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I suppose it would be an extreme game design challenge, but I would play more evil characters if I didn’t have to play as “stupid evil”.
I want to be a manipulative monster who preys on trust. Of course I’m not going to punch the begger in broad daylight in front of everyone. I want chat him up, gain his trust, and give him a drink laced with medical alcohol so I can then steal his pocket change.
Minecraft survival server with friends :)))
Or start a hardcore raiding wow guild.
Nothing brings me more joy than to enslave a couple, put them into a tiny jail, forced to breed forever and watch as their children are taken down a chute and become slaves until the end of time.
Making it worse is that many games don’t punish you for things we’d consider pretty “evil”. Like, you can walk into people’s houses and search their cupboards and other containers for useful things, and it’s mostly not considered stealing. So, as long as you choose the nice dialogue option when talking to them you stay good.
A real good vs. evil choice would be one where resources are always tight, and you constantly meet people who need your help along the way. Helping them stretches your resources even more. Or, have people who are able to help you, but you have to stretch the truth about who you are or about your goals to get their support.
My experience in the STALKER games is like this, even though the game has no built in meter for these actions. Sometimes I will see a group that I naturally feel friendly to in a fight. I can join and help, I can actively hinder them (often a “stupid evil” choice if they are against strong enemies who will either fight me or block me from looting), or I can sit back and do nothing.
Doing nothing can be interesting since it can net me decent loot for simply waiting. Makes me feel like Mad Max in the beginning of Road Warrior where he watches the raiders fight but is disinterested in helping.
This war of mine might be something you wanna check out
Witcher 3: Tell peasant he can keep his 20 crowns for his daughter. Proceed to loot all his precious gem stones and ore right in front of him and his sick daughter.
…Halligan? Is that you?
I want to play a game as a Machiavellian figure with good intentions who struggles over the course of the game to maintain the deceptions keeping everything running. The game shouldn’t present anything as good or bad, but rather an accumulating, eventually overwhelming amount of context for any given decision.
You could make real money in Eve doing that.
EVE has fantastic stories, but I’d never want to play it myself. The people who did stuff like the bank scam put in so much time in front of spreadsheets it was like a real job.
God damn. That fucking guy who ran the bank genuinely for years and then one day just closed up shop and fucked off might be the wildest story in gaming history.
iirc there’s also no evidence buffalo buffalo buffalo that he ever tried to use or sell the ingame currency. Guy seemingly just did it for the meme.
That’s even wilder
What you want is Knights of the Old Republic, best game to play an evil character ever
Endgame yes, but a lot of the early game choices were like
[1] Pet the puppy
[2] Throw the puppy off a bridge
Not at all. One example is the Romeo and Juliet quest, as a good character you can help their families understand each other, they get together and everyone is happy. On the evil side you can make everyone go to war, even the couple, by conspiring, you watch them kill each other then loot everything! Just one of the quests I think the evil side is way more interesting than the good one.
The vast majority of evil paths is like that in KotOR
Kinda the point - that was pretty pointless evil. Also the slightest bit of critical thinking would suggest it’s a really bad idea, what with the Jedi keeping a close eye on you. There’s no way they don’t know you influenced that, they just don’t call you out on it cause they’re manipulating bastards that are trying to use you still.
The end of that one is good cause it gives a really good reason to go dark side - the bullshit the Jedi did to you. The dark side ending of KOTOR is incredibly satisfying because of how much the Jedi deserved to be stabbed in the back in that game.
You sound like a guy who’d get his suit from Woolworth’s
Don’t forget the cannibalism.
The world would never allow a truly fun and justifiable Evil character, They didn’t even let Thanos have his shine in the second movie.
You’re going to really like what the future of gaming is going to bring, but be careful what you wish for, as along with the mechanics you want being able to exist, the ways in which you’ll end up being impacted by those actions is going to mess with your head like nothing you’ve seen before.
Interesting times await.
There are already some games like that.
Some games like Eve or Factorio have backstories that make it clear the player sucks. Capsuleers are immortal but the rest of the crew isn’t. The Factorio engineer lands on a strange planet, pollutes the hell out of it and kills the natives.
Then there are games like KOTOR or Pathfinder:ROTW where the evil path has you make some pretty fscked up dialog decisions.
The Factorio engineer lands on a strange planet, pollutes the hell out of it and kills the natives
yeah but the natives are ugly
And the spidertron is really cute…
But who’s ugly or cute on the inside? That’s what counts, right?Right?
Well the driver’s on the inside with the spidertron. Unless you’re using the remote I guess
Its the 400 nuclear warheads inside that count.
I never had the desire to play that kind of character until recently and my god does Bethesda fail horribly at allowing that kind of character… Even in Skyrim where there’s guilds for theft and assassination, I never felt truly evil or bad, just kind of a jerk with the occasional dumb response.
The problem is that people don’t treat you differently for being evil. Yeah, you might have hitsquads coming after you, maybe a companion or two won’t follow you. But the same happens to good characters. There’s absolutely no weight to your actions. You can literally slaughter half the wasteland in broad daylight and people will still talk to you as if you’re just a typical person. I always end up having evil karma because I steal everything not nailed down and yet I’m still considered a hero by everybody. It’s only gotten worse in games like Fallout 4.
