"Moral" choices seem to be a trend lately, especially with BioWare RPGs and their ilk (Dragon Age, Mass Effect). Unfortunately, most of the consequences are fairly minor, mostly only revolving around the opinions of your in-game acquaintances. The events unfold a little differently sometimes, but the end result is almost always the same.
The worst of it is that they always main-line you into one moral extreme or the other. It's always obvious which choice is "good" and which is "bad", and once you've made that choice for the first time you'll always make the same choice later on, else you'll miss out on the in-game benefits of having a "pure" moral stance. Mass Effect and Infamous especially do this.
On your point, KOTOR II comes to mind. Taking Lucas' Black/White morality of The Force and turning it more Grey.
It's just a burden of the games of today. And that it was a lot easier to write out text in older Bioware games for possible branches and outcomes. As that was the main way to tell the story and what players expected.
Versus recording dialogue, creating cutscenes, etc that modern games tell their stories though.
edit: the constraints of modern asset creation being fairly clear with the ending of the last Mass Effect game. A series that was toted for its story and depth. Where your choices 'mattered' but were reduced to the same end cutscene with different hues.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vjHXchR8pw
For an A-list game this is probably true, but there are very many indie/small games being developed which use 'archaic' game mechanics/stylistics.
I'm actually surprised to see the visual and mechanical simplicity of many games that have flared up in popularity among my students. Certainly, the processing limits of mobile phones play a role - but that doesn't stop these small games from passing through the student body like wildfire (and then burning out equally quickly).
This has been my experience as well. I am attracted to bringing games into the learning environment because they can offer unique opportunities for action/reaction/reflection (in addition to other benefits) - but I am indeed more interested in complicated decision making rather than simply choosing Red Team v. Blue Team.
For instance, I would love to see a game like "Papers Please" with a stronger element of consequences. Rather than simply being told you allowed a terrorist through the gates (with a brief cut-away) the consequences of this action (deaths, social destabilization, etc.) would impact the future game play. Perhaps, you decide to actively aid and abet these terrorists (by communicating to them that you will allow them and their compatriots to pass through) - but then you put yourself and your loved ones at risk, as well as increase social instability.
This is already a wonderful game, but I would like to see the premise taken even farther. Games could be a wonderful place to consider and critique decision making and moral choices that are analogous to those we face in real life (even if filtered through clearly fictitious events/circumstances).
To the opposite extreme, there's also The Stanley Parable. On the surface it's a humorous narrative seemingly about being a cubicle drone, but it's ultimately about the futility of choice.
The original BioShock was better in going meta on the futility of choice in video games as a medium. You're going to end up doing what the game designer wants you to do. This presumes a game designer has a vision of some sort, of course, but games that don't are either bad or seen as tech demos.
Bioshock Infinite doesn't purport to give the player more than the standard illusion of choice, but I think it's more interesting how choice is handled in the narrative.
The characters think that they're making big, important decisions that reshape their world. It turns out that they weren't really.
I think that this is why the ethics question is ill-formed in video games: it is used as a mean to an end (i.e. what should I do in order to get this). Translated to real life, it results in a quite hypocritical and cynical behaviour (I'm nice in order to get that). Playing with morality implies playing with the players feelings (or rather the player plays with its own feelings), which in turn implies that the game have to build those feelings in the first place.
I can't help but thinking that there should be an AI for this.
Papers Please does that. Depending on how you play the game, multiple different endings are possible. You can choose to assist resistance movements, rebel yourself, etc.
I think part of this is because few people tend to think of morality as a question. They know what's right and presume everyone else either agrees or is insane in some way. This makes it difficult to frame a morality decision as an actual choice; it becomes coercive instead.
I wonder what would happen if you surveyed game designers and offered them some trolley problem [1] variant and said, "Write up an explanation for which decision you choose." How many would discuss the pros and cons of both decisions? How many of them would look for a third option? How many of them would even be able to explain their decision? How many of them would be able to make a decision?
But the nuance and detail in their response, to me, would be the real indicator. If someone can dive deeply into the question, I think they'd be able to offer real moral choices in other situations, too.
I really don’t understand this obsession with consequences.
KRZ is extremely effective in letting you make very meaningful choice without those choices affecting anything at all, really. That’s possible, you know. There don’t have to be (big) consequences. The choice itself, even, can be meaningful.
One of the nice-but-sometimes-annoying things about the Stalker series was that the world was very grey, and lots of choices weren't even obviously choices at the time.
In Call of Pripyat, for example, how you treat a few characters in chance encounters can drastically change the late-game, and completely change the endings. Also, the choices aren't usually "Eat baby or save world", they're more "Do you help this guy, or this guy? We have only vaguely hinted what they're up to, so choose carefully."
Fallout 2 and Arcanum had some really well-done morality gameplay as well.
Witcher 1 and 2 are RPGs that do this the right way. No morality meter, just hard choices without full knowledge (so you can't be sure which choice is good, often neither) and with delayed consequences (so players don't just reload).
And in TW2 they made a whole chapter (+-20% of the game content) different depending on your choice, with different map, different NPCs you meet, quests, and you get to know different aspects of the story (if you play just one version you won't get the whole image).
I agree with this, mostly, but I am also optimistic about what we'll see in the future. There are lots more little studios making niche games and trying out new ideas than there were just a few years ago. I bet we'll see some RPGs with less spoonfed choices in them.
I completely agree. The only thing holding any of those games back was the lack of desire, funding, or resources to make a truly non-convergent branching narrative.
A Dark Room is actually a counter example of this. It more or less mainlines you, but makes a point of it. You cannot reverse it. Yet, I was glad to find out that I was not the only one to try.
The worst of it is that they always main-line you into one moral extreme or the other. It's always obvious which choice is "good" and which is "bad", and once you've made that choice for the first time you'll always make the same choice later on, else you'll miss out on the in-game benefits of having a "pure" moral stance. Mass Effect and Infamous especially do this.