In FallOut 3 I was given a choice between blowing up a town and saving it. I went with the evil option, as that seemed to offer a greater reward. Later I went back to the town, and I saw the used-to-be-good-looking NPCs now disfigured, but some still alive. That made me feel really bad about what I did. Also, later I also heard about it on the in-game radio multiple times, which really felt weird, and made me feel bad about what I did even more. At that point I felt that my actions in this game have consequences, and after that I made my choices more carefully. But the game did not let up, it kept me remembering what I did by putting some of these disfigured NPCs into quests later on.
(It might have been only one NPC that survived, details are fuzzy.)
The one NPC that survives is the one who gives you the series of "survival guide" sidequests which are meant to help encourage you to explore the game. What's interesting about that to me is that her quests are pretty much the only valuable (in game mechanics) thing about Megaton after the nuke quest is resolved -- and they end up letting you do them either way. It's actually cited by people as an example of the game not following through on the consequences of an evil act. But your interpretation makes more sense to me; the idea that a game has to 'punish' in-game evil by means of a mechanical penalty is itself kind of discomfiting.
In Fo:nv I have taken out the NCR's Camp Forlorn Hope but not become a full enemy. Everywhere I go, NPC's tell me how terrible it was that someone did it. "Yeah, that was me".
All of them. It is a common accepted reality in game design that players will take any shortcut offered. Players will go so far as skipping content just to "solve" a challenge with the fastest method.
Players would jump at genocide if it solved their problem. It would be an interesting result if it was not so predictable.
Unless the outcome is not clear. Killing off all homeless people would get rid of homelessness(obviously) but it might have a long term negatives, so not everyone will elect to do it.
Just like in many RPG games you can make "evil" and "good" choices. In many instances, going with "evil" makes the game much easier - instead of doing a 2 hour long quest to find someone's lost ring, you can just kill the person and take their money you would get as a reward, so the immediate outcome is the same. But people like to roleplay and people don't make decisions just because they make the game easier.
> In many instances, going with "evil" makes the game much easier
I agree. I find that many games present the moral choices in a way that become a "what possible reward do I want" choice.
One of the best ways moral choices were presented were in Skyrim, with the Deadric Princes' quests. You usully had to do some horrible thing (murder, cannibalism, torture, etc.) and you would be rewarded with a cool magical item. The moral choice is glarangly present while not being explicitly stated. You either do the quest or you don't. And that resonated with me because I believe that while there are many motivations for being evil (selfishness, greed, desire of power, sadism), the motivation and reward for being good is itself.
People kill game characters all the time, even when it's not part of the game. See RollerCoasters being ploughed into waiting crowds for one example. Or not being able to kill the child characters in FallOut3 for another.
