Praetoria's morality...

I think I finally figured out what bugs me about Praetoria's take on "morality" and why I find myself so turned off by something which should, in theory, be exactly like what I've been asking for. Once upon a time, I asked for choices and options, yet when we got choices and options, I balk. Why is that?

As I ran through Katie Douglass' "morality" mission of whether to free the Seers from the network or leave them where they are, something struck me. When a moral dilemma is posed before me, I have the tendency to run through my options before I actually learn what my options are, to be prepared, so to speak. I was thinking between "Is it right to remove the Seers and expose people to danger?" "Is it right to force these women to sacrifice themselves against their will?" Those... Aren't quite the options I got.

What I got, in fact, as "Without the Seers, the PPD would be blind!" vs. "If you free these Seers, the Resistance can use them!" Wait, where is the morality in all of this? Where is the choice of MY morality? And then I realised what bothers me about those supposed "morality" missions - they aren't morality missions, they're political missions. They don't force me to choose between two morally ambiguous decisions and choose my moral high ground in the process, they force me to choose between two political factions and who to support. I am never given a choice to pick MY morality. I am only given a choice between the moral stances of two organisation from which to pick.

This, in a nutshell, is what I hate. The premise of Going Rogue and Praetorian Earth was that morality would come into question and we would be able to define our character's own unique view of morality and ethics, to make our characters even more our own. But far from giving more freedom, the choices we are forced to make only serve to railroad us even further still. We may no longer have to choose between good and evil, but we still end up choosing between two static factions nonetheless, and a middle ground still does not exist. Worse still, OUR OWN position is never considered. Our characters are not viewed as their own entities with their own thoughts, aspirations and ideas, but merely as extensions to either the Resistance or the Loyalists.

Once upon a time, I asked for choices because I didn't want to have my characters working for, belonging to and identifying themselves with existing organisations in the game, most notably Arachnos. And the choices I got were to work for, belong to and identify with a few more organisations. And the coveted independence of our characters and ability to pursue their own agendas, morality and goals simply failed to materialise.

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Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

That's not strictly speaking true: There's quite a bit of scope for our own character's interpretation of things (much more so than earlier) especially considering that there are four paths, not just two. (And even within paths your motivations are left unclear)

And I'd also question the distinction: Politics is a fundamentally moral activity: It boils down to "What goals should society seek to achieve and what means are justifiable in seeking them?" That's a moral question right there.

I look at it this way: one of the results of the choices you make is that one or another political faction decides that they like you or don't like you; you're not choosing "what is best for this faction" so much as "this is what <insert character name> believes is right", and the faction shifting is the peer pressure consequence of your decision.

If you want to take it as your character being purely motivated by political agendas and finding uses for people within a faction then that's your take on it. But it doesn't mean that everyone else that chose that way did so because it furthered a political goal.

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Originally Posted by PleaseRecycle it has gone from unconscionable to downright appalling that we have no way of measuring our characters' wetness.

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Originally Posted by Brillig It's hard to beat the entertainment value of Whackjob Wednesdays.

I also have to disagree, Sam. Freeing the seers is clearly the correct moral choice. Forced labor, forced servituded, imprisionment for no crime, clearly violate all the normal rights and freedoms that we hold. The fact that there are political implications as a result are just the consequences of your choice.

What I really like about Going Rogue: we have conversations like this one on these forums.

As Katie and the freed seers were there to see me off at the portal as I left Praetoria, I'm confident that there was a right decision to make.

Well- I18 was known as Shades of Grey. To me that means there was more focus on vigilante/rogue than actual good/evil or hero/villain if you will. To me a grey area (Shades of Grey) means the middle ground where good and evil are blurred.

This I think was the theme through the entire GR expansion. Praetoria just seemed like one big shade of grey to me. All the missions with choices seemed to have equally good/bad points morality wise.

I'm not really seeing the conflict between your choices and the choices presented in the game, Sam.

Your preferred choices: free seers or don't free seers

Game choices: free seers or don't free seers

tl;dr

Also, only a matter of time until she comes in.

I think the main "problem" with the GR morality missions is that they've clearly been designed to be RP-friendly - like if you pretend to be a Paretorian, and use a Praetorian mindset for the missions, then they could be complex.
But if you don't RP, then for normal people, they're not really very diffcicult choices at all, because we're influenced by the real world and the game world, so we know that Tyrant is evil, and that his methods are evil too, as we've seen them being used by evil people in the real world, and in the game world.

For example, the choice to free the Seers is only difficult if you're thinking like a Praetorian, and imagining that you've been brainwashed with the lies of the dictatorship since you were born,, and are caught up in hte hystreria about "treachery" and the need for "security" that dominates the lives of the Praetorians.
But for normal people, we know that in both the real world and the game world, law enforcement forces don't require slavery or forced conscription to be effective - we know that police officers choose to do their job and risk their lives to protect people, just like we know that Heroes in the game world make the same choice, so when we're given a choice to free slaves or keep them enslaved because that would help "prevent crime", we know right away that that's a lie, as we have real world and in-game reference points to show that it's a lie, while if you're RPing as a Praetorian, then you have to imagine that you don't have those reference points, so you might genuinely believe that the Seers were required to keep people safe, and not being used as tools of repression.

The tutorial is another good example of the RP angle the devs have gone for in GR - if you play it through as someone who's obedient to authority, and never asks questions or talks back, then you get a totally different picture than the one you get if you question what you're being asked to do at every turn, and see the friendly facade of the PPD quickly fall apart.

Whoa. GG does get it. Mostly.

Thanks for showing us that side of you, GG. You're not bad when you're not trying to distract us with incessant winking.

I disagree. That is a fairly unreasonable expectation. What other games out there allow moral choice trees that reflect the nearly limitless range of reasoning that might be behind choosing A over B?

The only time a game has presented moral ambiguity close to that is a game where the choice isn't in some dialog tree. The game simply lets you do something and then presents the consequences.

Fair enough.

The true morality choice aren´t whether you work for Loyalists or Resistance, but what path you choose working for them. Protect civilians or get as much power as possible//Free Praetoria or simply tear everything to shreds.

@Redcap

Keep in mind, Anarchy doesn´t mean destroying everything it´s just...read my sig.

@Redcap