With the announcement of Fable 3 I feel like reposting my old 1up rant about how Fable 2's morality system soured my experience with an otherwise decent game. This is because noone read it on 1up and also to raise awareness in the hopes that Lionhead studios never puts me through this again. Enjoy. 

When I play games with some kind of morality component in them (and boy are they becoming a genre of their own these days). I follow a set of rules I set out for myself to keep things honest. I never be a jerk just for the sake of being a jerk and I never be good just for the sake of being good. I try to role play...in these role playing games (imagine that) rather then making the morality choice the game is built around before I even start I let the game's attempts to influence my emotions and judgement and my reactions to them decide my choices. This is how these games presume people should play them after all I thought, otherwise you would just pick 'good path' or 'evil path' in the start up menu like selecting a difficulty.

With all that said fable 2's morality system, for all of it's high minded ideas, struck me as being binary.

Don't get your knickers too much in a twist. I didn't say the game was bad and when I say binary I don't mean as cut and dry as bioshock. Where you crack open JUST ONE innocent girl's skull and feast on the goo inside and all of a sudden you are an evil person (how unrealistic) Still I don't consider Fable 2 as a medium for a person to express their own morality as much as it is a medium for the creators to express theirs, allow me to run through my own choices to explain my personal experience and make my point. (SPOILERS AHEAD! AHOOOOY!) 

I started off normal enough. I was playing through at a good pace, being a sort of disgustingly neutral person who neither kicked puppies nor fed them particularly well. Then I got into the real estate business and became filthy rich, and in being the sort of person who isn't that fond of wealth for the sake of caviar I turned all my properties down a measly 20 percent in discounting. Since I owned near half the city I had resided in this resulted in me apparently becoming the messiah overnight with everyone and their brother either asking for my autograph or (in a rather disgusting turn of the system's concept of love) a wedding ring that LORD KNOWS I should have given them ages ago because since they love me so much WE MUST be going out even though I've never met them before. I just chalked it up to an annoying glitch with the way the game defines it's world and moved on.

Later on I ran into a guy who believed it would be prudent to ask me to accept a quest to enslave townsfolk. As the townsfolk liked me rather well and were the reason I was filthy stinking rich (and also I hadn't really considered my character to be the 'completely evil jerkwad' that goes into human slavery) I though this was a right out stupid idea for someone to ask their lord and savior.
So I decided to enact some vigilante justice. I personally am of the opinion that in a game where anything that gets the red 'their coming right for us!' border around it is fair game for killing in the most gleeful way possible doesn't have respect enough for human life to teach me the importance of the life of a SLAVER (especially since halfway further into the game I would be killing slavers with reckless abandon.) So I decided my character didn't think this wanker deserved to live and hit him with my sword....and hit him....and hit him.....and hit him.
Around the point I was arrested by a guard for assault A FULL MINUTE LATER I suspected I had met the games first breaking of it's own sense of moral freedom of choice, unkillable NPCs. So not only could I not be batman in that I couldn't be loved and appreciated for taking the law into my own hands I couldn't be Batman in that I COULDN'T take the law into my own hands because anything that doesn't have the 'it's coming right for us' border and still deserves justice is PROTECTED BY THE GAME.
Presumably to make sure you always have the option to start the quests where you roast babies over a spit for money regardless of weather or not you want to play those quests. But if an NPC has done nothing to you and has no designs of enslaving humanity go ahead and kill him. I mean that way it would be easy to just call you evil for killing innocents.
A minor squabble to most I'm sure but leaving out the entire morally grey area of vigilante justice is a big hole for my personal interest in exploring morality to begin with. If you cant whomp on something society protects for societies own good then you only are allowed to be completely pro society or completely anti society. Neither of which I like the idea of personally.

 The next thing that I ran into was what I think the game wanted to be it's morality 'money shot', the tattered spire. Going in there I was expecting a smash and grab escape scene so when I was actually enslaved I knew something was up. In particular what was on my mind when the collar went on was 'boy blindy and fat Nariko had the worst plan ever for getting this guy out.'
After that I noticed that I then saw some guy I met while walking off of the ship again talking to me while we were on duty and decided that since they were trying to humanize him so hard with a family and a plucky attitude he would inevitably be dead so I could feel sooowy for him. It's usually a good idea to not make a character stick out like a sore thumb from the surrounding NPCs to avoid this kind of predictability but I forgave that because the writing was good enough and I was digging the atmosphere.

 Around the time the general was telling me my name was Tobey and teaching me masochism I decided that the smartest strategy to take when trying to save someone from a jail like atmosphere from the inside was to take my lumps and bide my time until an opportunity presented itself. So I took the beating and asked for more because I was a bit more interested in saving the goddamn world then I was in looking tough.
I reasoned that when a metric ton of enemies were ready to descend upon you while you were unarmed and could be convulsing in pain from the collar around your neck the last thing you want to do is walk around like you own the place and start trying to make sure all the denizens of the big evil henchmen club were being extra special nice to all the people they were enslaving. So when they said DO NOT FEED THE CAPTIVES. I was like 'probably a good idea to listen. I'm trying to save the world not save 3 or 4 already doomed individuals from MISSING LUNCH.
Then all of a sudden my evil-o-meter started ticking down! Apparently Game Von Designenstien didn't think any rational human being knew of the concept of choosing your battles. He thought this was a clear test of morality and by god I should show my work. So I sighed and in order to avoid growing a pitchfork from my arse I started pulling levers and peeing Exp so that I could make the game think I was a fuzzy altruist who thought these poor slavey waveys deserved their break today, because apparently having tactical understanding of a situation is where the devil gets his claws in you.

