inFamous - Karma Moments

Published 24 March, 2009 Duration 2:17

With great power comes great responsibility. With great super powers comes the chance to fry random members of the public at random.

Comments (0) Latest comment 3 years ago

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  • penhalion #1 3 years ago

    I....like it.....

  • Olemak #2 3 years ago

    I like that one.

  • TeeHee #3 3 years ago

    cut scene animations look terrible

  • tonyferrino #4 3 years ago

    I don't want to be Infamous, I want to be....fumus.

    Hmmm, Partridge doesn't work in the tinternet.

  • kangarootoo #5 3 years ago

    Christ, subtle? Not much.

    With every game and its dog doing the whole "be good or evil", you might think that adding something to that area might be considered important. Yet InFamous takes what seems to be the most obvious route in every situation.

    "DO YOU WANT TO BE GOOD OR BAD?" it asks us. "IF YOU WANT TO BE GOOD, PRESS THE GIANT BUTTON WITH BE GOOD WRITTEN ON IT". And then sit back and be told how you have just earned 14 GOOD points for your goodometer (which when full, will result in NPCs saying "Hey, you are really good" on occasion).

    Talk about wearing your heart on your sleeve.

  • penhalion #6 3 years ago

    @Kangarootoo

    If you are a hero with super powers, then the masses need to see you being good or evil. It's not like a thief who can choose to steal a priceless family heirloom or not. No-one will know if he decided not to do it but, everyone will know if he does.

    As a hero you don't get anonymity. If you barbeque 20 people, the city will hear about it and if you save 20 people they will hear about that too. You are in effect wearing your heart on your sleeve.

  • Cyclone #7 3 years ago

    Could be fairly decent, in fact I hope it is. So far though, it looks a little ... meh.

  • HermitArcader #8 3 years ago

    Post deleted at 09:17:39 22-12-2011

  • Kenshin001 #9 3 years ago

    What's up with his voice? Sounds like Solid Snake.

  • Spekingur #10 3 years ago

    Man, this guy has a bad case of whiskey voice.

  • hiddenranbir #11 3 years ago

    As usual I'm going to take the middle road and nullify the whole point of extremes.

  • Cappy #12 3 years ago

    I was hoping for a third option also. Non-involvement, alongside good and bad choices. In the end the bad choice might as well not be there because like most people I won't use it.

    RAPE INNOCENT ORPHAN? Y/N?

    Uh... No.

    BARBECUE BABY? Y/N?

    Er... Can't I just go and explore that street I haven't been down yet?

    MURDER NUNS? Y/N...

    I was hoping the choices would sit more in a grey area, such as two competing groups fighting it out for limited food supplies. Those other guys are a bit mutated and ugly looking. Probably not even human anymore... I'll help out these normal looking people and wipe them out.

    Later on it dawns on you that you've sided with the zeig heiling neo-nazi nutters, they don't like mutants, they don't like people with the wrong skin colour and they're not warming to people with freaky powers such as yourself. You're not as god intended, you've got to go.

    Make the choices a little more naturalistic, so the outcome of your choice isn't immediately obvious.

  • DrDamn #13 3 years ago

    Hopefully there is an option to turn off "Make moral choices really obvious". The whole sequence may have been manufactured for the promotional video.

    As a title this continues to grow on me, it's certainly looking and moving better than early vids. I like the climbing about and exploring angle - yet to be convinced by the super hero stuff.

  • Rash' #14 3 years ago

    From what I understand Fable 2 has really set the standard in these morality games. Having read about the achievements of Lionhead's game I too have to question Infamous' lack of subtle and varied choices.

  • HermitArcader #15 3 years ago

    Post deleted at 09:17:39 22-12-2011

  • DrDamn #16 3 years ago

    @VS
    I agree the set-up of the riot was forced, but haven't you gone and missed the whole point despite having it rammed down your throat by the vid? :).

    The choice isn't null because of the karma involvement. It may be easier but do you want to be good or evil?

  • dadrester #17 3 years ago

    mmm... i could fry a couple of people?

    /rubs chin pensively

  • HermitArcader #18 3 years ago

    Post deleted at 09:17:39 22-12-2011

  • JediMasterMalik #19 3 years ago

    This actually makes the game more appealing to me, provided there are some real consequences to your actions.

  • kangarootoo #20 3 years ago

    @penhalion

    That is a good point. Maybe they are supposed to be representing the view of the public rather than my position on some other-worldly karma-ometer.

    They could have perhaps made it clearer by making reference to your public image a bit more though. A public image is sort of hollow and something that you might want to manipulate, but the examples in the video (except for the poster reference) seemed to suggest it was a more personal "am I getting into heaven then, or what?" sort of mechanic.


    Even so, the sorts of choices they have presented the player with (in the example movie, which I realise is not exhaustive) are hardly challenging moral quandaries. Cappy puts it perfectly with,

    "RAPE INNOCENT ORPHAN? Y/N?
    BARBECUE BABY? Y/N?
    MURDER NUNS? Y/N... "

    Presenting the player with such choices (yes, I realise the ones in game were not quite so polarised) is essentially saying "Do you want to act like a despictable shit? Y/N". Even with the concept of managing your public image, the choices could have been made tougher by the removal of such obvious RIGHT and WRONG options.

