Games That Blend Themes Of Science Fiction With Ethical Dilemmas
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Highlights
- Science fiction games often explore the ethical and moral implications of new technology and scientific advancements, challenging players to make difficult choices that impact the storyline and characters.
- Games like “Detroit: Become Human,” “Somerville,” and “Endoparasitic” delve into themes of sentience, alien invasion, and the consequences of neglecting ethics, providing immersive and thought-provoking gameplay experiences.
- “Prey,” “Mass Effect,” and “Soma” all incorporate ethical dilemmas into their gameplay, allowing players to shape the story and make decisions that impact the world and characters, emphasizing the importance of morality in a sci-fi setting.
Part of the allure of science fiction games is how far society is pushed to accommodate new and unusual technology and scientific advancements, often to the detriment of the ethical and moral codes of society.
Many sci-fi games join the approach of upturned ethical decisions with gameplay by giving players their own opportunity to continue with the trajectory of scientific discovery or try and preserve a moral code at the expense of a world-altering mission or project. Blending sci-fi and ethical decisions within gameplay can make a unique game experience that has lasting impacts on not only the storyline but also the players even after they finish playing.
This Article Contains Light Spoilers
6 Detroit: Become Human
Detroit: Become Human from developers Quantic Dream is a dystopian interactive adventure game that tackles themes such as artificial intelligence, consciousness, and ethics that come with androids that display human-like qualities. In a future Detroit that has technologically developed so that androids have been integrated into society, some androids are gaining sentience of their own and breaking from their programmed tasks.
The player is responsible for choices that will shape the future of the story and the three androids the game follows as the player is tasked with balancing the ethical and moral dilemmas of both the androids and the humans they serve. The gameplay switches perspectives of the three androids and includes gripping and immersive game events, as well as a flowchart of decisions available during and after a chapter should a player want to change a particular choice.
5 Somerville
Somerville, from Jumpship, is an adventure and puzzle game that follows a father from a once-normal family after an alien invasion begins that seems to give him strange powers over alien machines and objects. While the game has no dialogue, it effectively tasks the player with finding the father’s wife and child with his trusty dog and newfound alien-tech abilities that will help the player navigate the now-invaded Earth.
Many of the ethics surrounding this game are what the father discovers about the people who had disappeared from Earth and what the aliens’ plans are for utilizing Earth. While the aliens are not actively harming the people, the player must decide if the new reality the invaders are trying to achieve is worth fighting or if he should also give in and join his family’s fate. The game also relies on a series of puzzles throughout the game that will allow the player to achieve different approaches, or endings, to the alien invaders.
4 Endoparasitic
Endoparasitic, of developer Miziziziz, is a survival horror game that follows a research scientist who is currently suffering the fate of their discoveries at the expense of other inhabitants aboard a secret research facility. As the player goes about trying to escape the facility, lore is revealed about the researcher’s past neglect of ethics in the hope that the parasites would give him power.
While the game’s primary feature is his surviving with his one remaining limb, the game makes evident that the main character’s current situation is a direct result of his hubris and neglect of how his research decisions would cause catastrophe for other people in the research facility.
3 Prey
Prey, from Arkane Austin and published by Bethesda Softworks, is a first-person shooter game that takes place in an alternate timeline that leads to humans developing orbital stations much sooner. The player controls scientific researcher Morgan Yu who is currently on a project researching an aggressive and cunning alien force named Typhon. As the player explores the space station trying to contain Typhon, they encounter survivors from a previous incident and have the choice to extend or reject help.
The game further complicates the ethics of Morgan Yu’s research responsibilities once it is made known in the game that there is something more to Typhon than what was originally relayed. This game combines action, roleplay, and stealth elements across an open-world space environment alongside important ethical dilemmas.
2 Mass Effect
Mass Effect, a game and franchise from BioWare, is a military sci-fi epic that combines third-person shooting and roleplay elements set in a world where humanity and aliens have colonized the galaxy utilizing technology left from ancient civilizations. The game emphasizes the player’s morals and ethics through a point system that assigns the player Paragon or Renegade points based on their decisions.
The player’s decisions, and by extension their points, affect the story and later available decisions that could be limited by the player’s moral position. The moral position of the player will impact ethical implications throughout the story as well.
1 Soma
Soma, from developers Frictional Games, is another blend of sci-fi and horror that tackles themes of identity, consciousness, and humanity set under the Atlantic Ocean in the underwater facility of PATHOS-II. This first-person survival game takes place on a remote thermal mining rig in the year 2104 where the facility’s machinery has human-like characteristics due to its own artificial intelligence.
The player, through the character of Simon Jarett, reveals more ethical uncertainties about their existence as they fight to survive a treacherous underwater-scape and the machinery that seeks to “protect” PATHOS-II inhabitants, according to their programming. Somaalso features exploration, stealth, puzzle-solving, and heavy lore-building throughout gameplay.
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