 Then we of course reach the point where I have to kill disposable NPC I was supposed to care about because he told me he had a family. I drew a sigh and thought about what my character might do in this situation (notice that I was thinking in terms of 'my character' rather then 'me' as when I had to feed the slaves like I was begging my overlords to put me out of my misery I officially decided my character wasn't me as I'm not that retarded.) and then I realize I had a sword in my hand....and promptly shoved it up my overlords ass for a bit because I hated him and hated this stupid little test.

 Figuring out eventually that he was anther dura-last unkillable NPC I decided to put the coup de gra in the family man for no other reason then I was sick of the game shoving the 'good is personal sacrifice' message down my throat and wanted to move on to the next segment. Still when I finally started cutting a merciless swath through the enemy's that hindered me and MC Guffin's escape and I saw their collars glow as they died I actually felt kind of bad because I knew how crappy a situation they were in. The game's morality was ringing a bit hollow for me but the emotional context was definitely still there...until some of the dumb bastards talked anyways. The mid fight one liners are a bit dehumanizing and weird.

After I got back from the spire I slapped a hat on my bald head and, feeling emotionally drained and low on self esteem like a used up hooker, made my way to a barber. It was still too early for it to be open so I stood outside and stewed in my now back in character juices about how crappy the spire was...that is until my entourage decided to drop by. As I stood there listening to the mob prattle about how great I was and how they wanted to get into my pants all I could think of was 'good lord you jag offs, this character was imprisoned for years and years, was brain drained by scary collars, and had their entire view of morality itself called into question stabbing some lovable jerk in the damn intestines and you want to talk about THAT WEDDING RING you think you deserve for just meeting them???'
Then I decided it was a good time for the character to flip out, slapped the crap out of a bunch of townsfolk (I didn't think the rampage would be murderous considering the character) and then scared the rest of them off with my ooooh so terrifying time control spell. (I swear these people would run for the hills if someone pulled a rabbit out of a damn top hat) After getting the character's hair restored I saw it was greying, slapped on a dye job with a sigh of frustration, and decided to create a character later that would make the NPCs in this game's lives a living hell (congrats peter, you made the NPCs so that people WANT to be evil. Pity that was at the expense of actually wanting to be good.

I once again settled into the groove with my good character but my slightly jerky character (I don't really feel like a full on kill everyone and let god sort them out evil character just yet) was having trouble getting anyone in the temple of shadows to die. Batman would truly hate albion. No ability to fight for justice at your whim and no such thing as a non lethal option for dealing with someone. Real moral choice at work. 

So my goody two shoes (who after all this still managed to be neutral because I can't stand working the crowds in this game and was focusing more on the main story then the side quests.) Eventually reaches the point where I had to choose between dooming some innocent stupid girl to old age or dooming myself to it, all because Reaver is a douchebag. I let ms whiny pants take the fall because I figure I should be at full strength for SAVING THE WORLD (and killing that bastard Reaver if I ever get the chance) and it's not like my character doesn't have a family and memories and hardships and a soul like that damn NPC kept rattling about.
If you want me to sacrifice myself for someone else, game, you'd better have a better sales pitch for me then 'if you don't do this you're a real mean doody head. And you'll be about as evil as if you ate a few baby chickens and forgot to flush after you crapped out the beaks.' Besides it's not like Reaver hasn't done this and will continue to do this to countless other people so saving one of the symptoms isn't really going to help the disease anyway.

Then, after Reaver put another notch in his contendership for biggest douche in the universe and the wicked awesome fight scene and the wicked awesome I wuv my sister and farms are fun scene I was tasked with three choices. Save everyone who died in constructing the spire (you know, all the hungry hungry slave-os and collar mans) Save my goddamn dog (I love you GiR!) and sister, or be a the most cartoonishly selfish jerk who ever got access to a genie or any other wish granting device (a bunch of money? Really? I have so much property right now I could make a bunch of money scratching my butt for a half hour)

 So since the third choice was stupid as hell it was down to selfless saving of people the game has barely made any attempt to make me care about or (what the game deemed) selfish saving of the characters the game had actually SUCCEEDED in getting me to care about. The former option being let the game tell me I was awesome and selfless while feeling terrible about myself and miserable or the game telling me I was an amoral jerk while feeling awesome about my choice. The sad thing is I even considered the first option because of this game's never ending guilt trip.

At the end of the day I chose to reward the game for what it was good at. Getting me to care about it's main cast of characters. The entire morality system just struck me as one big guilt trip. Your supposed to be the damn lord and savior of the world, selflessly removing every single thing you like about your character from the game so that you can prove you are dedicated enough to the concept of good to blindly choose it no matter what because good is supposed to be it's own reward, or be a horrible snidely whiplash character who would kill their grandmother for one more ducket because it feels SOOO good to be bad.

 That's all well and good for people who choose what they want to be from the outset but I personally would rather their have been more options for the middle option that was only really given to you in the final choice. I wanted to see more decisions where what the player cared about and what was in the player's heart mattered instead of what the designer was trying to convince you was Christian to do. As a story and a game Fable 2 is a dem fun romp i'm going to be tooling around with for a while yet, but the morality simulation is too reliant on the game makers concept of what is right and lacks nuance for those of us who want to make serious decisions.

(And honestly, my jerk character actually was given the choice in that ghost mission to either drive a man to suicide or marry his mopey butt. Yet another all or nothing sacrifice or evil choice. Couldn't I just give him a really nice and supportive dear john letter of my own? Come on!)