Posted by Allow me to begin this article with a hypothetical scenario: you walk out of your house on a typical tuesday morning. As you round the corner on your way to work, you see an elderly woman crossing the street. Now you have a choice, you can either help her across the street, where she will reward you with a lollipop, or push her in front of an oncoming car and steal the wallet off of her corpse. It sounds dumb right? Why are you only allowed to choose those two options? Why would you ever choose the second one? Why do you even have to deal with this in the first place? It seems rather arbitrary and nonsensical, but these predicaments aren’t so unfamiliar to the gaming crowd. In fact, they’ve been with us for a long time.
It’s called Binary Moral Choice, and it’s a system that peaked in popularity with the seventh console generation. Moral choice systems aren’t exactly new to the medium, having been a staple of RPG’s stretching back to the beginning of gaming, but the binary moral choice represents an interesting subcategory, offering an experience that is neither particularly open-ended, nor entirely linear. In essence, the binary moral choice offers a player something basic, an opportunity to experience more or less the same content, but flavoring it with a layer of “good” or “evil.” The most straightforward example of this would be the original Infamous. Players took on the role of Cole Macgrath, gravelly voiced protagonist-man with electric super-powers. Throughout the game Cole is faced with opportunities to choose between “good” and “evil” actions, the first of which is to let some desperate hungry people have food, or use your powers to zap them and hoard all the food for yourself. Another choice soon after sees the player’s progression blocked by a key NPC who is looking for their wife. At this point, they can either reveal to the NPC what happened to their wife, promising to avenge her, or just zap him with electricity because why not.
In fairness, the game has more reasonable choices as well, but my complaints run deeper than a few silly examples. Binary moral choice, as a system, has quite a few pitfalls that many of these games fall into. The first, and perhaps most obvious, is the issue of “all-or-nothing.” Many games with these binary morality systems lock all the best rewards behind the extreme ends of the spectrum. Mass Effect gives unique dialogue options to players who invest in one side heavily, Fable has a reputation system that rewards those who stick with their alignment, Infamous 2 even goes so far as to block off the ending until you have fully committed to being either a good guy or a bad guy. Basically, there’s no reason to ever deviate from the good or evil path, as doing so will only ever water down the experience. It’s a peculiar contradiction, being a system that encourages one major, good or evil choice, while simultaneously punishing choice on an individual level.
Secondly, the ideal interpretation of these systems is often undercut by their practical reality. This is particularly noticeable in Mass Effect, where good and evil have been rebranded to “Paragon” and “Renegade.” In theory Paragon options represent diplomacy and empathy, solving problems through understanding and compromise, while Renegade is more about intimidation and brute force, saving the galaxy by knocking down anyone who gets in your way. The idea is that Paragon is more passive but respectable, while Renegade is more direct but makes you a jerk. The real problem with this dichotomy however, is that, in apparent hesitation to punish a player for their morality, both options tend to produce similar, if not identical overall results, save for some altered dialogue or reputation with an NPC. What this means is that the real choice becomes “Do I want to be nice, or be a jerk?” (or racist, in the case of the first Mass Effect) which isn’t exactly a complex moral dilemma.
Third and finally, there’s the issue of diminishing returns. Binary Moral Choice systems are designed to give players options and experience different content, ideally encouraging multiple playthroughs in order to see everything. Truthfully, it seems to have some appeal; going through online forums and discussions, you’ll find no shortage of those comparing their playthroughs, planning another run-through, and discussing their unique experiences. There is a segment of the gaming population that, instead of buying lots of games, prefers to buy just a few and get as much as they can out of them. It’s a part of why games like Skyrim and The Witcher 3 and Call of Duty are so popular: they offer quality experiences that consumers sink innumerable hours into, and Binary Moral Choice is just another way of boosting that hours played/dollars spent ratio. However I would suggest that these types of players represent a niche group. Considering the fact that a significant number of people don’t even complete a game once, I’m confident in asserting that the average player will not replay a game to explore other choices. And why would they? The fact of the matter is that binary choice is not a particularly great incentive to revisit a game in it’s own right. It’s a problem all of the previously named titles suffer from; there’s content unique to the good path, content unique to the evil path, and then the majority of the game is built around what we might call “neutral content:” parts of the game that do not change with player choice. So the first time one plays these games they have a completely fresh experience, but if that player wishes to experiment with other choices, they, by necessity, are forced to replay vast swathes of content they are already familiar with, making the alternate path inherently less appealing.
None of this is to say that I dislike Binary Moral Choice systems, and I do believe the games I have mentioned deserve much of the praise they received, but Binary Morality has, in my mind, become somewhat dull with time. These systems are no longer the hot thing in gaming, and most of the franchises that popularized these choices are either on hiatus, or moving away from the system. Personally, I’m not holding out hope for some new IP to come along and revolutionize the formula anytime soon. However there is still at least one game out there that I believe vastly improves upon binary morality, and fixes all three major issues. That game? None other than Sonic Adventure 2.
