Hero, saint or boring?

[lathany]

A while back in a session of my From The Cellars Of Xanadu game, there was a discussion about computer games. It went on to be a discussion about picking paths in computer games and making the character good or evil. Three of us agreed, that we couldn't play bad guys. As one of the three, I remembered Baldur's Gate and I've never been able to take the evil path (give the silver dragon eggs to the demon, wear the human skin, etc).¹ However this whole "choose your future" thing seems to be turning up more and more. I wondered how other people felt and thought I would poll and find out.

[Poll #1353028]

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¹ Fortunately, there's a lot less to it, so I don't feel I'm missing out.

Comments

[condign.livejournal.com]

A lot depends on the game. Fallout 3 allows you to play evil, but the storyline doesn't seem very satisfying if you do so. In Neverwinter Nights 2, on the other hand, playing evil provides you with an entirely different game mechanic, somewhat different options when you meet NPCs, and a different game strategy. Seeing as I really didn't like my principle companion being a spirit bear, evil was a good path.

There's rarely a game that has a good/evil dichotomy in which being evil provides any benefits. Games like the Grand Theft Auto series, in which you start out at best morally ambiguous, get closest.

[lathany.livejournal.com]

There's rarely a game that has a good/evil dichotomy in which being evil provides any benefits.

I think that's been true in my limited experience of games as well. As I said above, Baldur's Gate does have evil options, but there are far fewer and they are less satisfying than being good.

[condign.livejournal.com]

Yes, the best games for evil are those that are designed for it, like Dungeon Keeper or Overlord. Though the latter never really kept me that interested.

[lathany.livejournal.com]

I never did well at Dungeon Keeper. I built really naff dungeons.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_alanna/]

I tried to play KOTOR as the evil character, and I had such a difficult time selecting the bad choices that I never finished! :(

[lathany.livejournal.com]

I'm playing good, but I've been stalled for ages that I suspect I'll restart (although, again, as good) when I finally get back to it.

[kevandotorg.livejournal.com]

I tend to assume that most people will play the "good" side, and that the developers also assume this, and will have put more effort into the plot and dialogue for that half of the tree.

[lathany.livejournal.com]

A good point.

A truly good moral dilemma

[applez.livejournal.com]

Has been difficult to articulate in games for far too long. I'd be very excited to see more range of moral challenges in games, with more sophistication than goodie vs. baddie with which arsenal.

Come to think of it, even Adult Swim's "Orphan Feast" presents an interesting moral evolution with a really simple game & 2D interface.

Re: A truly good moral dilemma

[condign.livejournal.com]

Neverwinter Nights 2 actually isn't that bad.

[sosoclever.livejournal.com]

I also think that the evil story branches tend to be a little . . . light, like there's just not as much there. They also seem to generally be more difficult, like you're being punished for not choosing the good guys.:-P

In games that have a broader selection, I think I tend to play neutral-ish characters with "good tendencies."

[lathany.livejournal.com]

Yeah - I wonder if anyone has done much for the bad guys. Black and White was supposed to be equally good as both, but I've not heard whether that was true or not.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_kent/]

The two games I have in mind here, that I've played recently, are Fable II and Mass Effect. In which the dichotomy appeared to be between "Good" and "Act like a colossal jerk." On the few occasions where there appeared to be profit in it, I chose the evil option, but that did very little to tarnish my reputation.

Also, the sliding scale of good/evil in Fable II was somewhat silly. In that it was a case of "Did once kill my wife because she annoyed me, but otherwise led a noble life" adding up to "saintly."

[lathany.livejournal.com]

the dichotomy appeared to be between "Good" and "Act like a colossal jerk."

<snigger>

I think you've summed up a fair number of the non-good alternatives there. I'm reminded of Monkey Island where all the secondary options (and occasionally also the primary one) fell in that category.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_kent/]

I think most of the time, I'm good in these games because the evil options are so needlessly impolite. If you could politely decline to help people, that'd be good.

There is, I believe, one excellent counterexample to all of this in WoW.

I understand in the lastest installment, there was a quest which required you to capture and torture someone. If you didn't, you'd never get to know the location of one of the instances, and never get to play there. As far as I know, there's no in-game punishment for completing the quest, and no reward or recognition of any kind for refusing to complete it. Effectively, if you took a moral stand and quietly refused to complete the quest, you would be denying yourself access to content, for no visible reward.

