Being Evil in the inFamous games were somewhat rewarding. You could play the games twice and get something totally unique out of it as your powers change and the story and world changes.
Infamous is one of the childhood favorites for me; it also makes the Kessler fight feel much more personal on an evil playthrough as well; I just wish you could fight the beast on an evil playthrough
I think infamous 2 evil ending is a good example of how to portray evil in games, where its a moral dilemma that makes sense to choose the more evil side. but the choices through out the whole game arnt as impactful. so its evil for evils sake till you reach the end where evil is presented as morally grey.
For me the short version is that "evil" choices in RPGs usually boil down to "vicious self-destructive idiot", plus there's rarely ever any worthwhile rewards on evil paths anyway. Also, the good choice is usually too easy and too obvious. Often it involves going on guilt-free killing sprees pro-bono, yet the loot you get is worth more than the reward you turned down anyway. So the player gets their dopamine hit for being the good guy, while sacrificing nothing.
Play Tyranny, it's a CRPG by Obsidian where all shades of evil are pretty well represented, from the reluctant "lesser of two evils" to the pragmatic planner to the evil tornado of death.
This, all of this. Plus, the only unique rewards I can recall for doing any of the evil options in Fallout 3 and New Vegas are a unique unarmed combat move you can get as a reward from a Caesar's Legion interaction (that requires only a bit of reputation with them and has no quest attached), and a single unique weapon you can find in the ruins of the Brotherhood Citadel in Broken Steel. It is a scoped .44 magnum, which admittedly is the most powerful handgun in the game, but by that point you should have a loooooot more powerful options in every other category. So they know how to attach unique rewards to picking the evil options, but most of the time they just don't and the ones they do aren't worth very much.
Something I heard in a DnD video about good/evil playthroughs is that the “good” are usually reactive to events unfolding by the evil. Games are prescripted, so reacting is kind of the only thing you can do. The evil, on the other hand, is often written as the proactive with plans and schemes. This requires you to have almost complete freedom to draw your own path. This is really hard to do in a video game, since the world is always scripted to some extent. You are not completely free to do what you want to
That's why the best games for doing an "evil" playthrough are 4X strategy games. Those games truly do let you forge your own path and aren't scripted, so you have the freedom to plot, scheme and do all the things that a villain would do.
Good character: Ok, I'll help this Town to get rid of some bandits for absolutely nothing. -You get valuable loot from the bandits -Earn reputation with the Town -Unlock more quests Bad character: I won't help this Town because i'm evil -You get nothing -You lose -Good day, sir
That's basically the Dragon Age Orgins Redcliffe choice, like, you want to be evil or in character for your rp, but you also don't want to lose out on all that juicy xp.
I think the main problem with being evil in video games is that so many games being evil is a rewardless options which doesn't effect the story and is just a side activity of killing everyone and nothing else
Gore restrictions, no gibs or limbs being torn makes it hard - most games. Violence against kids restrictions. Toned down dark humour/dialogue - no really sick stuff. You're "free" to do eeevil, to a limit.
@@gudgurl it's annoying asf that they just care about some blue hair weirdos bitching on Twitter so much that they've taken all these features out in the past 10 years
I think the issue people have is how they define evil in games. I play a lot of Lawful Evil characters in games which, to me, usually means that I'm not a good person, but I have lines I will never cross normally. It seems like many people's idea of evil is just psycopathic murderer and nothing else
Agreed. The "Lawful Evil" is the reasonable, methodical, subtle kind of evil - the kind that takes advantage of people or circumstances for their own benefit, but doesn't go around being a rude jerk or violent monster just because they don't like someone. A Lawful Evil character is usually cunning enough to realize, that alienating or antagonizing people isn't likely to win them any favors. I like to play a lot of different characters, with different views and different morals - just because I find it fascinating to consider difficult situations or moral dilemmas from different perspectives, and try to reason why a person might choose to do something, that others might consider evil.
@@LadyDoomsinger I like playing Neutral characters because of the challenge of balancing light and darkness. Its so easy to be a hero or villian but something about the Grey area is not only more realistic it is a lot more interesting in every possible way.
Mercenary playstyle can be considered Evil too. I like playing games with my main goal not saving the world, but saving it in a way to make money. That does not matter if you are killing bandits or caravans if that brings you money.
I like to play a Lawful Evil character, whom is on the good side - just brutal and uncaring in a lot of situations where a traditional hero would be sympathetic.
They could have made the evil route a compelling and understandable option by just making tenpenny the first place you go, and having a few friendly characters there (who absolutely HATE Megaton) be your introduction to the game. Then when you're asked to go infiltrate the city and blow it up, it sounds like a reasonable enough request. Then you go there and find out these people are actually nice, it's an actual moral choice. Do you doom these people you just met because the first people to offer you shelter asked you to? Or do you help out these salt of the earth people and break your promise.
You could make it even more compelling by having the player encounter a few hostile ghouls before getting to Tenpenny Tower. Make their hatred of ghouls seem justified (the way that, say, hatred of goblins or orcs is in most fantasy games). And only after the player makes the decision to blow it up do you realize that no, you just sided with a bunch of racists. You could also make the evil choice more compelling by having the folks in Tenpenny offer you quests if you blow up the building. Make being a gun for hire a valid option. That switches the choice from "Do you blow up this town of wonderful people or side with them?" to "Do you work with the low-class, moral people or the rich, a/immoral ones?" By making Tenpenny a faction--but making the quests all be morally wrong--you add weight to the decision to side with them. It's not one decision that dooms you for life, it's the first step down a long, dark road.
I think the "good vs evil" duality suffers from "good" being the point of reference no matter what. Good is meant to make things better and often unambiguously helps the people/place you're in; it's clearly the "right" option. Meanwhile, the "evil" option isn't an alternative viewpoint, it's just "I don't want to do the good choice" option, often with some money or other reward offered as a weak attempt to prop it up. It feels shallow and one-dimensional, because it's not a viable worldview but rather a petty "I don't want to be a good guy." You're not choosing to be evil as much as rejecting being good, and you can see how lopsided the results are.
Exactly, that’s why, as cool as it sounds in theory, I see no motivation to act “evil”. It feels meaningless if being “evil” just means pointless murder, and since I’m not a psychopath that isn’t inherently fun to me.
It’s an issue in games because playing a game for feeling and experience and immersion vs playing for efficiency lead to good vs evil only being relevant to some people. People who want to play a game to experience a different reality will make decisions based on their own morality and what they would do in those situations, most people aren’t evil and abide by social norms so they will usually pick options that are good or options that have massive benefits People who want to play a character will pick options based on the morality of the character they play People who want to be good at the game will only pick options that benefit them and disregard morality When a game is not stimulating your feelings and only stimulating your monkey brain dopamine receptors you will not care about your actions and only pick efficient options, so making a good evil system requires that the game has tangible benefits to making immoral decisions, yet these benefits are outweighed by a genuine guilt built upon characters and environment and storytelling.
I think an interesting workaround is when doing the "Good" thing is absolutely the worst thing for you mechanically. Like not in the sense that you get a lesser reward. But in the sense that doing the right thing actively inconveniences you in some way. There's a game called "Lisa: the painful" where you're given a choice early on between letting a completely useless party member die or losing one of your limbs. And this isn't just a cosmetic choice. Losing that limb actively makes the game harder to play and it doesn't come back. I find the idea of making it hard to be good more interesting than the idea of making it profitable to be evil... but I also stopped playing that game shortly after reaching that choice because it was depressing. So it's very interesting in theory, but I'm personally too soft for it in practice.
There's something extremely satisfying about exploring a world and seeing positive changes around you, or the absolute heartbreak of when something you thought was the right choice has horrific consequences.
Like Judy telling you everyone at Clouds is dead... I really wanted to help the dolls in that questline, and it was so heartbreaking to find out that I could only keep he status quo if I wanted them to stay alive.. I think it hurt most because deep down, I knew that it would go wrong, but there was this blind hope that made me go through with the plan. It really helped to characterize Night City as the antagonist of the story...
I think it just comes down to the fact that most "evil" options in gamed are bad options. The problem is putting the player character in a position in which an evil choice is also actually beneficial. You have to make good decisions harder and evil decisions easier.
@@Solaxe That may be a true point, but we won't ever get to prove it if we keep conflating evil and bad. Things look a lot different in more muddled scenarios, if the game makes you feel bad for choosing good and vice versa. If it's "optimal" to play good, even if it's a nice moral lecture from the game about how it always wins out in the end etc., you aren't really being good for good morals sake.
The good decisions harder and evil decisions easier is done EXCEPTIONALLY well in the Dishonored series. The more peaceful endings in Dishonored are generally harder to get as you constrain yourself with boundaries to stop yourself from murdering. The more chaotic endings in Dishonored are so much easier. You are free to do whatever your mind desires, much to the dismay of the people around you. It’s fun to unleash creative havoc on the world, but it’s also fun finding ways to slip by without hurting a soul. Both ways are fun, but the evil way allows more freedom with the game’s full technical depth.
@@Solaxe Yeah, that's true, most players will do good guy run especially on their first run because that's typically how games were intended to be played. However when it comes to evil runs, most of the time playing evil is just not that interesting because games like I said were designed to be good guy in mind, so being evil kinda comes off as afterthought. For example, in KOTOR1, before you get access to Force powers, if you play Dark Side all you will really do is steal someone's lunch money. It's simply not fun because your options to do Dark is very limiting and simply not rewarding. Even more modern RPGs have this issue, because like I said devs assume you're gonna play good guy.
My favorite playthrough of New Vegas was an evil run, and what made it so fun was I set one simple goal: Take whatever option pays me the most caps. I genuinely had no idea where this route would go. I thought maybe I would end up working for House, but we instantly got into an argument over the worth of the Platinum Chip, which lead to me killing him. The Legion was also off the table, as their "honor" based society held little incentive for me, especially with how crude their settlements were. In the end, I actually ended up working for the NCR. They had no shortage of problems to solve, and being on their good side gave me an abundance of resources. Their sheer size also meant I could get away with a lot more, as many of my quest givers didn't seem to mind or notice me solving their problems in dirty underhanded ways. In the end, I took the most vanilla route possible in New Vegas, but I did it for all the wrong reasons with the cruelest methods possible. I think my favorite thing about the playthrough is it really gave me a new perspective of the NCR and Mojave as a whole. I could really see how corruption could flourish when working with "the good guys". While Ceaser is a monster and House isn't perfect, neither of them would have let me get away with half the stuff I pulled, their plans were too meticulous. The NCR's size prevents that kind of control, in a sense it's a status quo faction just trying to keep itself alive, and that's ripe the manipulation of corrupt individuals like myself. It's this kind of complexity that really cements New Vegas as a favorite for me, and is part of why I keep coming back.
I think evil options not allowing for some pragmatism also has an effect. Like, you can be evil and still save a village from some bandits, especially if you're a Lawful Evil character who still believes in some semblance of order. You get loot, and a village in your debt that can be useful for your purposes. Another thing I think is that it's harder to justify an evil playthrough if you're a naturally empathetic person who has difficulty stomaching the thought of hurting innocent people just to "reject" the obvious good option. People don't often run on the good or evil binary; there's tons of nuance that video games just don't usually replicate effectively, if at all.
The absolute best way I ever saw what you're getting at summarized was this: "In a game with no sides, why are you still playing the Good Guys?" "Because my ultimate power fantasy is being able to help everyone."
Baldur's Gate 3 did a great job in doing what you've described imo. Without spoiling anything, this pragmatic approach you're talking about is completely possible, there isn't just an obviously good and evil choice but the outcome is determined by so many small choices along the way that you can shape it in pretty much any way you want.
@@AclibButLikeTheRealOne I had an opposite experience with BG3, I tried my second playthrough as villains in co-op and there's a lot of messed up stuff you can do with no real reason, and I'm speaking about dialogue/quest choices. More over, the game tries to guide you towards a heroic path right from the start, like you have no choice but to help in battle at the gates, even if you run away there, the NPCs gonna act like you're the hero who helped and you will have to actively ignore that, trying to justify things in your head, instead of having it justified in-game.
@@AclibButLikeTheRealOne Try being "pragmatic" about raiding the grove and report back on the ratio of chaotic evil to not chaotic evil options you found )or more importantly were forced to take). The first real and only evil "route" branching in the game is handled horribly, gives only one party member at the expense of three, and doesn't even let you relish in your own power WITH your companions willingly at your side. The entire evil "route" in BG3 is that of a psychopathic CE murderhobo.
@@ladywaffle2210 You got the quote slightly wrong it's "In a game with no consequences, why are you still picking the good side?". However this also gets down to the basic gist of why RPGs are designed like they are, people want to feel like the hero so games tend to cater to that.
When I played Knights of the Old Republic as a kid, I LOVED the Evil/Dark Side playthrough. Mostly because the more evil I was, the more cool powers I got, and the "evil" choice was usually fairly obvious, so I always knew what to pick to get stronger. That was one of the only games that I would do evil playthroughs of.
SWTOR is also amazing for nuanced evil. The light side sith aren't typically what you'd call likable, you could even argue they're not less evil just less cartoonishly evil. It's fascinating how much nuance they managed to put into the sith.
Agreed, KOTOR is a great exception to the rule. That game goes out of its way to give you nonstop rewards for evil choices, while being good often means extreme altruism. It makes sense given the lore.
I think a lot of writers just make the bad route into the stupid route. Real evil is not just randomly murdering people to your own detriment. Real evil is enriching yourself to the detriment of others.
Yes, but no one in real life actually consider themselves as an "evil guy" - instead, when doing something morally wrong, people always assume that they are good guys who deserve more and who have to make a living in a cruel world. To put it simply, being evil by definition requires from a person to be ignorant of real effects and consequences of their actions, or, in other words, to be a stupid person. So yes, the "stupid route" is exactly what a good writer can give you as a reward for choosing evil :D
It's hard to be 'evil' because games force you to be 'good' (mainstream normie). Because gaming corporations (and corporations in general) are very moral 🙄
I just feel like pointing out, that game comes with some irony. The difficulty and monotony of the genocide route aims to deter you from continuing, but the boss battles counter-intuitively encourage the route.
Tbh the reason for the genocide route is the player curiosity. They have freed the monsterkind in the pacifist route. So what will happen if you do the opposite.
I think the real reason evil doesn't often feel that fun in RPGs is because the choices are immoral as opposed to amoral. The evil choice is always explicitly cruel and malicious, as opposed to simply selfish and apathetic. And like... No one wants to really feel like they are actively a bad person.
I mean yeah. It's supposed to be evil, not neutral, after all If we take your definition of evil, there's a lot of evil playthroughs in games people often give crap for not having one. Fallout 4 with the brotherhood, for example
@@Michael-bn1oi So is the Institute. Railroad is simply pointless. The Minutemen ending is only available if you kill all three other factions. I guess war truly never changes.
amoral is easily the worse evil. acting in an immoral way at least requires some conviction. on the other hand, all of the worst atrocities in human history were facilitated by the lazy, the cowardly, and the amoral nimbies.@@anna-flora999
I disagree with the last sentence (at least in terms of games) but I fully agree with the gist of the rest. We need more moral shades represented. Let me be immortal. Let me amoral. Let me be moral. Let me be something inconsistent.
There is much simpler answer - being evil is boring because most of the time the "evil" routes only exist to meet the quota in the first place. Evil options are barely functional, you gain nothing by being evil, and you loose all the lore you'd get by talking with people instead of killing them, so it's ultimately less content than you'd get by playing good.
Yeah like the time i've killed all the dead horses and the other faction (don't remember the name) beacuse i killer the friendly npc for a mistake on the start of dead money dlc. I literally wiped out everyone don't knowing they are supposed to talk to me... When i made the second walkthrough i understood how much i lost 😂.
Plus if you genuinely make a true evil route, most of the time the community or the public gets mad because it’s moral reprehensible, which kinda goes with the territory of being evil. I personally prefer the idea of having true evil available as it makes it more clear that the choices you make are truly good and not simply railroaded.
@@sketcher445I interpreted it more as in the logic is very much like a cartoon villain. No reason for doing evil things, they’re just evil because they’re meant to be. Their whole personality is just… being evil. Super one-dimensional.
This exactly there's almost no nuance I feel like baldurs gate 3 subverts this for the most part. You can be a mustache twirling villain, a realistic character who does good and bad, or just a murder hobo. It's pretty good for playing evil
@@sketcher445 Being evil in Dishonored is fuxking amazing and gives you 1000 more ways to fight. Morrowind is also fantastic at consequences and freedom. But yeah, most of the time. Yah.
Media differences aside, I'd like to make an analogy with an anime character that is essentially a player going on an evil RPG campaign: Overlord. Momonga/Ainz Ooal Gown, as well as basically all original inhabitants of the Tomb of Nazarick are undeniably evil, but they're not "evil for the lulz". Even the guardians like Albedo and Shalltear, who despise humans, are (even if through great effort and orientation) able to get past that in order to accomplish the missions given to them. Ainz will use whatever subterfuge and tactic he can to get an advantage, be it political or in combat, but he still struggles with being a former human (and slowly losing his grasp of it) as well as caring for the well-being of everyone in Nazarick - normally an evil video game character would be a lone wolf or simply use everyone around them as replaceable pawns, as if they were total sociopaths and misanthropes. He has a unique personality and core beliefs/values, which is also true for every other member of the cast, which makes them all interesting and sometimes understandable. It's rare for them to kill someone because they're mad, or lost control, which is also something that most games are very quick to do with their evil characters. Video games with evil playthroughs are often boring because the writers often don't have the time or will to elaborate on the character, and the evil route ends up lacking any depth. If you're writing a story about what's essentially a good villain, you need to have traits such as multidimensionality, clear motivations, charisma/commanding presence, at least some sympathetic qualities, and a consistent behavior/logic. Leave any of that out, and you get a General Hux instead of a Grand Moff Tarkin.
Most plots do evil the wrong way. It's far more compelling when the choice isn't "Help people or screw them over for your own benefit," but "Help people, but at additional risks that may undermine your efforts in the long run and require sacrifices that make you question whether the ends justifies the means." One game I remember that I felt did this well- Tyranny.
YES! Making people choose between two different wrongs, or a wrong for the right thing is much better. I can't count the time I thought to myself "This is a wrong for the greater good."
Oh yeah onenof the best gray area games of all times where really...there wasnt a good choice more like the lesser evil then evil and sometimes that wasnt what you thought it was.
Wasteland 3 did it well with the Denver questline. Brainwash valor for the Gippers and they give oil back to Colorado Springs but angers the Patriarch and he doesn’t reward you and you’re also alienated by the Machine Commune, Capture Reagan for the machine commune and you get valor alive but have to kill the Gippers and Colorado Spirngs doesn’t get oil back, Hold Reagan hostage and you get Valor alive but you’re alienated by both the Gippers and the Machine Commune but you also turn the oil back on for Colorado Springs and you’re rewarded, or kill Valor just for the lolz. Personally I took Reagan hostage because everyone survives and I still get my rewards and turning the oil on is a step for the “best” ending is for Wasteland 3
I agree very much. Doing the right thing is very easy when it also benefits you more than doing something else. True character is only shown when somebody chooses to do the right thing even when it doesn't seem beneficial to oneself.
I think it should be more along the lines of: Being evil should actually be the one that give you good short term and personal rewards (direct upgrades to yourself and your equipment), but can bite you in the back really hard when you least expect it, and it can close a lot of doors with relations with normal people but the doors it does leave open allow you to network with powerful people and without constraint. Being neutral is the smart play where all doors remain open to you, but has the problem of being impossible to maintain in the long term, and leaves you very much alone without the relationships and the benefits the other two bring. Being neutral can slowly break you down into evil as well, as sometimes one must acknowledge the injustice inaction can cause, and that avoiding engaging with your emotion and human side isn’t healthy. being good can allow you to form some good long term investments through relationships with people, but you loose a lot of the personal benefits as you sacrifice more of your time, resources, and relationships with others tearing yourself apart for the short term feeling of “it feels good”. It can pay off sometimes, but a lot of the time you get absolutely nothing in return
I always really liked the narstive behind the binary choices in bioshock 2, maybe because I am a parent. The way your daughter would rationalize your choices and see them as the correct and even morally right path to take regardless of what you choose really hit home just how impressionable a child who idolizes their parent can be. In the end, you aren’t making arbitrary good or bad choices, you’re setting examples for the potential hero or monster your child will end up becoming when she escapes out into the wider world.
And man, it also makes the Neutral Good ending the most narratively satisfying and interesting, Eleanor sees these contradictory behaviours from Delta and has to try and come to terms with why he acted the way he did and why in his final moments he chooses to die rather than make her a worse person. I think it only hits as hard as it does because you are given the option to take these other parts and the ending doesnt really care about why you take the complicated path you do, it's about her coming to terms with the complex nature of her idol.
It really missed the mark with me as i remember saving every little sister except 1 because i was really close to an adam upgrade, and then your daughter will turn up evil because i didn't saved 100% of the little sisters
@@arielmatiauda5110 bruh you just told on yourself. She only turns evil if you kill the bosses instead on showing them mercy. Otherwise if you show mercy on the bosses and somehow miss a sister then MC just dies.
@@Pocket_Crab i remember a scene, where she has the option to save or kill someone and said something along the lines of exactly how you thought me and then she harvest the girl, and i remember only doing "good karma" except for a single little sister harvest
Even if very few people take the evil path, the fact that you could have been cruel and selfish but choose not too means so much more to the fantasy of most RPGs than if you'd never been presented with that option at all. It definitely adds enough value to the experience to be worth putting into the game.
That's part the Ubdertale charm I believe, the knowing that you could be killing characters but choose not too is what gives the pacifist route its value, if the only other option was the neutral ending it wouldn't mean as much.
No if being Evil gave you a Weapon to one-shot everything and Cash like crazy and interesting interactions not just everyone hunting you people would do it without thinking about it.
I get your point, but at the same time, it can warp the game by including evil options. What I mean is, the writers and voice actors and everyone now have to do twice the work because there's twice as much "game" to be made. So, naturally, each individual playthrough gets less development and is shorter. It can be even more difficult to actually make the evil options fit into the game and not break the narrative. So while what you're saying is true, that there is a positive aspect to allowing a choice, it also has alot of costs that quite possibly outweigh that benefit.
