玩家在游戏初期必须面对突变的强大敌人——这个结果虽然会让人惊讶，但却也是符合逻辑的。

4.提供相呼应的结果。不一定需要呈现1：1的比例，即使玩家所做出的决策能够颠覆整个游戏空间，你也不能让他们面临一个截然不同的游戏世界。同时，与过场动画和对话形式一样，游戏也很大程度地依赖于机制进行表达，所以利用机制向玩家传达游戏结果也是一种很好的方式。这种方法与玩家在接触金钱或新道具的过程一样简单，但是如果它能够创造出全新的内容或者一种可征服的新挑战，那么这便算是绝佳方式。

很多游戏只实践了某些步骤，如《质量效应》明确了游戏背景和结果，但是却让玩家不得不面临莫名的决策，并且也未能够真正影响之后的游戏场景——除了角色模型所面对的背景场景。这种选择设置具有明确的情感效应，但是除非决策能够清晰地呈现这些要点，否则玩家最终只能面临一些失衡的内容——完全基于实用主义或者肤浅情感体验的决策。但如果你的复杂游戏系统变成只是“使用X或Y便能够增加信誉值？”或者“我更喜欢NPC A还是B？”，那么这种选择也就失去了意义。

突破实践

《阿玛拉王国：惩罚》是少数几款尝试遵循上述所有要点并创造出优秀道德决策的游戏。主要是因为这款游戏并未依赖过场动画或情节提供道德决策，反倒是基于情节的比例呈现道德选择（不论是游戏中小小的奖励或者可颠覆整个游戏世界的关键时刻）。你也许不必在每一个情境或者重要场景中进行道德决策，但如果真遇上了，你就有可能要比在其他游戏中花更长时间权衡选择。我将列举这款游戏中一个最简短但却也是最重要的内容进行阐述。

在早期的任务中，为了再现民间传说（即将羚羊头摆在适当的地方以召唤出守卫魔戒的恶魔，杀掉它，然后将魔戒赠送给一名少女，也就是“任务委托者”），玩家将捕猎羚羊并获取它们的头颅。玩家可以不需要进行任何对话选择或修饰选择而完成任务指示。而游戏最后的决策虽然看似简单，但是比起你的正义/邪恶或者神圣/愚蠢的回应有深度多了，即你是否会将魔戒还给委托者，还是将其占为己有？

这时候我们便明确了游戏背景。即接受了任务的玩家不只拥有一个明确的终极目标以及前进方向，同时他所需要面对的游戏世界也呈现在我们眼前。在阿玛拉游戏世界中，Fate会主宰每次故事事件的结束。而这种故事的创造完全符合阿玛拉世界的逻辑，并且在玩家接收到任务的那一刻就已经明确了。这一点非常重要，因为阿玛拉是一个完全不同的国界，常规的正义和邪恶概念在此并不适用——它们就像是大自然中夏天和冬天的存在，或者说是共生的魔法与生物，阿玛拉世界更专注变化与稳定而非正义和邪恶（从而让选择显得更加有趣）。

游戏在此巧妙地设置了探索任务。即变成“Fateless One”的玩家与游戏世界中的其他玩家不同，不能再与Fate维系在一起，他们能够改变自己的命运，更重要的是，甚至能够改变故事发展。设置“Fateless”的玩家状态很重要，因为这让选择变得更加重要也更有意义。虽然在此的铺垫很简单，甚至可以说有点疲软，但是这却是必要的过程：即玩家获得魔戒作为奖励而不只是纯粹地占为己有。玩家所获得的魔戒可能也是他所获得的第一个也是最厉害的一个戒指。

阿玛拉王国：惩罚(from gamasutra)

（在《阿玛拉王国》中，即使是一个非常简单的任务也可能包含有趣的决策，并且为了让这种决策更有效，游戏结果通常都不会过于戏剧化。）

当然了，这只是一个小小的选择，但是当你在提供一些较为模糊的道德决策并将其与一个适当的装备（能够适应玩家所居住的世界）相结合时，这一决策将会变得更有趣且更具有吸引力。当然了，我们也可以不断完善这种决策，如让魔戒衍生出更多有价值的奖励，如此让那些“无私”（即主动归还魔戒）的玩家会发现自己因此失去了更多奖励。除此之外，任务委托者属于Travelers派系，所以如果玩家出卖了她，也就很难加入她的派系。

