Are you getting tired of games making you feel like a bad person, for the sake of coming across as mature? Becouse I am.

Right now I'm doing the genocide run of undertale, I'm stuck on the Undyne boss fight and I'm wondering whether I should carry on; not only because the boss fight is difficult, but because I also not sure what the point of it is. Ooooo wait... Before I carry on spoilers... massive ones... If you still haven't played undertale it's only ten dollars (seven pounds round where I live). If you don't have that much go steal a homeless man's change. It should be enough.

This is what made undertale stand out to me. It made you feel like a good person without any cynicism or irony. You where just good and you felt good about being good.

But then there is the bad run in which you are a bad person and everything you do makes you feel guilty. And I kind of get why this trope is being used so much, because only games can give you that feeling of guilt. Unless you find some sort of weird porno and are enjoying it but, really feel like you shouldn't. I will try to remember all the games I played (haven't played that many) that did this:

Dark Souls

Deus Ex

Deus Ex Human Revolution

Spec Ops: the Line (this one especially)

Bioshock

Fallout New Vegas

Witcher 1, 2, haven't played 3 yet

Hitman Blood Money

Hotline Miami

And the thing is that these are some of my favourite games ever and I liked it when they made me feel guilty. It felt so unconventional, edgy and meta and all those words. But I feel that now it become the convention and I don't like that. Yes some of those games give us a choice but you still want to see all the content, for which you paid with your hard earned money and considering that money is real and dead hostages are fictional, you know which one you're going with.

I know that writers and developers want a sense of realism to some of the M-rated titles and want that to, but I think so far the scale has been tipped to far towards pessimism. In real life you can be a good person and feel good about it, maybe you can't change the world but, maybe you can, other people did and other people will, sometimes for the better. So that's what I want and now expect every developer to do. I want more games that make you feel like a good person in a non-patronising, non-condescending way. A way that makes me work my ass off to be the best person I can be. A game that sometimes makes that seem impossible but always achievable. We already had one, it's called the pacifist mode of undertale.

There are plenty of games where you play as the "good guy", or at least "sort of good guy". A lot of games, like Watch Dogs, let you have a choice as well, letting the way you play the game decide whether you are deemed "bad", "good", or "somewhere in the middle".

The majority of games I play I don't find emotionally engaging enough to make me feel bad. I have to care about the story and characters to begin with, and while there are exceptions here and there (TLoU), they're fairly rare.

The psychological play that some of these sociopathic developers are trying out will be looked back upon as being as quaint as the FMV trend in the 1990s.

Spec Ops The Line handled it well. The big facepalm is the Metal Gear series: every single game is like "Here, take these guns, shoot people." Then: "How dare you use the guns I gave you to shoot people? Here's a 30 minutes lecture on war being bad!"

Compared to the majority that makes you out to be a hero with no flaws?

No.

I agree completely. I much rather play as a hero with no flaws than a criminal. Why in earth would I want to be a murderer? There is no element of intrigue to that! That is precisely why I have never been able to like GTA. A game that starts with robbing a bank and then shooting through many cops to get away- I don't see the point. I would much rather be the cop in that case. Even if it is going to be a bank robbery, make it like Ocean's Eleven. or Robin Hood. I mean, the good and the bad do not have to be completely separated in a game but at the very least, I am sick of games that manifest on crime.

It depends. Undertale is a horrible example of it, the characters have no development and are annoying yet it tries to make you feel bad for defending yourself.

lol....that's about right!!!!! @Black_Knight_00

Spec Ops: The Line is one of a very few games I would call "art." It was on a very short list of games that transcended entertainment and really made you feel something. I was in a funk for days after beating that game and ruminating on what it all meant.

And Metal Gear can suck it.

Pretty much how I felt about each game. Spec Ops: The Line handled its message fairly well, while MGS fumbled it like it does for almost everything else in its narrative.

^^^^ This. The ones that do I rarely find are patronizing, but maybe I don't play those games. i can't remember a game that made me feel like a bad person because 99% of games you're a good-2-shoes, or you can be.

OH! I just thought of X-com 2, but I don't think it's intentional. They want you to save all the civilians and it is impossible (literally) to do so, so it gets annoying when they get mad at you for not saving them.

The answer the question not really. Unlike most people who cant tell the difference of whats real and whats not real. These games are made to entertain. If the person feels the game isn't that good or very much offensive they can stop playing it and maybe find something better to do with their time.

A hero without flaws does not an interesting hero make. Firstly, the whole point of a hero is to overcome both internal and external strife so that at the end of the arc, a story is told and a lesson learned through their journey of self actualization. In order for this catharsis to occur, they need to be flawed at the start. It's one of the rules of storytelling.

Secondly, some of the best stories have been told through the eyes of the morally ambiguous. Ever hear of Macbeth? Goodfellas? Heat?

Lastly, GTA borrows it's storytelling elements and themes heavily from some of the films of Michael Mann among others (the similarities between Thief/Heat and GTA V aren't difficult to see). Both Mann and GTA's V characters are an essay about lone wolves's selfish, willful rebellion against the hypocrisies of society and it's pseudo morality. If you have the eye for it. that shade of storytelling can offer quite a bit of food for thought about who we are and where we're going as human beings.

