I've often been one of the fiercest critics of Bethesda, but lately I've been trying to observe the good in their products more to get a balanced view of what they do. One thing I realized is that the Skyrim Civil War, while dreadfully boring and eventually meaningless, was an admirable attempt from them to paint two sides with their own rational objectives. Neither the Stormcloaks or the Imperials were EVIL! like the Enclave were painted to be in Fallout 3. The only thing dreadful about the Civil War was its eventual execution, not the idea behind it. In this aspect I think Bethesda has attempted to answer our calls, and that gives me hope for Fallout 4.

In Beth defense when it comes to 3, they where only trying to play close to heart of the old games and if ya take of the rose tinted glasses and look at those, the main conflict was not that grey in tone, Fallout 3 Enclave was exactly as evil as Fallout 2s was.

LOL we have so little faith in Bethesda writing

As much as I would love to see it, Bethesda won't try it.

From what I've learned so far, the institute will be the evil scientists forcing slave-bots to work against their will and the railroad will be the good guy people to set all the tormented people free.

Having a faction that believes in slavery be anything but super evil just won't fly in today's society anyways. Don't need any more rediculously uncalled for riots... Worlds just been made to sensitive for them to be a grey morals.

Who knows though. If Beth does decide to go grey I think it would turn out OK. Not great, but not awful.

They can, but why would they want to?

All morally grey stories end the same, everything being [censored], and nothing really improving, making all of your actions meaningless in the end.

Its the reason why most games dont do them, who want to play a game where everything you do turns out to not really change anything at all?

I don't know. I liked 3's MQ. If they fleshed out the Enclave side of the equation, it would have good for everybody.

I don't mind a morally grey story depending on how it's done. The Pitt DLC seems to be on people praise for being morally grey but I haven't played it personally. I just want a good and interesting one at this point. After Skyrim main story being so bad I just want something good.

They haven't given us much reason to be optimistic about it in recent years, TBH. However, with each new game they put out, I still have renewed hope they will finally improve upon their writing skills in meaningful ways.

Now, while neither the Stormclucks, or Wimperials were a simple black versus white choice, the entire civil war was horribly executed, and left in such a mess I'dve much preferred they left it out entirely. Essentially, the entire war was one giant cluster[censored].

I do welcome more morally grey choices like we had in The Pitt, and even the Tenpenny Tower quest. More grey choices with real consequences of our actions would certainly be welcome.

Morrowind is the other example, no slavery was not an main issue but it was an part. Slavery was also an issue in ESO. only remember one quest with slavery as main issue. but it was an background and lots of friction about it. Argonians was free but not Khajiit. Slavery was simply an background part same as it would be in anything set in an ancient roman setting.

Fallout the pit was an grey slavery example from Fallout 3

Skyrim civil war was an gray conflict, no the execution was not that good but the setting was.

Well yeah, it's never a happy ending for everyone no matter what decision you make, that's how life and morally grey options work and I wouldn't say it makes your actions meaningless either. Looking at the endings of NV which had some grey in their factions a lot of things can change depending on who you help.

As opposed to pure black and white where you have two endings "Everyone is dead and were all miserable:(" and "Oh yay the bad guys are dead and we are all happy" a morally grey story can add a lot more depth and make things a bit more interesting if done right.

But I can see where you're coming from, my biggest problem with morally grey choices being the fact that a lot of the time they just shoehorn in some bad with the good for the sake of having it even when it's not really believable and/or doesn't make much sense.

well, HOPEFULLY, if they try it, tehy do better then Obsidian did with the legion, but if their track record (looking at you civil war) is anything to go by, tehy will likely fail.

Two Words:

The Pitt.

Or, if you prefer three words:

Skyrim's Civil War.

Both are morally grey, with no clear "right" or "wrong" faction. The fact that both have had vociferous discussions on which side is better proves this. We don't get that kind of discussion over "Megaton or Tenpenny", after all. The Civil War was... slightly less well-executed than the Pitt, but since most of it was focused on the taking forts instead of one side trying to ideologically one-up the other, I can give that a pass.

I'm not sure what the infatuation with 'moral greyness' is. I like playing good guys, and if there isn't a clear villain in a struggle I'm most likely to say "let them work it out themselves" and ignore it. I certainly don't have my character take up arms against folk that I don't see as villainous, so if it's a war and the point of the game is to actually participate then I want a clear bad guy to fight.

They would want to do it because morally grey stories tend to be more compelling in RPGs than good vs evil. If done properly it makes the player stop and think about the choices they're about to make. Also, which morally grey choices are meaningless in the end? The only reason for a choice to meaningless in the end is if a game fails to properly accommodate the choices you've made. That could happen to any title. Example #1 being Skyrim. After you defeat Alduin nothing really changes, and that's in a linear story of good vs evil.

A good example of how to build a political story is the Witcher 2. That game did a lot of things wrong, but it nailed the political atmosphere. There were plenty of options that allowed you to fundamentally shift the state of the Northern Kingdoms, and the killing of monarchs actually meant something in the story (Another failure of Skyrim). So yes, it was very fulfilling to have a morally grey story with consequences for what you've done.