但是否玩家只要不到5分钟的时间便能够完成这个支线任务？提供这种决策并不需要投入更多开发精力，但是比起让玩家选择是否莫名其妙地去射击无名的NPC，这无疑是一种更令人愉悦的选择过程。

总结

《阿玛拉王国：惩罚》中有许多这种类型的决策，几乎在每个有关寻找道具的任务中玩家都将面临是否留下道具的选择，即通过技能鉴定或者其它方式。而这种决策有大有小，如果从游戏整体来看，我所阐述的内容只是微乎其微，并不会影响读者在游戏中的体验（因为根本不会剧透）。

这种均衡且充满意义的决策将进一步壮大受能量制约的奇幻世界，而小决策也将影响着大决策的作用，不仅能够进一步提高玩家的期望值，同时也能够为游戏世界引入更多道德准则和道德系统，让玩家真正体验到自己主导游戏世界的感觉。《质量效应》在早期阶段便让玩家必须做出生死攸关的重大选择，并理所应当地把死亡当成是一种戏剧化的结果；与之相比，《阿玛拉王国》为游戏中的每个选择都明确了强大的基础，从而让玩家能够轻松自在，且充满期待地迎接各种选择，无需烦恼该如何做出选择。

《阿玛拉王国：惩罚》中的道德决策设置是很多开发者可以借鉴的重要内容。这些选择在迎合玩家渴望控制能力的同时也不会让玩家感觉游戏无趣，强迫，廉价或懒散。你只需要稍微思考一下比起提供给玩家一个既定的结果或者有趣的方式，你真正希望玩家在游戏中做些什么。尽管《阿玛拉王国：惩罚》并不总是遵循我在此所提到的方法，但是比起我最近所接触到的其它游戏，它真的优秀许多。写作或逻辑创造其实都很“廉价”，因为很少有玩家会真正注意到你所投入的努力，不过，你也不能忽视这种努力，因为它们能够帮助你获得更多有价值的故事体验。

（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转载，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

Reckoning: Breaking the Moral Choice Mold

by Eric Schwarz

Last week I gave my thoughts on Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, Big Huge Games’ just-released open-world action-RPG.  In that article, I examined how the game struggled with its sheer size and MMO-style design considerations, and how they ultimately resulted in a weaker single-player experience.  However, there’s another side to Amalur that I think it pulls off excellently – the way in which it handles the moral decisions it gives to players.

Most RPG fans are big fans of being able to sculpt their own destinies in games, and there have been plenty of developers that have taken advantage of that to create more personal experiences.  Oftentimes, it’s a key selling point, and not having some sort of morality system built into a game can leave it looking dated.  Kingdoms of Amalur, though, despite having no formalized morality mechanic, actually has some of the best moral decision-making I’ve seen in a game in some time.  It breaks and surpasses the standards set by most other games and produces choices that are genuinely intriguing and effective.  Though this article is partially about Reckoning, more broadly it is an articulation and demonstration of a framework for developing interesting and effective moral decisions.

Why Moral Choice?

I suppose it’s best to start at the beginning for this one.  While many developers integrate moral choice into their games, often it’s considered a virtue in and of itself to include.  Players want options, they want to role-play, so why not give them to them?  The reality is that it’s a little bit more complicated than simply giving the player choice or not giving the player choice, and I’m not even talking about the obvious increase in development time and complexity.

Generally, moral choices and morality systems exist in games not for their own sake, but in order to give the player a feeling of authorship over the world, and, more importantly, to create a power fantasy.  This is especially true in Western games.  The story of just about every Western game (and most other media) can be summed up as: hero rises from low status and fights against all odds to defeat a bad guy.  The Western world is built upon this idea of self-actualization, of taking advantage of your skills, pulling yourself up by your bootstraps, and claiming victory through your own strength of will and abilities, and this carries over into almost all of our stories.

Dragon Age: Origins offers a variety of shades of grey between the yes and no – these options are often cosmetic, but often enough are neither simple, or the outcomes predictable.

Moral choice is a big part of this in modern games.  It’s not about being told a story, as in many Japanese games, but rather, about making a story.  Players want to feel like they have control over their experiences, which is why just about every shooter these days has leveling up built in, or why open-world games were all the rage a couple of years back.  It often doesn’t even matter so much what the choices are or their consequences are – the mere act of choice-making is often enough to give players a sense of ownership over their stories, to make them feel like it’s them calling the shots rather than a writer or a designer.

