Evil Choices

BioshockLittleSister

I am easy. Just tell me when and what to shoot and I am super. However, some games lately are big on choices. They ask me what to wear or what my inner morals are. Before someone comments I don’t understand or have no appreciation to detail, let me reassure you I don’t.

In Crackdown 2, at the start of every game, you are asked to choose your character and hair color. This makes no sense as you cannot see your character in the game since he is wearing a full suit of armor and helmet. You only see the back of the head. So what difference does it make what friggin’ hair color he has? Does it make him more evil? A waste of two minutes of gaming right there, choosing your hair color.

Choose to be bad and you’re screwed? In Red Dead Redemption, I started the game by shooting everyone and everything, including prostitutes, shop keepers and domestic pigs. I thought this was the only way to make quick easy money. Pretty soon after, with a $9,000 bounty on my head, some dead NPCs for some reason didn’t want to help me. My bad, I thought this was GTA on horses. Why can’t I kill and rob like your other games, Rockstar? So I started a new game and in the end, I found out the main story stayed the same. I could have killed and robbed everyone anyway.

MassEffectChoices

The same applies to Mass Effect 2 or Fallout 3. The evil conversation choices are not evil; they are just arrogant. So what’s wrong with being arrogant? In reality, no one likes a smartass. However, in both these games choosing the so-called smartass evil path has little or no bearing to the end outcome of the game anyway, so I felt cheated for being a smartass. Where’s the retribution for being a pig in front of Miranda in Mass Effect 2?

In BioShock, killing or saving Little Sisters gives you roughly the same amount of ADAM. The entire game you are given moral choices and in the end nothing. What was the whole moral point of the game again?

Why do these games give me choices? If they are going to give me choices then at least make them really impact the game. Throw me into jail or give me an execution while goody-two-shoes gets the girl, all because I chose a different hair color.