Sure, they did with Pitt and Skyrim's civil war.

We've yet to see them make the main conflict as such though, all their main bad guys have been have wearing top hats and twirling mustaches while kicking puppies

Eh. I wish they would. but really, looking around these forums as of late, I feel it would be lost on many.

I hate it when they kick puppies.

The moral greyness opens up plenty of routes for roleplay though. If one had an ideological character it would allow them to pick a side based on that. Plus, it creates an actual conflict in the mind of the player over who they should choose. If you can fill entire forum pages with discussions over the legitimacy of a factions goals then you've successfully created a poignant conflict. As pointed out above, there's plenty of debate about Imperials vs Stormcloaks, and that's even with a botched Civil War questline. It shows that people do actually care.

Debatable, especially given that basically of the RPGs considered the most classic and best made DON'T have grey morality setups.

Literally all of them, since none of them have any impact in the game itself and are instead shoehorned into a post game cutscene that means nothing and changes nothing.

Eh, the problem is that most modern "realistic! advlt! grey!" things tend to be "no happy ending for ANYONE", no matter what decision you make. (Personally, I don't feel NV is a great example, since I mostly just felt depressed by the ending, and it's repeated litany of "oh, and those guys in you tried to help? Yeah, didn't work." "Oh, that companion you tried to help? Ended up depressed and alone." etc, etc, etc.

re: meaningless..... as mentioned, too many "grey" storylines tend to hammer home their "stark realism!" with annoyingly fatalistic results where trying to help people results in.... nothing. Because "good" is an outdated concept for simpletons, and see how edgy & complex we are! You're a fool for trying to help - the world doesn't work that way!

Bleh, no thanks. Give me a nice Good vs Evil storyline in my entertainments. I get enough "good guys lose in the end" and complexity/greyness in the newspaper every morning - I play games to escape the depressing realities.

There's truth to what you're saying, but most games function this way already. Most RPGs fail to provide a drastically different world after the completion of the MQ, which is really unfortunate. However, giving the player a choice (and usually a morally gray questline facilitates choice) still allows them to change the lore of their own little world, and live in their choices, while making those choices a little harder to make. Basically it's nice to make players consider the world around them and what would occur before they move forward with something. You're probably tired of hearing about The Witcher 3, but it did this pretty well in certain areas. In the Bloody Baron and Lady of the Woods questlines there were genuinely difficult decisions to make that effected the fate of an entire city, a village, and a few key characters. The characters themselves were also compelling due to their strengths and flaws. This is pretty much what I would enjoy seeing in Fallout 4.

Also, you didn't address the part about conventional good vs evil being no better at actually changing things.

I hope they do try to make a morally grey main plot as the whole good vs evil theme is so terribly boring(not in all cases, but most). As some have already pointed out, the Civil War and the Pitt were both pretty well done in terms of how no side was the "right," side, so hopefully they can hit that type of moral ambiguity while still having it be engaging.

No it didn't. There is an obviously clear better choice in the situation, which is kill the tree spirit, which is defied as evil by everyone, even Geralt himself.

The kids were sent to the swamp because their parents had no food for them, they should be dead by all accounts.The witches eating them is just getting more use out of something before it would have died anyways. Letting the kids be saved by the evil tree spirit only results in a town being destroyed, when it has no reason to be, the baron and his wife dying, when they have no reason to, and the kids, who should be dead, being kept alive only to be used for evil purposes by the tree spirit.

There is no point in which not killing the evil tree spirit offers and equal ending to killing it, its unanimously worse by all measure.

No they weren't, they were utterly stock cliche character archetypes that have been used in not only games, but books, movies, and TV shows for ages.

I honestly can't see how anyone could call The Witcher 3's characters compelling unless they have somehow missed out on the last two decades of media.

The world is not your's its the game dev's, and the choices are not hard to make, as they lack the actual impact they would IRL because the real world is based off of randomness, while games are just designed.

Making choice in morally grey games is only as hard as deciding if the top fell or not in the end of Inception, which is to say not difficult at all once you realize the entire basis of the choice is fake. There is no more difficulty in making choices in orally grey games then there is in balc/white games, they are both equally fake, and both equally based on what does the player want at that time.

Which RPG's exactly? And I don't really understand how the ending slides showing your impact and changes to the world don't count, sure you can't play it/see it for yourself firsthand but I don't think they should be dismissed completely because it doesn't change anything "gameplay" wise.

Yeah, I used NV as an example mainly because out of all of the games in the series, its the one that I feel has the most grey choices, albeit not the greatest, it still has some interesting grey areas and choices to the point where I still see a lot of people debating/ discussing all of it, like the factions and their flaws/good sides, and which is objectively best, etc.

I do sort of agree with the whole "no happy ending for no one" thing because like I said before a lot of the time some grey options feels shoehorned in and are just there for the sake of having some grey choices.

Though I'm not sure what you did (or probably didn't do) to get those endings, most of mine were happy things things like goodsprings thriving and becoming a hot spot for traders and settlers alike and Raul becoming a badass vaquero that later became a campfire story legend or something along those lines.

Asher. The Pitt. The perfect exemple that bethesda can do a morally grey story involving slavery