When Games Test Your Morals

A cheap shot in a hockey game turns into an unexpectedly honest question: when someone crosses a line, do we stay calm and “take the penalty,” or do we swing back and call it justice? We follow that spark straight into the heart of moral decision making in video games, where a single dialogue option can feel like a personality test and an alignment system can become a real-life compass. 

We talk about the clearest morality meters in RPGs like Knights of the Old Republic and Star Wars The Old Republic, and why “light side vs dark side” works so well as a framework for self-control, accountability, and self-image. We also unpack the uncomfortable truth behind great villains and messy players: most people do not pick “evil” because they want to be evil. They pick it because they believe they are right, they feel wronged, or they are tired of being a doormat. 

Then we shift to games that hide the moral math. Elden Ring buries story in vague NPC hints and punishingly long gaps between cause and effect, forcing you to decide what kind of player you are when the game refuses to guide you. Baldur’s Gate 3 raises the stakes again with reputation, relationships, and the wild freedom to wipe out the very people who would normally hand you quests. Along the way we shout out Mass Effect, BioShock, Heavy Rain, and more, comparing how each game makes consequences land emotionally. 

If you care about narrative design, RPG choices, player psychology, or just want a smarter way to think about why your “good run” never stays clean, you will feel seen here. Subscribe for more, share this with your favorite party member, and leave a review, then tell us: which game decision still lives in your head?

Transcript

Hockey Hit And The Dark Side

SPEAKER_02 0:14

Hate being sick. And then to top it off, my neck is killing me because I got cross-checked in the neck on Tuesday. But I can't tell my wife that because then she'll be like, see, I told you hockey was dangerous.

SPEAKER_01 0:29

Is that legal? Is that I will make it legal. Okay, so cross-check in the back of the neck is legal. No, it's not. No, but it still hurts. Oh yeah. I guess whether they get in trouble or not, you still took the hit.

SPEAKER_02 0:48

Yeah, but I had there was a choice. I felt like I was in Swotor, where the guy cross-checked me, and I had a light side or dark side choice. So the light side choice was just let him take the penalty and I just skate the other way and not retaliate. Or the dark side choice was am I is my character a Sith Lord? And is that how I designed that character? Or am I a light side character? And I designed it to be like, hey, things happen. They have rules. Go to the box. So the question is, did I did I go for the dark side choice? Or did I go for the light side option?

SPEAKER_00 1:40

Dark side. Doc? Anything else is unacceptable.

SPEAKER_01 1:45

I don't know. I just really want to believe in you, Marcus, that you chose the light side choice and you did the selfless thing that put your team in the better position.

SPEAKER_02 1:54

Fuck no, I punched him in the face with my glove.

SPEAKER_01 1:59

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 2:00

I was like, what the f and and I'm gonna try really hard tonight to not swear. So I was just like, dude, what the F, man? What the F? I gotta go to work tomorrow. What's wrong with you? Guys, oh, I didn't mean to. I was like, dude, it's one thing if you cross-check me in my back. Like, I can understand. You hit it nice and low, it feels good on these old muscles. But in my neck, that's trying to hurt me.

SPEAKER_01 2:24

I would like to propose that we cast an audible on this and we take the natural topic that is right there in front of us that will make the world a better place if they listen to it, and that is video games teaching us moral decision making. Yeah, so all of the thousand of hours that Marcus has played Star Wars the Old Republic did not teach him that punching this person in the face is not the way.

SPEAKER_00 2:59

But it's perfectly well it's okay.

SPEAKER_02 3:01

But I'm not a Sith. That's the problem. I'm the Sith.

SPEAKER_01 3:06

I am the Sith.

SPEAKER_02 3:11

It's just it was a funny, it was a funny thing. But kind of staying in that realm of conversation, right? So it it brought me to who like I actually like when I was driving home and like my neck is really sore. It's actually nice that I have this chair because like I can rotate without having to spin my neck too much because my neck is really sore. I was really messed up yesterday. And but I was questioning who I was because I'm like, it's not really my type of it's not really me. Like I believe through and through nobody's above an ass kicking. Like anybody can get their butt kicked. If you're an idiot, you deserve it. But my point is like it's usually not me, that guy that is just because the guy made a stupid mistake and gonna retaliate, but something in my blood made me do it.

SPEAKER_00 4:04

Okay,

Do Games Teach Moral Restraint

SPEAKER_00 4:05

that would be the Sith blood.

