Greater than Ourselves

Paladins Can Loot?

Obsidian Entertainment, formed by a group of Black Isle alumni after Interplay closed Black Isle, crafted the sequel to KotOR, adding an Influence value to the alignment system, to track the extent to which NPCs were open to persuasion by the player. This is a natural extension of Fallout's Reputation - a single number that determines whether word of the player's altruistic or self-interested actions (represented by the Karma value) has reached a given NPC. It contrasts starkly with PST, where a sufficiently charismatic player can persuade an NPC to virtually any course of action. Such NPC-specific player attributes, combined with branchy dialogue trees, can create richer player-NPC interactions and allow a developer to pose more interesting ethical dilemmas to the player.

Still, the strength of Gygax-model CRPGs like PST suggest it may not be the inherent restrictiveness of the Gygax model holding back North American CRPGs, but rather CRPG developers using it as a crutch to simplify characterization and storytelling. Because Good and Evil are defined so clearly by the Gygax model, it's extremely easy to create cookie-cutter characters and railroad players along a couple of paths toward the all-too-common "Good ending" and "Evil ending" - that is, if an "Evil ending" is even included.

Settings, graphics and physics are becoming increasingly complex in CRPGs, and player alignment models need to grow along with them. The kinds of deficiencies revealed by NWN's looting Paladins have to be resolved, but there is much further to go. Obsidian has explored Evil player alignments more deeply than most, and they've made an effort to chart some of the ethical murk between the Gygax model's well-defined Good and Evil, but even they have yet to stray too far. We need an ambitious developer to take that first complete step outside the long shadow of the Gygax model, abandon Good and Evil, and treat in-game ethics with the detail and nuance they deserve.

Raja Doake is a would-be writer in engineer's clothing who lives in Ontario, Canada, and spends way too much time thinking about this stuff.