The old super Nintendo game, Ogre Battle, had an interesting way of showing the benefits one night gain for being evil. In that game, the easiest form of combat (only ever targeting the weakest units) pushes you towards evil, whereas only targeting the strongest enemies (and making combat a lot harder for you) pushes you towards good.
I think a huge reason most games evil routes fall so flat regardless of the narrative built around them is that it takes individual agency to commit meaningful acts of evil, and that current game design and structure, especially the "quest giver" centric formula arent really able to allow players that kind of agency over their actions.
I think the real reason is for most games you aren't meant to be evil so it's more of an after thought. Like in baldur's gate 3, no matter how evil you want to be at the end of the you still need to go against the actual evil guys or in Skyrim. You can do all the evil quests and stuff but some npcs will still treat you like you are the hero and you still need to actually be the hero to finish the main story
BG3 has a valid reason though, if anything I like their approach to evil. (Spoilers for evil route) In both good and evil playthroughs you still ultimately have to fight the ones in charge of the Absolute, but the huge difference is WHY you fight. In a good run you want to stop evil guys from being evil. In an evil, non murder hobo playthrough, you are trying to seize *control* of the absolute for your own benefit. Alot of people take issue with the fact that we can't be in good terms with the Chosen the whole way through, but it makes sense as by this point in the story you know that the Absolute is a mindflayer plot to begin with and everyone infected is a planned pawn for the Chosen to use, taking control of the Absolute both protects you from the Chosen subduing you and it also grants you unbelievable power
In previous BG's playing evil clearly wasn't an intended route, even starting companions from BG2 suggest a good "canon" playthrough. Less money, less experience, choices were often just to be mean, without some sort of benefit or logic behind it, etc. It also goes for many other games.
A malicious route (killing and destroying everything in sight) isn't the same as an amoral route (taking the decision of manipulating, lying and killing to your benefit).
@@incendiary6243 Let´s try to prove murder and theft are indeed amoral, first from a basic syllogism, then through the ethymology. Animals hunt each other, that´s murder. Porperty doesn´t exist in the natural world, that´s theft. Sexual coercion and domination exist in multiple animal species including ducks, penguins, ducks and great apes -to name a few- that´s rape. So, the syllogism is as follows: Animals don´t have morality Animals steal, kill and rape Murder, theft and rape are amoral. Now on to the ethymology: a-moral from Greek ´a-not/lack of´ and Latin ´moral/moralis-manner or custom´ however moral was first used to translate the Greek ´ethikos´ Amoral an adjetive that means "ethically indifferent," first coined in 1882 by Robert Louis Stevenson (or so they say) as a differentiation from immoral. The term immoral would apply better to the player that´s just a "murderhobo" or serial killer, just killing for the sake of killing, given the circumstances you could also call an amoral player someone with a flexible ethical code or with a colorful pragmatism.
@rodrigocoockiemonster4460 humans kill other animals too, and that's not murder. Killing and murder are not the same. Property not existing and therefore being theft makes literally no sense. If animals cannot have property, then they cannot be stolen from, and then theft cannot be 'natural', whatever that means. If your character chooses to lie, cheat, and steal because it benefits them, that is immoral. It is an intentional act to harm others. It is also immoral to murder indiscriminately. But the prior scenario has a lot more room for character development and nuance, but is often not done justice because it is hard to make a story and characters fit so much content well
In games in which I have moral choices, I can never bring myself to play the evil path. Never. I can't tell how often I've played Fable - The Lost Chapters and everytime when I start, I say to myself "This time. This time you'll play evil." And then within the first 2 in-game minutes this little girl asks me to find her teddy Rosie and all my evil ambitions are gone and I 100% of the time end up with a good playthrough 🙃
A closer comparison would be Red Dead 2 and GTA. Like GTA, Red Dead has the generally nameless infinitely respawning NPCs that don't mean anything to the story. But with Red Dead, you can see the impact of your mindless killing with Arthur. How he talks about feeling violent with the people at camp and how he hates the man he's becoming. And you see what being evil is doing to Dutch and the gang and everything falling apart. I want to not be evil in Red Dead so Arthur can redeem himself and live the rest of his days as a good person.
As a side, read dead 1 feels like it has 2 endings based on your morality. Good= a man with a bad past turns good and the government broke its promise because of corruption and malice. Evil= government broke its promise because you were a monster who couldn’t be left alone. Same ending but one feels just
Being honorable in RDR2 is tedious and unrewarding gameplay wise. Besides, you can be an evil SOB 90% of the game and gain back most honor in the last part of Arthur's story.
Two words: _Soul Nomad_ by Nippon Ichi Studios. You can only do the evil playthrough after completing the game normally, and oh boy, that context makes a huge difference. You only need to make a few decisions at the start that aren't really evil, they're just not overly self-sacrificial and altruistic. Then it catapults you into a story that _very explicitly_ changes because you're not showing up at places at the time you normally would have. While joke characters and affable goofball villains all become serious characters throwing aside their differences and conflicts to stop you, just making it to a certain town a few months later than you would have in your normal playthrough throws you a little context you weren't ready for. It makes you stop think about half the "good guys" you were helping before, and maybe decide that while you might be doing it for the wrong reasons, you might be doing the right thing when you slaughter them. You're evil, but not for no reason, or a stupid reason, and until the predictable out-of-control plot spiral into eating god that you really should expect from the Japanese by now, you can kinda jam with the evil route.
Yes, good game. The evil playthrough was fun because you got characters you didn't get in the normal story. But you do get your just desserts at the end.
@@gamerxcool Was actually going to point this out, but Undertale might have the best evil route of gaming itself. The literal premise of it is just "I can just reset, so I'm gonna see what happens." Sans literally calls you out on this and makes the (probably correct) guess that you've already done a pacifist route. Enough said. (Also Chara turning this on your head and making you ACTUALLY evil. An ACTUAL good way to make you reap what you sow)
To me it's really just the fact that being "evil" really just means going around and killing everyone you see and eventually it gets boring there is no depth to your evil deeds its just do you kill and steal from everyone or not and most RPGs are like that. Also the fact that you actually get rewarded for being a good person most of the time
See Trevor and all the other player characters in the GTAV campaign. No depth, all evil, and you are REQUIRED to be evil. And in multiplayer, you get MORE GAME if you are bad than if you are good. Play it good and you have a sub par driving game and dolls house. It isn't the same sort of game as Fallout3.
Have you played BG3? I initially planned to do an evil playthrough and was having good success with it 20 hours in eithout massaccring people for no reason. Currently I'm trying to redeem my character however the games gives you A LOT of options to be a goddamn evil piece of shit and actually incentivizes you to do it. BG3 is probqbly that one rpt that is an exception to this.
No shit. True evil has no depth. That's the whole point. That's why evil should be rejected, irl or otherwise. It's shit, shallow and fake all at it's best.
the problem, for me, is that usually its not even worth it to be evil, because the things you do makes npcs react to you by fighting and you have no choice but to kill em, which will make you lose a lot of side content. so im always worried that ill lose content by being evil. if we got a whole branch of sidequests due to the things ive done, it would be worth it
Yep, even in Fallout2 (one of the best RPGs ever imo), they give you an option to be a slaver... but then the game severely punish you in every possible way, basically ruining your playthrough. So why bother, it's not worth it.
Heres the thing though, thats kind of the point. When you do evil things, people are obviously gonna dislike or even hate you because of those evil actions. Thats how it is. If you want to be evil, part of that is knowing that near everyone around you is *going to* hste you.@@bdleo300
In Fallout 3 you can actually max out your karma by selling slaves, and donating half the caps to the church. You'll get rich and get positive karma at the same time
My biggest thing is that being "evil" in a lot of games equates to just being mean. You don't need to explicitly be an asshole to have bad morals, and its moreso (to me) an issue of me just not wanting to be explicitly rude to people. If there is going to be an "evil" option it shouldn't default just be your typical schoolyard bully, there should be more nuanced options that allow for more sinister and devious play that allow you to put on the facade of being good while furthering your own evil goals.
Agreed. The truly evil route in Fallout 3, for instance, could be the player taking over Megaton themselves - perhaps holding the people there to ransom with the threat of the bomb. "I'm in charge now. Do as I say, or this whole town will disappear!" And you wouldn't get there by simply being mean. Far from it - you'd need to ingratiate yourself with the town to get close enough to the bomb and set everything up. You'd need to be NICE to them. Hell, do it right and they may even gladly accept you as their new leader; they're halfway to that already with the "good" ending.
This is part of why I love Baldurs Gate, you can be "nice" for the sake of making things easier for yourself and be evil whenever it's beneficial. (And evil is more nuanced than "kill everyone you meet", unless you don't want it to be)
You can kinda do this in SWtOR. I was playing my bounty hunter character with 3 rules. 1: Always take the job, no matter what. I'm a bounty hunter, not a moralist. 2: Never betray the original employer. Reputation is everything. 3: Always prioritize credits except when doing so would break the first two rules. The opening planet for bounty hunters has you working for a Hutt, and that Hutt sends you to track down and kill a scientist and bring proof of the kill to strongarm the dude's wife into doing what the Hutt wants. So I took that job and tracked down the scientist. The game gives you an option to either kill him, accept a bribe from him to let him leave but say you killed him, or lie to him and accept the bribe but kill him anyway. I did the latter option, not because it was necessarily evil (because it was, especially when I took his head back to his wife), but because it netted me the most credits without betraying my original employer... the Hutt.
Too many of these games with moral decisions encourage either an "evil" or "good" playthrough. To an extent, this should happen. There should be benefits to pursuing a playstyle. However, it typically leads to both evil and good playthroughs removing the RP aspect, the "deciding based on how your character would act," and instead just choosing whatever seems most extreme in hopes of pushing that alignment bar in one direction or another. Ultimately, I think the issue is hiding content behind some otherwise arbitrary measurement of your morality. What's needed would be a massive increase of data, more paths that open up based off individual decisions rather than some made up number value. And making it absolutely clear to players that your decisions, your individual decisions, have more impact. Perhaps a three-way path towards the beginning with no choice inherently good or evil options based off one important decision. Side comment. Make sure the player largely knows the effect of their options. Even if seeing, "Dark Side Points Gained, Light Side Points Gained, Influence Gained: Kreia, Influence Lost: Kreia" is meme-worthy.
In Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous the evil options are supported by the fact they give you access to a lot of exclusive content. In the game, you are supposed to lead a crusade against the demons. However, midway into the game you can choose to instead turn yourself into a demon (or a lich, if you did the right quests). Being a demon unlocks more content in a later chapter of the game where you have to infiltrate a demonic metropolis in the Abyss. Since as a demon the demon queen of that realm personally invites you there instead of you having to sneak in, you get somewhat of a VIP treatment right off the bat, and can even do quests that you can't do otherwise, such as one that lets you overthrow various demon big shots to steal their followers. Your quest turns from ridding the world of demons to usurping the demon lords that are currently leading the invasion. The Lich path likewise has some great characterization, with the main character being criticized by their followers for trying to defeat an evil with another evil. You have the option to just pull rank and shut them up, or rationalize it as sacrificing your own morality to save the world, whether it's a lie or not is up to you. All that while opening up extra options when interacting with undead characters that let you use your necromantic powers to unlock more options and even gain more playable characters by reanimating certain enemies. Being evil feels good because you're not just burning bridges with the "good guys", but the ones on the side of evil are rational and welcoming to a degree. You still have to rise through the ranks and earn their respect with force or trickery, but you can end up with as many, or even more options than playing the good routes. Also you can choose to instead turn into a hive mind of billions of sentient bugs if you completed all of the hidden requirements for it, which makes literally every single NPC in the game, including the other playable characters, turn against you in disgust. But since you now have basically infinite power, the endgame turns into an all-you-can-eat buffet of curb stomping enemies and former allies, where even the main villain of the campaign is utterly disgusted by your choices. In a game that's so heavy on the role playing aspect, having such a big change is truly a huge twist. If you can stomach, pun intended, eating everyone that has been helping you through the entire game (and your little dragon, too!).
People just play games when everything is a form of social control. Thank you for sharing this exemption to the rules. Interesting and appreciated I would of never known this was the case.
YES!!! This perfectly describes why that is my favorite game of all time. They also give you a ridiculous amount of options for character and class customization which just makes the experience even more fun.
There are games that have an interesting twist on this.Take This War of Mine for example: in that game, food and essential supplies are very hard to come by. So one day you might encounter an old friendly couple only protected by their single son. Will you beat the son to death and take all the food they have, leaving the old couple to die, or do you spare them, and come home empty handed? But what about your brother who is deathly ill at home? The old couple have the medicine you need, but they are not willing to part with it as they need it just as much themselves. What now? Who is the good and bad one? The choice just got a whole lot more interesting now.
Yeah agreed. I think playing as a morally grey "evil" with solid motivations behind their fucked up actions is a lot more compelling then just being a mustache twirling villain who just does bad stuff for the sake of being bad.
It's not a hard choice. If you have to commit a crime against someone who's done you no wrong, you're the bad guy. What gives you more right to survive than these people? Because you're the protagonist? No. They have the right to live, and enjoy their property without someone thinking it's ok to murder them, because they have a need too. Sure, it's a video game, it doesn't matter, do what you want, but if you carry that mindset into reality, you get Portland during the BLM riots.
'You' are still the evil one for killing an elderly couple's son and potentially the elderly couple whilst also stealing their medicine. At least that's how I see it. A horrible act is still a horrible act regardless on the justifications we can put on it. To be honest I find more enjoyment in characters who are just straight up evil than one's who are morally evil. Morally evil characters annoy me for the most part. Its like a game of who can play the biggest victim.
@@gwourubased on the comment i think they define morally evil as the side thats evil with motivations that theyre willing to appease "by any means necessary" while straight up evil is a trope called Pure Evil
I have noticed the same thing with baldurs gate 3 lately. Even when I played a character I characterized as evil, I would still mostly use good choices, because most evil choices were either irrational, where the benefit was far outweighed by the drawbacks, not only from knowing how the game would unfold, but also from a characters point of view, or just the cowardly "don't involve me in this" kind of response
@USERZ123XD holy shit that's actually such a psychopath line of thought, you really want to get your money's worth of combat for your first playthrough XD
Maybe because worlds like fallout are already destroyed and most of the characters you meet already went trough a lot or already "broke"... And there are less of them. So being evil in these types of games would make the world more empty than it already is and would leave you with an empty feeling also.
I think one big problem is that so many morality models in games portray evil as cartoonishly evil, when you could easily tie a progression system to stepping on others to get ahead or manipulating your way to the top of the food chain. There should be a distinctively different payoff for both paths as well, making the evil path worth it, or enticing enough to also make the good path an actual moral decision
That’s why I like Dishonored. Choosing to be evil makes the game much easier, but it also visibly makes the world around you a far worse place. But the easy ending, although difficult to achieve, is highly rewarding for your efforts too with a satisfying outcome for every character.
Yep. Totally random but this is also why I like Frostpunk. That game will turn you into a monster in order for the city to Survive especially on your first playthrough and first time trying to beat the game.
Isn't it kind of the opposite of this? If you kill a lot of people, and put the game into "high chaos" mode, the game puts more enemies and obstacles into future levels. Everyone's on high alert, and they're bringing the big guns. Not that I see this as a punishment, exactly. In my experience, the high chaos versions of levels are actually a lot of fun. But just sneaking around the easy version of levels for the good ending definitely isn't the "hard" path.
@@epsteindidntkillhimself69 The game is very easy when you make use of everything the game offers like instantly hiding dead bodies, strong weapons like explosives, guns and even using the basic sword makes the game ultra easy
I’m sad Baldurs gate three dark urge was not brought up more because there was a lot of rewards for the nasty things you had to do and I thought that was a really big change from fallout and other RPG’s. It really gave you a reason to be terrible, so that there is a dilemma of doing it or not.
Dude trust me I’m upset with myself that I didn’t include it more too. I had about two to three minutes of dialogue where I raved about Baldurs Gate evil path but I cut it out of the video because a lot of what I said matched the same thoughts I expressed for New Vegas, just with more examples unique to the game. It got to the point where I felt like I was repeating myself, so I didn’t want the pace of the video to get dragged down by it. I should’ve written it better to combine the two at the end more, but because I wanted to keep the comparisons tight with the just the fallout franchise, the result was what you watched.
@@StrictlyMediocre understandable to keep it between the two games anyways cause they are fundamentally different when it comes to to morality I just saw Baldurs really reward you for being evil and punishing you for not I’ve not seen that in a lot of other games and it was quite refreshing and it’s really something I hope I see more in RPGs because it added a lot of depth to being good and having to scrifice yourself for the greater good instead of being rewarded
Don't know about the dark urge path, but doing evil stuff like siding with the goblins, etc, felt really underdeveloped to me in bg3. Felt like there was an expected path that was mostly good. The more I deviated from that path, the more quests I became locked out of, and the more the party hated me. Maybe I should give dark urge path a try, I suppose.
@@sithmorpheus9747 you definitely have to accept the dark urge path for a while, but once you get further into it if you go back on what you promise you get really punished for it and if you continue, there’s really cool rewards so you get stuck doing terrible things
@@sithmorpheus9747 Overall, the game still rewards you far, far more often for playing good vs. evil, even as the dark urge because yeah, you get a few neat things but you lose out on so much more in the process that it's not really worth it if you're aiming to make a playthrough as fulfilling as possible. BG3 has a better "evil" route then some RPGs but I wouldn't call it particularly good or satisfying when you're still left feeling like you're shooting yourself in the foot both gameplay wise and narratively.
Most games just allow you to be cartoonishly evil. I would love it if AAA games had story content like Tyranny, where evil is nuanced and varied and not the standard chaotic evil or a robinhoodesque "evil" that turns out as good in the end.
Hearing about Tyranny almost makes me wish for a nuclear winter. The game is so unique despite being a small budget gem yet there'll never be a continuation of its ideas :(
I wouldn't really call it cartoonish, as that would actually be fun to play as a over the top silly cartoon baddie. Most games give you a watered-down, half baked villain following the hero's story and saving the day, with the good and bad ending. Let's pick between the red or blue option. I mean, I'd love to play a game where you can follow a hero or villain path that's actually it's own path. I think being an actual cartoonish villain would be a lot of fun. If games gave you that option without crushing your experience with constantly punishing you for doing a villain playthrough
Undertale has one of my favorite evil routes, because it actually unpacks the trauma you're inflicting on the characters. You hear their desperation to live, their desire to protect the people they love, their grief when they fail. When you grind all of that into pulp under your heel, you make a barren world without love or joy, and you _feel like_ the kind of monster that should've been stopped. “Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring.” ~Simone Weil In most games, evil actions _cut off_ content. You get less game for your game. The best evil routes are the ones with _the presence of a story,_ rather than the absence, in the aftermath of your actions. Something to say about cruelty, instead of a nihilistic sandbox full of paper dolls. And as others have said, this is even more compelling when you have more nuanced options than, "Attacking people on-sight."
I totally agree. It's a slow build that requires more and more purposeful acts of cruelty to get the evil ending. The first time I did it, I was able to dissociate just for the sake of curiosity, but even by the time you get to Snowden, it gets to be almost too much. The whole town is abandoned or in hiding because of you. Papyrus, the goofy guardian who just wants to be friends, is powerless to stop a real villain. The characters that you can grow to love are only safe if they never meet you. But on the other hand... Megalovania?
I think the whole access to content debate is why evil usually feels so cheap. Developers don't want to go to the effort of making a whole area of their game that only evil people will explore, so you always end up with this cheap system where you can sort of do everything despite the way you treat people around yourself. Gamers are also part of the problem, because they complain constantly when the are locked out of content based on morality. If done correctly, you SHOULD be locked out of experiences, character interactions and areas, but you should be given alternatives. Undertale gives you these alternative interactions with the characters that really make you feel the terrible things you're doing, that's another big part of it. Morality shouldn't be treated like a game, you are hurting people and that should always be abundantly clear to the player. It often isn't.
That's not good evil as well lmao that's just a game forgetting being evil can be nuanced which by your example is clearly missing from the game ,being evil can be just as joyous and exciting as being good it's not black and white and if you think it is your just wrong being being evil =/= 1layer person who does retarded acts
I legit feel bad when I’m mean to video game characters. I know it’s just a game but the level of depth given to characters in games makes me see them as real. I know that video games will only continue to get more realistic and I hope that the percentage of people that are good in video games continues to outweigh the percentage of people that pick the bad route. I know that it probably won’t always be that way but I’m happy to hear that the percentage of people that are good in video games is the majority.
I agree. Me and my girlfriend were playing gtav and she ran over everybody and laughed. I then showed her Red Dead Redemption 2 because I enjoy it more. When I wanted to kill an npc, my girlfriend was so mad at me because she didnt want me to kill that innocent man. Thats what I like about Rdr2, the world feels realistic and all my actions are impactful
@@fallapi I haven’t played RDR or RDR2, I know that that game series is the complete opposite of GTA since your actions impact the game, GTA is merely a playground to do whatever you want with little to no consequences
I'd feel devasted if I lost some marines when I used to play Halo as a kid. Sometimes I would even restart the whole level if I couldn't save them by reverting to last checkpoint.
@@jrc1606 Same. I’m playing Fire Emblem Three Houses on classic mode, meaning that if any of my characters reach zero hit points, they die, and are out of the game. Even characters that I hate, never use, and are more burdens than assets I still reset for, because I want them to live.
I got it backwards, I legitimately have a hard time NOT choosing the evil options in Fallout games because they seem more interesting to me, and more than that it just makes for a funnier story. Helping the powder gangers and the legion is so hilariously wrong, I can't resist doing it.
