Moral choice in video games has always been an element difficult to execute. It’s not that moral choice is hard to comprehend, but more like the way we depict moral choice to the player. We have to place the player in a scenario where they must decide between right and wrong, engage them with the world and story so that they may understand both sides of the conflict, and finally make them interact and consider all the possible consequences of both choices. This may sound simple enough, but failing to do any of these key features may create moral choices that lack any considerate thinking at all. A good example of moral choice lacking any meaning thereof would be Infamous: Second Son. You are given the ability to become either a faithful superhero who protects the public, or abuse your powers to become a godlike ruffian. Problem is that the writing doesn’t do a good job showing the consequences of both sides. Whenever the player is presented with a moral choice, the game points out immediately what the writers think was morally good. Just look up the percentage of people who beat the game with good karma, and it’s a higher percentage than those who beat it with bad karma. As there was no moral reason to see what the bad choices would lead to besides being a person wanting to roleplay as a super villain.
You have a decent example of moral choice with the Dishonored series. To get the good ending you have to kill a low percentage of people, and to get the bad ending you just play normally and kill as many bystanders and guards as possible. However, the writing and characters still bring up the player’s action as the story moves forward. With allies becoming disgusted by the murderous rampage you are partaking on, being positively surprised when you find different solutions to take of your targets besides stabbing them, and even little Emily may or may not becoming more desensitized by the actions her father takes. Dishonored striked that even balance with moral choice matching up in the writing and gameplay department. Then you may end up with a game like Undertale. An RPG where you can choose to either spare or kill monsters. Every creature in the game has a charming personality, and the game berates the player for not considering other options they had on hand besides the short and violent way out. The characters try their best to make you care about the world and go outside the usual RPG combat standards. However, the consequence for choosing a pacifist route is that you won’t level up. Your attack power and max health won’t increase, and you face the risk of falling down faster in later fights. There are both story and gameplay consequences when making moral choices in Undertale.
What all of these three moral choice depictions have in common is that they are nailed down to killing or harming NPCs. Not many attempts have been made to go outside these depictions. The only example I can think of is Fallout: New Vegas where you must decide what political faction should rightfully rule the wasteland. It’s always nailed down to killing, which is fine because it’s a stressful situation. Yet, I’d love to see a game where the player is forced to make tricky choices without it just being whether they kill a person or not. Which brings us to today’s review choice.
Lucas Pope the Genius
Lucas Pope, what I believe to be one of the most genius independent developers the industry has seen over the last decade. Each of his games aim for innovative gameplay loops, and he finds a way to tell intriguing stories through these gameplay systems. Return of The Obra, his latest piece of work, is one of my favorite games and one of few times I gave a game a perfect review score. It was a detective mystery where you had to discover what happened to sixty passengers aboard a tradeship, and through deduction and piecing together the puzzle you uncover the many attacks which happened aboard the ship. How all of them connected back to one source. It’s not the best story I’ve seen in a video game, but it’s the most interestingly presented. Every single factor of Return of The Obra Dinn, from the high seas setting to the level of immersion thanks to the audio design, was nailed perfectly and that’s why it remains to be one of my ten favorite games. There was another game Pope made before this.
It was technically Lucas Pope’s second game, but it was his first game to truly blow up online. Released back in 2013, Pope released a little indie game known as Papers, Please. At the time, Let’s Players were becoming a huge topic online and they scoured the next for lesser known titles that can be beaten within a few sessions and make their audience laugh at their reactions. Papers, Please was the perfect candidate and through their reactions this little indie game which could have easily been forgotten blew up across the net. I don’t think it was just the Let’s Players which helped Papers, Please become successful, because there was something going on for people to talk about the game beyond the reactions of an average gamer. The premise of the game was that the player would scan through the paperwork of those wishing to cross the border into a strict communist country, and they would decide whether the individuals coming through would be allowed in. It had an interesting gameplay loop which hadn’t been done before, but what made Papers, Please unique were the occasional choices it presented the player. Asking them if they wanted to go against their orders to reshape a corrupt world or only take care of themselves. Papers, Please did moral choice differently, but it presented in such a way where the effort of the player through the gameplay is what helped them reach a new world order.