SPEAKER_01 4:07

I'm just thinking about all the different games that I've ever played where I had a decision to make. And I I remember when I was in elementary school because my parents wanted to make sure that if I play games like Mortal Kombat, I'm not going to become a violent child because they watched a lot of news in the early 90s. Right. And so, in order to solve that problem, they signed me up for taekwondo, which I did from first grade through the end of fourth grade, and then in fifth grade, sports became an option with a lot less driving and in rural Illinois, because you could do the sports right at the school. But I had taekwondo for three years, so that I would not be running around trying to uppercut other kids' heads off during recess because Mortal Kombat influenced me to become a violent kid. And so throughout my whole life, I've been taught this story that you have to learn the right life lessons no matter what video game you're playing, right? At any moment, my parent could come through that door and say, Daniel, what is the moral life lesson that you need to remember while you play this incredibly violent, brain-numbing game? And I'd have to answer that question successfully, because if I was wrong, they'd say, This game is influencing you in a bad way, and I'd have to stop playing it.

SPEAKER_00 5:40

Interesting.

SPEAKER_01 5:41

Yeah, I wish I was making this stuff up, but it's so true. So when I hear the stranger than fiction, though. Yeah, exactly. Yes, because the video games are the fiction, and I have to do like a moral debate over every game that my parents would see me playing. So when I see in my mind, I feel like I can see it. I can watch Marcus's hockey game, I can see him get cross-check in the back of the neck, I can see him get super freaking upset and really earn that explicit language checkbox that I have to check every single week when I edit the show. But I didn't yet. You didn't. I wait, I'm not understanding your story then, Marcus. No, I didn't swear. Oh. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 6:29

And that's hard to believe.

SPEAKER_02 6:31

I'm not going to.

SPEAKER_01 6:33

Oh, so here's where your moral fellow is.

SPEAKER_02 6:35

No, no, in the podcast. Yeah, in the port. In the podcast, I'm not I'm not gonna swear. Oh, in real life, dude. I I told them I was gonna slit his throat with my skate.

SPEAKER_01 6:45

Whoa, that's so violent, Marcus. My parents would make you stop playing this.

SPEAKER_02 6:52

I went full Sith. I was like Dark Side Jsa. Dark side Sith. You know what I mean? I went full dark side. This guy, like, we're talking about my neck. We're not talking about anything else. That guy could have paralyzed me. Like, right.

SPEAKER_01 7:06

You said Dark Side JSA, and I'm having visions of one of the hottest video game characters ever, so I can't listen to you right now.

SPEAKER_02 7:13

All right, but here's the next thing. I've never done dark side JSA.

SPEAKER_01 7:19

Darkseid JSA or had JSA go dark side? Wait, never mind. Don't answer that. The answer is yeah. I think the answer is yes.

SPEAKER_02 7:27

Alright, we know what Doc's AI co-pilot is named as JSA. No, it's Geeky Saga. Yeah, I'm being funny.

SPEAKER_01 7:36

I know. AKA Dark Side Jace. That's the sleeper code if someone calls her that in the chat. My talk stream goes way different direction. After Dark Doc. It's on. Yeah. Oh, that would be so fun if I programmed stuff like that into Geeky Saga. You should. But in terms of what can video games teach us in terms of decision making, there are a lot of video games that put your choices in the center of this moral continuum between good and evil. And some games do that just like a dichotomous choice. You're either good or you're bad. And there's a lot of choices like that in the Knights of the Old Republic, which is a Star Wars RPG, and then the MMO version of that is Star Wars the Old Republic. There's lots of moments in those stories where you have a light side choice, which is typically you do good for people, the peaceful and

Parents Policing Mortal Kombat Morals

SPEAKER_01 8:40

mindful option that follows the Jedi code, and then there's the aggressive really stand up for yourself and assert your dominance, control the situation no matter who you hurt, your will determines the outcome of this scenario. And those are the dark side choices. The dark side. And they really are a part of me, even if they're based on a philosophy for a fictional world. I think there's a lot of things I do in life where I purposely am drawing on the Jedi and the Sith Code. It's become a moralistic decision-making anchor for me. And for Marcus, too. He knew what he was doing in that hockey game. Oh, for sure. I knew.

SPEAKER_02 10:15

I knew. There's rules. When you cross the rules, the pay you gotta pay your toll.

SPEAKER_01 10:21

But let me ask you guys a five-minute major for that, Marcus. I got ejected. Oh man. That's brutal.

