Morality systems
The game tracks the player's ethical choices on one or more axes — good/evil, paragon/renegade, honor — and world state, dialogue, abilities, or endings shift in response. Designers use morality systems to make choices persist: a decision that only matters in the moment is a puzzle, but one that follows you is an identity. The classic binary meter (Fable, inFAMOUS) is cheap to implement and instantly readable, but pushes players toward pure-good or pure-evil optimization since middle states unlock nothing. Faction or reputation-based alternatives avoid flattening ethics onto one axis. Key decisions: visible meter or hidden tracking (hidden judges the player honestly; visible turns morality into a build choice), mechanical rewards for commitment, and whether evil routes get equal content — they rarely do, and players notice. Pitfall: telegraphing 'this is the evil option' reduces moral choice to menu selection.
- Dev effort: Medium
- Timing: Real-time or turn-based
- Common in: rpg
Seen in
- Mass Effect 2
- Fable
- inFAMOUS