I want to add on to this because I think it's really interesting: Keeping "evil" options isn't just for the players who wish to play an evil route. Rather, it also allows for each player's run to be a bit more "tailored" to their own morals, which vary by age, culture, faith, political standing, etc. For example, let's look at assassinating President Kimball in Fallout: New Vegas. Yes, you can assassinate him as part of a Legion play-through. BUT, there are plenty of arguments from pro-NCR players as to why Kimball needs to be removed from power. Therefore, some could argue that the morally-gray/"evil" choice of turning a blind eye or just straight up killing him yourself is actually a morally righteous choice.
That's why New Vegas outshines Fallout 3 in terms of moral choices because unlike Fallout 3, the choices in NV are much more morally grey and it forces the character to really think what the right choice is rather than good vs evil
For me, the difference between being evil in GTA versus Fallout is that one is you playing as a character and making them do evil things and the other is playing as an evil character. Going on a rampage in GTA doesn’t really effect the story. In Fallout, these actions have consequences and can change how you go through the main story.
@@skaterzrule4 objectively a personal problem crazy that you liked it more when you fell through the map after any strenuous action on your old gen console
I remcommend Vampyr if you haven’t already played it. Lots of choices like who and when you want to EMBARCE (not eat). The more you find out about a person the more como you get. They may info they will help you progress with other characters. Using ppl as an xp dump costs you your safe spaces around the map
Part of the problem is that most of us play roleplaying games to connect with and integrate into the world. But most evil decisions effectively drive a wedge between you and the rest of the world. You miss out on quest lines, you miss out on companions, you miss out on chances to ROLEPLAY in a ROLEPLAYING game, and it becomes "you versus the world" instead of "you being a part of that world." It's fantastic to have the option, and I'm never going to complain about a game giving us more narrative freedom, but evil playthroughs typically undermine most of the core strengths of a roleplaying game.
@@iwuanadie1058maybe in real life, but if an unkillable merciless bandit rode into town I would expect respect and fear, to have the effort and time that I put into my status be rewarded in some way. Being evil is just not profitable at times, and is actively unfun to do, so why would I play a game that isn't fun?
There are ways to make evil playthrough's work for those of us who enjoy them. In Bound by Flame, your character becomes more powerful if you succumb to the demon. In Bioshock, you reap heaps of Adam if you harvest the little sisters. In Infamous, you get access to highly destructive powers when you go evil. Ofcourse all these have their own repercussions such as bad endings. This however is a step in the right direction. As an evil agent, I expect shortcuts to power, and wealth. Perhaps missing out on a side quest but gaining money as a result. The problem with RPGs is they seldom reward you for evil, which makes no sense because the world doesn't work like that. You don't always prosper because you're good, and you don't always suffer because you're evil. Sometimes it's quite the opposite. I don't see why this can't be incorporated gameplay wise instead of making me miss out on content and loot coz I'm a "jerk" As for companions, just have evil companions too. Companions who people who choose a good playthrough get locked out
To make the choices between good and evil interesting, its important to have the outcomes variable and the situations nuanced...like real life. When you do something good, sometimes nobody cares. Sometimes you become an instant hero. Sometimes your positive action actually makes things worse. When you do something bad, sometimes you get rich. Sometimes you get imprisoned. And ironically, sometimes you become an instant hero.
I think it might be hard for developers to make an engaging evil playthrough possible because they would essentially have to program and script two games in many cases.
funly enough you can make one central story where both parties try to reach the same goal and you are the one who will tip the balance for good or ill sure is still extra work as it requires both paths to be interconected so you dont make 2 games in one but well is less than 2 games in one
@@gawkthimm6030no, it's a feature many market thenselvs around but in the end, is rpg by definition is just a Game where you play the role of your characters, even in the olden and new TTRPG campaings can be pretty linear, it's just that, most of the times, you wont see the railroad you are following.
EDIT: it seems people misinterpret what i said.. no i didn't say Skyrim or Undertale set the standard for anything, just that AAA games felt threatened by the success of Undertale, which affected the way modern RPGs are made today.. if i'm wrong i'm wrong, if i'm right i'm right.. but i'm tired of debate culture and people arguing against points i'm not making.. so i'm leaving this thread to touch grass..
@@guilhermeadfl This is correct. I think what makes it so noticable in Bethesda RPG's is the fact that you play a self defined character without a preset moral compass. You wouldn't go full evil in the Witcher for example because that's not keeping with the character of garalt. Bethesda games don't give you an archetype to follow so it's easier to bump into the "guardrails".
I can tell you right now why being evil isnt fun its because games don't let you actually be evil. Either the characters are protected or doing one bad thing makes the whole town attack you. I personally think its limitations of how quests/storylines are implemented.
@@ShatteredSightfrom what i hear letting your game have killable children or even show children being hurt all has to be offscreen as if it’s shown your game is banned
Boom, this right herhere. Being a murder murderhobo doesn't make one evil. At best, you're playing a psychopath, maybe evil, but more like, chaotic. I think the closest thing to evil i could imagine, would be siding with the Reapers in ME, not because you're brainwashed by them, but because you've made a deal, wherein you get to rebuild the nascent life that follows into your own image of perfect life. Instead, we get the choice between "doing what needs to be done and saving the galaxy, heroically" or "doing what needs to be done and saving the galaxy, but you're an asshole now."
For me it all comes down to the fact, that evil playthroughs often feel underdeveloped in comparison to good ones. While there are many reasons, why it happens, it boils down to two main factors: 1)The main problem, I notice especially frequently, is the loss of pragmatic aspect in roleplaying villains. Most RPGs treat good deeds as the ones most rational in current situation. You may think, that beeing good will make your life harder in dark settings, your story is played in, but eventuallly following the path of good brings you the best companions, best resourses, best equipment and doesn't require you to sacrifice anything when fighting for greater good. Evil path on the contrary leaves you in a much more poor state, striping you from material benefits of good walkthroughs. The best example is Mass Effect, where you can easily achieve best endings and unite the Galaxy simply by being pure Paragon throughout the trilogy. Meanwhile, playing pure Renegade, you are basically doing the Reaper's work for them, sucessfully ravaging your Galaxy at the worst time possible. There is no reason for a rational hero to behave like a villain, because it hurts him more than helps. 2) Beeing good guy, you keep your reputation high, get the best loot from killed bandits, get additional quests, which provide you additional experience to upgrade yourself. Needless to say, you also get lots of new entertaining content to experience, thus enjoying the game longer. Evil runs however tend to kill those questgivers, cutting their content off and leaving nothing for you in return. It happens, because most evil runs are written more like a loosely connected chain of alternative mission outcomes, rather than a full-fledged history, normally presented in good runs. The recent example is Baldurs gate 3, which is a real blast in a good run, giving you an epic heartfelt adventure to experience. However, when trying to play game as a villain you quickly find out, that you lose tons of content by abandoning the path of good without adequate replacement in evil runs. As a result you lose money to buy new weapons and xp to achieve new levels, thus making the late game unnecessarily difficult, compared to the good path. In the end of the day, it comes to the fact, that you don't have any rational pragamatic reason to dive into evil paths, both as a player and a character, you've created. So, the only option left to play the game as a villain for you is literally "evil for the sake of evil". Should I mention that most bad people irl will find this motivation boring at best or irritating at worst? Narrowing the description of evil in RPGs to "evil for the sake of evil", writers tend to take away most of villainy flavour from their games to the point, when even bad characters will blend in good walkthrough more naturally. Sadly, there are not many games today, which have enough guts to give pragmatically evil options to roleplay, without being afraid to show the good side less profitable, undermining the moral message behind the plot.
Thats the nail on the hammer really it's just killing content being the bad guy. I wipe the town out so now I lost out on a town with vendors, loot, quest givers. Maybe I loot the town before or after sure but again you lost vendors generating new items, maybe you do the quests before killing them all off but sometimes they offer repeatable quests gone now if you commit to the evil playthrough. And the loot from killing them isnt worth it if you dont have anyone to sell your spoils to lol.
@@cjpkallday5233 thats a simplistic "kill everything idiotic evil" - I prefer the "make all the worst choices presented" evil option play-through. I want to see what mechanics the game designers have implemented and how they used to limit the player
You kill that ONE GUY and boom, there goes 57 quests inaccessible now. Hell, you might not even be able to beat the game in some cases. You also have to factor in the image of the devs... A game that lets you torture people? Rape, and pillage? Kill kids? Hell people lit their hair on fire over that mass shooter game that I played like once...
On your first point, Undertale had an interesting take on this design, in the good playthrough you don't level up at all or gain any new equipment, so your character is very fragile. Only in the evil playthrough do you actually level up and gain increasingly powerful gear, eventually being able to one shot most standard enemies. You're right though, most games don't offer much in terms of motivation toward the "evil" options.
One thing I didn’t see you mention is the narrative cohesiveness of a specific story by playing a good or bad character. When I play Red Dead Redemption 1&2, I want to be good because both main characters are trying to redeem themselves, so I feel compelled to do what I think those characters would have chosen to do. Even in a game where it’s “easy” to be evil, like GTA V, I tend to not act like a psycho unless I’m playing as Trevor, as I don’t think Franklin and Michael would do many of the things Trevor would.
With RDR2 I prefer going with low honour until the end of chapter 5 and then helping everyone you can through chapter 6 makes Arthur's redemption more satisfying. That way you get to experience both evil and good.
In a lot of RPGs, evil routes just feel like trying to play GTA. It also lacks nuance, like you cannot be meaningfully vicious and cruel to your enemies, while also having real affections for your friends. I think it's more common to have evil story paths in certain games (Shin Megami Tensei has some stuff like this), in games that are more focused on a linear plot, but sandbox type games or RPGs with lots of side stories and plots frequently seem to struggle more with having interesting evil options.
The issue often is that your "friends" are goody two shoes as well. There's too many games where companions or friendly NPCs will have their entire family tortured and violently killed by a minor villain, but if you don't arrest him and give him community service they will lose their shit and call you the greatest demon the realm has ever seen
TBF the "evil" route in SMT games aren't even REALLY evil. They represent an ideology of freedom... even if that freedom means a lot of bad shit happening to people. Is "ultimate freedom for all beings" worth it? In turn, the "good" route is one of absolute control, with an "ends justify the means" approach to justifying the bad things that the "good" guys do. Usually, the closest thing to a truly "good" route is the Neutral route in SMT games. Being a centrist beats being an extremist, or so the developers seem to think. Ironically, the Law route - the "good" route I was talking about - is often the hardest to justify. Like basically nuking a huge area to get rid of demons, and killing all the human survivors in the process, justified as "collateral damage". SMT games are cool.
idk i think a lot of ppl think about "evil playthrough" and immediately think "oh, so like, u play as a murder-hobo and kill everyone? yeah no that sucks". A real evil playthrough for me is one where you build your character up to be 'evil' through actual in-game events/dynamics and they aren't just out there killing everyone - you make actual realistic 'evil' choices that actually benefit the character & their pursuits, y'know? A good example of a game that allows u to be evil is fallout. u can do this really easily in Fo4 and FoNV, ESPECIALLY with mods, I still prefer chaotic neutral/good playthroughs but rp'ing as a full blown villain is a fun experience in those games.
Often, it is because the world is just way better, and you have a bigger impact on fixing issues that are happening. Sure, you have the freedom to cause chaos, but it is often the worst ending or thing you can do in most games. Plus, being shamed or having character, especially ones you are close with be disappointed in you just hurts a lot more than you'd think.
@@sierranicholes6712 It's hard to be evil in those type of games because the characters feel like people like they don't just have a one off line and then never talk to you again which is why games like that are great because it makes you feel that your choices actually have an impact on the world and characters in it.
Baldur's Gate 3 actually does an alright job at providing options for playing as anything from a greed-motivated mercenary, an apathetic jerk, someone struggling with an internal demon, or just being a completely murderous bloodthirsty monster, and it provides unique dialogue and interactions for each path you take. Yet another reason it's GOTY.
@@lightworker2956 No, trust me, it won't ruin your ability to enjoy games. BG3 raised the bar, yes, but it's also a very specific KIND of game that was pushing for that kind of freedom of play, and it isn't at all reasonable to expect that level of quality and effort out of every single game that comes out because that was a huge gamble and incredibly expensive to create. Enjoy BG3 for what it is, and enjoy every other game for what they are- don't let what one does better ruin your ability to enjoy what another game does.
@@lightworker2956 It won't ruin your ability to enjoy other games because the actual quality of the story is not great. It has lots of good roleplaying and is fun to play, but there are many other rpgs with much better writing, worldbuilding and characters.
It's hard be evil in games because the options are often too binary and safe. There's usually no convincing factions to join, no ways to truly affect the world, and a lack of a satisfying ending.
Pretty much this which is why I like the reputation system in New Vegas better. Plus, a lot of the time it's a con to be evil in video games with a morality system.
Try Obsidian's RPGs like Pillars of Eternity and Tyranny, or even better Planescape: Torment, those games definitely wouldn't qualify as "safe and binary" and being evil in them is actually really engaging and fun.
Maybe that's because most people don't actually want to be evil bastards. There's plenty of evil to do IRL and sometimes it's not even intentional. Evil is the state of the world. In games being good is easy and evil is more difficult most of the time. In real life the opposite is true. Being good is hard, even more so to be altruistic. Most of the things we do are neutral to lawful neutral at best most of the time. Doing TRUE good requires work, often a lifetime of work. It's all to easy to dive into evil and malice. A stupid driver, a bad day, or even just a conversation gone horribly wrong. It may seem trivial to be a "good" person, but in reality, your probably not doing anything that could be considered truly good. Mass Charity, housing the homeless, saving people in war, stopping wars entirely. Those and much more are truly good. The rest below it are, as valuable as they are, are the product of being a decent human being. Simply put, not having adequate rewards for an evil playthrough is that there are already plenty in real life. Why invest one's self in recreating the tragedy and trauma that we already go through?
@@TheBlackAntagonist But the thing is, Games aren't real. Why can't I indulge in something I can't do in the real world? That's why play video games, to do things you can't do in real life.
I adore evil playthroughs. Problem is in a lot of games the evil playthrough content isn't fleshed out. Or just stereotypical and lacking any nuance. Instead of playing Lawful Evil or Cunning Evil it usually is 'Chaotic Evil'. Or the story is impacted very little by it. Some games also like to push you into being a good little Paladin by making the rewards of being evil or opportunistic way worse. Or simply don't offer a way to tackle the quest in another way. I always play Legion in Fallout New Vegas but even there they clearly were among the 'cut content' sections of the game. There is also the fact though a good villain character (for example a mercenary without a heart, a stonecold assassin or a manipulative ambitious noble) are going to go out of their way to help people just on the basis of good PR, good rewards or to reach another objective. Black and White morality systems in games can seriously clash with nuanced and pragmatic in character playstyles leaning towards evil/greedy.
So true, and even though the issue with the legion as a faction is that, well, they're the legion, they're still better than the NCR bc the NCR is still a failed bureaucracy that represents the failure of pre war America. Personally, I would've put Joshua Graham in the base game and made him a "faction" where he kind of creates his own little new Mormon settlement and can go to war with the NCR and Legion, because he has reason to hate both, and Joshua is arguably the best fleshed out character in the game in any capacity. But that's another thing that hurts RPGs: making characters that have integral stories to primary factions, like Joshua, and then not including them in the capacity of where you can choose them over said faction
You should go play Dayshift at Freddy Fazbenders then. Its a free fnaf fan game on game jolt, that plays like a story game with you being able to make multiple choices that give you different endings. But most importantly it let's you join the games hilarious version of Purple guy-Dave Miller in killing a bunch of a toddlers, then partying in Vegas as a reward. It sounds kinda shit I know but trust me, the games hilarious and is surprisingly well written when you get into the two sequels.
This is it! I can really only play as an evil character if the level of evil you can be is comically absurd. I found the Dark Urge and a lot of the evil dialogue choices to be so batshit that I was having fun for the first time in a long time playing evil. It's a bit hampered by the over the top edginess. But generally it's just never fleshed out to really make me want to deal with the consequences. And the older I get and the more understanding I become of what creates real world evil, the less enthused I am for it in games. Simply because they won't do it Justice. Reminds me of the show Game of Thrones. In that show there is an bad guy named Littlefinger who is a master manipulator but usually comes across as very skeevy, perverted and like the actor is trying to play a bad guy. While that same character in the books is extremely likable, is everyone's friend and his motives are mostly just plain old self interest. A lot of evil playthoughs in games seem like they allow you to be evil for the sake of it and not because you have a clear motive, which is usually not the case in good playthoughs where you have plenty of motivation both in the context of the story and the context of you as a player to be good
In my opinion, THE HARDEST game to be evil in is Star Wars: The Old Republic. I remember a mission where i killed a father in front of his son just so that that child would be sent to the Sith Academy on Korriban. It felt terrible and was a VERY hard choice to make, but had to be done. (Long Live the Sith Empire)
What's interesting about that one is its a bit more nuanced than your typical Good vs Evil system. Since you can play as a Sith but still be light. My favorite one to play was my light side Sith inquisitor. I was forced to be "evil" a few times, but it really makes you question the morality of the Jedi you encounter. There was one mission where I needed to retrieve an artifact from a Jedi's vault. Obviously one option was to just wade in kill the Jedi and take the key to the vault. Instead I took the option where I very nearly ended a massive blood feud. I snuck into the Dark side faction and talked to the leader. And I got the story about how she had this feud going because the Jedi stood her up at the alter. I got the two of them to a meeting and the Jedi remarked "You have more light in you than I do." I get them to agree to resume the marriage thing and the Head of the assassin's would be willing to stand down and end the war that was consuming the planet. I nearly achieved peace, asa Sith. Not once did I mention the artifact to anybody. Even openly refused a reward until I had no choice but to accept when the Jedi insisted I go to his vault to take one item as a reward. I go to the Jedi's vault and... am betrayed by the Jedi. He ambushes me and I'm forced to defend myself.... so I handily wipe him out thus restarting the blood feud on the planet. So the Jedi, decided to betray the person who helped to end a blood feud war on the planet and achieve peace... because they're a Sith. Wasn't the only time either. Several times you try and play nice with the Jedi, help them with a problem and they backstab you. Playing a good guy as a bad guy was a lot of fun.
Many times being evil on the Sith side just felt...counter productive. On the third planet you find out about some force sensitive children the Republic resistance were trying to smuggle out. While on your mission to capture them for Sith training you find out that all of these children were only mildly sensitive, so little that even the Jedi didn't think they could sense the force enough to train them. Your option is to send them to Korriban anyway, knowing they would be a waste of resources, time, and all end up dead or let the Republic take them so that they would be forced to feed 'useless' mouths. The Light side option, from a war stand point just made more sense, let the 'useless' orphans become a drain on the Republic's resources.
When I think of a truly evil player character, the evil Sith Inquisitor character in SWTOR is one my mind is usually naturally inclined towards remembering. As an evil Sith Inquisitor, there are plenty of opportunities to go beyond mere casual cruelty. There are choices to deceive, manipulate, and use other characters, and cause them unimaginable suffering once their usefulness has run out. By the end, if one has made the decisions necessary to achieve this outcome, the evil Sith Inquisitor will have lied to, cheated, stolen from, betrayed, tortured and/or murdered nearly everyone they've met on their path to power. Even the two of their companion characters who aren't also insane or evil (or both) will hate them, secretly or openly.
SWTOR is an outlier though. You get rewarded for the good and the evil choices mostly the same, the consequences are usually only narrative, cause you can't do huge world or gameplay changes in an MMO. That leads to a lot more people preferring the evil path than in other games. I'm usually someone who does choose the good path, but when I first played the game I chose the evil path for all the empire factions, cause they're the bad guys so you've got to play the bad guy. Yeah, if you think about it you usually feel bad after you make the evil choice, but sometimes... you just don't think too hard about it. Though if you're not a fourteen year old like I was you start to see that the factions in that game aren't exactly black and white. Another reason to play evil in SWTOR is, that there are some really hilarious interactions on that path.
Nah it’s definitely bg3 if you decide to kill the teiflings in the grove you’ll lose 3 companions and a lot of content just for 1 companion that doesn’t even have a questline
There is one game I played that made their evil arc surprisingly engaging. Surprisingly, it was Star Wars The Old Republic (The MMO), specifically, the Sith Inquisitor storyline. I'll try not to spoil the story too much because it was honestly pretty fun. You start off as a former slave thrusted into Sith training. Right from the get-go, you are forced into a social system of harassment and conflict. To impress your superiors, you are compelled to commit acts of deception and betrayal for your own survival. In this way, you aren't acting like a jerk because you want to. You're acting like a jerk because you HAVE to. The harsh Sith hierarchy forces morally ambiguous choices, shaping your character to understand that advancement demands stepping on those beneath you. Later in the story, you become more independent. You don't necessarily owe your allegiance to the Sith, but you've already made it so far. So you continue to learn more about the force and gain more power. The game does a good job of making you numb to immorality because you've been fighting for your own survival the whole time. Of course, internal conflict within the Sith order never goes away, demanding constant morally challenging decisions on the relentless path to power as a Sith Inquisitor. (Minor spoiler) There's an act in the story where you meet a Jedi apprentice, and you can turn her away from the Jedi. But it's not necessarily because you're a total douche. It's because you cause her to question her beliefs and she starts seeing things from a new perspective. She also starts seeing that the Jedi aren't necessarily the perfect "good guys" she thinks they are, and perhaps not all Sith are absolutely evil either. TLDR, It was a very compelling way to present a truly evil playthrough without making it feel like a complete guilt-trip. There are definitely some amoral decisions you can make, but you do it because you have to for your own survival. Your character was dealt a very bad hand and thrust into a very punishing environment, so you're constantly having to make terrible choices to keep up. That's how you make an evil villain arc. Bioware were really something else in their peak.
For the same reason I love the Sith Warrior storyline. You're playing as a person who believes in the Empire and the Sith Code superiority, and you'll do anything to ensure Empire safety, no matter how horrible some actions are. At the same time you can work with certain Jedi and even befriend them, you can even kill some Siths that you see as a danger to the Empire. This was one of the most morally ambiguous playthrough I made and it was extremely interesting and engaging for this reason.