SPEAKER_02 10:29

You didn't. What about him? He got ejected too. He got a gross major, he got suspended the next game. So basically, a gross major, you get five minutes. It's a double penalty, so four minutes, but it you get kicked out of the game and a one-game suspension. It's like where he hit me, I could have died or been paralyzed. It's no joke. They're reviewing it. The guy might get kicked out of the league. And I just punched him in the face, like I with a glove on, and he's got a cage on. I didn't drop my gloves like you watch in the NHL or anything. But that leads me to this is a really interesting conversation for me because excuse me. So let me ask you guys a question. When you create your character, okay? So we're talking about during the game all of these choices, whatever game you're playing that has those decision trees, right? And you're creating that character. Do you did you guys know when you're creating the characters that they're gonna be good or bad? Is that on your mind when you're creating the character? Yes. Yes. Ooh, see that not me. That's interesting. Why?

SPEAKER_00 11:42

So when I create a character, I'm gonna play through, and this was a question I was trying to hopefully work into this. So when I create a character for my first playthrough, I'm gonna play it as myself. It's gonna be a reflection of me. It's gonna be how I would play this game. If I if I clear it, I'll go back and I'll play it as every other alignment. I'll start it off as evil I can get. I'll start it off as one way or the other. But on my initial playthrough through every game, it's gonna be a reflection of how I would play.

SPEAKER_02 12:13

So, like a decision tree, like they ask you, hey, is the what are you doing today? And the responses are like, Don't ask me questions, what do you care? And then, oh, I'm gonna have a nice sandwich at lunch break. You're gonna answer it as if Doritos was answering it.

unknown 12:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 12:31

I'm the same way. But I don't create my character to feel like I'm not creating that character to go, oh, I want him to be evil. I'm just creating him in my image.

SPEAKER_01 12:48

That's a really good point. I mean, uh because I don't think Darth Vader was trying to be evil. I think that for a lot of Revenge of the Sith, Anakin Skywalker sees himself still as the hero of the story. Even if it's like tragic and he's crying on Mustafar. He's not seeing that he's the villain. He's seeing all the people that wronged him and didn't listen to him and didn't give him a chance, and now look where I'm at. And that's the thing about good villains, actually, is they still think they're doing the right thing from their point of view, truly think that they're doing the right thing from their point of view. And we can create characters like that too in games. The dark side choices in Star Wars, you're still the hero of that story while you make those choices.

SPEAKER_00 13:43

Especially a Sith Warrior, you have to uh kill plenty of people.

SPEAKER_02 13:48

Yeah, and that's my favorite class or my favorite story. And I don't think I've ever done a full dark side character. Ever.

SPEAKER_00 14:05

Really? Nope. Okay, so we've been talking a lot right now about Star Wars and Sotor and our character creation within that universe, because that is a common ground we all have. What about Elden Ring? We've all played Elden Ring. It is there are not as many morality choices in there, but there are still plenty of morality choices within the game. Yeah. No, I agree. I killed the shit out of patches.

SPEAKER_01 14:36

Oh my god. I was just gonna bring up you any any NPC that has conversations with you and ends up being a vendor, if you like what they're wearing, you can kill them and take their outfit. And you just can't buy stuff or sell

KOTOR And SWOTOR Alignment As A Compass

SPEAKER_01 14:55

stuff with them the rest of the game.

SPEAKER_00 14:58

And right, but you get the pearls, you give it to the twins.

SPEAKER_01 15:01

So yeah, you know that that guy that's in the area in the northwest with the three towers, and he's a real celuvus, he's a creep, and he's turning people into puppets. I have never gotten to do that entire quest because the first time I played the game, I just murdered him.

SPEAKER_02 15:23

So can I ask you a serious question? And it's completely off topic of that. When you kill him, do you get the talisman?

SPEAKER_01 15:31

I don't remember if you get the talisman, but I definitely got his robe, and I used it for a long time.

SPEAKER_02 15:37

All right.

