Moral Ambiguity In Side Quests (spoilers)

bluechincilla · Post by **bluechincilla** » Mon Mar 12, 2007 10:59 am

Ok, replaying KOTOR again and it got me thinking, the Sunry trail has no clear good or bad path (as has been discussed else where), but then I found a 2nd, or chronologically speaking 1st side quest which doesn't have a clear 'good' path. The quest to find Elise runaway droid. The obvious bad path is to kill the thing then say its still out there, but I can't work out which is the 'good' path. If you return the droid then Elise is still stuck in the past, but if you kill it and tell her she moves on with her life, eventually.

On the first quest (Sunry's trail) though I wish they'd made it possible to give the judges the evidence to say he'd committed the murder but then defended his actions so he was only imprisoned or something, I think the 'good' option is to defend him. You can actually do this without saying he didn't kill her and for me this seems like the best of some bad options.

On the second (Elise's droid) I can never see how killing the droid, though it has the best out come, can be morally good. On the one hand, it is only a droid but on the other it has awareness, but if you return it to her it'll be 'abused' and she'll never move on.

So why am I going on about this? Well I play RPGs in two ways, one how I'd do it if it was real and I was doing it, and also in charactor. I find it interesting that there is such moral ambiguity, possibly more so in the Sunry trail. Also thinking about it there is also the case of Tanis Venn and his droids, do you save him, leave him or kill him? I'm sure there are more. Anyway what do you guys think? would you like to see other ways to solve them? Are there anymore quests with no clear paths? And anything else you want to say!

Kayos · Post by **Kayos** » Tue Mar 13, 2007 8:34 pm

hmm... intresting. ive noticed both of theses but never really thought of them to any extent really, but now thst i do think about it what about that other quest with the two guys and the dead farmer Nurik. you know on dantooine. and what about the Hrkert Station on Manaan? you can blow it up or poision the shark. neither of those has any clear lightside/darkside path choice either.

and you notice all 4 of these events happen on rather serene, lathargic planets?

DesR85 · Post by **DesR85** » Tue Mar 13, 2007 9:01 pm

Kayos wrote:hmm... intresting. ive noticed both of theses but never really thought of them to any extent really, but now thst i do think about it what about that other quest with the two guys and the dead farmer Nurik. you know on dantooine.

For Sunry's murder trial, I thought that contained some moral ambiguity but as for the others, I never thought of that but the murder investigation in Dantooine didn't come across as ambiguous compared to Sunry's, in my opinion. It's more straightforward in a sense that you have to find the culprit who murdered that guy (and you get to interview all three suspects to glean information and to find who's responsible).

Come to think of it, the Dantooine investigation is much better than Sunry's in a sense that it is more straightforward and the objectives clear (compared to Sunry's where the Sunry is either innocent and guilty at the same time).

Xandax · Post by **Xandax** » Wed Mar 14, 2007 12:34 am

bluechincilla wrote:<snip>
The quest to find Elise runaway droid. The obvious bad path is to kill the thing then say its still out there, but I can't work out which is the 'good' path. If you return the droid then Elise is still stuck in the past, but if you kill it and tell her she moves on with her life, eventually. !

Destroying the droid yourself is the morally "good" path. One must remember the context of the gameworld and not only assign out own (real life) moral system to the situation.
Real life tells us "killing" the droid is bad - however in SW universe droids are not sentient real life beings, they are machines with computer chips - build for doing all the stuff "people" don't want to do.
And the droid himself also asks that you destroy him, meaning if transfered to real life would be almost a question of euthanasia.... if the droid was a living thing and not just a machine.
A real life analogy could be somebody who couldn't live without their computer, so you do an intervention where you remove the addiction factor

DarthMalevolent · Post by **DarthMalevolent** » Wed Mar 14, 2007 2:05 am

Gotta disagree. In the SW universe, it's obvious that droids are intelligent and self-aware (sentient), however, they're also not "people" and are in fact property.

The perceived moral ambiguity is caused by you (I'm supposing) being opposed to euthanasia. Under certain circumstances, it's not only allowable, it's darn near demanded IMO.

Once you destroy the droid and return to Elise and tell her that he's been destroyed, she runs to the Enclave. Look for her there to finish the quest - you'll see that it turns out best in the end, and you gain some unambiguous LS points from it.

bluechincilla · Post by **bluechincilla** » Wed Mar 14, 2007 2:50 pm

DarthMalevolent wrote:Gotta disagree. In the SW universe, it's obvious that droids are intelligent and self-aware (sentient), however, they're also not "people" and are in fact property.

The perceived moral ambiguity is caused by you (I'm supposing) being opposed to euthanasia. Under certain circumstances, it's not only allowable, it's darn near demanded IMO.

Once you destroy the droid and return to Elise and tell her that he's been destroyed, she runs to the Enclave. Look for her there to finish the quest - you'll see that it turns out best in the end, and you gain some unambiguous LS points from it.

I agree with you its the best ending for the quest but I can't help but think it would have been better to have an option where the druid lived and you could get her to move on, though my favourite outcome is telling the druid you'll kill it but not tell her, (am I a bad person for finding that funny?).

I think its more comparable to euthanizing an individual whos life is awful but which could be easly fixed (say a slave and the solution is to set them free). Have to agree that droids in the SW universe are obviously sentient, after all if the one in question wasn't it wouldn't have run away in the first place.