#Yeah fam because the fun of games like undertale is that when you kill people there are absolutely no fucking consequences

[yusuke-of-valla]

Ok so first of all, I kinda misspoke in the first part, it’s not how the morality system works because there is no morality system

Yeah. So according to the developers in this Kotaku article:

“Characters will react visually and audibly to seeing the player cast an Unforgivable, but we don’t have a morality system that punishes them for doing so – this would be too judgemental on the game maker’s part."

I’m just. I cannot put into words how stupid that is? Let’s break it into bullet points:

“We can’t judge another person’s actions” first of all, its not the developers judging the player, it’s the characters within the world? Are you just saying that everyone in this world has the same lax standard of morality???

It is 2023. Games like “BioShock,” which judge your actions, were coming out in 2007. It just makes the world less immersive to not have tangible consequences for the players’ actions, and also means there’s no real choice!

You can’t choose to be an evil wizard if people don’t give you shit for being evil! 

Hell games that didn’t necessarily judge you for something but still had consequences are older! I can pull up forum posts of people arguing over whether or not to kill a mama bird for a phoenix down in “Final Fantasy 7”. A game that came out 1997.

In that same article, the quoted developer calls it “the ultimate embodiment of role-playing” but not actually having consequences for your actions is the opposite of role-playing! It means choosing to do the different actions will have the same results! You don’t even need to punish the player, just give them a different fucking ending. Make playing an evil wizard feel different damn it!

They’re making all this hay about how side-quests will affect the main storyline, but how you go about those side quests won’t matter? Or do your actions matter only in clearly delineated side-quests but not when you’re just wandering around? How is this cohesive game design?

Seriously, how exciting can an open world game be if the developers can’t even be bothered to give you characters who feel like characters with their own goals, motivations, and opinions when you do shit like commit literal murder.

And yeah, I get it, morality systems are hard and some can be really basic! I haven’t played “Mass Effect” but I’ve seen the discourse. But if you don’t want to have a proper morality system, then maybe just don’t let the player go around and do shit that should matter but doesn’t because that causes a little problem called breaking the player’s immersion (or if you’re fancy, “ludo-narrative dissonance”)

I just, seriously what is this game?! What are they even trying to do?! Did they have a game in mind and then threw a Harry Potter skin on it to make it profitable? Is this the game equivalent of “Velma”? How do you do this if you want to give the player a realistic feeling of living in the Harry Pottter world?

*incoherent screaming*

Anyway, obligatory links to remind people about JKR’s bullshit and just how weirdly antisemetic this game is, on top of just a weirdly half-assed morality system.

I’m deeply sorry but we got clarification on how the morality system in the Wizard game works and I have. I have feelings from a game design perspective so in like an hour when I get out of class I’m going to bitch about this again I’m so sorry