[WCG]

Thing is that these bandits, and the vast majority of the population in the vast majority of RPGs, are there just to kill you. They have no, or little other purpose and can be dealt with in no other way.

Good point.

I was just reading about Dragon Age: Origins, where supposedly you must choose between helping a village of elves or helping their enemies, a group of werewolves. Apparently, both sides have valid complaints, and it's not a matter of good vs evil. Fine,...

...But if you help the elves, the werewolf den, cubs and all, is entirely destroyed, and if you help the werewolves, the elf village is completely wiped out. Those are the two "alternatives." From what I hear, you have to do one or the other, and there's no middle ground. Whichever way you go, you get the help you need from the survivors.

To me, there's no real decision here, since I might as well just flip a coin. No side is better than the other, and both have valid concerns. More importantly, I can't do what I'd normally want to do, which is to try to come up with some kind of compromise (with the threat of extinction being a pretty good argument in favor of it).

Your bandits are a perfect example of this kind of thing. In most cases, as you say, the bandits only exist to attack the player's character. Generally, there's no question at all, you just kill them. Occasionally, they might be sympathetic characters, escaped slaves or the like, forced to take up banditry to survive. In rare cases, you might even be able to choose sides, but you can rarely solve the problem of the bandits in multiple ways, because the bandits aren't realistic people (and are usually just "monsters").

The bandits are an encounter, and occasionally a quest, but they don't exist in the gameworld for more than that. Whatever happens there, nothing changes. They might stay dead, or they might respawn, or they might, if you bribed them or otherwise passed the roadblock without killing them, still exist, frozen in time. But what they never do is live, and change, as real people might.

[Drumdebasse]

Well, morality isn't a reality anyway, just a human concept which is not substantive.

If in real life i was an assassin and that i have to kill someone:

Good: I kill this person without collateral damages and without suffering for the victim
Neutral: I choose to kill the victim the most efficient and secure way, no more no less.
Bad: I take pleasure to kill peoples and to fuck them so i rape his dog before the eyes of the victim, cut the his little girl in bloody dead meat and explode the head of his wife before torturing for a long moment the target.

Finally, the result is the same, i did my job, the victim die and i am a bastard for normals peoples, sentence is usually death or imprisonment to life if caught, by the moral choice that is yours (you can argue the evil choice is more risky for yourself and have harder punishment, but few people in reality choose to be consciously evil -think at peoples with serious psychiatrics problems in normal society or fighters in countries at war- at the difference of the "good" choice which is intellegible if conceptual, neutral is the "natural" way if it have a sense, no reflection on the moral, no psychic illness in account, just doing your job)
More, peoples have often differents way to "interpret" moral even in a same culture, since its not substantive and mainly the fruit of your perception aligned on your education.

[Coverax]

As we reach the morality argument again i just wanted to add my opinion to the discusion.
What if in stead of making a good evil axis you make a utalitarian vs. deontological axis and actually give the player moral dilemma situations so even if you want to play a good guy you have to make choices.
Moral Dilemma Situations with this type of options are for example:
A large rading party stands in front of a city an poses a real threat to aformentioned city. The leader of that party demands the city elder (or king or chancelor or whatever) to be given to them, if this is done the city is spared of not the city is attacked. To make the point i am trying to make easier lets assume you are a knight sworn to protect your king (city elder etc.). There is a clear dilemma as your duty tells you to protect your king, however from a utalitarian point of view it is clear that you should just sacrifice the king since the total benift will be greater.Now even though this is a rather generic example it has a lot going for it since it will really engage your own morality.

[WCG]

Well, morality isn't a reality anyway, just a human concept which is not substantive.

I have no idea what this means. Morality is just as "real" as any other human concept, isn't it? There are disagreements about what's moral and what isn't, if that's what you mean. But as a society, we generally agree on the basics. And the concept seems to be real enough (and fundamentally based on our evolution as social animals).

To make the point i am trying to make easier lets assume you are a knight sworn to protect your king (city elder etc.). There is a clear dilemma as your duty tells you to protect your king, however from a utalitarian point of view it is clear that you should just sacrifice the king since the total benift will be greater.Now even though this is a rather generic example it has a lot going for it since it will really engage your own morality.

I like the idea, but computer games tend to be terrible at this kind of thing. If this happened in reality, the situation would be quite complex. What would really happen if you gave in to the demands? Likely, it would end up as just the first of many demands, right? And what would making either decision do to the morale of the city, or to its cohesion. Real people don't live in a vacuum. If you give anyone up to the raiders, his friends and relatives are going to be upset.

Furthermore, how big of a threat is the raiding party? Would the bandit leader really be willing to take the casualties necessary to attack the town, considering that he probably has enemies elsewhere? How long could they wait outside the town before risking attack themselves (generally, raiders are hit and run types)? In real life, bandits don't live in a vacuum, either. And could you offer them money, instead, or otherwise negotiate with them? What are they REALLY after? Why are they REALLY there?

Unfortunately, computer games can't model real-world complexity, and most don't even try to come close. There might be two options in the game and only two, when I'd want to try something the game developer didn't allow for. I've never played a game where this kind of dilemma seemed anything but wholly artificial. And I'm not sure that it would even be possible to do otherwise.

In fact, I think I'd prefer that this kind of situation be game-oriented, rather than pretending to be something it couldn't be. Just make the situation a clear role-playing decision (are you playing a heroic character or a selfish one?) or a simple matter of competing advantages to your character. One decision might give your character this short-term advantage, while the other decision might give you that advantage, perhaps more long-term in nature. Because I really don't think a computer game - with today's technology, at least - can come close to making it a realistic, complex, emotional dilemma.

PS. Hmm,... I just thought of something (sorry about the length of this post). I'm sure many people here are familiar with Larry Niven's "Ringworld." In the sequel, "The Ringworld Engineers," the hero has a terrible, emotionally-wrenching decision to make. The fact is, there is clearly only one right answer. The correct decision is obvious. But the decision is still emotionally devastating, to the character and to the reader, because we've gotten to know the people who'll be affected by it. (I don't want to give away spoilers by being too specific here.)

In this situation, it's not a case of the right decision being difficult to determine, but rather of the right decision being difficult emotionally. A computer game COULD model this quite well, with good writing. Let the player get interested and emotionally attached to the NPCs, and then spring something like this on him. The correct decision would be obvious, but it wouldn't be easy to take, not at all. I'd really like to see a game do something like this. Still, the point wouldn't be about choices, but about the emotional impact of necessities.

[caster]

Unfortunately, computer games can't model real-world complexity, and most don't even try to come close. There might be two options in the game and only two, when I'd want to try something the game developer didn't allow for. I've never played a game where this kind of dilemma seemed anything but wholly artificial. And I'm not sure that it would even be possible to do otherwise.

Of course its possible. Examples you numbered above are only a few sets of additional content options - not "modeling real world complexity".

The thing is that "that" needs to be a goal set in design docs as primary feature of the game and those kinds of games are seldom done in a massmarket like this. There is nothing impossible about spreading some interconnections between NPCs and events/quests in the game.