A while back I did a couple of blogs that floated around the concept of morality in video game storytelling. (A topic I find particularly fascinating.) First I spoke about how morality appeared in old video games, when storytelling was beginning to come into it's own, and then I carried on with the ways in which storytelling is presented nowadays, with choice and consequence. I want to cap this topic off by giving my predictions about how that concept will evolve in the future, both how I'll believe it'll grow and how I wish it will. Of course, that means this blog will contain pure conjecture on my part as I rattle off my hypothesis, but you're likely already use to that by now so I'll just get right to it.
Firstly, I will admit that I am dissatisfied with a lot of portrayals of morality that we see in modern day videogame storytelling, or maybe it's just with the concept in general. I look at it like a restraint upon the kind of stories that could be told and the manner in which we tell them, one that has become sadly commonplace in the AAA gaming market. (Indie games tend to be a lot more free and interesting when they tackle these concepts.) To establish what I mean, let's take 'Assassin's Creed: Rogue' for example. This was a game that was founded on an eye wateringly simple concept; Shay Cormac, the protagonist, used to on the side of the heroes (The Assassins) before he joined the antagonists. (The Templars.) A child could write this and make it somewhat interesting. And yet somehow, as though Hollywood's cowardice is catching, the game fails to go all the way.Let me elaborate. Assassin's Creed is a series that sets itself in the midst of very important and complicated situations throughout history and dumbs everything down into a fight against good and evil. All the multifaceted and interesting folk of the era are whittled down to either advocates of freedom (Good) or pursuers of control (Evil), and as a result a lot of nuance that these games could represent gets lost. I think it is an exceedingly fantastic idea to jump throughout history and engross oneself into the story of the land, (fun and education, together at last) but Ubisoft often fail spectacularly in this regrade and denigrate their side characters into overblown caricatures. In Rogue, they seemed to have gotten around this by making the vast majority of the characters completely unique, (You still had fellows like William Johnson around, but Ubisoft had already done him justice in AC3 so I'm willing to let that slide) however it just highlighted the team's unwillingness, or inability to tell a tough story. Instead of having Shay turn against his brothers due to a genuine disagreement in personal philosophies or motivations, everything was just a huge stupid misunderstanding.
This actually reflects the way that morality is presented in a great many big budget Hollywood movies. There can never be any grey spaces, just absolute right and absolute wrong. Just look at Warner Bros' 'Batman V Superman'. The encounter that the movie was named after was based after a famous Batman comic known as 'The Dark Knight Returns'. It's a brilliant tale about an older Batman who has become obsolete due to his age and back injury, he retreated into his isolation and allowed the world to move on without him and America to turn into a totalitarian state. As events drag him back into the limelight, he ends up drawing the attention of the government as his brand of vigilantism undermines their authority. The last remaining active superhero, Superman, is dispatched in order to force Bruce back into retirement and the two decide to settle things with a battle. This story was so fondly remembered because it wasn't afraid to have it's hero's be anything less than absolutely right. Superman was still a hero that saved lives and represented America, but the country he stood up for had become bastardized and corrupt. Batman was still an anti-hero who's presence caused as much harm as good, but he became a symbol of hope to the people of Gotham who had resigned themselves to living under the thumb of local gangs. Neither side was ever completely right or wrong, making their conflict all the more dramatic. (I won't say that you ever had trouble deciding which side to route for because we all know who was more right. It's obvious. I don't even need to say it. You know who I mean. Batman. I meant Batman. You were thinking him too, right?)
In the movie, Batman is introduced as a bad tempered psychopath who's happy to kill in order to get the job done. His entire issue with Superman is based upon a baseless risk assessment that spawned the iconically stupid line "If we believe there is even a 1% chance that he is our enemy we have to take it as an absolute certainty." They even took advantage of 'Man of Steel's destruction fetish to fuel this idea of Superman being a threat to humanity and give Bruce the justification to go ham on his ass. Lex Luthor then pulled some shenanigans and managed to set off a battle between the Last Son of Krypton and the Caped Crusader with little more than a tad of smoke and mirrors. And threats. Those too. As as result the entire movie rings hollow and feels like a vehicle to stage geekdoms most storied showdown. A showdown, I might add, which wasn't even that impressive. All these concessions and changes were made to the base material so that everyone could be in the moral right by the end of it. They could just pat each other on the back say it was a misunderstanding and it'll all be forgotten by the next movie. (Just like the rest of the DCEU.)
Unfortunately, this style of inoffensive storytelling has ruled the roost in the mainstream for a great many years now and it leaves us with a bevy of one-note leading characters. I'm not saying that every story should have the potential for an indepth character study, but a little bit depth would certainly help flesh out characters. I believe that this ambiguity is the key to pushing forward morality in the future of videogame narrative storytelling and, luckily for me, I have some evidence that might be the way things are going in the future.
In my last blog on this topic, I mentioned how the narrative storytelling for a lot of modern AAA games were leaning into the action-consequence model. (Although I would hesitate to call the model a modern construction) I find this preferable to the simple 'good guy- bad guy' layout as it forces the storytellers to expand their horizons beyond the obvious and into the world of the morally grey. Games that have pulled this off well, like 'Fallout: New Vegas', The Telltale games and the Dishonoured games, have managed to elevate their stories by removing preconceived notions of right and wrong and leaving that choice in the hands of the player. (Yes, 'New Vegas' still featured a Karma system but anyone can tell that was just a holdover from using Bethesda's engine. Obsidian clearly preferred going the morally grey route with the main story.)
