I can't believe nobody else has mentioned It Takes Two. It's one of the most imaginative games I have ever played, and my kids and I had a fantastic time playing it. Excellent story, creative mechanics, and teamwork is required through the whole game.
I've been meaning to buy this game, and in fact I just about bought it today (it's on sale right now). Now I'm not sure I want to.
If I understand correctly, this is a game in which great pains are taken to make you take the emotions and ethics seriously, in which you are railroaded into making an unethical choice (murdering an innocent thinking creature for the sake of personal convenience)?
I don't know of anything less ethical in storytelling than convincing players that sometimes murder is the only reasonable choice, in situations when clearly it is not the only reasonable choice.
“Railroaded into an unethical choice” is an interesting concept in video games. The notion of “railroading” itself is unique to video games—if you were reading Tale of Two Cities, would you feel railroaded into the ending? Well, no. What makes video games different? Perhaps video games only provide an illusion of choice, most of the time?
To be honest, I can’t think of railroading as “right” or “wrong”, but instead as a poorly understood narrative choice in games. Another example that stands out in my mind is Nier and Nier Automata, which both feature early boss fights that occur mechanically, regardless of the player’s personal morality. You, as the player, may be playing a character and this is a deeply troubling thing for people to do. That character may have desires that do not match the player’s desires.
On a more real level, the question about violence in games is more “can I talk to my children about this” and less “does this game depict violence”.
I don’t have the answer for It Takes Two.
Games can’t really force you to take ethics seriously, IMO. Few games have ever really had any serious take on ethics. If you want a serious take on ethics in games, play Undertale or something.
Even if might not be exactly what the op is searching, I can heavily recommend it. It's such a well done game: Incredible worlds, great gameplay, and great storytelling. I played it coop with a friend, and even though we both don't seem to be in the target market as 40 year olds we totally enjoyed it.
I kinda agree with this , I mean, it would be perfectly fine if it wasn’t the elephant part. I played this with my brother and a friend , we are in our 30s, and I though “when I have a kid I’ll play this with them”… and then we got to the elephant part