I 100% get this. I have a Togrutan Female Sorc in the Inquisitor background. My headcanon is that she awoke to her powers because her master "abused her" (to use Safe For RUclips terms). After finally killing him as a matter of reflex, she was sent to the Korriban Academy. The crux of the headcanon is that, as she's _forced to be evil to survive,_ she slowly becomes comfortable with her choices. Then begins to revel in it. Then becomes that which she herself feared once upon a time. From meek and frightened slave girl, to confident Sith Sorcerer, to the brutal (and slightly mad) Darth Nox. In fact, my main is a Twi'lek Gunslinger I started on the Smuggler story (which is Republic in faction), and she sided with the Empire at Iokath. In the moment, plus with the Smuggler's story taken into account, it felt natural to repay the favor they did for me in KotET (while also sticking it to the Pubs that screwed me over so much when I was no longer useful). I missed out on a companion I would rather have had other than Quinn, but for RP purposes it felt right. The 1.0 story of SWTOR was so good specifically because each class (now each background) had their own narrative, which each told a specific story, but let you decide how your POV character fit into the narrative. Every character - the Jedi Knight and Consular, the Sith Warrior and Inquisitor, the Republic Trooper and Imperial Agent, the Smuggler and Bounty Hunter - could be a paragon of light or a heartless monster. In some cases (Knight, in particular) it can be as awkward as having massive negative karma and still saving the DC Wasteland in Fallout 3 (you massacred an entire village, Anakin! That's so hot!). But for the most part, it can work no matter what. The Knight can be either Anakin at his best or Anakin at his worst; the Consular can either be Yoda-like or one step from total insanity; the Warrior can either have a sense of warrior's honor or be as cold a killer as Darth Vader; the Sorcerer can be either a true student of The Force as a whole or embrace the Dark Side only; the Trooper can be either a proper protector of the people or a thug with a gun; the Agent can either break away from the Empire and become a free agent (the most Light Side choice I could find) or embrace Imperial ideals and be fully committed to the cause; the Smuggler can either be Han Solo (a scoundrel with a heart of gold) or can become the most notorious pirate in the galaxy; the Hunter can be either a professional with standards or...a thug with a gun (honestly, the Dark route for Hunter isn't that different from the Trooper's, and I like playing the Honor-bound Mandalorian anyway).
I started playing as a LS Inquisitor, but there was always a hint of selfishness in my choices, though only if it didn't lead to too serious damage. However, I can point out the EXACT moment when I decided to fully embrace the dark side, because I had to kill an NPC I actually liked thanks to a "minor" DS choice in a much earlier quest. Even then, though my choices were motivated by what led to the most power gained to my character, I didn't engaged in Sith's petty evil. On my Imperial Agent, I played diffently, as a Empire loyalist, and picking choices that, in my opinion, were the most pragmatic and with the best result for the Empire, leading to roughly neutral-aligned playthrough, as some of those choices were DS, other LS. But still, since the first planet, I had to deal with cleaning up the consequences of Sith stupid petty evil actions (including killing another NPC I liked, because it seemed like safer choice than leaving him go), and about halfway through the campaign, I went rogue (as much as I was allowed to), because the other option would be to accept the (stupid) Sith in charge. Still choosing to help the Empire, but very much standing against anything the Sith did, with the character being against the idea of Force users being in charge of anything, Sith or Jedi. I also played Republic loyalist Trooper, greedy what-pays-the-most Bounty Hunter and a good guy Smuggler (who still liked being paid, but not if it involved too questionable stuff), so I can say I loved the breath of possibilities how to play various characters. But none of them impressed me as much as the Inquisitor and Agent storylines.
The issue is usually that being evil is an afterthought, it was never a real choice. That and rarely the good choices actually challenge you, there's no real reason to pock the bad options.
What most games fail at is giving you strong motivation to be evil. If the game encourages and rewards you being evil, suddenly being evil is a whole lot more fun. Hence why crime sandbox GTA style games are so beloved. You're the bad guy but the game rewards you immensely for being the bad guy, quite often.
You are not being evil in GTA; the game is fun because of game mechanics, not because you are 'rewarded for being the bad guy.' People attach this morality nonsense ex-po-facto and think it explains stuff, when it is litearlly coming after the cause (game is fun because of mechanics; everything else is aesthetic; yes, even morality is an aesthetic in video games, because it isn't real).
A good game with evil choices is one where you can unlock another way of playing. Instead of you getting punished, you get to experience stuff you couldn't with a good playthrough. I think the infamous games do a really good job of this, especially Infamous 2
The problem with "evil" choices in games is that it is usually a misunderstanding of what makes a human being actually choose to commit the horrific acts they commit. The desperation of poverty, The mental illnesses and the emotional breakdowns that causes someone to commit horrific acts that the average person who isn't emotionally and mentally compromised would ever do or finally the Ideological struggles that mankind finds itself in when facing choices that some may consider questionable while others would find admirable. In our reality we see every day people who justify and are sometimes deified for their acts of cruelty and death in whatever reasoning they and their society has come up with to accept their actions when their enemies and victims see horrific evil being cast upon them. Do you think the people in war ever truly believe they're the bad guys? The best games and stories have villains who aren't just mindless evil caricatures but complex individuals with sometimes very reasonable arguments making choices that will bring people to question who is actually the hero and who is the villain in the story. They'll have compelling reasons behind their actions and in the end we are shown that there is no true good or evil in this world but just different shades of gray as we all make our way through it.
Your work is great, and I highly recommend playing Classic Fallout and Fallout 2. Not to compare them to new Fallout, I love them all. But the evil choices in old Fallout are sooo tempting because you *need* the money to survive.
Eh I mean, in fallout 1 and 2 you can get a lot of money by cheesing the casino in junktown and New Reno by having atleast 60 points in gambling and a quicksave, but each to their own i guess.
I see clips of the dialogue exchanges in those games and I'm tempted to play them more and more. I do gotta ask though: Do the games crash often? I really went through it while trying to record footage for the new fallout games lol. The crashes were ridiculous. Also thank you!
Yeah i remember how can go into new reno and support any bandit group you want to conquer the city, and despite one being somewhat objectively good, other groups also have good points on how to improve the city.
@@StrictlyMediocre if you want you can try to use fallout fixt for fallout 1 and f2 restoration project for fallout 2, it basically fixes bugs, restore cut contents, stop crashes, and probably many more. (if you see both comments of me, then youtube probably delete the one with link, so i am just gonna tell you to this instead)
@@StrictlyMediocre I think the current versions are stable, I know fallout 2 running full screen works well, at least for me, meanwhile fallout 3 and nv keep crashing because of that weird bug where the memory keeps stacking and eventually the game runs out or whatever.
i think Red Dead 2 is probably the best example of morality in videogames. When you kill certain people and loot them, you can find wedding rings, letters to loved ones; and even (once or twice) be confronted by their widow who will say how you murdered her husband. Plus with how alive the world feels, being evil feels evil, and being honourable feels honourable.
Was looking for this comment. Red dead 2 definitely does a better job at making you feel bad for killing npc’s there’s a genuine low honor high honor system and being evil with Arthur is hard for a lot of people to do.
It’s also definitely not boring playing evil (the Wolf). Having to keep yourself from being recognized to avoid having bounties and lawmen chasing you wherever those bounties lie, people who could’ve been helpful if you were honorable with them are now avoiding you or even hostile. No discounts in shops, and scavenging becomes more viable than risking being seen in town to get supplies, but also can be exciting getting in and out without drawing attention. Then the camp. You literally feel alienated going back to it and like you no longer belong there, unless you actually are an A-Hole.
While it is true that Good choices are what most people gravitate towards, the fact that there is a choice is the most important part. Even if you don't play evil, you feel like you are good by choice, not because the game's narrative forces you to. That is really important in these types of games.
my first Skyrim playthrough was an evil character... but not one that is openly psychotic and murder crazy, or a silver tongue only interested in his benefit, he was more of a Thanos or Funny Valentine type, an anti-Villain, interested in basically doing what Talos did on steroids, he was interested in usurping the Gods and becoming the sole deity that everybody would pray to, and he'd shape the world in his image, based on what he deemed to be "righteous". The character used magic you'd typically see a bad guy use, like lightning, necromancy and illusions, in terms of the civil war, he despised both sides, but saw the empire as easier to manipulate in the future, seeing as the elves had already done it, and the stormcloaks, in their stupidity, might have the gull to try and opose him if left unchecked, so taking care of them now as a mere independent adventurer siding with the empire and not an almighty God abusing his divine power against a group of mortals might save him the trouble of being seen as an evil God to be praised out of fear later down the line. He used the mace of Molag Bal to steal the energy of his opponents and add it to his own, collected every single divine artifact he could get his hands on from the Aedra themselves, blissfully unaware of his true intentions, absorbed every dragon soul he could, and because the game ends after you defeat Alduin, his story is left as an open-ended cliffhanger on if he managed to go through with his plan to defeat the Gods and steal the power for himself, or if the Gods always were privy to his intentions and struck him down effortlessly once Alduin was taken care off. My idea with his story was, "what would happen if an average person attained Godhood?" Sure, Talos already did this, but realistically speaking he was no average person, the guy is basically a superhero with all the stuff you hear about him in legend, he effectively earned his rank amongst the Gods through his deeds, but what if somebody who was truly average decided that this world was unfair? that if it was up to them, things would be much better for everyone? I found through playing him, that you end up with a character who treats the people fairly, donates to the poor and strikes down corruption and crime where he sees it, but all because he wants to be seen as a favorable hero by the people, so that when the time comes for him to become THE God of this world, the people will praise him as their savior from the evil Daedra and the useless Aedra that never heeded their prayers, and thus allow him to reshape the world in the image of what he deems to be correct and good, which I purposely tried to not think about so that it could be left open ended, yeah he says he wants to do what's best and all but what would that look like exactly? If several deities came up with this world and it's still unfair, how can one mortal claim that they'd be able to do it better? if any of what I said doesn't fit with elder scrolls lore, it's because I didn't know anything about the lore when I started playing, the character sort of just developed in that direction somehow over the course of my game and as I watched youtube videos of the lore I got the idea for it. Also since this character used the Ebony mail and Ebony armor, I sometimes like to think that whenever I fight the Ebony Warrior with future characters, I'm actually fighting that first character I made, who has seemingly attained his goal to some extent at least, the Gods are still around clearly, but so is he, he's gotten taller, stronger, but he also doesn't have that spark of ambition he used to have... Now seemingly just wishing for... death? Perhaps the Gods as punishment for his audacity made him their divine errand boy, and now in-between doing the will of each Deity on the mortal plane, he seeks out worthy adventurers to see if one of them could finally put an end to his misery
When I played Fallout 3 for the first time, I explored around a bit when I left the vault, then found myself in Megaton. Met some people, got some quests, then found that guy who asks you to detonate the bomb for some bunch of rich shmucks over in Tenpenny Tower. I listened to him, heard him out, and then when he finished.. I stood up, looked around, got out a revolver I'd found, and shot him in the head. There was a sudden firefight and I'm not sure who all died there, but by the end of it I was on friendly terms with Megaton, and a lot of bounty hunters wanted me dead.
That quest is a wonderful example of Bethesda doing such a bad job that this guy made this video and applies that trope to everything. Even if you do "blow up the town" the tutorial quest giver Moira is still there in the same place and has the exact same voice lines and isn't even mald at you she's just a ghoul now. She wants you to do the exact same tutorial quests. It's truly babbies first fallout. I'll never stop hating 3. 4 isn't so bad not because 4 is some pinnacle of fallout but because 3 is there and exists.
The issue with evil playthroughs is that most directors/writers can not write a story that is multidimensional for an evil player. It’s almost always just being a terrorist with no conflict. You can’t grow your character because the story was written to be for hero’s, and the player given the option to be a killer.
They need to stop hardlining stories and quests into open world rpgs mainly. We're at the point where the CPU can unfold a unique story by giving the NPCs their own social and financial economies. every playthrough having the same start point with you being the "x factor" in the environment
I mean, how creative are you as a player? There's games where you can go from being evil to having a redemption arc/change of heart and saving the world. Hell, I see Fallout 4 which everyone rags on for not having choices as a slow, gradual change from a suburban parent to the most evil prolific killer in the region, all in the name of rescuing your kidnapped child. THAT is compelling storytelling if you have the sense to pick up on how your character really is changing over time. If you join the Institute you literally go from grieving parent/spouse to being just like your enemy who stole your child and kidnapped your spouse. In fact you find out the exact same thing happened to him to make him this way. That is GOLD. It flies over most people's heads.
@@majorpwner241 "I mean, how creative are you as a player?" Tha'ts the problem: I didn't pay full price for a campaign in a game just to be told it's on Me to figure out how to make the story engaging. If my hyper-complex redemption arc hinges on me making up context around the janky mechanics of a game, then I'm the one doing most of the work inventing a moral arc the game devs flat out didn't design. Why would the game devs get credit for work I'm putting in?
@@patchwurk6652 'URR This game isn't even a real RPG!!' *As a player, refuses to engage in roleplay in the open world which has been provided to you. Enough said I think. Can you really criticize games being lacking when you're a lazy player? Go play New Vegas then, or some other game with a little cartoon bearded devil man in your log telling you how evil you've been. Being real with you though, that stuff is cartoonish and so is your idea of moral choices in games. If you have to be told something is bad, if you really need an A or B option that is so expressly good or evil, the story in your game is about as deep and stimulating as cardboard. I'm tired of hearing otherwise.
@@majorpwner241 "'URR This game isn't even a real RPG!!' *As a player, refuses to engage in roleplay in the open world which has been provided to you." Not what I said. "Enough said I think. Can you really criticize games being lacking when you're a lazy player? " You're calling me lazy for not giving the developers credit for ME having to make up a completely nonexistent plotline on my own just to have fun with it? You do realize you're defending Bethesda here right? The guys so phenomenally lazy that their games popularity is entirely thanks to Modder communities fixing their incomplete games, and you call ME lazy. "Go play New Vegas then, or some other game with a little cartoon bearded devil man in your log telling you how evil you've been." The fanboy is thick in your insecurity. How desperate are you to simp for a gamedev who couldn't even be bothered to release "A Finished Game" while still demanding fullprice from you? "I'm tired of hearing otherwise." Too bad fanboy, your game of choice sucks and you're a loser for not expecting better.
To me, for being Evil there's a lack of a few factors: Reaction- to your actions/presence that comes with being evil, fear or hatred that isn't just a trigger to flee but a 'voice' of how characters think of you or impact locations, emotion ranges, etc. It's an on/off switch when it could be more authentic, could evoke the feeling of being evil in the game from how those react to you. Scope - for being evil what can you do? Either be a dick or make people dead, there isn't 'reveling' in despair or range of effect to those enact evil onto. Even extremes like torture, imprisoning, etc. Compared to other evil factions, our characters give a "bad, but not as bad as that guy" type feel. Depth/Flair- Again, being evil tends to just being a dick rather than more refined, or crazy, or grandiose in how your evil presents itself. Many mediums have stories that being Evil makes sense or can even feel like 'the right side' to corrupt good/rule. Even as retribution against people/world for what it has done to you but generally there isn't a catalyst of why you could be Evil than a mood. Outcome - Either lack of rewards or reducing options (killing being primary 'evil' option) compared to Good playing that opens up more. When playing Good there is an established 'bad guy' that is enemy. When playing 'evil' there isn't a counterpart to that. Would be fun to see the results of our evil bring forth a 'hero' to try and stop us or factions banding together launching an assault.
been loving bg3 lately which I'm sure you've got a massive earful of. I betrayed a man and lead an evil horde to the place his friends were seeking safety. When he asked me why, I said "Because I'm sin incarnate, idiot, lol." at the end of the massacre, one of my friends is drinking herself stupid and going "yeah that was SUPER FUCKING NOBLE how we SET A BUNCH OF WOMEN AND CHILDREN ON FIRE I totally feel AMAZING ABOUT MYSELF" and I just went "yeah but we won, stupid' "villain and loving it" isn't done nearly as often as it should be. another quote from hte game: "IT'S ABOUT TIME SOMEONE RECOGNIZED MY GLORIOUS DEPRAVITY"
in GTA you play a fully fledged character; In games like Mass Effect or Fallout you're encouraged to play yourself. At least that's how I feel. It's more fun to make decision based on what I, myself, would do in that situation. The characters from most RPGs are blank slates on which you can project yourself. There's exceptions ofc
I'm currently running my 12th playthrough of Mass Effect 😂 I'm an addict I know. But this is my second renegade playthrough and I've been trying to be super evil but its hard. I'm ruthless but still reasonable. I know what I signed up for but its hard. I'm looking forward to my next playthrough when I can make my actual decisions
I think that the issue with "evil being boring" is the fact that these games are made with the good playthrough in mind, then the evil choices are just duct taped on for the sake of having choices in a roleplaying game. When the evil choices are actually interesting is when the game is designed around the good and evil path. While I haven't finished Tyranny, far from it... very far from it, I have a bad case of making new characters and basically never leaving the tutorial, anyway, in that game, the good path is the difficult choice, the one that means there might be large ramifications in the future. Because the God herself is "evil", and you play as her (essentially) Priest. So the evil path is the "correct" and "easy" path, while the good path is the path that you have to figure out how to do good while not directly disobeying your God. You could also just directly ignore her laws and be good, but then bad things will happen to you. So you kinda have to balance the good and evil if you wanna stay within the good graces of Kyros.
I also like it when games add some world-building based on your play style, like Dishonored. If you go stealth/pacifist, there are fewer guards, rats, infected folks, and wanted posters. If you go loud/murderous it’s the opposite, and the wanted posters will have a sketch of your character instead of a blank question mark.
Infamous is a perfect example of how to do morality well, it did good not to unbalance the incentives for being good or evil and the Evil Ending wasn't a Bad Ending... and then there was Second Son which threw most of that out the window.
Something else about GTA is that it's basically impossible to play the game without killing anybody or stealing cars. Even if you try a pacifist run, you'll probably run over somebody within minutes. So it doesn't feel evil when it's your only realistic option.
You know what's impossible? Finding your will to live, cuz that's gone faster than your father who walked out to get milk after watching you fail kindergarten.
It doesn't help, that for the most part, it always feels like the npcs that you WANT to give their comeuppance in an evil playthrough are protected, and beating them to 0 hp a few times may be fun in the moment, but because you are not intended to kill them it's common for that to make games bug out, or do weird things. Like say you go beat up Ulfric Stormcloak, then leave because he's immortal, and then later when you come back in the actual quest where you can finally kill him, he bugged out, and is still kneeling and invincible until the game lets him stand back up, but he just won't stand back up. Now the quest is locked. Then on the other hand, the characters the game DOES let you screw over in an evil playthrough end up being the ones you actually like. Those are the ones who when you get to the end of a quest to return their sentimental mcguffin, you get the option to go "nah, I'm gonna keep it. It was a lot of work to get" just to be a dick for an item that is useless to you as the player. Evil options in games just always feel either cartoonishly evil like blowing up megaton or stealing candy from a baby for the lulz, or perssonally ruining the life of the npc that actually helps you. They need to let you do more petty evil, let us hear a snide remark from a stranger, shoot him in his new bum leg, and ward off anyone who tries to say something like "he had it comin, you want it to?" without making the entire city and 40 guards suddenly dogpiling you until you run away or kill them all. Small petty fights happen, and overcompensated retribution for small personal wrongings from others and more sidequests where you get offered jobs of doing the dirty work for someone will feel like a much more genuine evil playthrough.
I always thought the stormcloaks were the best faction. Honestly the only thing wrong they have going on is the racism. Other than that, they are really the best guys in the game. I think bethesda added the racism because they realized any practical logical playthough would have to side with the stormcloaks and they wanted players to have a reason to not pick them.
@@johndeerdrew I mean it's also the Elder Scrolls universe. Racism is par for the course there, Bethesda just hasn't always been the best at showing that in game though.
@@johndeerdrewin the thalmor embassy you can read a document that says the thalmor would rather have the stormcloaks win than the empire. they really want the war to drag on for as long as possible so both sides are weakened but if they cant keep it going indefinitely a stormcloak victory at least means the empire is down another province and the aldmeri dominion has a better chance of winning the next great war.
That’s one good thing about Cyberpunk that I like as an RPG. The game just lets you be ruthless- in fact, doing so has a lot of perks such as using strength for intimidation. The only thing I don’t like is you rarely get rewarded or recognition for knocking people out instead of killing them. You MIGHT get more pocket money but it’s not totally worth it, and doesn’t affect gameplay outside of different animations for each. That combined with rarely being held accountable for either good or bad decisions just kinda makes me feel railroaded into being a morally grey guy. TL;DR It’s too normal in the world of Cyberpunk to be an unhinged psycho, so being an unhinged psycho isn’t as fun as it should be.
@@LordButtsauce Actually, the document says they want the war in a deadlock so that the Empire commits less resources to competing with the Dominion. The war ending for either side is suboptimal for the Dominion either way as if the Stormcloaks win Skyrim becomes a hostile area of operations, and if the Empire wins the Legion will move forces back to face off the against the Dominion again.
The best 'evil' playthrough I have had in a long time was playing a Bleak Walker Paladin in Pillars of Enternity. Your methods are brutal and uncompromising but its for a purpose. As you get to a point where your reputation is so feared your opponents surrender outright stopping unnecessary blood shed in the long term. Its a lawful evil approach where the ends justify the means your not restricted in the factions you choose, your methods for achieving their goals are just different.
Well because hardly anyone ever has that ability. That's called two stories instead of one. Every story ever has a point and a purpose not two points and two purposes. It literally is two games in one which is why RPGs that do that have bugs and shit game play b/c it all went into the writing. Gotta pick and choose where your resources are spent including manpower obviously. It can be done easily by having one person write this and one person write that in terms of writing or the idea. Its implementing it in game play, voice overs, and literally 100s of other variables that go into it that is the problem.....because like that I said that's called two games instead of one so better to do two games instead of one. Fallout sacrificed like most obsidian and black isle games and basically every cRPG ever sacrificed on game play and bugs and variety in other areas.
@@SM-nz9ff Your example is wrong because Fallout 2 exists. Plenty of player choice and consequence with great gameplay and no bugs. Also, if you’re referring to New Vegas, that game was unpolished because they had less than a year to develop it, not because they put incredible effort into creating high-quality writing.