SPEAKER_01 15:39

Yeah, I it's really just because when I walked in that room, I didn't realize he was in NPC, so I just started attacking him, and that activated him being upset at me. So then I had to kill him. And yeah, you have to. So, but in Elden Ring, a lot of the storytelling is under the surface, and whereas a game like Star Wars The Old Republic puts dialogue choices and puts alignment symbols next to your choices, and it's like you are about to make a conversation-changing choice right here. Elden Ring does not care if you understand anything that is going on, and you have to talk to those NPCs as if the way you talk to people in real life, if you are not taking your own notes to say what you're saying to me is so important, I'm gonna remember it ten weeks from now, you will not even have side quests in that game. Because people that wanted you to go over here and find the thing and bring it back, you weren't paying attention to what they said. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 16:53

I think that was my biggest flaw in Elden Ring was I didn't actually listen to what they were saying. I went full Dr. Gamology in most story-driven games where I spacebarred through, but then I realized that there's no way to ever hear what they said again. So I would have to go to YouTube to find that conversation and listen. Because they're like, oh, in a deep, dark part of the forest, there's a crooked tree, and you may find somebody there to talk to, and that's it, it's just the most vague thing ever. But then eventually you end up in this dark forest by some crooked tree, and there's this guy leaning against her smoking a cigar, and you're like, hey, and they're like, Oh, you remember Shakalaka from 400 hours ago. Not really. He said you would come and see me. Here you go, sir. But you have to deliver this to East West Chuck a ruck and in the snow land, and you're like, okay, and then 400 hours more, you find this snow land and you find this person, but you don't remember. It's that's Elden Ring in a nutshell.

SPEAKER_01 18:14

I feel like the way you just play role-played Elden Ring is like you're Pete Davidson from Saturday Night Live, and like Elden Ring is just serious, they really want you to understand. You're just like, okay. Yeah. Oh man. I just got a problem.

SPEAKER_00 18:32

I've got a place called East West Chuckarook now. And Shakalaka has to give you your magic spell. Shakalaka has to.

SPEAKER_02 18:38

That's right. But it's the truth. You when you play Elden Ring, and I'm glad Doritos talked about this because we've all played Elden Ring. And we're everybody plays it different, and we all know our play styles, but you really have to dig for the story in that game. And if you're not listening to everything they say, it's just a waste. You might as well not even listen to the game.

SPEAKER_01 19:08

The chapter that I wrote in the psychology of Elden Ring, it talks about more moral alignment in the game as a function of what ending that you try to unlock for your tarnish. There are six, I believe, and some of them require you to do a lot of really nasty busy work to ruin the world. And there are completionists who maybe want to see every ending for themselves. Other people may just go on YouTube and see the endings they didn't get so that they know what all of them are. And I did get all the endings except for one. Up to this day, there's still one that I haven't done. And I really do some of the ones that are really evil because the quests you have to do create a whole different journey through that world that I really enjoyed. There are areas in that game that I only went to once, and it was because of the ending I was going after. And that created a whole different experience of the game than just going straight through the main story and becoming Elden Lord, which that's epic enough anyway. There are the one ending in particular, the eternal flame ending, where you just become evil incarnate and plunge the entire lands between into a fiery, eternal darkness. I really loved how different that ending was compared to the one that I got first, which was the Rani sailing the cosmos as the consort to the most powerful witch in existence ending.

SPEAKER_02 21:02

I'm actually jealous of both of you. Why? I didn't do the extra save file. So I only uh have gotten one ending.

SPEAKER_01 21:17

Oh, I didn't do that. I completely beat the game five times new game plus four. Yeah. Because to do it the way you're alluding to, you have to really put weird mods on your save files on the PC game. And I did not do that. I did it. I totally did it. I couldn't figure out how to do it. I just beat the game again. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 21:49

Shut I was lazy. There's a man. So then it brings us back to this character creation, right? Do you create every character in every game? Or let me cre let me say it again. Do you create every first character in your the gate in every game the same way? Whether it's a boy or a girl or whatever, I'm just saying, does that first character always have the same look and feel as every other game? Oh, interesting.

SPEAKER_00 22:31

I'll play him. I might have the same play style, but I will not care necessarily create the character the same way. Huh. What about you, Doc?

