7. How the morality system is completely and utterly fucked.
It takes a special kind of failure to take something that is already broken (the two point morality scale) and break it even more. Not just to the point of being broken, but to the point of being irreparably damaged beyond any hope for salvage or repair. This is especially jarring considering that Bioware’s last morality system (paragon and renegade in Mass Effect) was actually one of the best two point morality systems around. It was still victim to many of the pratfalls associated with two-sided morality but it also was far less restrictive than a simple light side/dark side linear scale.
Compounding on the already monumental and cataclysmic failure of resorting to the piss-poor lineal morality, Bioware also managed to make morality in The Old Republic as completely fucked as possible. And it lets you know just how fucked it is fairly early on. How early? Well I was about an hour (a little bit less probably) into the game when I realized that morality was totally and irreversibly broken. I was playing my Chiss Agent (because blue girls are the best girls – seriously, the fact that every class can’t be Chiss is a travesty) when I was presented with an encounter where a man was threatening to blow my cover. Following the wonderfully restrictive dialogue wheel I was given three choices on how to deal with the situation. Bribe him. Kill him. Fuck him. Now let me get this out-of-the-way right now: to praise Bioware; I applaud the ability to whore your way out of a situation. When playing a spy class, I expect some zesty romantic escapades. The issue however comes from the option to fuck him or bribe him being considered light side choices and the option to kill him being considered a dark side choice. We’re not talking about Joe from accounting that just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. This is a criminal attempting to blackmail and intimidate you. I’m not trying to say, in a real life situation, that would justify murder, but what I am saying is that bribing him or emotionally manipulating him shouldn’t be considered the moral high ground and killing him shouldn’t be worth as many dark side points as shooting a child’s father in cold blood while said child watches.
See the biggest and most glaring flaw with morality in The Old Republic is not that it’s blatantly black and white; it’s that it’s fucking retarded. Often times there will be light side choices that are only light side by simple merit of not being the dark side choice, or the other way around. And if that wasn’t enough there is absolutely no fucking consistency in what is and is not a dark side or light side choice. For example: there is a mid-level Imperial instance where you are given control of a missile battery and the evil choice is the unthinkable act of targeting the Republic fleet with the missiles. These aren’t some missiles carrying some inhumane toxic weapon that violates all standards of decent warfare; you’re not shooting civilian or non-combatant targets. It’s an enemy fleet of warships. That’s the evil choice. Okay, I’ll accept it on the grounds that you’re directly causing a massive loss of life. That would be fine if immediately after the instance I couldn’t go hop in my ship, find the nearest space battle, blow away 100+ Republic pilots, cripple a ton of Republic cruisers and capital class ships (presumably killing hundreds if not thousands of crew members), nearly destroy a Republic space station (also presumably killing thousands of people), and suffer absolutely no morality loss. And it’s not like that’s an isolated incident. It happens all the time. It’s okay for my Sith Sorcerer to shock a man to death while he’s begging for his life because he was a gigantic douchebag… on Nar Shaddaa; but on Tatooine it’s not okay to shock a guy who isn’t begging for his life and is equally a douchebag. (Although it is okay to let Steve Blum murder him for revenge.)
There just is no fucking consistency. It wouldn’t be so bad if you weren’t A) completely railroaded into having to make an either or choice (excluding the very rare moments the game is nice enough to give you a morality choice with a neutral option or no counter morality option) and B) forced to pick between playing either light side or dark side. Yes, you can indeed play a neutral character. Except that Bioware forgot (they claim they didn’t have enough time) to put in neutral morality gear. This isn’t the first time Bioware has forced me to nerf myself, so it’s not surprising. (I had to play through all of Mass Effect 2 without a helmet and all associated stats because Bioware forgot to include a ‘hide helmet’ option.) The only good thing is that The Old Republic is easy, so the stat losses from playing a neutral character are negligible.
