are the right thing to do, and some of the things that are considered light side, are the wrong thing to do? there seems to be a lot of different opinions on what is right and wrong, why is this? so are we all being forced to accept the devs idea of what is right and what is wrong?

are the right thing to do, and some of the things that are considered light side, are the wrong thing to do? there seems to be a lot of different opinions on what is right and wrong, why is this? so are we all being forced to accept the devs idea of what is right and what is wrong?

I think it is just to make things more interesting. If every light choice was "save this damsel in distress" and every dark choice was "kill this kitten just to watch it die" it would be a much weaker story overall.

 

Having some instances where the dark side choices are legitimately tempting or at least believable choices that a real person might make, is a good thing! If you were face-to-face with a person who's just killed thousands of people for his own sadistic pleasure, it really would be very tempting to take justice into your own hands and kill the bastard right there - but that doesn't mean it should be a "light side" choice to do so.

I see but I also think that's debatable.... People always associate life with the "light side" but honestly speaking, death is much more merciful than being taken prisoner - especially if you are being taken prisoner by the Empire. I know I would personally much rather be dead then tortured or locked away for life by the Empire.

There are a few posts of similar topic floating around this forum right now.

 

My take is that the light side/dark side choices aren't necessarily intended to reflect morality or emotional state, per se. In another similar thread somebody had pointed out it's more about selfishness and selflessness, as well as freedom and control. And if you think about it, a lot of ds/ls choices in this game seem to follow that pattern more or less.

 

But there are a handful of choices that apparently weren't so easy to categorize. If the people responsible for assigning ds/ls points at the end of Black Talon, for example, could explain their reasoning it might make more sense. In the absence of said context, we're left to wonder why killing somebody for the information he possesses is somehow worse than handing him over to be tortured for the same information even though in the end it all evens out. In the end I think it boils down to forethought and impulse. The light side points might come from the fact that they may be able to squeeze more information out of him, thus potentially benefitting the empire even more, the dark side from imposing your own selfish whims and morality or bloodlust (or both) at the expense of the emipre's wishes. Basically, by leaving judgement to the authorities or imposing judgement and penalty of your own.

 

I don't know. I usually just ignore it, if you make dark side choices for the sake of making dark side choices you'll encounter enough of these that it'll probably damage your immersion. Turn off indicators and make logical choices and you might miss a lot of the choices shoehorned in simply to add more of them.

Edited May 12, 2014 by eldefail

I know of at least 1 choice that I find iffy, there is a quest on Coruscant where you expose a senator for making deals with the empire by taking actual documents from a protocol droid rather than giving false information (agricultural data I think if I recall correctly), where it gives LS for protecting the senator who is trying to sell out to the imps.

Good and evil are relative concepts, and neither are completely objective.

Good and evil are relative concepts, and neither are completely objective.

 

But I think that's just it. They can't seem to decide if they want to represent light/dark as good/evil, or moral/immoral, or some combination of the two. Somebody in another thread mentioned it seems to revolve largely around your actions IN THE MOMENT and not so much whether or not they will pan out in the long run...but then if that's the case the Jedi Council should be racking up the darkside points for their habitual indecisiveness, right?

 

Maybe it has something to do with the preservation of life and free will, vs taking life or imposing your will on others. Like a certain republic mission on Alderaan to rescue an amateur "spy" that got herself caught. Light side lets what is presumably a young, completely untrained, inexperienced woman continue to do what she's doing even though she WILL probably get herself killed and possibly talk during interrogation, or you can send her packing back where she belongs--away from enemy territory for dark side points. Because imposing your will and judgement, however rational, on her is apparently what makes it a dark side choice, and the fact that you almost certainly saved her life and the lives of anybody who may have been sent on ANOTHER rescue mission to clean up her messes apparently doesn't factor in at all.

 

Basically nobody can seem to agree on whether Light side/dark side should constitute morality, good vs evil, life vs death, or any random combination of the three. Not even the Bioware devs seem to agree on that.