SPEAKER_01 22:41

I think Star Wars, the Old Republic

Elden Ring Choices Without A Morality Meter

SPEAKER_01 22:45

is such a different game than all the other games that I've played since. Because in Votor, I wanted to be a very powerful Sith. Like a the most dominant Sith sorcerer that you have ever seen. And I became Dark Five and was that way for five years. When I finished my PhD, I had this idea in my head that only a Sith would ever finish their doctorate because the Jedi are mindful and they're willing to accept their reality and not bend it to their will and change it. And so I really felt when I was done with school to me going all the way from the negative 10,000 dark side points over to the 10,000 light side points. So I just spent months making all the light side choices possible to reverse my alignment on that character completely. And ever since that time, when I create characters in other games, I generally am aiming to make good choices and for people to like me, to be saved by me, and for me to do good in those fictional worlds. But there are some situations where the good choice results in me being a doormat and not standing for anything, and I will actually choose to hold people accountable and destroy idiots. As a boss and leader for my department, is I want people to have a good experience of me. I want things to be fair. But if the shenanigans go into that you're incompetent kind of category, then I will have to hold you accountable. And in video games, those often are the aggressive and accountability-driven choices do end up having that evil moral alignment, even though I don't think it's evil to hold people accountable for their mistakes, especially deliberate mistakes. Interesting.

SPEAKER_02 25:15

I think that's different. Right.

SPEAKER_01 25:17

How is it different than being like, you poisoned the water well, and I'm going to kill you because you tried to poison the entire town, you schmuck. I'm sure there's a mission in Red Dead Redemption exactly about that. Probably is.

SPEAKER_02 25:36

That game was crazy. I didn't read. I played the second one for five hours. Yeah. And then they just capitalized on it.

SPEAKER_00 25:51

Well, well, what okay?

SPEAKER_01 25:54

Go ahead, Doritos.

SPEAKER_00 25:56

So I'm gonna I'm gonna I'm gonna shift uh just a hair as we've all started our Baldur's Gate campaign together. Character creation for that. How has the decisions from some of the other stuff that we do? We've been talking to Switch, we've talked Elden Ring, but Baldur's Gate. The only thing that Baldur's Gate doesn't necessarily have in there is being able to pick your alignment. How is your character creation gone when making the characters for our campaign? My character is me. I play that character as if it's me. Yeah, my and we talked about this about four or five episodes ago.

SPEAKER_01 26:41

My character, I think, is usually half elf, hot girl doc. Right? I want to make good choices. I want to romance Shadow Heart. I want people that are aligned with the people of Baldur's Gate to like me. But I did see a reel on Instagram a couple weeks ago where someone decided at the very beginning of the game to just murder people, and these are people that give you missions and you're supposed to save the grove. And they just murdered the first five real social interactions that they found in the game, and as a result, their act two and three had no quests other than the main quest, and they were despised by everyone, and everyone just wants to fight them because news has spread, and you're the person who murdered our uncle in the grove, and you're the person who burned down the treehouse southwest of the grove, and you're the person who pillaged and tortured all of the drow that were in the you know, outside the burning village next to the grove, and you become like in The Witcher, there's that butcher of Blavakin label that Geralt cannot escape over something he did a century ago, and they did that to themselves in Baldur's Gate. You're the butcher of the grove. And I've actually wondered how fun it would be to do a campaign like that because everything is just battle, and there's no reason to talk to anyone at that point. But it's you get hurt so much every battle, I can't imagine the supplies that you need to collect for those camp rests to get your health back. So I'm sure it's a very hard path through the game. So, even though there's no morality meter that says you're good or you're evil in Baldur's Gate, I think your reputation as a party does impact your path through the game.

SPEAKER_02 29:07

Yeah. I haven't played enough of it. To be honest with you, I think for me, Baldur's Gate, I need to play it alone to really find out

Baldur’s Gate Reputation And Chaos Runs

SPEAKER_02 29:20

what it's about and do it alone and then play with you guys. Like I'm doing the group campaign. I'm doing the group campaign, but it's I'm doing the group campaign, but it's also I feel like I'm I'm just I'm following the leader instead of build being the leader.

SPEAKER_01 29:47

Maybe, but I remember us telling you to go into the room first, because you're the tank and we want all the arrows to hit you.

SPEAKER_02 29:56

Yes, no, I'm with you. But it's still I feel like I'm the follower, not the leader.

SPEAKER_01 30:07

And that is a role that you are not comfortable with.

SPEAKER_02 30:11

No, I don't mind it. It's just in that game.

SPEAKER_01 30:17

Yeah. It's been over a month, I think, probably since we jumped into our three-person campaign.

SPEAKER_02 30:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 30:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 30:27

Life has been busy.