[lathany.livejournal.com]

Now that is a great test - I'd be interested in what proportion of people walked away at that point.

[zandev.livejournal.com]

I could be wrong, but I think if you decline to do that quest, you just miss out on several follow-on quests. I don't think it is a prerequisite for any of the major content.

WoW does have some really disturbing quests, but they are usually in an appropriate context. For instance, the Death Knight starting quests involve massacring peasants. Some of the early Blood Elf quests are rather evil too.

This quest was notable in being available to all classes and factions and rather jarring.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_kent/]

It was my understanding that you can't get to the instance "The Nexus" without having completed this quest. I may be wrong; I certainly haven't had first hand experience of WoW since before this latest bunch of content was released.

[condign.livejournal.com]

Fallout 3 does that too. Although frankly, even with the few evil things that I did--accidentally, mainly, several including accidental pickpocketings and a "damn, I just killed an NPC by pushing the wrong button"--I was still a better person than most NPCs...

[lathany.livejournal.com]

I've not played the Fallout series - I see it has atmosphere though if all the NPCs are like that.

[mrlloyd.livejournal.com]

I often mean to go back again later and take the dark path, but never get round to it.

Deus X had a few real choices, but they weren't really of the good / evil variety. For instance after discovering your employer was dodgy you could tell a trusted colleague to leave, or remain behind as your accomplice - with differing results. Different dialogue responses would get you different outcomes as well, but there was no mechanic to keep you consistent.


You also had a choice to kill or not right through the game, (I believe there was only one kill you couldn't avoid), and the choice of ending was between three different futures for the world, each with up and downsides.

[onebyone.livejournal.com]

Slight spoilers below, although since you've already said the employer is dodgy, I don't think it it matters much.

I believe there was only one kill you couldn't avoid

Not so: here's how to avoid the Anna Navarre kill.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hsh24FmYlNQ

The way it works, is that NPCs carry skeleton keys. However, she won't use it, because her AI never wants to get out of the level. Unless you lob a grenade, or damage her just short of dead, so that she switches to "run away" mode, and the door is her best route away from you.

Arguably you're right about the game's intention, and this is a hack, since the game writers probably did not intend it as a solution. But it makes some narrative sense: her mission is to kill you, not to keep you trapped in the level, so if she's going to flee in terror for her life, it's not ridiculous for her to stupidly unlock the door in the process.

[onebyone.livejournal.com]

the game writers probably did not intend it as a solution

Scratch "probably", come to think about it. I don't think I've ever achieved this solution, but I'm sure I remember reading that even if you do it, and avoid the kill, Gunther's dialogue later in the game claims that you did kill her. Maybe she was whacked by her bosses for letting you out, but Gunther was told you did it ;-)

[dracunculus.livejournal.com]

City of Villains does a pretty good job of making "evil" entertaining (you're a scrappy supervillain from the wrong side of the streets, just trying to get along despite the fascistic "heroes" and the oppressive reigning evil overlords)...but even in CoV after about 20 levels I couldn't do it anymore. There was a point where one of the quest-givers says something like, "If you do this, you'll no longer be able to tell yourself that you're just misunderstood. You'll be embracing your depravity." Aaaand...I decided to go make another superhero in City of Heroes instead. Because "just misunderstood" was EXACTLY how I had been building the villain character in my mind.

[lathany.livejournal.com]

bateleur has a saying - "no-one ever thinks of themselves as the bad guy". I think that some "evil" path-writers could consider the implications of it. Although, I guess when people play evil, they sometimes want to do it entirely.

[ao-lai.livejournal.com]

Having ticked the first option, I should probably say that I am able to, say, play GTA games, and I was able to get through the Death Knight starting areas in WoW.

But in the first, most of the time you don't get to make any choices, and when you do, I always chose the better one. And in the second, well, that was harder. There are a couple of quests where you have to kill some arbitrary number of civilians, that of course you can't bypass, and when you approach a group of them wearing your chaos spiky armour and wielding your huge glowing sword, some of them cower and plead, and some of them fight you. I found I could only fight the ones that fought me first, even then...

[lathany.livejournal.com]

Yeah - I've had similar experiences with some games. I watched bateleur play GTA and never felt inclined to myself.