Unavowed Creates the Space for Its Difficult Choices to Work
Unavowed is a 2018 point-and-click adventure game from Wadjet Eye Games where you play as a newly recruited member of the Unavowed, an esoteric detective group whose job it is to root out and handle supernatural unrest in New York City. You join them after they exorcise you — you’ve been possessed by a demon for a year, and you spend the course of the game playing detective to ‘your’ own machinations. Each level of the game is structured around a case unravelling ‘your’ evil schemes, accompanied by two other members of the Unavowed.
It’s common in games with companions, particularly ones with explicit morality mechanics, to use the companions as moral indicators for the player. Ruthless Pragmatist argues we should leave the helpless kitten stuck in the tree, it was its own fault for getting up there. Naive Idealist argues we should not only rescue this kitten, but go out of our way to find its owner. The player is therefore guided to either align the player character’s morals with that of these two extremes, or with a ‘moderate’ middle ground. Especially in games that don’t offer ‘evil’ options, this sliding scale of ‘ruthless pragmatism’ to ‘naive idealism’ operates as many games’ moral compass.
When you start playing Unavowed, you would be forgiven for thinking the same thing moral structure is being set up. In its opening scene, you are being exorcised. You are introduced to two of the members of the Unavowed, and your first two companions, Eli and Mandana. You (or rather, the demon possessing you) almost kill Eli, and Mandana pulls a sword on you. Eli, still prone, tells Mandana everything is okay. Moments later, you see a scene of brutal mass murder (your doing), and the mouseover descriptions show that Eli looks queasy and uncomfortable, while Mandana is, at the very least, not giving anything away. You appear to have your Ruthless Pragmatist and your Naive Idealist.
And then the game gives you your first difficult choice. During the exorcism, Eli accidentally summoned a fiend from another realm. It cannot go back without feeding — on human flesh, and there is a batch of fresh corpses just in the next room. It also cannot safely remain in this realm, so the only alternative is to kill it. Here, where you expect Eli and Mandana to take opposing stances and to have to choose a side — they bicker about it, flustered, shunting responsibility from one to the other between ethical disputes.
Mandana: “I cannot kill a creature in cold blood!”
Eli: “So we’ll… what? Let him chew up the bodies inside?”
Mandana: “No. We cannot do that either.”
Eli: “I’m not the one who has to cut that thing’s throat. I can’t decide that for you.”
It is down to you, the player, to interrupt their stalemate. Neither of these choices place easily on the scale that is familiar from so many other games. You could argue that killing the fiend is the more ‘pragmatic’ option, but you’d be hard-pressed to argue in turn that it makes the desecration of corpses in order to preserve life ‘idealistic’.
Even when Unavowed presents you with only two choices, it isn’t ever presenting you with a moral binary. Neither pragmatic nor idealistic, good nor evil, lawful nor chaotic. There are questions underneath, with an emotional reality that belies its supernatural flavourings, and you have to answer who you choose to be in that moment. Is it more valuable to preserve one life than to atone for the lives you’ve taken? Does it matter that their means of survival might expose you? What role does their innocence and your responsibility for their position play?
After each level, you go back to Unavowed headquarters and sleep. The next morning, somewhere separated by time and space from the urgent moment you made your choice, you can reflect with your companions about the previous day. Each character has different approaches informed by their own histories and personalities, but the base assumption is always that you acted in good faith and did your best. When every choice you could make could be the best one at that moment, and the game will neither reward nor reprimand you for making them, you are left to sit with your own reasoning for the decisions you make.
As the game progresses, the choices get more complex, and their ramifications in the moment feel more gut sinking, but the compassionate core of the companion interactions remains: It was a hard decision. You did the best you could. If the companions in other games act as a moral indicator to shape your decisions, the companions in Unavowed are moral support. You have to sit in the uncomfortable space with your difficult decisions, but they will sit there with you.