    In fact, it might have made for an even more interesting system if the choices confronting the player were difficult and complex, for them only to find the public response to be polarised and knee-jerk in nature (much like real life I suppose).


    @JediMasterMalik

    "This actually makes the game more appealing to me, provided there are some real consequences to your actions"

    I completely agree, but it all hinges on the "provided..." caveat :)

  • kangarootoo #21 3 years ago

    @Rash'

    Fable 2 still felt a little obvious to me, once you knew what actions affected what statistics.

    I will say though that the great thing Fable 2 did was put good/evil and corrupt/lawful on two seperate scales. An important step I think insofar as trying to represent the way people really operate.

    Mass Effect had a good stab too, in replaving GOOD/EVIL with a sort of "renegade bad boy(girl) / company yes man" system.

  • Rash' #22 3 years ago

    It appears the answer to what is right and wrong is a subjective one. I would have thought frying innocent bystanders is universally wrong...

    Penhalion, agreed in the context of a comic book superhero maybe the black and white nature of the karma system is more understandable.

  • kangarootoo #23 3 years ago

    @Rash'

    I think what Fable 2 did well was to address the whole "sometimes people do bad things for righteous reasons" issue, which crops up from time to time in real life (or rather it probably crops up all the time, but doesn't always make the news).


    "I would have thought frying innocent bystanders is universally wrong..."

    Maybe the issue there is that qualifyinf GOOD and BAD is actually hugely complex and difficult, and so games often end up presenting gamers with the obvious extremes to avoid confusion.

    Imo some gamers genuinely don't like being presented with difficult moral decisions, and games often have to cater for that.

    Just look at the outcry that resulted when a load of gamers found out that sentencing their dog to an eternal death meant exactly what it said on the tin.

    At no point was it ever unclear what leaving your dog dead would result in, and yet gamers seem to struggle with blaming themselves when they later changed their mind (even describing it as a borderline bug). This of course predictably sent me off on one of my typical "take some responsibility for yourselves, you bloody spoilt brats" rants :)

  • Rash' #24 3 years ago

    kangaroo, I believe games have a long way to go before they can offer complex moral choices as gameplay components. Certainly Fable 2 has set a marker. I also think Penhalion has raised a very strong argument for Infamous' "easy" stab at the growing trend. The black and white worlds of comic books (not including Watchmen of course) is a convenient artistic choice for the seemingly simple system.

  • Cappy #25 3 years ago

    Personally, the only games I've ever found to handle moral choices in an interesting way have been titles within the survival horror/horror adventure genre.

    One reason is that there is no moral system that the player is aware of, they're just choices within the story.

    Raw Danger has lots of choices that aren't obviously good or bad and an odd little chapter tucked away on the middle of the game which sets the player up for a very difficult choice. We're following the escape of a girl from her school as it's collapsing during a flood, she is the victim of some extremely savage bullying, trapped and left behind by her tormentors.

    The whole chapter is a sinister setup, building to the moment when you will have to help your one-time tormentor. Then finally you have their life in your hands. You can be sitting in the last rescue helicopter leaving the area, nobody will ever know what you did and the game won't brand you with baddie points. I have no idea if the choice does anything at all, that's exactly as it should be, the choice is the important thing not manipulating some invisible good/bad scale.

    It's simply your choice. Would you leave a helpless human being to die?

    As soon as it's reduced to a system, moral choices in games seem to lose any sense of subtlety or mystery, suddenly it's a pendulum knocked back and forth with an extremely large sledge hammer.

  • Scimarad #26 3 years ago

    "From what I understand Fable 2 has really set the standard in these morality games."

    Whaaaaat? Fable 2 was just as black and white.

  • Rash' #27 3 years ago

    "As soon as it's reduced to a system, moral choices in games seem to lose any sense of subtlety or mystery, suddenly it's a pendulum knocked back and forth with an extremely large sledge hammer."

    Not sure about this. If moral choice is integral and influencial to the overall experience of the game there has to be some system in place. After all, all games are calculated systems.

  • Cappy #28 3 years ago

    The problem is that these sorts of moral systems running on polar opposite good/bad choices are self defeating.

    The player isn't really making choices at all, they're simply identifying the good path and the bad path which becomes absolutely no choice at all, there is no grey area so you'll end up forced into choices on one path because the alternative is too unpalatable to consider. It would be better if there were some choices that had no obvious inherent moral alignment.

  • Shrike #29 3 years ago

    Any tension here is completely ruined by the freeze-frame THIS IS WHAT WILL HAPPEN IF YOU DO THIS stuff. Making decisions with consequences is only interesting if you don't know what those consequences are, surely. Would also highlight The Witcher as a game that does that well. It gives you the freeze-frame "look what you could have won" bit often hours after you've made a decision, allowing you to see what the results of your actions have been but not allowing you to change them.

    Also: those animations. Stylised? Or crap?

  • Spekingur #30 3 years ago

    It's not games that have a long way to go before games can offer complex moral choices as gameplay components. It's the gamers that have long way to go before they are able to accept it in gameplay. Mostly because people, in general, don't want to make complex or life-changing choices.