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I need to do a paper on ethical analysis of a game I played. I chose inFamous, by Sucker Punch, and I just need to get some thoughts out before I write the paper, because I can't turn that into a review.
So, inFamous stars a man named Cole, who woke up one morning with superpowers. Or rather, woke up from being knocked out from a blast that took out a good chunk of the city and killed a couple thousand people. And the city's under quarantine and the government's reacting worse than FEMA after Katrina.
So, Cole, the player, wakes up with lighting powers. And basically gets to choose, through his actions, whether to be a hero or a villain ("Infamous").
So far, so good. I mean, it's like Star Wars, where there are Light Sided and Dark Sided Jedi. You're either one or the other, not both.
Except, well, I hate that black-and-white dichotomy. I don't see the world, personally, in black and white, but in shades of gray. Ever since I was in high school. Whenever I play a game with a sort of karma meter, I almost always go Neutral, if possible. Which, in cases like SMT: Imagine (the MMORPG), was actually more difficult than choosing Law or Chaos. Or in Mass Effect, balancing Paragon and Renegade. It's not that I don't want to "choose", per se, but sometimes, the right decision for me falls on either side. In inFamous, being "Evil" was more being selfish and looking out for yourself and your people over everyone else. I did play "Hero", but it made the game harder because I had to play self-sacrificing to the point where I couldn't use some powers due to collateral damage. Sure, it might be the "right" thing to do, but I'm too much of an individualist to believe in "the Greater Good" being right at all times.
I don't know what that says about me personally. Possibly why I believe, if we shoved someone into the boxes for DnD character alignment, I'm likely to fall under True Neutral or Lawful Neutral (if we ignore my feelings about copyright). *shrug* Quite a fall from the Chaotic Good/Neutral Good I was in middle school. *wry grin*
So, inFamous stars a man named Cole, who woke up one morning with superpowers. Or rather, woke up from being knocked out from a blast that took out a good chunk of the city and killed a couple thousand people. And the city's under quarantine and the government's reacting worse than FEMA after Katrina.
So, Cole, the player, wakes up with lighting powers. And basically gets to choose, through his actions, whether to be a hero or a villain ("Infamous").
So far, so good. I mean, it's like Star Wars, where there are Light Sided and Dark Sided Jedi. You're either one or the other, not both.
Except, well, I hate that black-and-white dichotomy. I don't see the world, personally, in black and white, but in shades of gray. Ever since I was in high school. Whenever I play a game with a sort of karma meter, I almost always go Neutral, if possible. Which, in cases like SMT: Imagine (the MMORPG), was actually more difficult than choosing Law or Chaos. Or in Mass Effect, balancing Paragon and Renegade. It's not that I don't want to "choose", per se, but sometimes, the right decision for me falls on either side. In inFamous, being "Evil" was more being selfish and looking out for yourself and your people over everyone else. I did play "Hero", but it made the game harder because I had to play self-sacrificing to the point where I couldn't use some powers due to collateral damage. Sure, it might be the "right" thing to do, but I'm too much of an individualist to believe in "the Greater Good" being right at all times.
I don't know what that says about me personally. Possibly why I believe, if we shoved someone into the boxes for DnD character alignment, I'm likely to fall under True Neutral or Lawful Neutral (if we ignore my feelings about copyright). *shrug* Quite a fall from the Chaotic Good/Neutral Good I was in middle school. *wry grin*
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I think my favorite moral dilemma of the game, though, was when an artist asked you to choose between posters that made you look super creepy or posters that made you look like a shining beacon of hope and goodness. I'm pretty sure it's more evil to be mislead people with propaganda. But I guess not.
(I played it through as a hero and as a villain, the latter just because I wanted to see if I could avoid getting my girlfriend fridged. *grumble*)
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(Man, that fridging...it didn't help that it was so dark I couldn't tell which building was which. And then with the ending...man, wow. That's an epic fridging.)
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