SPEAKER_01 30:29

Doritos and I are conspiring to murder everyone in the grove in our two-person campaign. Yes, we are. We started we started the murdering last time we played. So everybody ran after we did the first backstab. That's awesome. Is is. Yeah, it's just really interesting that in a game like that you can flip who it is you do all the things for and who you attack, and the game still continues forward. That I've played chapter one of that game eight times now. This is the eighth time with seven and eight is the trio and the duo that we have going on. I've never once tried to take out the person who says, go over there and defeat the goblins at the goblin camp and rescue Halsen. And instead, they're like, go rescue Halson. It's like, or how about I destroy you? And then so let's do battle, and then we win that battle. It's just really fun to see how flexible the scenario is. When I started playing video games that had choices in it, it was so limited that you could do path A or path B. And Baldur's Gate, you really can do anything you want. Which is crazy. It's fully voiced, too. So the number of lines that every actor or actress in that game had to record, the little nuances to hear all those lines, that's hard to wrap my head around, actually. But I want to ask both of you, besides the big recent games, the 2020s games, what are some of the other games that come to mind when we talk about choices and decision making that really made an impact on you? Mass Effect. Okay. Yeah, it's a good series to choose. Yeah, I'm still working my way through Mass Effect one. I'm on the first planet that I decide to visit after leaving the capital area. The citadel. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 32:51

Are you driving around the planet on the rover?

SPEAKER_01 32:54

Harvesting materials.

SPEAKER_02 32:56

Yeah, and harvesting materials.

SPEAKER_01 32:59

I'm not really paying attention to that. Is that a problem? No.

SPEAKER_02 33:06

No. But harvesting materials, it just upgrades your ship. They really do a good job in Mass Effect 2 of harvesting mechanics gets really easy.

SPEAKER_01 33:17

Oh, that's good. Because I didn't even realize there was a harvesting mechanic in Mass Effect.

SPEAKER_02 33:22

You will when they're like, hey, we gotta upgrade our ship engines, and you're like, How come I have zero?

SPEAKER_01 33:30

That is totally a me thing to experience.

SPEAKER_00 33:33

And you're gonna be like, Yep, I gotta go back. So if we go back, I've got the original Kotor when it came out a few years ago.

SPEAKER_02 33:41

That might have been the first game I ever played with real choices.

SPEAKER_01 33:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 33:45

That I can remember.

SPEAKER_01 33:47

That game changed me. Darth Revan is one of and will always be one of my favorite Star Wars characters and has never appeared on screen. Did you guys see that there's a YouTube channel that's using a mixture of AI and real actors to create a mini-series of Knights of the Old Republic?

SPEAKER_03 34:11

No.

SPEAKER_01 34:13

I'll have to share the link with you. It I haven't watched it through yet. I saw a preview reel on Instagram. It looks so well done, so cool. They did the terrace section for their first video.

SPEAKER_02 34:27

With AI, really. If you know how to command AI, you can do anything. It's all about context with AI.

SPEAKER_01 34:37

I also saw some reels of what episode nine Duel of the Fates would have been like if they had filmed that script instead of The Rise of Skywalker. And it was wild to see some of those scenes rendered using AI and having not real Adam Driver and not real Mark Hamill and not real Daisy Ridley doing those scenes. Interesting.

SPEAKER_02 35:05

He has been teaching me how to use Claude, and it's crazy what it can do, and I barely scratch the surface with it.

SPEAKER_01 35:14

Yeah. Quad's an amazing program. For me, I've been thinking a lot while we're talking about three games, and I'm just gonna drop them all in at once. Bioshock. Yeah, Bioshock, Detroit Become Human, Heavy Rain. Okay. You're right. So Bioshock is a simple choice. Yeah, because you like harvest or redeem. Yeah, always redeem. I harvested all of them during my one complete playthrough of Bioshock 1. I did it did not click in my head that letting them live would give me more in the long run than just taking their atom from them now.

SPEAKER_02 36:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 36:07

My grad school doc was

Mass Effect Bioshock Heavy Rain Big Consequences

SPEAKER_01 36:10

really intensely aligned with the dark side. But Bioshock will always be one of those games that has a special place in my heart.

SPEAKER_02 36:23

But I forgot about heavy rain. So the premise I'm saying in our conversation until you said it. You basically are playing a cinematic movie and you're catching the origami killer, which is a serial killer. And I only completed the game once, and I never completed, I never caught the origami killer. And I so I never caught the origami killer, and I couldn't pull myself to play the game again because it was such a perfect playthrough. And I lived with my choices and how it all ended. That game, oh, I have it right there.