New Vegas is a really complicated game when it comes to morality, but that's probably because it's a pretty central theme to the story and to the DLCs' stories. I think where it shines is when you try to do the right thing all the time, but it ends up that whoever you help first is often the only one you can help. The game kind of forces you to make a choice, because it knows that being good all the time isn't an option. On the other hand, you can blow up all the powder gangers and gain karma why? Cause they kill people? Something like that. The karma system doesn't really make sense, but the actual plot is very smart about morality.
I feel like nobody is doing genuinely evil playthroughs. If you're going around killing people or refusing to help, you're just bad. Bad is an impulse. You did something bad because you felt like it. That isn't evil. Evil is more along the lines of accepting a mission to help find a kid's dad, going through the trouble of reuniting them, and then coldly murdering the father in front of the son right when they have their reunion. Evil has to know the difference between right and wrong, and still make a conscious decision to do what is wrong anyways. If you're just doing bad things because you feel like it, again, you're just being bad; but if you're capable of doing the right thing and still make a conscious decision to do something bad, that's evil.
I like when the 'bad ending' is actually the 'good' or more interesting ending. I can think of a game that's good ending actively makes the world a worse place. Specifically breath of fire 4. The bad ending has you fight your friends, but because of the coddling it did to the villains and the narrative as a whole It felt more complete than the normal good ending.
I'm reminded of Postal 2, where there's a non-violent solution to a sizable number of errands, but it's usually so aggravating to do (and in Paradise Lost it might even deceive you into believing that violence is the only option, like with the Wipe House) that you'll probably resort to mass murder anyway.
Postal? Like, Post Office. Too funny this is a game. I found myself very interested in those workplace violence they often are infamous for. I never understood how that environment sprung do many incidents. But I know they are less reported over the years. Or an investigation can find no motive. But that's to keep people from using this as a form of retribution. Especially as wages stagnate and inequality worsens. That's the one that's not reported on. Or reported as a personal outburst. It's fascinating.
Worth noting that going postal was a thing since 1993 at the latest since that's the oldest known written use of the phrase, 4 years before the first game came out in 1997.
13:20 I used to be a summer camp counselor. We had this thing where we separated the boys and the girls to do tasks for the first day. A young boy asked the girls if they needed help with something. They accepted and he helped with stuff. Other boys asked him why. He simply responded "it's nice to be nice". i remember the face, but i forget the name. i forget the year. i forget what the nature of the help was. it must have been over a decade ago, but it's always stuck with me.
You don’t have to sacrifice anything to be evil. In games like Bioshock your moral choice is to be evil or be good and get a better reward. If someone is evil they probably would still pick the good option if there’s more in it for them, it completely trivializes your choice to be good.
A problem is that it’s not so easy to define “evil”. Nobody is just “plain evil”. Nobody does evil stuff just for the sake of being evil. Everybody has motivations, and sometimes people choose to hurt others in order to achieve their goals. So your character does not really feel right if you are just choosing the “evil option” for the sake of being evil. One of my main characters in Skyrim for example is a Vampire Lady with a sneaky fighting style and quite a low opinion of normal people. She does not randomly kill people just because she can, but their lives mean nothing to her and she would kill a human, elf, orc, etc. any time if she gains something from it. If she gains nothing from murdering a random farmer in cold blood, then she won't. If someone pays her to kill him, then she will.
It might be an extreme example, but I'd argue that "plain evil" people do exist in the form of billionaires. Anyone like your average billionaire will sacrifice the wellbeing and potentially the lives of the majority of people just to hoard wealth and power. Sure, they have a reason, but it's not the kind of reason that's written to make a character more compelling.
@neptun2810 I see what you're saying but I'd still argue that such people qualify as "plain evil" and games often play to that by trying to bribe you into being evil. Where they tend to fail is being unwilling to offer you enough money to really matter for balance reasons.
Where I lived it was very dangerous, there were lots of people who would just do horrible things just because "they can" for example a group of teenagers stabbed someone in an alley behind their scool to show off to each other with no other reason than bloodlust @@neptun2810
Granted I think a big reason people don't prefer evil playthroughs is that it's often just not as rewarding as being good. Like why be evil when being good gets me all the gameplay and loot I want already? I wish there were more games that made being evil just as engaging as being good, because that way choosing to be good has more weight
@@Daratango356 Undertale has like 2 cool fights that you basically have to do 2-3 hours of grinding to actually experience. The story changes are cool but it could be a lot better.
@@deesnyder8201 I understand that it's not really that interesting ig but I was just saying that being evil in undertale was engaging with the story changing and stuff
There once was this great, promising new Bioware rpg called Jade Empire. In this game set in a fantasy martial arts Chia you could also go evil, but it was called "Way of the Closed Fist" and was supposed to be about being ruthless and finding the strength needed to achieve you goal no matter what, instead of pure evil. There was a great scene where I think someones daughter was kidnapped by a criminal and you could just fight him and thus free her (good choice) or went full philosophical on her, talking about of oppression and breaking free of ones shackles and then hand her a knife and send her into the next room with the bad guy, whom she promtly murders, literally getting blood on her hands and thus losing her innocent view on the world. That was totally awesome. Sadly, later in the game time constraints reduced most choices to the typical black and white "should I defeat this ghost to let them go on to the afterlive, or defeat and consume their essence in order to become stronger myself". The final major decision was pretty cool, though. Sadly, in many of Biowares Starwars games, you only had ONE moral choice, and that was the very first choice at the start. If you went Light side, you would be a do-gooder at every opportuninty, as you a full light side attunement made your light side forcepowers stronger, and the same went for the dark side. But going dark side often let to situations where you had to be COMICALLY bad, just for the sake of being bad. In my POV, if you become a powerful evil figure, be it a Sith, a Dark Knight, a Necromancer or whatever, you don't need to go out of your way to ruin everyones life around you, just because. In order to gain dark side points you sometimes had to murder people just for looking at you the wrong way, or take away a beggars 10 bucks just for asking you for money. I mean, common, why should a powerful conquerer care about a beggars 10 bucks? Just ignore that poor sod. Or maybe even give him 100 and recrute him for your army or whatever, thus corrupting him. But the evil path most often forces you to play a manic and comically deranged bad person hellbend on ruining everyones life. Evil nearly never is written in a way that could work, but always this Saturday morning cartoon villain evil, where they dumb tons of toxic waste into the environment, because they just can't stand green trees or something.
Playing fallout 3 was a magical experience for me. I jumped into this game completely blind. Not sure how, but my settings were set to the hardest setting, my entire playthrough I had no idea until I completed the main story. So as the game began, while being in the Vault, I chose 100% good options a true hero but the moment I left the Vault, I was attacked by 2 raiders, as they shot me my health was instantly in the red, I was terrified, I ended up barely surviving, killing them both. I limped my may into Mega Ton. I lived in this world as the Dangerous Hell Scape that I believed it to be, so in conclusion, my desire to survive was my motivation, not being a hero or being nice. I looked at everyone as a way to make some easy caps. I was afraid to leave Mega Ton for a very long time lol because I knew how easily I could be killed, so when I got the option to blow up Mega Ton for a ton of caps, my desire to survive was all I could think about, but I wanted to maximize my rewards, I would sneak around and kill everyone I could. Hiding in bathrooms and using VATS to commit my murder and taking there items. I eventually met Jericho, who told me if you wanna join up together I had to be a bad guy. The thought of having someone watch my back in this wicked world was so amazing, so evil I would become. When everyone was dead in Mega Ton, and my inventory looked good, I took a deep breath, so scared to leave lol With Jericho by my side I went to Ten Penny Tower, to blow up the Ghost Town Mega Ton, I got my 2k caps and began my Journey as a monster, helping people if the profits were right, killing them afterwards to take there things, but towards the end of the Journey, I met my Father, who was so disappointed in me, his words hurt me deeply but I was so mad at him, leaving me alone in this Hell World. I helped him in his task but I all I wanted to do was to have our alone time to vent my anger at him but that moment never came. He gave his life so others could prosper. I watched him die, he died to help the Wasteland... The same Wasteland I have been destroying.... After that moment, I vowed to live as a hero, to never take a life unless I had to, as I continued the game, I would hear Jericho say, we made so much more money being evil... I laughed and agreed with him. but Jericho and I were the good guys, in the end. to me, this was a tale of magic. truly an amazing experience. And then one day I noticed, my difficulty setting was on the hardest option.. So I left it there, and laughed so hard... LOL
Lol nice! I actually played it when I was around 10, and I always felt compelled to help people in the game, and even more after wandering into that nightmare school full of raiders... It actually ticked me off, and traumatized me at the same time, How people would just attack a lone wanderer trying to survive, and delight in it! I ended up killing most of them, by surviving off the water and using a knife, and was then welcomed by almost everyone in megaton and even given a house almost free. I still had to find my father, but that obligation I had to rid the world of those murdering, torturing, rapist Raiders have always stuck with me.... and Paradise Falls... "I'll let my gun do the preaching"🔥 No game has had an impact on me like FO3, and CoD WaW, and that No Russian mission for MW2 where I turned my gun on Makarov, and refused to kill anyone. It's like the narrator said in the good karma ending. " But the Lone Wanderer refused to surrender to the vices that had claimed so many others... the values passed down from father to child guided this soul through many trials and triumphs".
That's honestly a really compelling narrative... becoming morally evil, not by will, but by necessity and desperation. And only later truly understanding what being good meant.
thats amazing, your character went through an entire arc. you really made your own story!! and here i was bored playing fo3 cuz i could loot and kill everything way too easily, i shouldve bumped my difficulty up a little lmao
I remember Yahtzee said one that taking the evil option in RPGs tends to be boring and narratively unsatisfying, which is another aspect that could turn people off. I think now the main reason why people choose evil options is if they're completionists who want to see all the endings.
There's also just being tired of being used as a fucking chore boy by every weakling and 'good guy' in the world that for some reason or another can't or won't help you so you get the joy of doing all the work while their sit around and jerk off only for your reward to be a smack on the ass and a half-eaten apple or some sht. That's the main thing that makes me go play a good guy run ONE time, then an evil run for the rest of the times I replay a game.
The evil route in baldurs gate 3 is the biggest fumble of the game because its so fucking barebones and boring. You help out the goblins in destroying the grove, what do you get? Minthara as an ally, the brand of the absolute on yourself, and in return you lose every single questline involving the tieflings, halsin, last light inn, many great items from those quests. There are no questlines you get in return from the cult of the absolute, you don't get any extra party members to replace wyll and karlach who will not be happy with your new friends, you effectively lose a ton of content for no gain.
its why i enjoy the more evil path in BG3, theyve actually put serious thought into how the evil decisions will effect the rest of your playthrough. Most times quests in games that have an evil option boil down to "the exact same quest with a slightly different ending" and then the consequences for that evil ending stop with the end of the questline. Bg3 is the opposite in a lot of ways, so it doesnt give that unsatisfying narrative that a lot of games do.
My issues with playing as an evil character: -often the story will assume you're good so you'll be good in those moments but bad when the game lets you -the evil options are too cartoonish and leave little room for personal expression. It's either save the world or eat babies. No in-between. -games are often balanced around good playthroughs. You'll end up with a subpar experience because of this. -a lot of games just flat out won't let you be evil or they'll railroad you so hard you'll have to be good. I played Half Life evil. Can't do that in Half Life 2. -in some games there's a global stat that monitors how evil you are so NPCs will just magically know you've done bad things without seeing it take place. It basically punishes you for daring to be evil. You cover some of these. I just wanted to put the ones I feel strongest about.
That last point in particular is real bloody annoying ngl. If I'm planning on playing an evil character, it can be fun to be an absolute monster to one group of people and then treat the rest with kindness; hell, it can even be pragmatic in some cases. If I want my evil to be known, sure, let it be known. But if I want to be a bastard in quiet, that should be an option.
I mean, on the one hand, this was a decently put together video and I don't necessarily regret watching it in full. He does a good job of things, as far as it goes. On the other hand though, dude really just spent 20 minutes telling us bad writing + lopsided risk/rewards = "well golly gee, looks like most human beings conform to human nature." Like, naw man, for real? No cap? Human beings act like human beings? Wow. Such amazing insight. But again, the vid was well done and the points you made were conveyed articulately and with appropriate levels of intermittent brevity to lighten the mood and make it more palatable. I like the content, but the subject's ironically quite shallow waters. The rewards for potty-mouthing you too hard probably won't pay off in the long run though, so I'll stick to a good comment run.
![ARGENTINA vs. PERÚ [1-0] | RESUMEN | ELIMINATORIAS SUDAMERICANAS | FECHA 12](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/xtI25ENDDSY/mqdefault.jpg)
It's hard to do an evil playthrough when all the truly hate-able characters are marked as essential and thus can not be killed.
Fable 2, Fable 3
Hence why fallout NV is the best fallout
Starfield
@@nathanu6759 Funny enough I just started playing it for the first time yesterday, I've straight up played every fallout but NV somehow
I am genuinely mad I can't kill the Paradiso group in Starfield.
Being Evil in the inFamous games were somewhat rewarding. You could play the games twice and get something totally unique out of it as your powers change and the story and world changes.
Infamous is one of the childhood favorites for me; it also makes the Kessler fight feel much more personal on an evil playthrough as well; I just wish you could fight the beast on an evil playthrough
Ah damn. I just found out I could stream the first one on PlayStation plus, and fuck yeah, it still holds up
I think infamous 2 evil ending is a good example of how to portray evil in games, where its a moral dilemma that makes sense to choose the more evil side.
but the choices through out the whole game arnt as impactful. so its evil for evils sake till you reach the end where evil is presented as morally grey.
Infamous is the goat
My first playthrough of infamous second son was an evil playthrough. It makes the game much easier too
For me the short version is that "evil" choices in RPGs usually boil down to "vicious self-destructive idiot", plus there's rarely ever any worthwhile rewards on evil paths anyway.
Also, the good choice is usually too easy and too obvious. Often it involves going on guilt-free killing sprees pro-bono, yet the loot you get is worth more than the reward you turned down anyway. So the player gets their dopamine hit for being the good guy, while sacrificing nothing.
Idk man infamous made me a powerhouse for being evil
Disco Elysium really leans into that fact for its "evil play through"
Play Tyranny, it's a CRPG by Obsidian where all shades of evil are pretty well represented, from the reluctant "lesser of two evils" to the pragmatic planner to the evil tornado of death.
This, all of this.
Plus, the only unique rewards I can recall for doing any of the evil options in Fallout 3 and New Vegas are a unique unarmed combat move you can get as a reward from a Caesar's Legion interaction (that requires only a bit of reputation with them and has no quest attached), and a single unique weapon you can find in the ruins of the Brotherhood Citadel in Broken Steel. It is a scoped .44 magnum, which admittedly is the most powerful handgun in the game, but by that point you should have a loooooot more powerful options in every other category.
So they know how to attach unique rewards to picking the evil options, but most of the time they just don't and the ones they do aren't worth very much.
crime doesnt pay big fella
Something I heard in a DnD video about good/evil playthroughs is that the “good” are usually reactive to events unfolding by the evil. Games are prescripted, so reacting is kind of the only thing you can do.
The evil, on the other hand, is often written as the proactive with plans and schemes. This requires you to have almost complete freedom to draw your own path. This is really hard to do in a video game, since the world is always scripted to some extent. You are not completely free to do what you want to
Thats why everyone is evil in GTA online.
Which is why pathfinder WOTR has the best evil roleplaying in any game ever
@@furosukki1301Idk KOTOR was hood at that
That's why the best games for doing an "evil" playthrough are 4X strategy games. Those games truly do let you forge your own path and aren't scripted, so you have the freedom to plot, scheme and do all the things that a villain would do.
Could be done with a game where the evil is in the position of static reactionary power and the good side is the active participant.
Good character: Ok, I'll help this Town to get rid of some bandits for absolutely nothing.
-You get valuable loot from the bandits
-Earn reputation with the Town
-Unlock more quests
Bad character: I won't help this Town because i'm evil
-You get nothing
-You lose
-Good day, sir
Unless there's an option to help the Bandits instead. Then you get to loot the Town!
@@dianabarnett6886and even then the loot is barely worth it
That's basically the Dragon Age Orgins Redcliffe choice, like, you want to be evil or in character for your rp, but you also don't want to lose out on all that juicy xp.
Oh hey Dirty Dan, it's DevourerOfContent
Play cyberpunk
I think the main problem with being evil in video games is that so many games being evil is a rewardless options which doesn't effect the story and is just a side activity of killing everyone and nothing else
Except in fallout and infamous*
Undertale:
Gore restrictions, no gibs or limbs being torn makes it hard - most games.
Violence against kids restrictions.
Toned down dark humour/dialogue - no really sick stuff.
You're "free" to do eeevil, to a limit.
5 year old me on minecraft creative mode burning a village: bruh
@@gudgurl it's annoying asf that they just care about some blue hair weirdos bitching on Twitter so much that they've taken all these features out in the past 10 years
I think the issue people have is how they define evil in games. I play a lot of Lawful Evil characters in games which, to me, usually means that I'm not a good person, but I have lines I will never cross normally. It seems like many people's idea of evil is just psycopathic murderer and nothing else
Agreed. The "Lawful Evil" is the reasonable, methodical, subtle kind of evil - the kind that takes advantage of people or circumstances for their own benefit, but doesn't go around being a rude jerk or violent monster just because they don't like someone. A Lawful Evil character is usually cunning enough to realize, that alienating or antagonizing people isn't likely to win them any favors.
I like to play a lot of different characters, with different views and different morals - just because I find it fascinating to consider difficult situations or moral dilemmas from different perspectives, and try to reason why a person might choose to do something, that others might consider evil.
@@LadyDoomsinger I like playing Neutral characters because of the challenge of balancing light and darkness. Its so easy to be a hero or villian but something about the Grey area is not only more realistic it is a lot more interesting in every possible way.
Mercenary playstyle can be considered Evil too. I like playing games with my main goal not saving the world, but saving it in a way to make money. That does not matter if you are killing bandits or caravans if that brings you money.
And sadly, that's also the idea a lot of games with a "morality system" run with. The obsession with karma systems was a dire time for RPGs
I like to play a Lawful Evil character, whom is on the good side - just brutal and uncaring in a lot of situations where a traditional hero would be sympathetic.
They could have made the evil route a compelling and understandable option by just making tenpenny the first place you go, and having a few friendly characters there (who absolutely HATE Megaton) be your introduction to the game. Then when you're asked to go infiltrate the city and blow it up, it sounds like a reasonable enough request. Then you go there and find out these people are actually nice, it's an actual moral choice. Do you doom these people you just met because the first people to offer you shelter asked you to? Or do you help out these salt of the earth people and break your promise.
Tenpenny from gta san andreas???
@@aadarshroy3216Tenpenny tower.
Fallout 3.
Not Sam Jackson.
Ah yes, the Reiner Braun playthrough.
You could make it even more compelling by having the player encounter a few hostile ghouls before getting to Tenpenny Tower. Make their hatred of ghouls seem justified (the way that, say, hatred of goblins or orcs is in most fantasy games). And only after the player makes the decision to blow it up do you realize that no, you just sided with a bunch of racists.
You could also make the evil choice more compelling by having the folks in Tenpenny offer you quests if you blow up the building. Make being a gun for hire a valid option. That switches the choice from "Do you blow up this town of wonderful people or side with them?" to "Do you work with the low-class, moral people or the rich, a/immoral ones?" By making Tenpenny a faction--but making the quests all be morally wrong--you add weight to the decision to side with them. It's not one decision that dooms you for life, it's the first step down a long, dark road.
I think the "good vs evil" duality suffers from "good" being the point of reference no matter what. Good is meant to make things better and often unambiguously helps the people/place you're in; it's clearly the "right" option. Meanwhile, the "evil" option isn't an alternative viewpoint, it's just "I don't want to do the good choice" option, often with some money or other reward offered as a weak attempt to prop it up. It feels shallow and one-dimensional, because it's not a viable worldview but rather a petty "I don't want to be a good guy." You're not choosing to be evil as much as rejecting being good, and you can see how lopsided the results are.
That’s a really cool way to think about it
Exactly, that’s why, as cool as it sounds in theory, I see no motivation to act “evil”. It feels meaningless if being “evil” just means pointless murder, and since I’m not a psychopath that isn’t inherently fun to me.
It’s an issue in games because playing a game for feeling and experience and immersion vs playing for efficiency lead to good vs evil only being relevant to some people.
People who want to play a game to experience a different reality will make decisions based on their own morality and what they would do in those situations, most people aren’t evil and abide by social norms so they will usually pick options that are good or options that have massive benefits
People who want to play a character will pick options based on the morality of the character they play
People who want to be good at the game will only pick options that benefit them and disregard morality
When a game is not stimulating your feelings and only stimulating your monkey brain dopamine receptors you will not care about your actions and only pick efficient options, so making a good evil system requires that the game has tangible benefits to making immoral decisions, yet these benefits are outweighed by a genuine guilt built upon characters and environment and storytelling.
I think an interesting workaround is when doing the "Good" thing is absolutely the worst thing for you mechanically. Like not in the sense that you get a lesser reward. But in the sense that doing the right thing actively inconveniences you in some way. There's a game called "Lisa: the painful" where you're given a choice early on between letting a completely useless party member die or losing one of your limbs. And this isn't just a cosmetic choice. Losing that limb actively makes the game harder to play and it doesn't come back.
I find the idea of making it hard to be good more interesting than the idea of making it profitable to be evil... but I also stopped playing that game shortly after reaching that choice because it was depressing. So it's very interesting in theory, but I'm personally too soft for it in practice.
Most games may, but in Infamous especially, that is not the case.
There's something extremely satisfying about exploring a world and seeing positive changes around you, or the absolute heartbreak of when something you thought was the right choice has horrific consequences.
ah, so you played Spec Ops: The Line
Faur
Like Judy telling you everyone at Clouds is dead... I really wanted to help the dolls in that questline, and it was so heartbreaking to find out that I could only keep he status quo if I wanted them to stay alive.. I think it hurt most because deep down, I knew that it would go wrong, but there was this blind hope that made me go through with the plan. It really helped to characterize Night City as the antagonist of the story...