Many games often come under fire for stupid, illogical, or unrealistic moral choices.  The Fable series has been oft-criticized because it provides ridiculous scenarios and responses to them, either because they are cartoonish and pointless, or because sometimes the “good” and “evil” options are ambiguous enough that they could be interpreted either way if it wasn’t for the devil horns or halo your character springs.  Fallout 3 is another game I’ve railed against in the past for its juvenile and simplistic approach to morality in what is ostensibly a realistic and serious world.

However, it’s also important to recognize that, in a sense, the actual details of moral choices are incidental.  The purpose of them isn’t just to give the player a brain teaser to mull over – sometimes it’s the act of choice and not he consequences that lend power to an experience.  Just as purely cosmetic decisions, like an avatar’s hairstyle, can have lots of appeal, the cosmetic value of choices can’t be understated.  It’s why, as much as I protest, Shepard in Mass Effect has no arc, or Fallout 3′s karma system can be so easily gamed – it’s about the player projecting themselves onto a world and being given a sense of mastery over it.

What’s in a Moral Choice

That out of the way, it’s worth stating: if you make sloppy, pointless, or stupid moral decisions for the player, and the players notice, then they will probably feel cheated or insulted.  This is still bad design, and building moral choices only on the cosmetic value, or only to achieve the end power fantasy is a quick way to leave your players feeling disillusioned, or to have them stop taking your game seriously.  Creating moral choices that are interesting and difficult is challenging.  While it’s easy to tug on the player’s heartstrings by giving them a cute kitten to kick around or play with, or to play Emperor Palpatine and do counter-intuitive, stupid-evil things for the fun of it, to do anything beyond that involves a good deal more work.

There are several steps I have identified to ensure a moral decision doesn’t fall flat.  Admittedly, these are a bit rough, and not incredibly specific, but I do think they stand up under scrutiny.

1.Build the context.  Most good moral decisions have a background to them.  In Mass Effect 2, for example, the Krogan-Salarian conflict is something bubbling under the surface of many scenarios in both the story and gameplay, and it occasionally rises to the top.  This is impossible to do without solid universe design and background lore to accompany the choice.  When you’re getting the player to care about two factions, or a bunch of strange-looking alien creatures, you need to inform them what’s at stake and why they should care.

2.Set up the choice.  A good moral decision is something the player should be able to anticipate – not necessarily the specific details, but the nature of that choice being made.  Much like setting up the context, the player needs to be given an understanding that a certain decision is coming up, before being called upon to actually make the decision.  This gives the time for a player to contemplate and prepare for when the choice finally comes, and can help avoid the whole “sitting in front of the screen for 15 minutes trying to make up my mind” problem.

3.Foreshadow the outcome.  This isn’t so much about telling the player exactly what’s going to happen if he/she presses that big red button – a failing in a few games, especially in their endings – but rather in giving the player a hint of what to expect.  A good moral choice is not a choose-your-own-adventure where the player is allowed to flip the page ahead and see what happens; likewise, it is not about springing the outcome of an action on the player out of nowhere ten hours into the story.  The Witcher largely got this right by hinting at future events, such as the stolen Witchers’ secrets and supplies leading to tougher mutated enemies earlier in the game – it’s a surprise otucome, but a logical one.

4.Provide a gameplay consequence to match.  This doesn’t have to be a 1:1 ratio – if the player makes a universe-altering decision, it’s unrealistic to give the player a whole other game to play.  At the same time, games speak through mechanics just as much (if not more) than cutscenes and dialogue, so it’s a good idea to give the player an outcome that is expressed in those mechanics.  This can be something as simple as money or new items to play with, but it’s generally best when it leads to new content, or a different type of challenge to overcome.

Many games get a couple of these steps right – Mass Effect’s choice to sacrifice a squad member late in the game, for instance, gets the context and gameplay consequences right, but it springs the decision on the player out of nowhere, and there are no real effects on the plot later on, save for which character model appears in a background scene.  These sorts of choices can have emotional weight to them, but unless the decision hits all of these points, there’s going to be an imbalance – a decision driven entirely by pragmatism, or by shallow emotional appeals.  There are always going to be players who min-max and game the system, but if your complex game systems are being reduced to “do I want +1 reputation with X or Y?”, or “do I like NPC A or B more?” then that choice has been cheapened significantly.