SPEAKER_01 37:09

Yeah. I there's four characters you play as, and my first playthrough, I did catch the origami killer. One of the four characters died before the final chapter that they could have made it to. And so that's my playthrough. But I kept going back through to Platinum Trophy the game, so I did see all 21 different compositions of the ending. And when I say 21, there's four characters. So some characters that their ending A and ending B are like super happy and mildly happy. And and depending on what happens with the other three characters, not every character has 21 different endings. It's just the endings fit together 21 different ways, if I remember correctly. Right. So you probably had a very dark ending, Marcus.

SPEAKER_02 38:24

Mine was fucked up.

unknown 38:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 38:26

But there it is. There it is. We gotta check the box.

SPEAKER_00 38:30

Almost almost made it through. Hold on. I'm gonna show you some of this. So Dorito. It is worth it. It is worth it.

SPEAKER_01 38:37

Last week, it was you and me. There were no swear words. I still check the box for explicit content because it didn't feel right to have one random episode that's clean.

unknown 38:49

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 38:50

You doing show and tell, Marcus? Yeah, with all of you.

SPEAKER_02 38:52

So you guys know Penny Arcade is my I love it. So if they do a three comic strip, and the three comic strip is basically the agent, and it says, Agent Jaden, Detective Harris, glad you're here. We heard about your work on the origami killer. Seemed like the man for the job, and he's he leans down to uncover the thing, and we're calling him the balloon animal killer, and it's just still one of my favorite.

SPEAKER_01 39:24

Yeah, that's so funny. All the characters in that game are so good. Yeah, it's just go ahead. They use the choices because it is a cinematic movie, but there's so many different ways the scenes can go that it's like watching a movie that is truly a choose your own adventure, and you can lower the difficulty on your controller dexterity to where it's not hard to make your choices. There are versions of it too where you have to use your controller very well, and you could try to make a choice and fail to make that choice in the right time. So it really is about what is your version of the story that you're comfortable playing. And with movies, you just sit there and watch, you see what the director and the actors were told to do. With a game like Heavy Rain, it's so powerful because that's your ending. You made the characters get to this point. That's a fun thing to realize when you get to the end of a very heavy emotional story. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 40:48

Yeah. That game, oh man, just thinking about this. Holy cow.

SPEAKER_01 40:54

There's also the games by Super Massive, like the Corey. There's also they have so many. There's the one that's about H. H. Holmes or from the World's Fair. The Devil Among Us, or The Devil No, The Devil In Me. I gotta look up the name of the game now. That's ridiculous that I can't remember. But all the games by Super Massive games tend to have these choices to them. And that's why I really like they did Until Dawn. The Devil in Me.

SPEAKER_02 41:36

Yeah, I don't even know what that is.

SPEAKER_01 41:39

What's another serial killer choose your own adventure where you have a bunch of kids going through a death hotel and trying not to get killed by a copycat killer that is modeling their kills off of H.H. Holmes, who is a very real serial killer from the late 1800s, who terrorized people at the Chicago World's Fair. So many documentaries you can watch if you want to go down that rabbit hole. Wow. But choices are a fun thing to think about in video games. They don't always have to be these really heavy, serial killer, soul-sucking, life-crushing games. They can also be lighthearted. And you build your relationships with characters two different levels, and the goal really is to hit a level 10 relationship with everyone. Whether that's friendship or romance depends on what choices you make. But level 10 is the strongest relationship, and there are impacts on the ending of the final fights of those games based on how many people you get that strong friendship and trust with. And I would probably reload my save and just do the choice over again with different people in my party so that I get Shadow Heart to like what I did, and Will wasn't even there, and maybe Asterian is neutral. So we'll swap out put Asterian in for Will so that nobody dislikes what I did. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 44:26

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 44:27

And in SWOTOR, you get the

Do You Need Custom Characters To Care

SPEAKER_01 44:30

romancey cutscenes where it has kisses and fades to black with the people that you have in your party if you get a lot of the positive support from your choices and avoid the negative support for your choices.

SPEAKER_02 44:47

My favorite part of that is when the screen goes black, all you hear is bound chicken wow wow.

SPEAKER_01 44:54

The my favorite was Ashara Zavros, because my original character is a Sith sorcerer. And the romance scene for her, it fades to black in the middle of a kiss, and when she when it comes back, she's straightening her gauntlet and she hums out loud the Imperial March. And I just always thought that was really cool. I don't know. Just it it breaks that fourth wall a little bit that they are aware of the Imperial March in their inside their game that they can hum it. It's not just something that we hear as the viewers.

unknown 45:39

Oh.

