Yet it still comes off as evil sometimes...
WARNING MINOR PLOT SPOILERS FOR MASS EFFECT IN THIS BLOG
For the two of you who read my InFamous moral choice blog, I posted a sister version of the blog on Gametrailers where a nice guy named Shabz left the following comment
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Yeah that is pretty interesting and twisted what you did. Moral choices in games should only be there if they actually made a difference in the future. Clearly, Mass Effect is an excellent example and so is the new game Alpha Protocol.

But I get what you mean and it's awesome when a game does that and actually makes you think.
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After living with Battlestar Galactica morality (most times not morally right but in the end it's the right thing to do anyway) and then being presented with cases in Mass Effect where the "Good" choice might not considered the right choice. Take this for example:

Yesterday (my first playthrough btw) I was walking through the Citadel lobby when a old man approached me and pleaded Shepard to convince a Alliance coroner to release the body of his dead wife who died in the attack on Eden Prime so he could take her back to Earth and give her a proper burial.

When I approached the coroner he explained that the Geth had used some new energy weapon to kill her and her body is being held so they can examine the wounds and develop new technology to counter this weapon.

In this conversation I only had one goal which was get the body back. There was no way I could get the coroner to convince Shepard that this woman could save people even in death and her husband would have to wait. Instead Shepard spouts some military moral propaganda crap about "Not losing our humanity in the process"

And the worst part is he didn't even convince the coroner. The wimp just finally had it click in his brain that this is THE MacMillan Shepard (yes, I just beat CoD4 again, sue me) and maybe he should do what he says or risk getting fired.

Two things wrong with this scenario.

A) I, having just been exposed to alot of the BSG Moral choices, felt the body being detained for research that could save the lives of thousands of soldiers and colonists outweighed the needs of one grieving husband even though I could get where he was coming from.

B) No matter how goody-two-shoes I got about the situation whatever I did that got me more Paragon points ended in the exactly the same way as if I had threatened the poor kid with the Renegade option. He realised who he is talking too and backed the fuck off. End of story, no moral victory here, you just pull rank on a enlisted man.

And then on the flip side, about two hours later Mass Effect almost made me tear up a bit.

The next time I returned to the Citadel I was reminded of my character's past.

When you load up ME for the first time and make a new character you have to pick between three different backgrounds for Shepard. He's either a rich kid, a Army brat, or a orphan that worked his way up the ranks after his family was raped and killed in front of him on Mindoir.

I picked the Mindoir thing due to the fact it would make the story sound better than "Son of Alliance soldiers grows up to be Alliance Soldier"

Anyway. I dock the Normandy at the Citadel then take a long-ass elevator down to C-Sec Headquarters. As soon as I step off the elevator I get a call from a LT back up at the docks saying there is a Ex-slave hiding behind some shipping containers and he would appreciate me coming up and talking her down.

I was a little pissed that I had to take the damn elevator again but I went up anyway. The dude said she was very distressed and had a gun. Then he handed me a sedative to give her and pointed me the right way.

I walked around the container to find a poor 20-something woman that looked like Natalie Portman near the end of V for Vendetta.


As I talked to her I found out that she was from the same colony on Mindoir that got destroyed by slavers that Shepard is from. The only difference is, Shepard escaped. She did not.

The poor girl had been in slavery since she was six, the slavers had driven her so hard and she had seen things so horrible she had to refer to herself in the third person so she did not have to think about the horrible things directly.

She talked about her parents trying to fight the slavers but "the masters made mom and dad burn with bright light and melt" and mentioned when the Alliance came to save her "More animals came, animals like her, she watched them make masters explode. She tried to put masters back together so they would not be angry with her. She put all the red and purples back in but they would not wake up"

While she's talking about this Shepard is taking steps closer to her and forcing her to think about her parents and her name, Talitha. At then end of the dialog chain I had two options: Give her the sedative or force her to take it.

I gave it to her and what happened next was one of the more touching moments I have seen in gaming. Shepard hands her the pill and says "Here, if you take this you will fall asleep and go somewhere safe."

Talitha took the pill and looked at it for a moment, then took it and asked him "Will she have bad dreams?"

She starts getting woozy and falls forward, Shepard holds her and replies "No, you'll dream of a warm place and when you wake up you'll be at that place with people who can help you"

Then Talitha quietly sobbed into his shoulder and passed out. If I had not been in a Live party with other people and thus got distracted by the real world at that moment I would have teared up right there. And that moment right there shows what is right and wrong with morality and characters in gaming today. There are only 4 other characters in gaming I have cared about as much as this one-use secondary character in Mass Effect.

And to once again be a Anthony fanboy I'll also point out that three of the four of them are characters that the protagonist met at the same time as the player. D.O.G, Clank, and Cortana, the fourth being John 117 because I've read his past.

The fact that there are characters in gaming that have seemingly more power and attractive qualities behind them like Niko in GTA or Dominic's search for his wife in Gears 2 and even still I gave more of a damn about just the simple fact that Clank was stolen from Ratchet for like half an hour in Up Your Arsenal. I got worried about what would happen later down the line in the story to the little backpack buddy and was extremely relieved to find him safe.

Same thing with finding Cortana in Halo 3, the two moments where John and her are alone are the two times where Chief seems more human than ever and the same goes for Cortana.

I have no magic formula on how to make good characters in gaming that you can get attached too, just thought I'd publicly say that in Mass Effect I got so attached to this one poor tortured character more than anyone else in the game so far. Hell if Ashely had dropped dead right then and there the only thing I would feel is regret that I would have to go sweet talk the alien to get the Paramour achievement and the alien takes more elevator time than Ashley on the ship and she can't use guns... that's it