Those of you familiar with the game are probably rolling your eyes at the suggestion, the Sonic franchise not exactly being known for subtle morality or player choice, but I urge you to play along for a moment. To explain the basics, Sonic Adventure 2 features Sonic and his pals running around and trying to foil Dr. Eggman’s latest schemes. Along the way they also encounter Shadow the Hedgehog and Rouge the Bat, both making their debut in Sonic canon. The player progresses through about fifteen levels, rotating between Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles, each of whom have different objectives and gameplay mechanics. But wait! That’s not all, because the player can also control Shadow, Eggman, and Rouge, who copy the hero’s gameplay, but have their own unique levels and story that runs in parallel to the hero’s adventure. So where does the moral choice come in? When you boot up the game and choose to play the “Hero” or “Dark” campaign.
There’s nothing else to it. You pick one or the other, and then you play through it. No “morality points,” no branching paths, and no more choices past that starting screen. In fact, you can’t even finish the game without playing both, as doing so unlocks the “true ending,” as is traditional in Sonic games. At this point I have no doubt many will find this argument nonsensical, since this is not what one might consider a “typical” moral choice system. However, I contend that this is exactly why Sonic Adventure 2 avoids the major pitfalls of your typical Binary Morality system, while delivering on the deeper purpose they are intended to serve.
First, the game sidesteps the “All or Nothing” issue by allowing, and indeed, requiring, the player to fully commit to an alignment right off the bat. A player will never have to worry about proving their commitment to either path, because they will never face choices that might lock them out of content. It allows the player to indulge in Binary Morality without having to prove themselves worthy of their alignment through repetitive choices.
Secondly, the game’s morality system avoids contradiction primarily by not making much of a statement. Unlike a game such as Mass Effect, where “Paragon” and “Renegade” represent distinct mindsets that occasionally contradict the actual decisions made, Sonic Adventure 2’s “moral choice” simply asks, “You want to play as the good guys or the bad guys?” Admittedly it’s a lot easier to avoid contradiction when you aren’t really making a statement, but I’d suggest that it’s better to say less, than to make contradictory remarks.
Third, and most importantly, the issue of diminishing returns is not only lightened, it is completely removed. There is no “neutral content” to be found in the game, both story lines are completely separate, save a few story beats experienced from a different point of view. What this means, is that there’s there’s no reason not to keep playing, because the player will be experiencing completely new content, tied to, but separate from, the first campaign they chose. The player gets to play both sides of the morality coin, while still experiencing new things, playing new levels, and getting new content out of the narrative. Ultimately this is because, for all intents and purposes, Sonic Adventure 2’s moral choice system isn’t a moral choice system at all, but an extension of the game.
Truthfully, that statement would seem to fly in the face of my whole argument, and it kind of does. I confess here, that my point isn’t truly that Sonic Adventure 2 features the greatest example of Binary Moral Choice I’ve ever seen; the game doesn’t really benefit in any way from letting the player choose which of the two stories they want to play first, since they’ll have to play both anyways. In fact, there’s really no reason why the game doesn’t just mash both campaign together into one story (though I would like to see more games with multiple campaigns). What really makes Sonic Adventure 2’s “choice” great is that, essentially, it means getting to play more of the game, without just playing the old stuff again. My major contention with Binary Morality, boiled down, is that it doesn’t feel so much like a “whole new way to experience a game” as it does a trick to make you play the same game again to see the handful of things you didn’t get to the first time.
I reiterate, that I don’t hate Binary Moral Choice systems, and I have about six Mass Effect save files to back that statement up. There’s no real mystery to why they exist either; people seem to like them well enough, and while I wouldn’t say they’re easy to implement, they’re certainly less effort than building and implementing an equivalent amount of brand new content. Still, that’s time and effort that could have been spent on something completely unique, something that could have a left a far greater impact than a new line of dialogue or slightly different version of the same event. I loved the time I spent with Mass Effect, but looking back I have to ask the question, what would I enjoy and remember more? All of those playthroughs I did? Or just another hour or two of brand new content in that storyline with those characters? So these days I’m somewhat glad that binary moral choice has faded from popularity, and that games are trying to increase their value in new and innovative ways, especially as I personally shift from playing a few games repeatedly, into playing as many different titles as a can. Binary Moral Choice systems will always have their place, especially in those franchises that made them popular, but I think we can learn a few things from Sonic as well. Sometimes in order to create “a whole new experience,” you can’t just add a new flavor of morality, you just have to sit down and actually create something new.