BioWare Blog: Black, White, and Grey
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Category: News ArchiveHits: 645
With D&D games, decisions are typically of the black and white variety, and at Ossian Studios we think that is what players are expecting, so that's how we've designed both of our D&D games (Mysteries of Westgate and Darkness over Daggerford). It definitely fits very well with the D&D alignment system of good/neutral/evil.
In contrast, with a game world like The Witcher, everything comes in shades of grey. Fans of the books and game would expect those kinds of difficult situations, so an RPG developer would have to take great care to give players those kinds of tough choices.
Looking at older forms of non-interactive storytelling, like books and plays, there has always been the full spectrum of black, white, and grey outcomes. From the Grimm fairy tales where justice prevailed and evildoers were rolled down a hill in a barrel of nails (ouch), to the Epic of Gilgamesh, which shows us the futility of avoiding our own mortality, all of these works have become classics, showing that people throughout history can be entertained by all three outcomes.