People don’t treat you differently for any reason. Oh you’re the Dragonborn, leader of three guilds, an obvious vampire, bedecked in legendary artifacts from a half-dozen Daedric lords, and savior of the Nords? I bet you don’t spend much time in the Cloud District though.
Random hobo bandit, “Yeah, I can take him on”.
Let’s mug 'im!
With starfield it’s kinda hilarious. I made it a point to just be a murder hobo (get a mod that alters bounties so there needs to be a living witness) and choose all the obviously bad choices and yet random UC security will have their preset wild lines where they say “I hear you’ve been cleaning up bad guys out there, well done have some money.” Lol
…like no? I’m the danger! I’m the one who knocks!
Too many games I’ve seen conflate being evil with being a jerk. Few games let you play the ‘long game’ where you are specifically nice and cooperative to deceive and manipulate. I think this partly due to decisions being made modular and point to point. Your overall morality then is calculated as some form of average of all the decisions you made. Mass effect series comes to mind.
But if you want to play as a scheming villain the opposite should be the case: you set your primary long term goal (eg taking over a country or institution) and then your actions are chosen in the vein of that goal. And those actions might in isolation actually be seen as beneficial or benign. But you ultimately do them to gain trust or deceive.
I kind of enjoyed how Oblivion handled things as completing Dark Brotherhood or Thieves Guild quests gave you infamy that made good characters dislike you and evil characters like you more. Though there still is a lot of jank in that game (part of the charm imo).
I’m playing a somewhat witty dating sim game that does it a better way.
Your goal is to prevent five girls from getting killed. You can accomplish this by being nice, and sweet, and doing good things. But it’s hard, and there are also much easier prompts to use “bad points” to achieve that positive end of saving good people from bad situations. Manipulation, Deception, Violence being examples.
I imagine old-style Bioshock approach to the game would be “Find girl, she invites you over; immediately stab her and loot her house.”
The game is called Hush Hush.
witty dating sim game
Your goal is to prevent five girls from getting killed
Damn, sounds like dating has totally changed since I was single.
It is a lot easier to be ‘evil’ or at least amoral in a game that does not play as a giant power trip for the player by making them fairly easy to become absurdly OP.
For example, play Kenshi.
You don’t have to be ‘evil’, but chances are, going out of your way to be ‘good’ all of the time will get you scammed, enslaved, starved to death or killed.
In many video games, being good vs evil is a relatively costless, relatively cosmetic decision.
It usually takes either an extremely harsh world, or very good storytelling to make such decisions more meaningful, where pragmatism and the innate messiness of reality factor in more greatly, to make such decisions more meaningful.
I might be bad guy… but I’m not bad guy.
And here I am, playing a guy who kicks dogs, uppercuts babies, and litters. Something fun being so utterly despicable in a game.
May I introduce you all to Rimworld, also known as Warcrimes Simulator.
I have more slaves, exotic dancers, and drugs in EvE. Not quite so many war crimes though
If you hurt Mr.Mittins the Muffalo entire colony will take turns removing limbs and feeding them back to you.
Sometimes I just can’t bring myself to be the bad guy, because either you get the worst possible ending (sorry, can’t suspend my disbelief enough to believe bad people actually get bad ends) or it just goes over the top.
For instance, in one franchise you can be bad, but it’s mostly rude comments, insults, maybe a couple betrayals here and there… Then BOOM surprise you just shot a kid in the back of the head.
I’m all for being a bad guy but it has to be a well-written and iltelligent bad guy that actually rivals the good version, not just stupidly plodding through the worst possible choice “because a bad guy wouldn’t care that he just crippled his fleet and lost the final battle, because he got mad that one of the admirals called him a hothead and crashed his ship into theirs”
Who am I kidding, the moment I betray someone I like, I’m going to bail and go back to being a good guy
Even in mass effect? Evil shepherd has some of the best dialogue. I never got as much satisfaction from a game when I let all the council dweebs die for being idiots.
RDR2 as well, some of the rude comments Arthur says are hilarious. And you’re a rough and tough cowboy so it kinda fits.
Mass effect was actually one of the first games that came to mind.
Yes, BadShep has some great moments, and some of the decisions actually feel good, but sometimes it just gets too over the top or hurts someone I care about.
Even if I didn’t abandon every evil playthrough, I would never have been able to [REDACTED] on tuchanka. Had to be him. Someone else might have gotten it wrong. 😭
And my Arthur is gruff but good-natured, has 0 time for idiots, and won’t hesitate to shoot someone in his way, while at the same time will go well out of his way to help someone truly in need.
So insults abound, but he still helps that woman get back to emerald ranch after she twists her ankle. He shoots anyone that’s got something he needs, but drops everything to find a missing person.
I like games where I can mix and match but still get good endings.
That’s the ideal line - stick to principles but we don’t have to be nice to everyone.