SPEAKER_01 45:41

So it's so funny that the Imperial March is something they would hum after getting freaky.

SPEAKER_02 45:46

So Doritos, we you play a lot of different games. And do you feel less connected to a game that you don't get to create your own character for?

SPEAKER_00 46:03

Not necessarily.

SPEAKER_02 46:04

Like Horizon Zero Dawn.

SPEAKER_00 46:06

That's a first. That's exactly where I that's exactly where I was going with it, too. Because you are given the story, and you know you're gonna be playing as Aloy, who's the heroine heroine of the story, it takes some of the takes some of the pressure off of exactly how you want the character to be created. It already has the look that is static. You're gonna get what you're gonna get. And for some lot of games like that, part of the tutorial is you you kind of learn how to play as the character and get to feel what the character feels in part of the tutorial when you're learning the basic moves, basic attacks, this, that, how to do all the different abilities. So I typically don't have a problem with it, because again, I can I I will ex I accept what is given as this is the persona that that has been given to this character, and I am playing as that, so how would I do that? Because in this goes back to some of the old bioware stuff too, originally, where you have the decision wheels. So there are several occasions within the Horizon series where you have a set of a trio of choices. You can make a decision that's aggressive, you can make a thoughtful decision, or you can make a decision with your heart. And depending on what that is, later in the game will have varying dialogue choices and potential other consequences. So it doesn't bother me that it's a static character creation already done, because I st I'm still enjoying the narrative. What about you, Doc?

SPEAKER_01 48:00

I think when we create our characters, it creates a natural deep connection to the world that's personal, as opposed to when you inherit a character, the bad things happening when you fail is happening to this character in a fiction that you're participating in. But I still think that you can have a deep connection with those characters. So I've been revisiting a lot of the things I think about Final Fantasy VII recently, and there those characters are all given to me by Square Enix, but I feel really deep things about them to the point where I get really sad at the end of that second game of rebirth. There's a character death in your party, and Expedition 33, same thing. There's a character death in your party, in that game, that impacts me very much when I see it. It makes me want to play more, actually. It makes me want to keep going and make Renoir pay. So I don't think you have to create your character to have these deep emotional connections to the game or the choices your character makes. It really depends on the game world and what it ends up being for you as the player. And if you get immersed in that world and the mission of that journey,

Writing A Book With Sith Motivation

SPEAKER_01 49:35

then whether you create the character or not, you still feel the influence of those story moments, I think. I've never thought about Ocarina of Time and been like, man, this game would have been epic if I just created a character and I wasn't playing as Link. It's an amazing game, and Link is just as much a part of it. That's the vehicle that you experience the game through.

SPEAKER_00 50:06

Interesting.

SPEAKER_02 50:10

Did you decide you wanted to be dark side or light side when you wrote your book that you won an award for? What do you mean? Were you did you go into it going, I'm gonna be a Sith as I write this book? Or did you go in there as I'm gonna be a Jedi?

SPEAKER_01 50:29

If I were a Jedi about that book, the book would not exist because I would have been happy with it being exactly the way it is before it was published. You have to hate it so much that you finish it. The fact that it's not published yet is enough to drive you crazy to where you'll work even harder on it for hours of your free time. I love the fact that the book exists. So when we were getting to the final edit phase before we lock everything and nothing, point of no return, we're printing it. I was reading it with different different oh, I forget the name of the program, but it's one of those programs that reads your Word documents for you and and you can choose the voices. So I've heard my book read by me as Snoop Dogg, and I've heard my book read as as if it's all kinds of different voices, different genders, and so I was going through the whole book every day for two or three weeks, just at a very fast speed, but still you have to check everything, you have to check punctuation, grammar, words are spelled correctly on every single page, every single word. So it's in 2024, I was going through it intensely every day. I have not sat down to really read any of the pages since then. I think when you have an intense goal like that, you do need to do whatever it takes to have a high level of motivation to do it. If you can do that with there is no emotion, there is peace, good for you. But I get more motivated by the idea that peace

Closing Laughs And The Cake Lie

SPEAKER_01 53:00

is a lie through victory, my chains are broken, that kind of thing.

SPEAKER_02 53:07

For me, the cake is a lie, and you should continue the journey.

SPEAKER_01 53:14

This was a triumph.