AWE TRUE TO CAESAR
Return to Sender Fucked. Me. Up.
I think it just comes down to the fact that most "evil" options in gamed are bad options. The problem is putting the player character in a position in which an evil choice is also actually beneficial. You have to make good decisions harder and evil decisions easier.
Nah, most people just hate being evil
@@Solaxe That may be a true point, but we won't ever get to prove it if we keep conflating evil and bad.
Things look a lot different in more muddled scenarios, if the game makes you feel bad for choosing good and vice versa. If it's "optimal" to play good, even if it's a nice moral lecture from the game about how it always wins out in the end etc., you aren't really being good for good morals sake.
The good decisions harder and evil decisions easier is done EXCEPTIONALLY well in the Dishonored series.
The more peaceful endings in Dishonored are generally harder to get as you constrain yourself with boundaries to stop yourself from murdering. The more chaotic endings in Dishonored are so much easier. You are free to do whatever your mind desires, much to the dismay of the people around you.
It’s fun to unleash creative havoc on the world, but it’s also fun finding ways to slip by without hurting a soul. Both ways are fun, but the evil way allows more freedom with the game’s full technical depth.
@@Solaxe Yeah, that's true, most players will do good guy run especially on their first run because that's typically how games were intended to be played. However when it comes to evil runs, most of the time playing evil is just not that interesting because games like I said were designed to be good guy in mind, so being evil kinda comes off as afterthought.
For example, in KOTOR1, before you get access to Force powers, if you play Dark Side all you will really do is steal someone's lunch money. It's simply not fun because your options to do Dark is very limiting and simply not rewarding. Even more modern RPGs have this issue, because like I said devs assume you're gonna play good guy.
Infamous did it better than most games
My favorite playthrough of New Vegas was an evil run, and what made it so fun was I set one simple goal: Take whatever option pays me the most caps. I genuinely had no idea where this route would go.
I thought maybe I would end up working for House, but we instantly got into an argument over the worth of the Platinum Chip, which lead to me killing him. The Legion was also off the table, as their "honor" based society held little incentive for me, especially with how crude their settlements were.
In the end, I actually ended up working for the NCR. They had no shortage of problems to solve, and being on their good side gave me an abundance of resources. Their sheer size also meant I could get away with a lot more, as many of my quest givers didn't seem to mind or notice me solving their problems in dirty underhanded ways.
In the end, I took the most vanilla route possible in New Vegas, but I did it for all the wrong reasons with the cruelest methods possible. I think my favorite thing about the playthrough is it really gave me a new perspective of the NCR and Mojave as a whole. I could really see how corruption could flourish when working with "the good guys".
While Ceaser is a monster and House isn't perfect, neither of them would have let me get away with half the stuff I pulled, their plans were too meticulous. The NCR's size prevents that kind of control, in a sense it's a status quo faction just trying to keep itself alive, and that's ripe the manipulation of corrupt individuals like myself. It's this kind of complexity that really cements New Vegas as a favorite for me, and is part of why I keep coming back.
I think evil options not allowing for some pragmatism also has an effect. Like, you can be evil and still save a village from some bandits, especially if you're a Lawful Evil character who still believes in some semblance of order. You get loot, and a village in your debt that can be useful for your purposes.
Another thing I think is that it's harder to justify an evil playthrough if you're a naturally empathetic person who has difficulty stomaching the thought of hurting innocent people just to "reject" the obvious good option. People don't often run on the good or evil binary; there's tons of nuance that video games just don't usually replicate effectively, if at all.
The absolute best way I ever saw what you're getting at summarized was this:
"In a game with no sides, why are you still playing the Good Guys?"
"Because my ultimate power fantasy is being able to help everyone."
Baldur's Gate 3 did a great job in doing what you've described imo. Without spoiling anything, this pragmatic approach you're talking about is completely possible, there isn't just an obviously good and evil choice but the outcome is determined by so many small choices along the way that you can shape it in pretty much any way you want.
@@AclibButLikeTheRealOne I had an opposite experience with BG3, I tried my second playthrough as villains in co-op and there's a lot of messed up stuff you can do with no real reason, and I'm speaking about dialogue/quest choices.
More over, the game tries to guide you towards a heroic path right from the start, like you have no choice but to help in battle at the gates, even if you run away there, the NPCs gonna act like you're the hero who helped and you will have to actively ignore that, trying to justify things in your head, instead of having it justified in-game.
@@AclibButLikeTheRealOne Try being "pragmatic" about raiding the grove and report back on the ratio of chaotic evil to not chaotic evil options you found )or more importantly were forced to take). The first real and only evil "route" branching in the game is handled horribly, gives only one party member at the expense of three, and doesn't even let you relish in your own power WITH your companions willingly at your side. The entire evil "route" in BG3 is that of a psychopathic CE murderhobo.
@@ladywaffle2210 You got the quote slightly wrong it's "In a game with no consequences, why are you still picking the good side?".
However this also gets down to the basic gist of why RPGs are designed like they are, people want to feel like the hero so games tend to cater to that.
When I played Knights of the Old Republic as a kid, I LOVED the Evil/Dark Side playthrough. Mostly because the more evil I was, the more cool powers I got, and the "evil" choice was usually fairly obvious, so I always knew what to pick to get stronger. That was one of the only games that I would do evil playthroughs of.
SWTOR is also amazing for nuanced evil. The light side sith aren't typically what you'd call likable, you could even argue they're not less evil just less cartoonishly evil. It's fascinating how much nuance they managed to put into the sith.
Agreed, KOTOR is a great exception to the rule. That game goes out of its way to give you nonstop rewards for evil choices, while being good often means extreme altruism. It makes sense given the lore.
Fable is also easy to be evil in. I mean, demon guy with cool sword is fun.
I can murder everyone in the vicinity but some choices like making Zaalbar kill Mission was too much
KOTOR 2 evil playthrough is very good. It made me feel like everything I did was pointless. At the end I thought "Why i'm doing this?".
I think a lot of writers just make the bad route into the stupid route. Real evil is not just randomly murdering people to your own detriment. Real evil is enriching yourself to the detriment of others.
Evil route is chaotic stupid in most games.
🍑
Yes, but no one in real life actually consider themselves as an "evil guy" - instead, when doing something morally wrong, people always assume that they are good guys who deserve more and who have to make a living in a cruel world. To put it simply, being evil by definition requires from a person to be ignorant of real effects and consequences of their actions, or, in other words, to be a stupid person. So yes, the "stupid route" is exactly what a good writer can give you as a reward for choosing evil :D
It's hard to be 'evil' because games force you to be 'good' (mainstream normie). Because gaming corporations (and corporations in general) are very moral 🙄
@@bdleo300 womp womp
Undertale nailed being Evil; you become a true monster. Almost every NPC can be killed, and the world judges you for being evil
I just feel like pointing out, that game comes with some irony. The difficulty and monotony of the genocide route aims to deter you from continuing, but the boss battles counter-intuitively encourage the route.
@@qwertyrhoads9295Because the Genocide run has the better boss themes
If I were going in blind, the ONLY monster I would've killed is Flowey. (But I don't have the patience for bullet hells).
Tbh the reason for the genocide route is the player curiosity. They have freed the monsterkind in the pacifist route. So what will happen if you do the opposite.
I was searching for that comment
I think the real reason evil doesn't often feel that fun in RPGs is because the choices are immoral as opposed to amoral. The evil choice is always explicitly cruel and malicious, as opposed to simply selfish and apathetic. And like... No one wants to really feel like they are actively a bad person.
I mean yeah. It's supposed to be evil, not neutral, after all
If we take your definition of evil, there's a lot of evil playthroughs in games people often give crap for not having one. Fallout 4 with the brotherhood, for example
@@anna-flora999 brotherhood is cartoonishly evil in F4. Bad example.
@@Michael-bn1oi So is the Institute. Railroad is simply pointless. The Minutemen ending is only available if you kill all three other factions. I guess war truly never changes.
amoral is easily the worse evil. acting in an immoral way at least requires some conviction. on the other hand, all of the worst atrocities in human history were facilitated by the lazy, the cowardly, and the amoral nimbies.@@anna-flora999
I disagree with the last sentence (at least in terms of games) but I fully agree with the gist of the rest. We need more moral shades represented. Let me be immortal. Let me amoral. Let me be moral. Let me be something inconsistent.
There is much simpler answer - being evil is boring because most of the time the "evil" routes only exist to meet the quota in the first place. Evil options are barely functional, you gain nothing by being evil, and you loose all the lore you'd get by talking with people instead of killing them, so it's ultimately less content than you'd get by playing good.
plus evil boils down to just killing which is basicaly the same as the "good guy" but with less rewarsd lol.
Yeah like the time i've killed all the dead horses and the other faction (don't remember the name) beacuse i killer the friendly npc for a mistake on the start of dead money dlc. I literally wiped out everyone don't knowing they are supposed to talk to me... When i made the second walkthrough i understood how much i lost 😂.
Evil choices should be more personally rewarding than good choices 80% of the time.
Evil choices should be presented as good choices 80% of the time.
That's cause acting evil just isn't rewarding. I've never met an evil person who wasn't completely miserable.
Plus if you genuinely make a true evil route, most of the time the community or the public gets mad because it’s moral reprehensible, which kinda goes with the territory of being evil.
I personally prefer the idea of having true evil available as it makes it more clear that the choices you make are truly good and not simply railroaded.
Being evil in video games is usually being a cartoonishly evil mustache twirling villain
Not even. That would imply shenanigans. All you get is killing random npcs for no reason most of the time, and that's just not interesting
@@sketcher445I interpreted it more as in the logic is very much like a cartoon villain. No reason for doing evil things, they’re just evil because they’re meant to be. Their whole personality is just… being evil. Super one-dimensional.
This exactly there's almost no nuance I feel like baldurs gate 3 subverts this for the most part. You can be a mustache twirling villain, a realistic character who does good and bad, or just a murder hobo. It's pretty good for playing evil
@@sketcher445 Being evil in Dishonored is fuxking amazing and gives you 1000 more ways to fight. Morrowind is also fantastic at consequences and freedom. But yeah, most of the time. Yah.
Dont insult mustache twirling villains by comparing us to videogame murderhobos
Media differences aside, I'd like to make an analogy with an anime character that is essentially a player going on an evil RPG campaign: Overlord. Momonga/Ainz Ooal Gown, as well as basically all original inhabitants of the Tomb of Nazarick are undeniably evil, but they're not "evil for the lulz". Even the guardians like Albedo and Shalltear, who despise humans, are (even if through great effort and orientation) able to get past that in order to accomplish the missions given to them.
Ainz will use whatever subterfuge and tactic he can to get an advantage, be it political or in combat, but he still struggles with being a former human (and slowly losing his grasp of it) as well as caring for the well-being of everyone in Nazarick - normally an evil video game character would be a lone wolf or simply use everyone around them as replaceable pawns, as if they were total sociopaths and misanthropes. He has a unique personality and core beliefs/values, which is also true for every other member of the cast, which makes them all interesting and sometimes understandable. It's rare for them to kill someone because they're mad, or lost control, which is also something that most games are very quick to do with their evil characters.
Video games with evil playthroughs are often boring because the writers often don't have the time or will to elaborate on the character, and the evil route ends up lacking any depth. If you're writing a story about what's essentially a good villain, you need to have traits such as multidimensionality, clear motivations, charisma/commanding presence, at least some sympathetic qualities, and a consistent behavior/logic. Leave any of that out, and you get a General Hux instead of a Grand Moff Tarkin.
Most plots do evil the wrong way. It's far more compelling when the choice isn't "Help people or screw them over for your own benefit," but "Help people, but at additional risks that may undermine your efforts in the long run and require sacrifices that make you question whether the ends justifies the means."
One game I remember that I felt did this well- Tyranny.
YES! Making people choose between two different wrongs, or a wrong for the right thing is much better. I can't count the time I thought to myself "This is a wrong for the greater good."
Oh yeah onenof the best gray area games of all times where really...there wasnt a good choice more like the lesser evil then evil and sometimes that wasnt what you thought it was.
Wasteland 3 did it well with the Denver questline. Brainwash valor for the Gippers and they give oil back to Colorado Springs but angers the Patriarch and he doesn’t reward you and you’re also alienated by the Machine Commune, Capture Reagan for the machine commune and you get valor alive but have to kill the Gippers and Colorado Spirngs doesn’t get oil back, Hold Reagan hostage and you get Valor alive but you’re alienated by both the Gippers and the Machine Commune but you also turn the oil back on for Colorado Springs and you’re rewarded, or kill Valor just for the lolz. Personally I took Reagan hostage because everyone survives and I still get my rewards and turning the oil on is a step for the “best” ending is for Wasteland 3
I agree very much. Doing the right thing is very easy when it also benefits you more than doing something else. True character is only shown when somebody chooses to do the right thing even when it doesn't seem beneficial to oneself.
I think it should be more along the lines of: Being evil should actually be the one that give you good short term and personal rewards (direct upgrades to yourself and your equipment), but can bite you in the back really hard when you least expect it, and it can close a lot of doors with relations with normal people but the doors it does leave open allow you to network with powerful people and without constraint.
Being neutral is the smart play where all doors remain open to you, but has the problem of being impossible to maintain in the long term, and leaves you very much alone without the relationships and the benefits the other two bring. Being neutral can slowly break you down into evil as well, as sometimes one must acknowledge the injustice inaction can cause, and that avoiding engaging with your emotion and human side isn’t healthy.
being good can allow you to form some good long term investments through relationships with people, but you loose a lot of the personal benefits as you sacrifice more of your time, resources, and relationships with others tearing yourself apart for the short term feeling of “it feels good”. It can pay off sometimes, but a lot of the time you get absolutely nothing in return
I always really liked the narstive behind the binary choices in bioshock 2, maybe because I am a parent. The way your daughter would rationalize your choices and see them as the correct and even morally right path to take regardless of what you choose really hit home just how impressionable a child who idolizes their parent can be. In the end, you aren’t making arbitrary good or bad choices, you’re setting examples for the potential hero or monster your child will end up becoming when she escapes out into the wider world.
And man, it also makes the Neutral Good ending the most narratively satisfying and interesting, Eleanor sees these contradictory behaviours from Delta and has to try and come to terms with why he acted the way he did and why in his final moments he chooses to die rather than make her a worse person. I think it only hits as hard as it does because you are given the option to take these other parts and the ending doesnt really care about why you take the complicated path you do, it's about her coming to terms with the complex nature of her idol.
It really missed the mark with me as i remember saving every little sister except 1 because i was really close to an adam upgrade, and then your daughter will turn up evil because i didn't saved 100% of the little sisters
@@arielmatiauda5110 bruh you just told on yourself. She only turns evil if you kill the bosses instead on showing them mercy. Otherwise if you show mercy on the bosses and somehow miss a sister then MC just dies.
@@Pocket_Crab i remember a scene, where she has the option to save or kill someone and said something along the lines of exactly how you thought me and then she harvest the girl, and i remember only doing "good karma" except for a single little sister harvest
Even if very few people take the evil path, the fact that you could have been cruel and selfish but choose not too means so much more to the fantasy of most RPGs than if you'd never been presented with that option at all. It definitely adds enough value to the experience to be worth putting into the game.
In KCDeliverance there is a brilliant questline with the Inquisition, you can be selfish and greedy, but there are consequences...
That's part the Ubdertale charm I believe, the knowing that you could be killing characters but choose not too is what gives the pacifist route its value, if the only other option was the neutral ending it wouldn't mean as much.
No if being Evil gave you a Weapon to one-shot everything and Cash like crazy and interesting interactions not just everyone hunting you people would do it without thinking about it.
It should always count for something.
I get your point, but at the same time, it can warp the game by including evil options. What I mean is, the writers and voice actors and everyone now have to do twice the work because there's twice as much "game" to be made. So, naturally, each individual playthrough gets less development and is shorter. It can be even more difficult to actually make the evil options fit into the game and not break the narrative. So while what you're saying is true, that there is a positive aspect to allowing a choice, it also has alot of costs that quite possibly outweigh that benefit.
The old super Nintendo game, Ogre Battle, had an interesting way of showing the benefits one night gain for being evil. In that game, the easiest form of combat (only ever targeting the weakest units) pushes you towards evil, whereas only targeting the strongest enemies (and making combat a lot harder for you) pushes you towards good.
I think a huge reason most games evil routes fall so flat regardless of the narrative built around them is that it takes individual agency to commit meaningful acts of evil, and that current game design and structure, especially the "quest giver" centric formula arent really able to allow players that kind of agency over their actions.
I think the real reason is for most games you aren't meant to be evil so it's more of an after thought. Like in baldur's gate 3, no matter how evil you want to be at the end of the you still need to go against the actual evil guys or in Skyrim. You can do all the evil quests and stuff but some npcs will still treat you like you are the hero and you still need to actually be the hero to finish the main story
Baldur's Gate 3 has a good evil ending, especially with the Dark Urge.
BG3 has a valid reason though, if anything I like their approach to evil.
(Spoilers for evil route)
In both good and evil playthroughs you still ultimately have to fight the ones in charge of the Absolute, but the huge difference is WHY you fight. In a good run you want to stop evil guys from being evil. In an evil, non murder hobo playthrough, you are trying to seize *control* of the absolute for your own benefit.
Alot of people take issue with the fact that we can't be in good terms with the Chosen the whole way through, but it makes sense as by this point in the story you know that the Absolute is a mindflayer plot to begin with and everyone infected is a planned pawn for the Chosen to use, taking control of the Absolute both protects you from the Chosen subduing you and it also grants you unbelievable power
Me when I loot everyones homes and use quicksave so I dont get thrown in jail:
In previous BG's playing evil clearly wasn't an intended route, even starting companions from BG2 suggest a good "canon" playthrough.
Less money, less experience, choices were often just to be mean, without some sort of benefit or logic behind it, etc. It also goes for many other games.
I mean how else would you be able to finish Skyrim? You don't have to be a hero to kill someone who is a threat to you.
A malicious route (killing and destroying everything in sight) isn't the same as an amoral route (taking the decision of manipulating, lying and killing to your benefit).
Talking like a real manipulator
Murder and theft arent 'amoral', but there is a large gap between being a murderhobo, being a psychopath, or an opportunist
@@incendiary6243
Let´s try to prove murder and theft are indeed amoral, first from a basic syllogism, then through the ethymology.
Animals hunt each other, that´s murder.
Porperty doesn´t exist in the natural world, that´s theft.
Sexual coercion and domination exist in multiple animal species including ducks, penguins, ducks and great apes -to name a few- that´s rape.
So, the syllogism is as follows:
Animals don´t have morality
Animals steal, kill and rape
Murder, theft and rape are amoral.
Now on to the ethymology: a-moral from Greek ´a-not/lack of´ and Latin ´moral/moralis-manner or custom´ however moral was first used to translate the Greek ´ethikos´
Amoral an adjetive that means "ethically indifferent," first coined in 1882 by Robert Louis Stevenson (or so they say) as a differentiation from immoral.
The term immoral would apply better to the player that´s just a "murderhobo" or serial killer, just killing for the sake of killing, given the circumstances you could also call an amoral player someone with a flexible ethical code or with a colorful pragmatism.
@@SERGIODELRÍOREYES
Thanks I appreciate it
@rodrigocoockiemonster4460 humans kill other animals too, and that's not murder. Killing and murder are not the same. Property not existing and therefore being theft makes literally no sense. If animals cannot have property, then they cannot be stolen from, and then theft cannot be 'natural', whatever that means.
If your character chooses to lie, cheat, and steal because it benefits them, that is immoral. It is an intentional act to harm others. It is also immoral to murder indiscriminately. But the prior scenario has a lot more room for character development and nuance, but is often not done justice because it is hard to make a story and characters fit so much content well
In games in which I have moral choices, I can never bring myself to play the evil path. Never. I can't tell how often I've played Fable - The Lost Chapters and everytime when I start, I say to myself "This time. This time you'll play evil." And then within the first 2 in-game minutes this little girl asks me to find her teddy Rosie and all my evil ambitions are gone and I 100% of the time end up with a good playthrough 🙃
A closer comparison would be Red Dead 2 and GTA. Like GTA, Red Dead has the generally nameless infinitely respawning NPCs that don't mean anything to the story. But with Red Dead, you can see the impact of your mindless killing with Arthur. How he talks about feeling violent with the people at camp and how he hates the man he's becoming. And you see what being evil is doing to Dutch and the gang and everything falling apart. I want to not be evil in Red Dead so Arthur can redeem himself and live the rest of his days as a good person.
The game has a story about failed or flawed redemption. It's a not an RPG and Arthur is set to die.
@@Lucas_Antar I wouldnt say gta is an RPG either. And sure arthur is set to die but you can choose how he dies
As a side, read dead 1 feels like it has 2 endings based on your morality.
Good= a man with a bad past turns good and the government broke its promise because of corruption and malice.
Evil= government broke its promise because you were a monster who couldn’t be left alone.
Same ending but one feels just
Being honorable in RDR2 is tedious and unrewarding gameplay wise. Besides, you can be an evil SOB 90% of the game and gain back most honor in the last part of Arthur's story.
@@woodlefoof2 I never really thought of it like that but it makes perfect sense
Two words: _Soul Nomad_ by Nippon Ichi Studios. You can only do the evil playthrough after completing the game normally, and oh boy, that context makes a huge difference. You only need to make a few decisions at the start that aren't really evil, they're just not overly self-sacrificial and altruistic. Then it catapults you into a story that _very explicitly_ changes because you're not showing up at places at the time you normally would have. While joke characters and affable goofball villains all become serious characters throwing aside their differences and conflicts to stop you, just making it to a certain town a few months later than you would have in your normal playthrough throws you a little context you weren't ready for. It makes you stop think about half the "good guys" you were helping before, and maybe decide that while you might be doing it for the wrong reasons, you might be doing the right thing when you slaughter them. You're evil, but not for no reason, or a stupid reason, and until the predictable out-of-control plot spiral into eating god that you really should expect from the Japanese by now, you can kinda jam with the evil route.