Papers, Please is one of those viral indie games that is actually fun to play yourself. It garnished quite a bit of praise from critics, and even got nominated for a couple end of the year awards in 2013. The Wire even chose Papers, Please as their overall Game of The Year. I’ve been flipping back and forth on whether I wanted to play this game or not, and it wasn’t until recently during a Steam summer sale that I finally decided to download the game. After almost nine years upon release does Papers, Please still hold up? Yes, it holds up surprisingly well. I had a really fun time going through Papers, Please and its quality shows why we need more standouts in the industry. More games that aim to innovate or do something different. It’s a classic and I want to explain to you why this silly border simulator works really well. Today we’ll be talking about why I love Papers, Please and why it deserves your attention. Glory to Arstotska!
Story
The game takes place in the fictional communit country of Arstotzka which is definitely not a representation of Russia, their sh*tty policies, and nonsensical actions like going to war over territory you don’t have control over. For the last six years, Arstotska has been at war with the neighboring country of Kolechia and it wasn’t until recently that a peace treaty was finally made. Borders that connect the two regions have finally been opened, and now everyone across definitely not Europe can definitely travel. However, the peace treaty is walking on a thin rope as not all conflict has completely settled and the two countries are worried one of them will pull the trigger on the other. That’s why the Arstotzka Government decided to put stricter measurements on border control. A high wall which separates both countries, guards stationed on the other side of the wall to shoot possible terrorists, and a booth which may allow folks in one at a time.
Inside the booth is a passport inspector and their job is to carefully look over the passports of each person coming in, make sure the information is correct and matches government requirements, and allow them to cross the border. If any entering individuals are to show aggression or suspicious activity then they will be detained and taken into custody. You are the inspector hired for this job. You wrote your name onto a ticket, and through a hiring raffle your name was drawn. Your family was moved into a reasonable apartment and hopefully you can make enough money each day to pay the heating bills and put enough food into their mouths. It’s an intense job as the rules are always changing due to events happening at the border or around the country, and what you may make will not be enough to pay off every necessity to survive.
Yet, you continue working because failure to comply may lead to your arrest and your family being taken into custody. Deny whoever seems suspicious or brought the wrong documents, and accept those who are capable. Some people will beg you to let them into the country and claim they will be killed, but you wouldn’t want to risk letting terrorists in. Even if what they are pleading is the truth and show you evidence for their claims. Arstotzka is a terrible place to live in, but maybe it doesn’t have to be. A few days into your job a mysterious hooded figure with what appears to be a mask with a sun-like symbol on it gives you a note claiming to be part of an underground resistance. EZIC otherwise what they claim to be, The Order, plan to revolt against the Arstotzka Government and they need your help to do so. They want you to secretly let certain individuals in and comply with their demands if you want to see a changed world. It’s either help the only freedom fighters left and risk being caught, or continue living under an iron fist who only finds pleasure in the suffering of others.
Gameplay
The gameplay loop of Papers, Please follow you looking over paperwork. Passports, documents, and much more. That’s as simple as it gets, but trust me when I say this simple gameplay loop evolves enough so that the repetition doesn’t become too annoying. At the start of each day you are given a newspaper stating what happened the night before and upcoming changes to the law. These laws apply to the border and new rules you’ll have to follow while doing paperwork. The newspaper does take up quite a bit of space on the table, so you have a trusty manual you’ll want to have out at all times. You will look back at it often and when you see passport information that doesn’t make sense or a person coming in doesn’t have the documents acquired you are going to want to highlight certain rules to use against them and inevitably reject their passport. Peculiar information, mainly known as discrepancy, can be highlighted with the press of a button and you must match up the discrepancy with something that goes along with it. For example, let’s say the current date is November 24th and you are given a passport which expires on the 11th. You can highlight the passport’s date and then the clock in the bottom left hand corner of the screen.
New rules and documents will be applied depending on what happens in the world. Whether this be having to look through Access Permits, the requirement of a Vaccination Card, folks from specific countries being denied access, or confiscating passports from travelers part of certain districts. What are the penalties for letting the wrong individuals in? Well, it turns out there’s a hidden system which detects the errors of the player and reminds them by giving them a pink slip. For the first two wrong individuals you are given a pass, but if you get three or more wrong then the money you make at the end of the day starts to be deducted. It’s that and also you may accidentally let a terrorist in who will cut the day shortly and lower the potential money you could make. When a day is over you are shown the money you made, and how it goes into heating and food for your family. You can choose not to spend this money and save it up for other future needs, but if your family starves or freezes to death then you are arrested for not taking care of them. You are either arrested for not being a family man or not complying to the rules. Just do your job and nothing bad will happen.
