And it sounds like Dragon Age has a nice take on the morality system. Perhaps its biggest faults in other games is the mostly binary nature of it. This inherently means you’ll only really deal with things in a very superficial way. But what if a game used the classic D&D alignments of Lawful Good, Lawful Neutral, etc, etc, to give at least a more RPG sense about the morality systems? This would probably mean a lot more work for the developer, but maybe they can shave a few bucks off the graphical department’s budget and dump some of that cash into character development.

I might still rather be rid of a morality system, though. Because, frankly, if I must be told whether my actions are good or bad then either I’m an idiot or the game thinks I am. Let the actions speak for themselves without some stat point reminding us that we did a nicey-nice or a stinky-bad. I can tell the difference and plots in games could always use the added subtlety that kind of restraint would lend.

Throwing in my on-topic two cents, I found Dragon Age II to be a far better morality system than any of the Mass Effects or Fables. Instead of attaching each response to a “good” and “bad” spectrum, DA II responses offered alternative tones and personality types (as I recall, the main three were “diplomatic”, “aggressive,” and what I liked to call “charmingly sarcastic rogue”)- even better, while consistent response choices would stack and solidify Hawke’s personality type, each Act offered the opportunity to alter his main personality. That way if you played the charming rogue at the beginning of the game, you weren’t locked into his personality all the way through and changing it didn’t cut you off from any real bonuses.

If I had anything that annoyed me about modern games, it’d be the consistent trend in modern military shooters to completely deadpan their racist/nationalist ridiculousness. Has anyone here rented Call of Duty: Ghosts? I usually play CoD games as a guilty pleasure, but that plotline required such a level of myopic national pride to make sense that I could barely keep my skeptical eyebrows on my face.

“Oh really. We can’t understand why dirty South Americans would want to blow up our giant space death ray?”

It was a perfect “Are we the baddies“? moment.

And I never really thought about camera systems outside of their use in the early Resident Evil games. Free cameras ARE kinda annoying. Especially if the camera control isn’t to your liking. (That is, inverted or un-inverted. Being stuck with the one you don’t like is torture) Also, not having to worry about the camera gives the player something else to do with the right analogue stick.

And battle music is another great one. That stuff really does wear you down after a while. I find that even environmental music can get that way after a long enough time. I’ve been playing Final Fantasy 14 and some of the locational music has gotten so worn out to me that I’ve taken to muting the music when I’m in well trodden areas. The ambient noises are nice and relaxing anyway.

@Tim: Hi!

Speaking as one of the writers whose drowsy words and lethargic topics speak (snore?) for themselves, I can say with some authority that the inability to come up with engaging topics isn’t proof Lusipurr doesn’t have your soul. Sorry, Matt, I think you’ve just been lying to yourself this whole time.

You’re like one of Kuja’s Black Mages who can’t help but say “can’t” instead of “can not.”

OK. I have a couple to add. They are both quite popular but I wish they would go away. The first is a free camera. At first, I could see the appeal of getting the angle you want but the thing is, nearly EVERY free camera in games is just way too close to the back of your character’s head or points too far downward. Kingdom Hearts and Kingdoms of Amalur come to mind as the worst offenders. Some games have pretty good zoom range and let you pull the camera way back when you’re outside. This is desirable to me. I see the character all the time, so I don’t need to be able to view them in great detail. Especially in RPGs where there are no platforming sections. I want to see the world around my character instead. That’s the content worth looking at while exploring. But even these good cameras totally suck when you get inside of tight spaces. Programmed camera angles is the way to go. Lords of Shadow, Metal Gear 3, and Tales of Vesperia all have VERY solid cameras. Also, the more the camera moves, the more blurry the graphics become. Plus there all kinds of cool effects that can be created with programmed camera work. Wow. I went on about that longer than I expected I would.

The other is “battle music”. I don’t like having a theme for general battling for the following reasons. 1) You end up hearing that song ALL THE TIME! 2) You can’t enjoy the music of the environment you’re in very much. 3) It interrupts the current audio and then gets interrupted itself when the battle is over. Not every battle is a total freaking surprise so having sounds suddenly cut in and cut out just breaks immersion. I’m all for boss battle music and I’m fine with battle music in areas that don’t have BGM, but there is nothing more annoying when you’re in an area that has awesome music but you can’t listen to it because every 10 steps you are forced to listen to the battle theme.

Rant over. Thanks for the article, Mel.

Also had an idea about the end of the year drawing. What if, instead of EVERYONE who donates $5 or more getting an equally random hat chance of winning, the person who donates the most throughout the year does? The trick is, donation amounts are never mentioned, so it’s a gamble for the readers to decide how much they should contribute versus the others. The way it is now, where one has the same chance of winning by giving $5 a year as $50, smacks of Communism, and lacks the incentive of free enterprise. Of course it would be unethical to change it for this year after having promised it for the past 50 weeks, but if you change it next year I think you’ll find a lot more boom-mike money in your Paypal account.

And I always will.

Forever.

The contract most specifically stated “eternal soul,” and as a sole believer in such things, I would not part with such a thing as that. You can be sure, despite any word play intended to worm out of the deal, that Lusipurr has ways of obtaining what is contractually obligated to him. Although, his lordship’s spiritualist power does seem to influence the soulless shell of Mel to write well.

It also says, “Please! Release me! End my torment!” But that’s off-topic.

And the proliferation of morality systems seem to have come and (sort of) gone with the previous generation. It may have just been an easy thing to do that added weight to what all the NPCs were talking about because suddenly game devs all had the disc space for copious voiced dialogue. And in some games it added an easily crafted form of replay value. Did it all as a good guy? Now do it again as a bad guy!

I’ve never played a game with a “morality system,” but it sounds pretty lame. Well, Shin Megami Tensei main series games gives you dialogue options for Law and Chaos, so I guess that counts. AND pre-dates Western developed games, SO THERE! But maybe Ultima had something like that, so I dunno.