I guess what I'm saying is that yeah, good guys can be great (Chritian Bale's character from 3:10 to Yuma is one of my favorites), but you should also allow room for the Michael Townley's and Neil McCulley's of storytelling as well :P

@zombieproof: I think you misunderstood, I said I would play a hero without flaws RATHER THAN a criminal. That doesn't mean of course that it is my priority. Nevertheless, I agree with the rest of what you said. I always tried to see the GTA games as films such as the ones you also counted- especially Goodfellas. Or Casino and maybe even Heat. L.A Confidential or American Gangster. I understand that the games provide a similar window as of those films/books for us to witness the cruel nature of humans. However, I believe it is one thing to watch it for the purpose of following an interesting plot, an authentic story and its another thing to play it with the will of accomplishing through it. That is something I can't like, I respect anyone who does but I can't find a pushing element in playing a game where, as I said, in the first 10-15 minutes I am expected to rob and murder immediately. The criminal side of these games are, I think, over-amplified. Anyone remember the airport terrorism mission in one of the previous Call of Duties? It was great that they gave the player the chance to pass it if they wish but, what was the point of it anyway? Show it with a video, narrate it. Or if you really want to create the impact of that moment, let us be one of the people at the airport who inevitably gets killed while trying to escape. Wouldn't that have a much stronger purpose? I think if the point is to see a storytelling about crime, a game from the perspective that is not of the criminal can be at least as successful or maybe even more.

Let's not forget that, for example, Geralt is not a hero either. We are always expected to make a choice, may it be the bad one or the best of the worst. It shows us a lot about the ugly nature of violence of humankind without forcing us to be the villain. So what is the point of killing for the sake of killing? These things happen every day, in real world. None of us are ignorant enough to be unaware of them. We are ALL capable of murdering, if we were determined to do so but so few of us will have the chance of being a hero in their lifetime. Then why play a game where you are a criminal?

@PCFascist

Great points all around man! When discussing storytelling in gaming, an element that sometimes gets overlooked is the one thing that makes gaming unique to every other art form out there. Interactivity. "You're" the one motivating the story beats. "You're" the one motivating the arcs and act turnarounds. It's this element that can make the act of gaming feel more personal than say passively watching a movie or reading a book because so many things are triggered and motivated by your own actions. It's also why so many people can be struck by so many varying themes and elements within so differently.

I totally get what you're saying. It may be the quality of writing behind said moral ambiguity that turns you off or maybe even the aesthetic presentation of the game and how that resonates wit you.

Have you played through the Legacy of Kain series? If so how do you feel about those games? I think the approach to moral ambiguity in that series was handled particularly well.

I think UnderTale gets a pass, since you have to go so far out of your way to do the bad run that you really are asking for it at this point, but I get what you mean. A lot of games only offer violence as a solution, but make you blatantly aware of the fact that violence is bad and you are bad and violent and blablabla. They'll push you into situations where your only choice is to do something horrible, but then the game makes it feel like you're the bad person here.

I get why games do this, though. It's to counteract how violence is normally portrayed in games, which is that you're always the good guy and those cops you just slaughtered were just enemies. But not every game needs this sort of thing. There's more to mature storytelling than grim violence and self-loathing. Just look at big comic books from the nineties. Filled with violence, anger, and grey morality, but lacking in actual maturity. They get so over the top that any impact is lost.

I think this is a transition to actual maturity. We've become acutely aware of how violent games are, and developers are using this to tell new stories, but they're still using violence as the chief vehicle. The next step is to just use less violence. Violence is a cheap and easy way to add gameplay, but it doesn't leave much room for storytelling, or being new. I think we have enough games about killing people at this point.

I think some people might have missed OP's point: there's nothing wrong with these types of games, it's just that it's becoming the norm and maybe tired at this point.

I myself have no problem with it.

@zombieproof: I couldn't agree more! To further explain, even though I love reading books, after finishing a good game, I feel like I have done more than reading a book. It feels like I lived the book. Of course books have their own advantages, but nevertheless, games create an ultimate story telling platform. Maybe it is because of this too that I can't find myself playing the criminal without a purpose besides crime. For example, Mafia games are also about crime but due to the general sense of family and power struggle, which becomes more of a case of honour, I like those games a lot.

So yes, crime also depends on how it is presented.

I never played those games but I will take a look as soon as possible.

It's baffling to me how many people miss the essence of Spec Ops time and time again. Don't read further if you haven't played it yet

YOU shouldn't feel bad about it because you are WATCHING Walker commit those atrocities and his eventual breakdown and descent into madness. No, you shouldn't have the choice to ignore the white phosphorus because it's the integral part of the narrative, and using such a grisly weapon only strengthens the point: it's THE deconstruction of the modern military shooter and one man army superhuman blank slate hero. You feeling bad about what you're playing is an added bonus.

@SovietsUnited: Please use spoiler tags when discussing plot spoilers. I went ahead and added them to your post this time.

As to the op's question, I guess "no" it doesn't really bother me. I like a storyline with moral ambiguity because it gives you something to think about. TLoU's ending is a great example leaving me both happy and sad at the same time.

Spec Ops is also a really good example of this done well. The story was really well written and had some decent twists but even more it's a deconstruction of military shooter video games as a genre since it takes the whole idea of "hero protagonist in the war game" and tears it apart and in fact kind of mocks you for even thinking that's the way it's supposed to be.

The bigger problem that I have is when moral choice in a video game is cartoonish. Like the evil choice is is so ludicrously over the top that it doesn't make sense to pick the evil choice except just to be evil.

-Byshop

A game can only make me feel bad for an action if I had a legitimate choice in the matter. Otherwise, I feel without free will, I cannot be held accountable for my (character's) actions.

COD:MW2 airport level is probably the most memorable bad guy moment for me. It felt so wrong, but it was pretty epic. At the end of the day, they are just games and I don't take that shit too seriously.