If you’re playing a game with any sort of narrative design that puts the player in the driving seat, you tend to have a pretty binary decision to make. Do you want to be a good guy, or a rotten ol’ bad guy?
Most games send you down one of these two paths, with little chance to alter your path, as morality in video games is a pretty tough thing to get right, and nuance is a fine art.
However, there are some games that tap into this nuanced storytelling so well that every decision feels morally grey. A cocktail of good, evil, and everything in between.
We want to spotlight these games that truly make you question whether you’re the hero of the story or not. These are incredible games where practically every decision is morally grey.
6.
Pathologic 2
Push Back The Plague
In the wake of the fantastic time-looping sequel Pathologic 3, I still find myself waxing lyrical about Pathologic 2. A game that places you in the shoes of a doctor in a doomed town with the impossible task of stopping a plague from wiping out everyone.
An unenviable task, and one that requires complete precision to pull off. But, spoilers. You won’t be pulling it off first try.
You’ll find yourself constantly compromising your ideals to survive, and you’ll end up giving up on someone in the hope of saving another because time is so damn finite.
The philosophical question, does one life mean more than another, is always at the forefront of your mind. Which, in the end, is a decision only you can make.
6.
Disco Elysium
Cuno Doesn’t Care
I’ll admit, there is a soft nougaty core to Disco Elysium represented by its dark and twisted humor. But, beyond the giggles, there is a real, sinister side to Revachol, and you are tasked with navigating it as a truly deplorable individual.
Sure, you can play as a version of Harrier Dubois that completes a redemption arc of sorts. But even if you do, you’ll need to make a lot of decisions that aren’t right or wrong, but sit firmly on the fence.
Is it okay to pound narcotics to get through your working days if it makes you a better cop? Is it okay to punch a child in the face if it helps you solve a murder case? Who is to say?
All I can say for sure is that it’s a wonderful experience from start to finish, and to this day, it’s still the best-written CRPG money can buy.
6.
This War Of Mine
War Behind The Front Line
War is perhaps one of the most harrowing things a human will ever have to endure or participate in. However, there is very little media out there that shows the horrors of war from the perspective of the random bystander. Something that This War Of Mine does with devastating accuracy.
In the shoes of civilians at the heart of a civil war, your goal is to simply survive in whatever sort of hovel you find yourself in. Keeping moral up as best you can, while also gathering what you can to stay alive.
Survival is possible, but it often comes at a cost to those just trying to do the same as you. It’s a dog-eat-dog world, and you have to be the dog with the loudest bark or the sharpest bite. Anything less, and you’ll just be another statistic.
6.
Papers, Please
Brutal Border Control
Not to get into the political trenches here, but I think that the subject of immigration is more of a powder keg than it ever has been. Almost to a point that there’s no moral ambiguity at all about it.
However, back on the release day for Lucas Pope’s Papers, Please, there was a more nuanced conversation happening around the topic. This allowed Pope to offer a Black Mirror-esque look behind the curtain.
Holding the border of Arstotzka, you’re nothing more than a pencil pusher, but one with the power to change lives and end others. As one ‘denied’ stamp can be the catalyst for atrocities way beyond your pay grade.
Yet, if you are too welcoming, you’ll be docked pay, potentially lose your job, and effectively consign your family to the same terrible fate. It’s a gritty, horrible, bureaucratic affair, but one that everyone should experience at least once.
6.
The Alters
DNA Does The Damage
While I never quite clicked with the action gameplay present in The Alters, I was enamored with the survival systems, and the stories woven in the creases between them.
Playing as several genetically cloned versions of yourself from alternative timelines, your goal is simple. Power your ship and outrun the sun. But, to do that, you’ll need to embrace the moral grey.
That means creating lifeforms that should never have existed. Manipulation of the highest degree. Exacting workload akin to slave labor at times, and ultimately deciding whether those you have created are worth saving in the end.
It’s a profound and powerful concept brought to fruition phenomenally well, and one of the most unique survival games you’ll perhaps ever play.
6.
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
Toss A Coin
I don’t think there’s any game on the market today, even a decade on from it’s monumental release, that can match The Witcher 3 for morally grey storytelling.
In the shoes of Geralt, the revered but ultimately unpopular Witcher, you’ll be faced with a variety of quest lines where you’ll have impossible decisions to make, and no matter what you do, you’ll come to the same conclusion. There is no happy ending.
There will be blood on your hands. There will be people who will suffer regardless of your best intentions. But, as any Witcher should. You simply need to do your job, take your coin, and move on before you become the monster in the townsfolk’s crosshairs.