Woah that’s way more than two words
Yes, good game. The evil playthrough was fun because you got characters you didn't get in the normal story. But you do get your just desserts at the end.
Undertale
@@gamerxcool Was actually going to point this out, but Undertale might have the best evil route of gaming itself. The literal premise of it is just "I can just reset, so I'm gonna see what happens." Sans literally calls you out on this and makes the (probably correct) guess that you've already done a pacifist route. Enough said. (Also Chara turning this on your head and making you ACTUALLY evil. An ACTUAL good way to make you reap what you sow)
Soul Nomad came to my mind as well when I saw the title of this video.
To me it's really just the fact that being "evil" really just means going around and killing everyone you see and eventually it gets boring there is no depth to your evil deeds its just do you kill and steal from everyone or not and most RPGs are like that. Also the fact that you actually get rewarded for being a good person most of the time
Darkest dungeon
See Trevor and all the other player characters in the GTAV campaign. No depth, all evil, and you are REQUIRED to be evil. And in multiplayer, you get MORE GAME if you are bad than if you are good. Play it good and you have a sub par driving game and dolls house. It isn't the same sort of game as Fallout3.
My complaint with being evil in games is how shallow being evil is, you decide to be evil to see what happens, but nothing really happens.
Have you played BG3? I initially planned to do an evil playthrough and was having good success with it 20 hours in eithout massaccring people for no reason. Currently I'm trying to redeem my character however the games gives you A LOT of options to be a goddamn evil piece of shit and actually incentivizes you to do it. BG3 is probqbly that one rpt that is an exception to this.
No shit.
True evil has no depth. That's the whole point. That's why evil should be rejected, irl or otherwise. It's shit, shallow and fake all at it's best.
To this day, I've never done a evil playthrough on bioshock. My wife keeps telling me it's time to do so lol
the problem, for me, is that usually its not even worth it to be evil, because the things you do makes npcs react to you by fighting and you have no choice but to kill em, which will make you lose a lot of side content. so im always worried that ill lose content by being evil. if we got a whole branch of sidequests due to the things ive done, it would be worth it
Yep, even in Fallout2 (one of the best RPGs ever imo), they give you an option to be a slaver... but then the game severely punish you in every possible way, basically ruining your playthrough. So why bother, it's not worth it.
Heres the thing though, thats kind of the point. When you do evil things, people are obviously gonna dislike or even hate you because of those evil actions. Thats how it is. If you want to be evil, part of that is knowing that near everyone around you is *going to* hste you.@@bdleo300
@@bdleo300 you literally become a slave owner ofc you would be get hated by great mayority of the world what did you expect
In Fallout 3 you can actually max out your karma by selling slaves, and donating half the caps to the church. You'll get rich and get positive karma at the same time
One of my all time favorite games to be evil in!
Just like real life!
@@ClockworkGearhead exactly!
@@ClockworkGearhead 💯 I'm laughing while simultaneously sad at the same time at the truth of this
thats how all the popes get into heaven
My biggest thing is that being "evil" in a lot of games equates to just being mean. You don't need to explicitly be an asshole to have bad morals, and its moreso (to me) an issue of me just not wanting to be explicitly rude to people. If there is going to be an "evil" option it shouldn't default just be your typical schoolyard bully, there should be more nuanced options that allow for more sinister and devious play that allow you to put on the facade of being good while furthering your own evil goals.
Agreed. The truly evil route in Fallout 3, for instance, could be the player taking over Megaton themselves - perhaps holding the people there to ransom with the threat of the bomb. "I'm in charge now. Do as I say, or this whole town will disappear!"
And you wouldn't get there by simply being mean. Far from it - you'd need to ingratiate yourself with the town to get close enough to the bomb and set everything up. You'd need to be NICE to them. Hell, do it right and they may even gladly accept you as their new leader; they're halfway to that already with the "good" ending.
This is part of why I love Baldurs Gate, you can be "nice" for the sake of making things easier for yourself and be evil whenever it's beneficial. (And evil is more nuanced than "kill everyone you meet", unless you don't want it to be)
You can kinda do this in SWtOR. I was playing my bounty hunter character with 3 rules.
1: Always take the job, no matter what. I'm a bounty hunter, not a moralist.
2: Never betray the original employer. Reputation is everything.
3: Always prioritize credits except when doing so would break the first two rules.
The opening planet for bounty hunters has you working for a Hutt, and that Hutt sends you to track down and kill a scientist and bring proof of the kill to strongarm the dude's wife into doing what the Hutt wants. So I took that job and tracked down the scientist. The game gives you an option to either kill him, accept a bribe from him to let him leave but say you killed him, or lie to him and accept the bribe but kill him anyway. I did the latter option, not because it was necessarily evil (because it was, especially when I took his head back to his wife), but because it netted me the most credits without betraying my original employer... the Hutt.
Too many of these games with moral decisions encourage either an "evil" or "good" playthrough. To an extent, this should happen. There should be benefits to pursuing a playstyle. However, it typically leads to both evil and good playthroughs removing the RP aspect, the "deciding based on how your character would act," and instead just choosing whatever seems most extreme in hopes of pushing that alignment bar in one direction or another. Ultimately, I think the issue is hiding content behind some otherwise arbitrary measurement of your morality. What's needed would be a massive increase of data, more paths that open up based off individual decisions rather than some made up number value. And making it absolutely clear to players that your decisions, your individual decisions, have more impact. Perhaps a three-way path towards the beginning with no choice inherently good or evil options based off one important decision.
Side comment. Make sure the player largely knows the effect of their options. Even if seeing, "Dark Side Points Gained, Light Side Points Gained, Influence Gained: Kreia, Influence Lost: Kreia" is meme-worthy.
Na, renegade Shepard is the ‘evil’ way of playing me but it’s not evil it’s just getting the job done any means necessary
Those cuts and music where he put together the dialogue about nuking megaton were so good, it's better than trailers I've been seeing for AAA games
In Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous the evil options are supported by the fact they give you access to a lot of exclusive content.
In the game, you are supposed to lead a crusade against the demons. However, midway into the game you can choose to instead turn yourself into a demon (or a lich, if you did the right quests).
Being a demon unlocks more content in a later chapter of the game where you have to infiltrate a demonic metropolis in the Abyss. Since as a demon the demon queen of that realm personally invites you there instead of you having to sneak in, you get somewhat of a VIP treatment right off the bat, and can even do quests that you can't do otherwise, such as one that lets you overthrow various demon big shots to steal their followers. Your quest turns from ridding the world of demons to usurping the demon lords that are currently leading the invasion.
The Lich path likewise has some great characterization, with the main character being criticized by their followers for trying to defeat an evil with another evil. You have the option to just pull rank and shut them up, or rationalize it as sacrificing your own morality to save the world, whether it's a lie or not is up to you. All that while opening up extra options when interacting with undead characters that let you use your necromantic powers to unlock more options and even gain more playable characters by reanimating certain enemies.
Being evil feels good because you're not just burning bridges with the "good guys", but the ones on the side of evil are rational and welcoming to a degree. You still have to rise through the ranks and earn their respect with force or trickery, but you can end up with as many, or even more options than playing the good routes.
Also you can choose to instead turn into a hive mind of billions of sentient bugs if you completed all of the hidden requirements for it, which makes literally every single NPC in the game, including the other playable characters, turn against you in disgust. But since you now have basically infinite power, the endgame turns into an all-you-can-eat buffet of curb stomping enemies and former allies, where even the main villain of the campaign is utterly disgusted by your choices. In a game that's so heavy on the role playing aspect, having such a big change is truly a huge twist. If you can stomach, pun intended, eating everyone that has been helping you through the entire game (and your little dragon, too!).
People just play games when everything is a form of social control. Thank you for sharing this exemption to the rules. Interesting and appreciated I would of never known this was the case.
Thank you for sharing ! Now that's morally interesting.
YES!!! This perfectly describes why that is my favorite game of all time. They also give you a ridiculous amount of options for character and class customization which just makes the experience even more fun.
You got me interested in this game
Dawg wrote an essay
There are games that have an interesting twist on this.Take This War of Mine for example: in that game, food and essential supplies are very hard to come by. So one day you might encounter an old friendly couple only protected by their single son. Will you beat the son to death and take all the food they have, leaving the old couple to die, or do you spare them, and come home empty handed? But what about your brother who is deathly ill at home? The old couple have the medicine you need, but they are not willing to part with it as they need it just as much themselves. What now? Who is the good and bad one? The choice just got a whole lot more interesting now.
Yeah agreed. I think playing as a morally grey "evil" with solid motivations behind their fucked up actions is a lot more compelling then just being a mustache twirling villain who just does bad stuff for the sake of being bad.
It's not a hard choice. If you have to commit a crime against someone who's done you no wrong, you're the bad guy. What gives you more right to survive than these people? Because you're the protagonist? No. They have the right to live, and enjoy their property without someone thinking it's ok to murder them, because they have a need too.
Sure, it's a video game, it doesn't matter, do what you want, but if you carry that mindset into reality, you get Portland during the BLM riots.
'You' are still the evil one for killing an elderly couple's son and potentially the elderly couple whilst also stealing their medicine. At least that's how I see it. A horrible act is still a horrible act regardless on the justifications we can put on it. To be honest I find more enjoyment in characters who are just straight up evil than one's who are morally evil. Morally evil characters annoy me for the most part. Its like a game of who can play the biggest victim.
@@KDB349 What's the difference between straight up evil, and morally evil?
@@gwourubased on the comment i think they define morally evil as the side thats evil with motivations that theyre willing to appease "by any means necessary" while straight up evil is a trope called Pure Evil
I have noticed the same thing with baldurs gate 3 lately. Even when I played a character I characterized as evil, I would still mostly use good choices, because most evil choices were either irrational, where the benefit was far outweighed by the drawbacks, not only from knowing how the game would unfold, but also from a characters point of view, or just the cowardly "don't involve me in this" kind of response
Being evil in baldurs gate 3: (Trade Karlach and Wyll for Minthara)
Can’t do it sorry. It’s act 1 and already not worth it
@USERZ123XD holy shit that's actually such a psychopath line of thought, you really want to get your money's worth of combat for your first playthrough XD
That's why in this one area Dragon Age Origins wins. You can be an extremely evil SOB in that, and even get rewarded for it.
@USERZ123XD ah alright that's understandable, I've known people like that
What about BG2?
Maybe because worlds like fallout are already destroyed and most of the characters you meet already went trough a lot or already "broke"... And there are less of them. So being evil in these types of games would make the world more empty than it already is and would leave you with an empty feeling also.
I think one big problem is that so many morality models in games portray evil as cartoonishly evil, when you could easily tie a progression system to stepping on others to get ahead or manipulating your way to the top of the food chain. There should be a distinctively different payoff for both paths as well, making the evil path worth it, or enticing enough to also make the good path an actual moral decision
Play shin megami tensei
@@Vanity0666 I was scrolling through the comments looking to find a mention of SMT.
That’s why I like Dishonored. Choosing to be evil makes the game much easier, but it also visibly makes the world around you a far worse place. But the easy ending, although difficult to achieve, is highly rewarding for your efforts too with a satisfying outcome for every character.
Yep.
Totally random but this is also why I like Frostpunk.
That game will turn you into a monster in order for the city to Survive especially on your first playthrough and first time trying to beat the game.
The easy ending is difficult to achieve? What?
@@steponme661 They meant the good ending.
Isn't it kind of the opposite of this? If you kill a lot of people, and put the game into "high chaos" mode, the game puts more enemies and obstacles into future levels. Everyone's on high alert, and they're bringing the big guns. Not that I see this as a punishment, exactly. In my experience, the high chaos versions of levels are actually a lot of fun. But just sneaking around the easy version of levels for the good ending definitely isn't the "hard" path.
@@epsteindidntkillhimself69 The game is very easy when you make use of everything the game offers like instantly hiding dead bodies, strong weapons like explosives, guns and even using the basic sword makes the game ultra easy
I’m sad Baldurs gate three dark urge was not brought up more because there was a lot of rewards for the nasty things you had to do and I thought that was a really big change from fallout and other RPG’s. It really gave you a reason to be terrible, so that there is a dilemma of doing it or not.
Dude trust me I’m upset with myself that I didn’t include it more too.
I had about two to three minutes of dialogue where I raved about Baldurs Gate evil path but I cut it out of the video because a lot of what I said matched the same thoughts I expressed for New Vegas, just with more examples unique to the game. It got to the point where I felt like I was repeating myself, so I didn’t want the pace of the video to get dragged down by it.
I should’ve written it better to combine the two at the end more, but because I wanted to keep the comparisons tight with the just the fallout franchise, the result was what you watched.
@@StrictlyMediocre understandable to keep it between the two games anyways cause they are fundamentally different when it comes to to morality I just saw Baldurs really reward you for being evil and punishing you for not
I’ve not seen that in a lot of other games and it was quite refreshing and it’s really something I hope I see more in RPGs because it added a lot of depth to being good and having to scrifice yourself for the greater good instead of being rewarded
Don't know about the dark urge path, but doing evil stuff like siding with the goblins, etc, felt really underdeveloped to me in bg3. Felt like there was an expected path that was mostly good. The more I deviated from that path, the more quests I became locked out of, and the more the party hated me. Maybe I should give dark urge path a try, I suppose.
@@sithmorpheus9747 you definitely have to accept the dark urge path for a while, but once you get further into it if you go back on what you promise you get really punished for it and if you continue, there’s really cool rewards so you get stuck doing terrible things
@@sithmorpheus9747 Overall, the game still rewards you far, far more often for playing good vs. evil, even as the dark urge because yeah, you get a few neat things but you lose out on so much more in the process that it's not really worth it if you're aiming to make a playthrough as fulfilling as possible.
BG3 has a better "evil" route then some RPGs but I wouldn't call it particularly good or satisfying when you're still left feeling like you're shooting yourself in the foot both gameplay wise and narratively.
Being evil IS the reward.
*laughs into gasmask*
Most games just allow you to be cartoonishly evil. I would love it if AAA games had story content like Tyranny, where evil is nuanced and varied and not the standard chaotic evil or a robinhoodesque "evil" that turns out as good in the end.
Exactly, Tyranny definitely was unique in that regard.
Hearing about Tyranny almost makes me wish for a nuclear winter. The game is so unique despite being a small budget gem yet there'll never be a continuation of its ideas :(
It sounds like you need to give crusader kings 3 a go
I wouldn't really call it cartoonish, as that would actually be fun to play as a over the top silly cartoon baddie. Most games give you a watered-down, half baked villain following the hero's story and saving the day, with the good and bad ending. Let's pick between the red or blue option.
I mean, I'd love to play a game where you can follow a hero or villain path that's actually it's own path. I think being an actual cartoonish villain would be a lot of fun. If games gave you that option without crushing your experience with constantly punishing you for doing a villain playthrough
Jade Empire for me is the one that truly allowed me to be a tyrant.
Undertale has one of my favorite evil routes, because it actually unpacks the trauma you're inflicting on the characters. You hear their desperation to live, their desire to protect the people they love, their grief when they fail. When you grind all of that into pulp under your heel, you make a barren world without love or joy, and you _feel like_ the kind of monster that should've been stopped.
“Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring.” ~Simone Weil
In most games, evil actions _cut off_ content. You get less game for your game. The best evil routes are the ones with _the presence of a story,_ rather than the absence, in the aftermath of your actions. Something to say about cruelty, instead of a nihilistic sandbox full of paper dolls. And as others have said, this is even more compelling when you have more nuanced options than, "Attacking people on-sight."
I totally agree. It's a slow build that requires more and more purposeful acts of cruelty to get the evil ending. The first time I did it, I was able to dissociate just for the sake of curiosity, but even by the time you get to Snowden, it gets to be almost too much. The whole town is abandoned or in hiding because of you. Papyrus, the goofy guardian who just wants to be friends, is powerless to stop a real villain.
The characters that you can grow to love are only safe if they never meet you.
But on the other hand... Megalovania?
All this for a shitty pixel indie game lol
Spongebob roller coaster scared.
I think the whole access to content debate is why evil usually feels so cheap. Developers don't want to go to the effort of making a whole area of their game that only evil people will explore, so you always end up with this cheap system where you can sort of do everything despite the way you treat people around yourself. Gamers are also part of the problem, because they complain constantly when the are locked out of content based on morality. If done correctly, you SHOULD be locked out of experiences, character interactions and areas, but you should be given alternatives. Undertale gives you these alternative interactions with the characters that really make you feel the terrible things you're doing, that's another big part of it. Morality shouldn't be treated like a game, you are hurting people and that should always be abundantly clear to the player. It often isn't.
That's not good evil as well lmao that's just a game forgetting being evil can be nuanced which by your example is clearly missing from the game ,being evil can be just as joyous and exciting as being good it's not black and white and if you think it is your just wrong being being evil =/= 1layer person who does retarded acts
I legit feel bad when I’m mean to video game characters. I know it’s just a game but the level of depth given to characters in games makes me see them as real. I know that video games will only continue to get more realistic and I hope that the percentage of people that are good in video games continues to outweigh the percentage of people that pick the bad route. I know that it probably won’t always be that way but I’m happy to hear that the percentage of people that are good in video games is the majority.
I agree. Me and my girlfriend were playing gtav and she ran over everybody and laughed. I then showed her Red Dead Redemption 2 because I enjoy it more. When I wanted to kill an npc, my girlfriend was so mad at me because she didnt want me to kill that innocent man. Thats what I like about Rdr2, the world feels realistic and all my actions are impactful
@@fallapi I haven’t played RDR or RDR2, I know that that game series is the complete opposite of GTA since your actions impact the game, GTA is merely a playground to do whatever you want with little to no consequences
I'd feel devasted if I lost some marines when I used to play Halo as a kid. Sometimes I would even restart the whole level if I couldn't save them by reverting to last checkpoint.
@@jrc1606 I have never played any fps games and I guess it’s because if I lost anyone in my brigade I know I’d feel bad
@@jrc1606 Same. I’m playing Fire Emblem Three Houses on classic mode, meaning that if any of my characters reach zero hit points, they die, and are out of the game. Even characters that I hate, never use, and are more burdens than assets I still reset for, because I want them to live.
I got it backwards, I legitimately have a hard time NOT choosing the evil options in Fallout games because they seem more interesting to me, and more than that it just makes for a funnier story. Helping the powder gangers and the legion is so hilariously wrong, I can't resist doing it.
👍🏻
I want to add on to this because I think it's really interesting:
Keeping "evil" options isn't just for the players who wish to play an evil route. Rather, it also allows for each player's run to be a bit more "tailored" to their own morals, which vary by age, culture, faith, political standing, etc.
For example, let's look at assassinating President Kimball in Fallout: New Vegas. Yes, you can assassinate him as part of a Legion play-through. BUT, there are plenty of arguments from pro-NCR players as to why Kimball needs to be removed from power. Therefore, some could argue that the morally-gray/"evil" choice of turning a blind eye or just straight up killing him yourself is actually a morally righteous choice.
Lemme guess, you work for the CIA. "No, no. We killed Kennedy for your own good, it was the best option!" ¬¸¬
That sounds more like mental gymnastics, to me...
@@lorenzocassaro3054 poor thing, he can't think
That's why New Vegas outshines Fallout 3 in terms of moral choices because unlike Fallout 3, the choices in NV are much more morally grey and it forces the character to really think what the right choice is rather than good vs evil
@@CapProGames yes!
For me, the difference between being evil in GTA versus Fallout is that one is you playing as a character and making them do evil things and the other is playing as an evil character. Going on a rampage in GTA doesn’t really effect the story. In Fallout, these actions have consequences and can change how you go through the main story.
Play cyberpunk
And because in GTA the humans are just moving targets while in RPG'S the humans are.......well......humans
@@jessethorns121I thought this exact thing and reinstalled after two years and it runs even worse than in 2020 lmfao
@@skaterzrule4 objectively a personal problem crazy that you liked it more when you fell through the map after any strenuous action on your old gen console
I remcommend Vampyr if you haven’t already played it. Lots of choices like who and when you want to EMBARCE (not eat). The more you find out about a person the more como you get. They may info they will help you progress with other characters. Using ppl as an xp dump costs you your safe spaces around the map
Part of the problem is that most of us play roleplaying games to connect with and integrate into the world. But most evil decisions effectively drive a wedge between you and the rest of the world. You miss out on quest lines, you miss out on companions, you miss out on chances to ROLEPLAY in a ROLEPLAYING game, and it becomes "you versus the world" instead of "you being a part of that world." It's fantastic to have the option, and I'm never going to complain about a game giving us more narrative freedom, but evil playthroughs typically undermine most of the core strengths of a roleplaying game.
Which is sad because there are other evil people who are part of the world, why can't you interact with them?
Most of the time is when you made bad choices that lead to have a different ending and perhaps a bad ending too.
I get what you're saying, but ironically, maybe that's what evil gets you
@@iwuanadie1058maybe in real life, but if an unkillable merciless bandit rode into town I would expect respect and fear, to have the effort and time that I put into my status be rewarded in some way.
Being evil is just not profitable at times, and is actively unfun to do, so why would I play a game that isn't fun?
There are ways to make evil playthrough's work for those of us who enjoy them. In Bound by Flame, your character becomes more powerful if you succumb to the demon. In Bioshock, you reap heaps of Adam if you harvest the little sisters. In Infamous, you get access to highly destructive powers when you go evil. Ofcourse all these have their own repercussions such as bad endings.
This however is a step in the right direction. As an evil agent, I expect shortcuts to power, and wealth. Perhaps missing out on a side quest but gaining money as a result. The problem with RPGs is they seldom reward you for evil, which makes no sense because the world doesn't work like that. You don't always prosper because you're good, and you don't always suffer because you're evil. Sometimes it's quite the opposite. I don't see why this can't be incorporated gameplay wise instead of making me miss out on content and loot coz I'm a "jerk"
As for companions, just have evil companions too. Companions who people who choose a good playthrough get locked out
i had no idea people considered being evil hard.
