Bobisimo made this comment, in response to my gushing about Alpha Protocol :

Part of me worries that this means “If you piss off NPC “John Doe”, then Faction A will love you and Faction B will hate you. But if you make NPC “John Doe” like you”, then Faction A hates you and Faction B loves you.” Not that it matters to me all that much, I’m already sold on the game. And to be fair, I’m usually more impressed than less impressed when it comes to Obsidian and the final product.

A very valid concern. Especially given that the way most games handle “moral actions” is by breaking them down into a simple binary split. Good/evil, paragon/renegade/ light side/ dark side. Then putting all the “good” NPCs in one bracket, the evil ones in the other, and making it so they like actions which fit in their bracket but not in the opposite.

The problem is the simplification of the player’s choices and NPCs into two very artificial categories, ‘good’ and ‘bad’. Once you’ve done that, your system becomes little more than a trivial exercise in min/maxing to attain whichever result you want for your character, ie to be the saint or the bastard.

The first problem is that there is no overlap between the two categories. They are binary, and mutually exclusive. Can’t really be both ‘good’ AND ‘evil’. In real life we know you can be, that choice are more granular than that, that simple terms like good and evil aren’t enough to describe all the subtleties, to take into account differing points of view. That sometimes, the ‘good’ choice actually amounts to choosing the lesser of two evils.

By breaking the system down further than good/evil, by having the NPCs rate you on factors like how strictly you adhere to your mission specs, which other NPCs you make deals with to achieve your goals, how much of a mess you make achieving your goals, you introduce the possibility of ‘fuzzy’ results, where the NPC approves of some aspects and disapproves of others. Some may value discretion or discipline, some may value getting the job done no matter what.

This is a good start, but we need more to make the system work better than plain good/evil. We need to work to ensure that NPCs aren’t polar opposites. If one NPC values Discipline and Ruthlessness, another shouldn’t value the direct opposite, Freeform and Compassion. There should be overlaps and oppositions, but approval/disapproval ratings of NPCs should overlap. You need to work to ensure the player can’t simply choose a faction of NPCs and always be able to pick the options which greatly satisfy that entire group.

The final thing that is needed is the possibility of obfuscation. So my character did something mean out in some backwater where nobody could possibly know about it. Why then does everybody treat me like I’m a jerk? The ability to ‘cover your tracks’ is an immensely satisfying, even vital component of this system, in my mind. It boils down to mapping the path of information flow from the player to the NPCs, and to giving players the ability to block or redirect that information. The holy grail of that kind of design is the ability to actually play a manipulative evil character, instead of just a brutish bully.

Will AP achieve this? I dunno, but I think that is what they’re trying to build, and I for one am excited.

(Here’s a picture of a random Venn Diagram I googled. Enjoy it. It demonstrates…um…overlapping categories. Just thought I’d throw it out there.)