The outlook does look positive that the mainstream may be picking up on this trend going forward. Later this month the hotly anticipated Western RPG 'The Outer Worlds' will drop, which Devs promise will be a darkly humorous game without restrictive moral paths. Last year's Red Dead Redemption 2 featured action/consequence prominently in it's story. (Although there was a rigid 'good/bad' system from face value, the maturity with which the story handled it means that I'll let it slide.) And the most anticipated game of 2020, Cyberpunk 2077, practically lauds it's amorality in it's very fibre. These are the kind of big games that start trends and I think it is fair to assume that various big games studios may be looking into this kind of storytelling in the years to come. (If they ever let the 'live-service' idea take a break...)
In my opinion, in order for the future of video game storytelling to grow stronger, it is essential that we abandon the concept of rigid morality altogether and delve deeper into the ambiguous, let the audience decide for themselves. Perhaps it's a little cliche to say, but some of the most memorable characters in my mind have been those that made choices that I wouldn't necessarily do. Those that act on whim or emotion and not always out of rationality or heroic compulsion. Those are the kind of characters ring with the authenticity that I find myself craving nowadays. Don't get me wrong, I still enjoy an enjoyable jaunt about killing demons in which you don't have to think too hard (oh DOOM: Eternal, why must you be delayed?) but I feel that there is room for more challenging content in the future. (And I'm not just talking about the next From Software game. Although 'Elden Ring' does have me hook-line-and-sinker right now.)
I do worry, however, that in the years to come we may encounter a little more issues in progressing storytelling than we really ought to, for no other reason than that of abject greed. With that I am of course referring to the rising interest growing for 'Live service' style games due to the potential for substantial financial return that they represent. Just like MMO's, 'live service' games are built to facilitate recurrent gameplay rather than great stories with diverse characters. Think of them like TV series' that keep getting drawn out with season after season with no plan to end things. Perhaps there was a uncorrupted idea in there once upon a time, but it all gets sacrificed and thrown aside in the pursuit of ensuring that the story can perpetuate itself indefinitely. This usually means that the stakes start to shrivel and the characters grow increasingly shallow and/or repetitive. (I just realized that I described the Arrowverse. I didn't mean it Grant Gustin, I still love you!)
For an example of this just look at the poster boys for the do's and don'ts of live services: Destiny and Anthem. Both are games that are characterized by bland world's and lifeless protagonists who embark on so many tireless good versus evil crusades that the terms start losing all meaning. The Destiny team scrapped their early ideas of splitting their player base by revealing a cold truth about the godlike-entity know as 'The Traveller' and seeing which players picked which side. Instead they chose a 'villian-of-the-week' model which is easily forgettable and fails to engage the critical thinking of their consumers beyond the thought "Which gun should I kill this Hive drone with?". Anthem, on the otherhand, was so directionless that the team has completely abandoned their story plans, leaving the barebones of a narrative without any idea of whether of not an actual narrative will ever pick up. (Not to mention that the story that was there amounted to another 'destory the ultimate evil' plot.)
This is especially distressing because Anthem's developer, Bioware, should really be leading the charge when it comes to revolutionary storytelling in games. Once upon a time, Bioware were the crafters of choice based narratives that pushed the rest of the RPG industry to catch-up. Now they've lost their special spark and become a vending machine for boring storytelling. And if you're thinking 'Hey, that's just one game. Maybe they'll get their groove back someday.' First of all you're wrong, 'Mass Effect: Andromeda' was a similarly badly written game. Secondly, you're still wrong, leaks tell us that Bioware's next game, Dragon Age 4, has been retooled into being a 'live service' too.
Bethesda have gone the route of live services as well with Fallout 76, following hotly off the heels of the narratively disappointing Fallout 4. (Although, in their defence, Bethesda have never exactly been exceptional in the storytelling department.) And the long promised 'Beyond Good and Evil 2' has been revealed to be a live service before we've even had a chance to learn anything about the gameplay. It seems that there is a trend picking up for jumping on this bandwagon and, giving how potentially profitable this is, I fear it could otherthrow the positive example being set by studios like Rockstar and CD Projekt Red. (However, it must be noted, that the 'Live service' model was perpetuated by Rockstar in the first place. They are our saviors and our condemners.)
Given the evidence, I feel it's safe to say that live service games are certain to have poor narratives that refuse to take risks. (Just like Hollywood.) So the direction of morality in storytelling could be grim as we slowly slink back into the dark ages of good versus evil plots only this time with but a modicum of the passion thrown in. Although I suppose this is more of a critique of the industry rather than the storytellers themselves.
Morality has the potential to become really ascendant in the future or really basic, and that may seem very middle-of-the-road for me to say but I genuinely mean that we could be straddling between those two extremes. However if I make the bold assumption that the future of video game storytelling will be placed in the hands of the storytellers, then I can certainly hold some hope for the future. Directors like Neil Druckmann, Cain & Boyarsky and those Polish guys who's names I couldn't hope to spell behind Cyperpunk, all seem dedicated to evolving traditional morality into something subversive and transcendent, and that is something that I crave to see more of in my games. Whether we will be lucky enough to see this play out in the future of our games, is a matter of fate. And maybe a little bit of Karma.
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