Renegade Shepard can be pragmatic on the Tuchunka incident although that requires a commitment from the player through all three games to have been “renegade” on their choices on the matter - sets in motion events where your choice saves one, but ultimately ruined another’s future.
Renegade Shepard does feel less screwed around with as their demeanour “demanding” respect, and mass effect 2 onwards refocuses renegade away from stupid “evil” choices and leans heavier to a " ends justify the means" with a slice of self importance and arrogance
In your case specifically I don’t think it’s you choosing to be evil, so much as O’Brian choosing violence.
Just don’t ask
whowhat’s in the pattern buffer…
Games that allow me to play as evil should remove all cute animals from that playthrough.
:(
There are many ways of being evil, petting the dog does not make a truly evil character less evil.
A lot of real life evil people actually like animals at least when it suits them in my experience.
A bit off topic but there are games where you are absolutely evil but it’s not easily recognizable. For example factorio.
Most people consider themselves not evil.
In Factorio you pollute, but there isn’t much evidence the native critters are intelligent. They sure don’t act intelligent. There also doesn’t seem to be any way to live in harmony with them.
Sure sounds like something a colonizer would say.
I first wanted to “/s” this but it’s literally the reasons some colonizers used to justify atrocities. Btw it’s canon that the factorio guy is evil as confirmed by the developers.
I get it in the game there is no way of confirming or even researching the sentients of the bugs but be honest was it your first instinct to check if they are? I sure as hell didn’t. I mean they attacked me first, right?..right?! (Until you realize that you are killing them with your pollution)
I love that game design, even the music plays a role. Iirc it was designed a bit eerie as if something is wrong.
be honest was it your first instinct to check if they are?
From what I remember, on my first play-through the first thing I tried to do was explore, and when I got near the critters I was attacked. I don’t think I even knew how to use my gun, so I just ran away.
In the real world, non-evil animals are often territorial. OTOH, they’re often also curious, and if you approach slowly you can end up interacting with them without it coming to violence. But, the biters in Factorio go straight from ignoring you to attacking you with no in-between.
As for colonizing, it’s worth noting that the goal in Factorio isn’t to establish a colony, but to escape after your ship crashed.
I do like that the game subtly makes it clear that you’re causing a lot of pollution, and that basically the only reason the natives attack is because of your pollution. OTOH, it would have been better if the biter “nests” contained something like worker ants who didn’t attack you but needed to be killed to wipe out the nest. I guess you could argue that the spawner things fill that role, but they don’t seem to do anything other than pump out enemies who immediately attack. So, not really.
Hmmm, ok what if the biters the critters themselves are stupid drones but the nests are sentient. Maybe the biters are like white blood cells part of the natural defenses of the nests. Something the “Brain” cannot control directly.
I am not saying this is the case or the developers thought that but it certainly is a possibility.
How can my pollution kill them‽ Their nests absorb it in huge swaths and actually give birth to MORE of them not less! /s very, very much (because although I didn’t know the player even had any kind of external alignment in factorio until right now I can totally see and understand this being the canon response of the devs thus making my statement rather sarcastic!)
A lot of real life evil people actually like animals at least when it suits them in my experience.
It’s really frustrating as someone who just doesn’t care for dogs. I’m seen as some heartless monster, but there are literal monsters are out there with dogs too… Idk about globally, but the US has had some “recent” (10-15 years ago) explosion of obsession with dogs.
Old man voice: back in my day the womenfolk found dogs gross, now they like dogs more than anything else in the world! :P
You can be evil and still stop to pat and love dogs.
Raise your hand if your Paragon Sheppard has never shoved that dude out the skyscraper window.
why would i play boring Shepard
I usually play overall good, but an impatient dick.
I don’t let machines fuck with my emotions. I know what they’re doing, give an option to slap the dog.
Moral choice in most games is pretty ridiculous anyway. In the vast majority of video games, the actions of play are already about doing unethical things (breaking into places you shouldn’t be, killing, looting, holding political office, etc) and the story or theming is just there to provide moral cover for why what you are doing is Good Actually ™️. Americans are great at justifying violence because our media trains us in doing it everyday.
If you tried to hold people to IRL standards of ethical behavior, the entire FPS genre would vanish. And that’s why these things don’t work well in games. You can’t punish bad behavior because it would feel anti-player. You also can’t reward bad behavior , even though that’s realistic, because it offends the miscalibrated normie sense of justice. And simulating the small-scale social consequences of immorality would also be immensely difficult and anti-fun.
There are some games where going out of your way to avoid resorting to violence is rewarded.
In most of those, the alternatives are pretty weak and poorly supported. Also, violence isn’t the only kind of immorality, that is very much my point. And also… you have to name one that isn’t Undertale…
Dishonored series was pretty good at offering and rewarding a peaceful playthtrough. It was definitely the more difficult option but usually worth it.
Which they made more of them
Deus Ex: Human Revolution!
In The Witcher games there are grey choices with hard to predict outcomes.
Geraldo: In a choice between two evils I’d rather not choose at all.
Also Geraldo: Does nothing but choose between evils.
To be fair, the game does give you inaction as a choice a bunch of times. It rarely leads to a good outcome though.
