I see this problem in most -- if not all -- open-world games: You can be "good," or you can be "bad," but you can never be "you."

I remember when Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic came out, and everyone fawned over its morality system. "Whoa, if I kill this person, then I become closer to the Dark Side! And if I save that person, I'm closer to being a Jedi!"

This black-and-white morality system seems archaic nowadays. But unfortunately for gamers, said system hasn't changed much...if at all. Games that give you choices still boil down to a "doing this makes you good, while doing this makes you bad" structure. Developers have just gotten better at disguising it.

But I'm not sure how much more advanced this system can get, though. Developing a game that gives the player complete moral free reign would take a lot -- A LOT -- of work. I just don't think it's possible at this point.   

I'm not entirely sure I get where you're going here. So, you tried to take some very rigid, defined personality characteristics, fit them into a game that wasn't designed to accomodate those specific personality characteristics, and were surprised it didn't work?

I kind of see what Nick was just saying about the lack of a "neutral" option in New Vegas, although one could argue that a neutral personality chooses not to get involved in affairs they don't need to, i.e. perhaps a neutral character in the Fallout universe is one who follows the main quest line, or the default motivation they're assigned at the beginning of the story, without going into all these side quests that have nothing to do with the main story, and which present many of these moral choices to us.

That may not sound very exciting, but it sounds realistic. Most of the people in the real world I might describe as "neutral" - mellow, relaxed people, mostly - usually mind their own business and don't get involved in anything other than their own, immediate pursuits. They neither volunteer at homeless shelters nor mock the homeless when they see them on the street. Many of them don't bother voting. Etc.

I tend to think that my characters in RPGs are defined by their actions as much as by their dialogue choices. My Very Evil character in Fallout 3 got his karma rating mostly by slaughtering almost everyone he meets, unless they have some utility for him (merchants, doctors, etc.).

My intention was to derive some actual fun out of playing a role rather than just going around doing whatever I felt like doing at the time. It didn't seem too farfethched when I came up with the idea but I wasn't prepared for how extreme Fallout's options are. I figured that it could be fun to act and make decisions by placing myself in the shoes of other people, but the game doesn't really accomodate anything more specific than good or evil. I'm not saying the game is bad because of that, just that it's not something I can personally enjoy.

There are a few instances where you can play multiple sides at once, including the main quest, for a while.  Specifically, there's a sidequest where a town is about to be attacked by mercenaries.  You can negotiate with the mercenaries as a neutral party and offer to pay them more than the person who hired them.  You then convince the town to empty their entire treasury to drive off the mercs.  The town hands you the money.  You go back out to the mercs and drive them away with a speech check or intimitade them.  You pocket all of the town's money and the town thinks you're a hero.  While the mercs run off, you can tail them, murder them all and loot the corpses.  Not every quest in the game is like this- but quite a few have options that are similar.  And you'll find that you can play all sides in the main quest for quite a while before deciding where you stand.

I'm a little confused by your argument, Chas. You enjoy the meaningful impact your decisions have for the main quest line (what I assume you mean by "brief but meaningful decisions you're forced to make"), yet you're also annoyed at the unintended consequences of others (i.e., deciding to use an explosive and accidentally killing a NPC). Those "minor" decisions impact the game world, too. What makes those so different?

David: That sounds like exactly what I was hoping to do early on. I just wish every scenario was that open-ended.

Rob: I call them minor because, no matter how immersed I can be, accidentally killing a nobody NPC just because there are some random enemies roaming the streets outside the Strip just feels like a nuisance. It's too easy to separate playing the game and playing a role in moments like that. It's far more meaningful than in a game like GTA where civilians can be slaughtered with little to no consequence, but those random NPCs can't stand up to the bigger, story-driven events.