Remember how I said at the beginning of the intro that moral choice in video games could be handled differently beyond just a life or death sentencing. Papers, Please presents some really interesting moral choices during its repetition gameplay loop. Occasionally a traveler will beg you to let them through, and they will present factual information to prove what they are saying is true. Their document information may be incorrect or they failed to bring certain documents, but you can clearly tell they are trying to do the right thing. There are certain recurring NPCs in the game, and they reward you with cash if you decide to help them and go against the rules. Then there is The Order who will give you notes and slip containing information you have to remember. By helping them you may inch closer towards a revolution, but you risk being caught by your own managers and sentenced to prison. You want to change the corrupt world you are trapped in, but trying to do the right thing has numerous consequences which will carry over to the future. It’s a moral thought process that is more compelling than it had the rights to be, and it allows Papers, Please to have an engaging world and characters despite being what is basically a border patrol simulator taken as a joke by Let’s Players. Besides that there isn’t much else to say. Hopefully you can get through each day and decide what is best for the world.
Thoughts
I don’t want the outro section to be too long as what I can say about this game isn’t much, but I’ll just say this. Papers, Please is an indie classic which I highly recommend. It’s not one of the best indie games I’ve played, but there’s not much the game gets wrong. Almost every element of it is splendid enough and any problems I have come with frustration. When the game starts stressing you out with numerous rules you have to follow or you’ve been playing it for a lengthy period of time then take a break. It’s best experienced in a relaxed state. Where you can scan over each itty bitty detail slowly and not screw up so much by trying to rush through each individual.
The gameplay loop is addicting and engages me harder than some of the other games I’ve been playing recently. You are working against the clock to make a lot of money by the end of each day. Scanning your eyes over every number and word. Checking for forgery, misinformation, and detaining peculiar individuals to make an extra five bucks for each two detainees. Trying to balance out your budget and figure what you need and don’t need. Making the most out of each booth upgrade, and trying to keep your desk organized so that you don’t get confused with a pile of jumbled up documents. It requires hard work, but that’s kind of the point since this is a border patrol simulator. You get to know what it feels like to search through papers. You’re probably going to do that five years from now when you get out of control and enter the workforce.
The story isn’t much, but I like the setting and tone of the game. Being stuck in this communist country and knowing all it’s wrongs. Wanting to leave, but you can’t because you’ll be arrested for treason. Trying to obey the law and do your job only to present information that may change the world. Wanting there to be change so that your family may live better lives. Encountering souls who are struggling much like you. Wanting to help them in exchange for possibly harming your salary, family, and livelihood. Yahtzee Croshaw stated this best during his review of the game, “Papers, Please presents us with constant moral choices, but makes it really hard to be a good person.” The game may not have the best depiction of communism, but it has an interesting take on moral choice. One that doesn’t just narrow down to killing.
The game has a total of twenty different endings and your first one can be acquired within three to five hours. It’s a short game, but it doesn’t overstay its welcome. I tend to revisit shorter, more condensed games rather than bigger ones because I find them easy to beat within a few sittings. Plus I feel more encouraged to revisit a game that challenged me before and see if I can do better. It’s why I come back to Hades and Bloodborne a lot. No playthrough should feel the same as every traveler is randomly generated besides specific story NPCs, and there’s even an endless mode to see how long you can survive before your family suffers or you are arrested. My only complaint is that while the pixel art is really nice it does make reading numbers and texts a little hard. Oh yeah, the main theme is good but it’s like one of the only tracks in the game. These limitations are understandable though as this is an indie game and Lucas Pope’s second game. Besides this I really enjoyed Papers, Please. It goes on sale for a dirt cheap price often on Steam, and Lucas Pope just announced there are potentially console ports on the way. It’s good to plug in as background noise or when you have literally nothing else to do. Return of The Obra is still Lucas Pope’s best work. In the end I am going to give Papers, Please a 9/10 for excellence at best.
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