One of the very first things I learned in my Creative Writing 101 class in college was a very simple rule of writing: Show, don’t tell. As a storyteller, the responsibility is on you to draw in the audience and paint a picture for them – let them understand what is going on through their own observations rather than simply explaining things to them. Showing a character’s irrational lashing out at someone is far more engrossing than simply saying “Dave was angry.”

The designers of Metroid: Other M must have missed this class, because they sure love to tell us pretty much everything.

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Now that we’ve seen the distant past of moral choice in games as well as recent history, let’s take a look at what it all means, and where it all could be going.

Choice is a powerful thing for a gamer; it can be the critical difference between a player simply playing a game and a player really experiencing a game.  Choice draws the player in, makes them feel like they really have a say in what’s going on in a game. Obviously, some choices are more important than others, and players want to know that the decisions they make have an actual effect.  Simply offering them the choice between going down the left hall or the right hall may be a choice, but it’s not one they are likely to remember. Moral choices, though – especially the ones that carry real consequence – those are the ones that players really remember.

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