Breaking Step

Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning is one of the few games that manages to, in most cases, hit every one of these points.  The reason for this is largely because it offers up relatively few moral decisions that are expressly presented in expensive cutscenes and plot lines, and instead offers them up in proportion to the size of the scenario, whether that’s a small in-game bonus or a world-altering moment.  You might not be making a moral decision in every single situation, or an important one at that, but when you do, chances are you’ll think about it more than in many other games.  In order to do this, I’m going to use one of the shortest and most insignificant parts of the game to demonstrate this.

An early quest sees the player hunting antelopes and retrieving their heads in order to recreate a folk tale – placing the heads in the right place summons a troll to kill, who guards a magic ring, which is then presented to a damsel.  The player is able to follow the quest forward without any dialogue options or cosmetic choices.  The decision made available at the end is a simple one, but has more depth than your typical good/evil or saint/jerk response: do you give the ring back to the person who asked you to retrieve it, or do you keep it for yourself?

Right off the bat, we have context.  The player has been given a quest that not only has a definite end goal behind it and a set of steps to complete, but there’s also a larger world that it fits into.  In the Amalur universe, Fate dictates that the events of stories play out time and time again over the ages – the recreation of this story is something that is logical within the game world, and has been established at the point the player receives the quest.  This is important, because the universe of Amalur is fairly alien, and the regular concepts of good and evil don’t really apply – they are embodied as Summer and Winter in natural, symbiotic magic and creatures, and questions are less about good and evil and more about change and constancy (which in itself makes most choices about five times more interesting).

The way the quest is set up here is a bit more subtle.  As a Fateless One, the player’s character is not bound by Fate in the same way that everyone else in the universe is – unlike others, he or she has the power to change destiny and, perhaps more importantly, change the story being retold.  The player’s status as Fateless is important, because it gives the choice weight and meaning,   The foreshadowing in this case is fairly simple, and admittedly a bit weak, but it does what it needs to, specifically: the player gets the ring as a reward rather than keeping it.  Similarly, the consequence is the magic ring the player gets – probably one of the first and best rings the player will have access to (I used it for several hours afterwards).

In Amalur, even a simple quest can have interesting decisions, and demonstrates consequences don’t always have to be huge or dramatic in order to be effective.

Sure, this is a small choice, but in providing a morally ambiguous decision – is it okay to defy an agreement when you stand to gain at the expense of another? – and combining it with a proper setup that fits into the universe the player inhabits, the decision becomes far more compelling and interesting.  Granted, it could be improved – keeping the magic ring yields a more valuable reward than surrendering it, so players who don’t take the selfish route are going to find themselves lacking a little bit in comparison.  Additionally, the quest giver is a member of the Travelers faction – backstabbing her could have had an influence on the player’s attempt to join the group.

Still, all this done for a simple side-quest the player will finish in five minutes?  It likely wasn’t any more work to include in the game, but it’s a far more satisfying decision than choosing to, say, shoot or not shoot a faceless NPC without good reason.

Closing Thoughts

Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning has more of these decisions – dozens more, in fact, and just about every quest that revolves around obtaining an item gives the player the option of keeping it, either through a skill check or some other means.  This extends from the big decisions to the small ones – while the example I gave was mostly spoiler-free and fairly unimportant in the grand scheme, it applies even more effectively when hunting down and killing former Red Legion bandits to save another man, or when the player is asked to.

The power fantasy is not harmed, but enhanced by these proportionate and meaningful decisions – the small ones are necessary for the big ones to matter, to build up expectations, introduce the moral codes and systems of the world, and provide a sense of growing authority and mastery over the game.  While games like Mass Effect will often throw life-or-death decisions at you in their earliest hours (or minutes) and take it as a given that a death in and of itself is dramatic, Kingdoms of Amalur creates strong foundations for all of its choices, so when they do come along, the player will feel comfortable, confident, and rewarded, but not without difficulty in the choice-making itself.

I think that a lot of game developers can learn from the decisions Reckoning provides the player.  They very often play to the player’s power fantasy, yes, but they do so without being cheap, pandering, easy, uninteresting or lazy.  All it takes is a little thought about what you’re asking the player, a desire to go beyond simply providing the ends, and crafting an interesting means.  While Reckoning doesn’t always follow the framework I’ve established here, it does so more than any other game I’ve played in a while, and it’s all the better for it.  Writing and logic are cheap – not every player will notice the effort put in, true, but those that do will be rewarded with a far more rewarding narrative experience.(source:GAMASUTRA)