To make the choices between good and evil interesting, its important to have the outcomes variable and the situations nuanced...like real life.
When you do something good, sometimes nobody cares. Sometimes you become an instant hero. Sometimes your positive action actually makes things worse.
When you do something bad, sometimes you get rich. Sometimes you get imprisoned. And ironically, sometimes you become an instant hero.
I think it might be hard for developers to make an engaging evil playthrough possible because they would essentially have to program and script two games in many cases.
funly enough you can make one central story where both parties try to reach the same goal
and you are the one who will tip the balance for good or ill
sure is still extra work as it requires both paths to be interconected so you dont make 2 games in one
but well is less than 2 games in one
isn't that the point Role playing games, to make your choices matter?
@@gawkthimm6030no, it's a feature many market thenselvs around but in the end, is rpg by definition is just a Game where you play the role of your characters, even in the olden and new TTRPG campaings can be pretty linear, it's just that, most of the times, you wont see the railroad you are following.
EDIT: it seems people misinterpret what i said.. no i didn't say Skyrim or Undertale set the standard for anything, just that AAA games felt threatened by the success of Undertale, which affected the way modern RPGs are made today.. if i'm wrong i'm wrong, if i'm right i'm right.. but i'm tired of debate culture and people arguing against points i'm not making.. so i'm leaving this thread to touch grass..
@@guilhermeadfl This is correct. I think what makes it so noticable in Bethesda RPG's is the fact that you play a self defined character without a preset moral compass. You wouldn't go full evil in the Witcher for example because that's not keeping with the character of garalt. Bethesda games don't give you an archetype to follow so it's easier to bump into the "guardrails".
I can tell you right now why being evil isnt fun its because games don't let you actually be evil. Either the characters are protected or doing one bad thing makes the whole town attack you. I personally think its limitations of how quests/storylines are implemented.
Yep, fallout doesn't let you be truly evil.
If it did people wouldnt be very happy, for example the children are invincible
@@ShatteredSightthere’s mods for that luckily
Sounds like someone accidentally stole a spoon in Oblivion.
Read dead readeamptean
@@ShatteredSightfrom what i hear letting your game have killable children or even show children being hurt all has to be offscreen as if it’s shown your game is banned
I think there should be a difference between evil and being a murderhobo.
Boom, this right herhere. Being a murder murderhobo doesn't make one evil. At best, you're playing a psychopath, maybe evil, but more like, chaotic.
I think the closest thing to evil i could imagine, would be siding with the Reapers in ME, not because you're brainwashed by them, but because you've made a deal, wherein you get to rebuild the nascent life that follows into your own image of perfect life.
Instead, we get the choice between "doing what needs to be done and saving the galaxy, heroically" or "doing what needs to be done and saving the galaxy, but you're an asshole now."
Which is why you should play pathfinder wotr
@@Thoron_of_NetoHow about both of those choices you mentioned being present, but you also have the option to destroy or conquer the galaxy?
For me it all comes down to the fact, that evil playthroughs often feel underdeveloped in comparison to good ones. While there are many reasons, why it happens, it boils down to two main factors:
1)The main problem, I notice especially frequently, is the loss of pragmatic aspect in roleplaying villains. Most RPGs treat good deeds as the ones most rational in current situation. You may think, that beeing good will make your life harder in dark settings, your story is played in, but eventuallly following the path of good brings you the best companions, best resourses, best equipment and doesn't require you to sacrifice anything when fighting for greater good. Evil path on the contrary leaves you in a much more poor state, striping you from material benefits of good walkthroughs. The best example is Mass Effect, where you can easily achieve best endings and unite the Galaxy simply by being pure Paragon throughout the trilogy. Meanwhile, playing pure Renegade, you are basically doing the Reaper's work for them, sucessfully ravaging your Galaxy at the worst time possible. There is no reason for a rational hero to behave like a villain, because it hurts him more than helps.
2) Beeing good guy, you keep your reputation high, get the best loot from killed bandits, get additional quests, which provide you additional experience to upgrade yourself. Needless to say, you also get lots of new entertaining content to experience, thus enjoying the game longer. Evil runs however tend to kill those questgivers, cutting their content off and leaving nothing for you in return. It happens, because most evil runs are written more like a loosely connected chain of alternative mission outcomes, rather than a full-fledged history, normally presented in good runs. The recent example is Baldurs gate 3, which is a real blast in a good run, giving you an epic heartfelt adventure to experience. However, when trying to play game as a villain you quickly find out, that you lose tons of content by abandoning the path of good without adequate replacement in evil runs. As a result you lose money to buy new weapons and xp to achieve new levels, thus making the late game unnecessarily difficult, compared to the good path.
In the end of the day, it comes to the fact, that you don't have any rational pragamatic reason to dive into evil paths, both as a player and a character, you've created. So, the only option left to play the game as a villain for you is literally "evil for the sake of evil". Should I mention that most bad people irl will find this motivation boring at best or irritating at worst? Narrowing the description of evil in RPGs to "evil for the sake of evil", writers tend to take away most of villainy flavour from their games to the point, when even bad characters will blend in good walkthrough more naturally. Sadly, there are not many games today, which have enough guts to give pragmatically evil options to roleplay, without being afraid to show the good side less profitable, undermining the moral message behind the plot.
I almost always go through any game with moral choices as "evil" the first time I play them just to see how far the game mechanics lets you take it...
Thats the nail on the hammer really it's just killing content being the bad guy. I wipe the town out so now I lost out on a town with vendors, loot, quest givers. Maybe I loot the town before or after sure but again you lost vendors generating new items, maybe you do the quests before killing them all off but sometimes they offer repeatable quests gone now if you commit to the evil playthrough. And the loot from killing them isnt worth it if you dont have anyone to sell your spoils to lol.
@@cjpkallday5233 thats a simplistic "kill everything idiotic evil" - I prefer the "make all the worst choices presented" evil option play-through. I want to see what mechanics the game designers have implemented and how they used to limit the player
You kill that ONE GUY and boom, there goes 57 quests inaccessible now. Hell, you might not even be able to beat the game in some cases.
You also have to factor in the image of the devs... A game that lets you torture people? Rape, and pillage? Kill kids? Hell people lit their hair on fire over that mass shooter game that I played like once...
On your first point, Undertale had an interesting take on this design, in the good playthrough you don't level up at all or gain any new equipment, so your character is very fragile. Only in the evil playthrough do you actually level up and gain increasingly powerful gear, eventually being able to one shot most standard enemies. You're right though, most games don't offer much in terms of motivation toward the "evil" options.
One thing I didn’t see you mention is the narrative cohesiveness of a specific story by playing a good or bad character. When I play Red Dead Redemption 1&2, I want to be good because both main characters are trying to redeem themselves, so I feel compelled to do what I think those characters would have chosen to do. Even in a game where it’s “easy” to be evil, like GTA V, I tend to not act like a psycho unless I’m playing as Trevor, as I don’t think Franklin and Michael would do many of the things Trevor would.
With RDR2 I prefer going with low honour until the end of chapter 5 and then helping everyone you can through chapter 6 makes Arthur's redemption more satisfying. That way you get to experience both evil and good.
In a lot of RPGs, evil routes just feel like trying to play GTA. It also lacks nuance, like you cannot be meaningfully vicious and cruel to your enemies, while also having real affections for your friends.
I think it's more common to have evil story paths in certain games (Shin Megami Tensei has some stuff like this), in games that are more focused on a linear plot, but sandbox type games or RPGs with lots of side stories and plots frequently seem to struggle more with having interesting evil options.
The issue often is that your "friends" are goody two shoes as well. There's too many games where companions or friendly NPCs will have their entire family tortured and violently killed by a minor villain, but if you don't arrest him and give him community service they will lose their shit and call you the greatest demon the realm has ever seen
TBF the "evil" route in SMT games aren't even REALLY evil. They represent an ideology of freedom... even if that freedom means a lot of bad shit happening to people. Is "ultimate freedom for all beings" worth it? In turn, the "good" route is one of absolute control, with an "ends justify the means" approach to justifying the bad things that the "good" guys do.
Usually, the closest thing to a truly "good" route is the Neutral route in SMT games. Being a centrist beats being an extremist, or so the developers seem to think. Ironically, the Law route - the "good" route I was talking about - is often the hardest to justify. Like basically nuking a huge area to get rid of demons, and killing all the human survivors in the process, justified as "collateral damage".
SMT games are cool.
Again Mass Effect proves this wrong
idk i think a lot of ppl think about "evil playthrough" and immediately think "oh, so like, u play as a murder-hobo and kill everyone? yeah no that sucks".
A real evil playthrough for me is one where you build your character up to be 'evil' through actual in-game events/dynamics and they aren't just out there killing everyone - you make actual realistic 'evil' choices that actually benefit the character & their pursuits, y'know?
A good example of a game that allows u to be evil is fallout. u can do this really easily in Fo4 and FoNV, ESPECIALLY with mods, I still prefer chaotic neutral/good playthroughs but rp'ing as a full blown villain is a fun experience in those games.
Often, it is because the world is just way better, and you have a bigger impact on fixing issues that are happening. Sure, you have the freedom to cause chaos, but it is often the worst ending or thing you can do in most games. Plus, being shamed or having character, especially ones you are close with be disappointed in you just hurts a lot more than you'd think.
when i tried doing the no mercy run in undertale i had to quit after papyrus because it just made me way too sad 😭
@@sierranicholes6712 It's hard to be evil in those type of games because the characters feel like people like they don't just have a one off line and then never talk to you again which is why games like that are great because it makes you feel that your choices actually have an impact on the world and characters in it.
Baldur's Gate 3 actually does an alright job at providing options for playing as anything from a greed-motivated mercenary, an apathetic jerk, someone struggling with an internal demon, or just being a completely murderous bloodthirsty monster, and it provides unique dialogue and interactions for each path you take. Yet another reason it's GOTY.
Yeah, BG3 really raised the bar.
I'm almost afraid to play it, fearing that I won't enjoy other games as much afterwards.
@@lightworker2956 No, trust me, it won't ruin your ability to enjoy games. BG3 raised the bar, yes, but it's also a very specific KIND of game that was pushing for that kind of freedom of play, and it isn't at all reasonable to expect that level of quality and effort out of every single game that comes out because that was a huge gamble and incredibly expensive to create. Enjoy BG3 for what it is, and enjoy every other game for what they are- don't let what one does better ruin your ability to enjoy what another game does.
too bad evil path goes the same route and you can just swap between good or evil endings XD
@@lightworker2956 It won't ruin your ability to enjoy other games because the actual quality of the story is not great. It has lots of good roleplaying and is fun to play, but there are many other rpgs with much better writing, worldbuilding and characters.
Does it tho? In the end your options are still varying degrees of being a jerk or not being a jerk.
It's hard be evil in games because the options are often too binary and safe. There's usually no convincing factions to join, no ways to truly affect the world, and a lack of a satisfying ending.
Pretty much this which is why I like the reputation system in New Vegas better. Plus, a lot of the time it's a con to be evil in video games with a morality system.
Try Obsidian's RPGs like Pillars of Eternity and Tyranny, or even better Planescape: Torment, those games definitely wouldn't qualify as "safe and binary" and being evil in them is actually really engaging and fun.
@@ivancar555 neverwinter nights 2 also has plenty of evil options, you can even kill all your companions at one point
Maybe that's because most people don't actually want to be evil bastards. There's plenty of evil to do IRL and sometimes it's not even intentional. Evil is the state of the world. In games being good is easy and evil is more difficult most of the time. In real life the opposite is true. Being good is hard, even more so to be altruistic. Most of the things we do are neutral to lawful neutral at best most of the time. Doing TRUE good requires work, often a lifetime of work. It's all to easy to dive into evil and malice. A stupid driver, a bad day, or even just a conversation gone horribly wrong.
It may seem trivial to be a "good" person, but in reality, your probably not doing anything that could be considered truly good. Mass Charity, housing the homeless, saving people in war, stopping wars entirely. Those and much more are truly good. The rest below it are, as valuable as they are, are the product of being a decent human being.
Simply put, not having adequate rewards for an evil playthrough is that there are already plenty in real life. Why invest one's self in recreating the tragedy and trauma that we already go through?
@@TheBlackAntagonist But the thing is, Games aren't real. Why can't I indulge in something I can't do in the real world? That's why play video games, to do things you can't do in real life.
and then there’s infamous where your abilities change based on your choice
I adore evil playthroughs. Problem is in a lot of games the evil playthrough content isn't fleshed out.
Or just stereotypical and lacking any nuance.
Instead of playing Lawful Evil or Cunning Evil it usually is 'Chaotic Evil'.
Or the story is impacted very little by it.
Some games also like to push you into being a good little Paladin by making the rewards of being evil or opportunistic way worse. Or simply don't offer a way to tackle the quest in another way.
I always play Legion in Fallout New Vegas but even there they clearly were among the 'cut content' sections of the game.
There is also the fact though a good villain character (for example a mercenary without a heart, a stonecold assassin or a manipulative ambitious noble) are going to go out of their way to help people just on the basis of good PR, good rewards or to reach another objective.
Black and White morality systems in games can seriously clash with nuanced and pragmatic in character playstyles leaning towards evil/greedy.
So true, and even though the issue with the legion as a faction is that, well, they're the legion, they're still better than the NCR bc the NCR is still a failed bureaucracy that represents the failure of pre war America. Personally, I would've put Joshua Graham in the base game and made him a "faction" where he kind of creates his own little new Mormon settlement and can go to war with the NCR and Legion, because he has reason to hate both, and Joshua is arguably the best fleshed out character in the game in any capacity. But that's another thing that hurts RPGs: making characters that have integral stories to primary factions, like Joshua, and then not including them in the capacity of where you can choose them over said faction
My biggest problem is that evil is easy, and good is much more challenging
@@AxenfonKlatismrekWhich games become easier by being evil?
You should go play Dayshift at Freddy Fazbenders then. Its a free fnaf fan game on game jolt, that plays like a story game with you being able to make multiple choices that give you different endings. But most importantly it let's you join the games hilarious version of Purple guy-Dave Miller in killing a bunch of a toddlers, then partying in Vegas as a reward. It sounds kinda shit I know but trust me, the games hilarious and is surprisingly well written when you get into the two sequels.
This is it! I can really only play as an evil character if the level of evil you can be is comically absurd. I found the Dark Urge and a lot of the evil dialogue choices to be so batshit that I was having fun for the first time in a long time playing evil. It's a bit hampered by the over the top edginess. But generally it's just never fleshed out to really make me want to deal with the consequences. And the older I get and the more understanding I become of what creates real world evil, the less enthused I am for it in games. Simply because they won't do it Justice.
Reminds me of the show Game of Thrones. In that show there is an bad guy named Littlefinger who is a master manipulator but usually comes across as very skeevy, perverted and like the actor is trying to play a bad guy. While that same character in the books is extremely likable, is everyone's friend and his motives are mostly just plain old self interest. A lot of evil playthoughs in games seem like they allow you to be evil for the sake of it and not because you have a clear motive, which is usually not the case in good playthoughs where you have plenty of motivation both in the context of the story and the context of you as a player to be good
In my opinion, THE HARDEST game to be evil in is Star Wars: The Old Republic. I remember a mission where i killed a father in front of his son just so that that child would be sent to the Sith Academy on Korriban. It felt terrible and was a VERY hard choice to make, but had to be done. (Long Live the Sith Empire)
What's interesting about that one is its a bit more nuanced than your typical Good vs Evil system. Since you can play as a Sith but still be light. My favorite one to play was my light side Sith inquisitor. I was forced to be "evil" a few times, but it really makes you question the morality of the Jedi you encounter.
There was one mission where I needed to retrieve an artifact from a Jedi's vault. Obviously one option was to just wade in kill the Jedi and take the key to the vault. Instead I took the option where I very nearly ended a massive blood feud. I snuck into the Dark side faction and talked to the leader. And I got the story about how she had this feud going because the Jedi stood her up at the alter. I got the two of them to a meeting and the Jedi remarked "You have more light in you than I do." I get them to agree to resume the marriage thing and the Head of the assassin's would be willing to stand down and end the war that was consuming the planet. I nearly achieved peace, asa Sith. Not once did I mention the artifact to anybody. Even openly refused a reward until I had no choice but to accept when the Jedi insisted I go to his vault to take one item as a reward.
I go to the Jedi's vault and... am betrayed by the Jedi. He ambushes me and I'm forced to defend myself.... so I handily wipe him out thus restarting the blood feud on the planet. So the Jedi, decided to betray the person who helped to end a blood feud war on the planet and achieve peace... because they're a Sith.
Wasn't the only time either. Several times you try and play nice with the Jedi, help them with a problem and they backstab you. Playing a good guy as a bad guy was a lot of fun.
Many times being evil on the Sith side just felt...counter productive. On the third planet you find out about some force sensitive children the Republic resistance were trying to smuggle out. While on your mission to capture them for Sith training you find out that all of these children were only mildly sensitive, so little that even the Jedi didn't think they could sense the force enough to train them. Your option is to send them to Korriban anyway, knowing they would be a waste of resources, time, and all end up dead or let the Republic take them so that they would be forced to feed 'useless' mouths. The Light side option, from a war stand point just made more sense, let the 'useless' orphans become a drain on the Republic's resources.
When I think of a truly evil player character, the evil Sith Inquisitor character in SWTOR is one my mind is usually naturally inclined towards remembering. As an evil Sith Inquisitor, there are plenty of opportunities to go beyond mere casual cruelty. There are choices to deceive, manipulate, and use other characters, and cause them unimaginable suffering once their usefulness has run out. By the end, if one has made the decisions necessary to achieve this outcome, the evil Sith Inquisitor will have lied to, cheated, stolen from, betrayed, tortured and/or murdered nearly everyone they've met on their path to power. Even the two of their companion characters who aren't also insane or evil (or both) will hate them, secretly or openly.
SWTOR is an outlier though. You get rewarded for the good and the evil choices mostly the same, the consequences are usually only narrative, cause you can't do huge world or gameplay changes in an MMO. That leads to a lot more people preferring the evil path than in other games. I'm usually someone who does choose the good path, but when I first played the game I chose the evil path for all the empire factions, cause they're the bad guys so you've got to play the bad guy. Yeah, if you think about it you usually feel bad after you make the evil choice, but sometimes... you just don't think too hard about it.
Though if you're not a fourteen year old like I was you start to see that the factions in that game aren't exactly black and white.
Another reason to play evil in SWTOR is, that there are some really hilarious interactions on that path.
Nah it’s definitely bg3 if you decide to kill the teiflings in the grove you’ll lose 3 companions and a lot of content just for 1 companion that doesn’t even have a questline
There is one game I played that made their evil arc surprisingly engaging. Surprisingly, it was Star Wars The Old Republic (The MMO), specifically, the Sith Inquisitor storyline.
I'll try not to spoil the story too much because it was honestly pretty fun.
You start off as a former slave thrusted into Sith training. Right from the get-go, you are forced into a social system of harassment and conflict. To impress your superiors, you are compelled to commit acts of deception and betrayal for your own survival. In this way, you aren't acting like a jerk because you want to. You're acting like a jerk because you HAVE to. The harsh Sith hierarchy forces morally ambiguous choices, shaping your character to understand that advancement demands stepping on those beneath you. Later in the story, you become more independent. You don't necessarily owe your allegiance to the Sith, but you've already made it so far. So you continue to learn more about the force and gain more power. The game does a good job of making you numb to immorality because you've been fighting for your own survival the whole time. Of course, internal conflict within the Sith order never goes away, demanding constant morally challenging decisions on the relentless path to power as a Sith Inquisitor.
(Minor spoiler) There's an act in the story where you meet a Jedi apprentice, and you can turn her away from the Jedi. But it's not necessarily because you're a total douche. It's because you cause her to question her beliefs and she starts seeing things from a new perspective. She also starts seeing that the Jedi aren't necessarily the perfect "good guys" she thinks they are, and perhaps not all Sith are absolutely evil either.
TLDR, It was a very compelling way to present a truly evil playthrough without making it feel like a complete guilt-trip. There are definitely some amoral decisions you can make, but you do it because you have to for your own survival. Your character was dealt a very bad hand and thrust into a very punishing environment, so you're constantly having to make terrible choices to keep up. That's how you make an evil villain arc. Bioware were really something else in their peak.
For the same reason I love the Sith Warrior storyline. You're playing as a person who believes in the Empire and the Sith Code superiority, and you'll do anything to ensure Empire safety, no matter how horrible some actions are. At the same time you can work with certain Jedi and even befriend them, you can even kill some Siths that you see as a danger to the Empire. This was one of the most morally ambiguous playthrough I made and it was extremely interesting and engaging for this reason.
I 100% get this.
I have a Togrutan Female Sorc in the Inquisitor background. My headcanon is that she awoke to her powers because her master "abused her" (to use Safe For RUclips terms). After finally killing him as a matter of reflex, she was sent to the Korriban Academy. The crux of the headcanon is that, as she's _forced to be evil to survive,_ she slowly becomes comfortable with her choices. Then begins to revel in it. Then becomes that which she herself feared once upon a time. From meek and frightened slave girl, to confident Sith Sorcerer, to the brutal (and slightly mad) Darth Nox.
In fact, my main is a Twi'lek Gunslinger I started on the Smuggler story (which is Republic in faction), and she sided with the Empire at Iokath. In the moment, plus with the Smuggler's story taken into account, it felt natural to repay the favor they did for me in KotET (while also sticking it to the Pubs that screwed me over so much when I was no longer useful). I missed out on a companion I would rather have had other than Quinn, but for RP purposes it felt right.
The 1.0 story of SWTOR was so good specifically because each class (now each background) had their own narrative, which each told a specific story, but let you decide how your POV character fit into the narrative. Every character - the Jedi Knight and Consular, the Sith Warrior and Inquisitor, the Republic Trooper and Imperial Agent, the Smuggler and Bounty Hunter - could be a paragon of light or a heartless monster. In some cases (Knight, in particular) it can be as awkward as having massive negative karma and still saving the DC Wasteland in Fallout 3 (you massacred an entire village, Anakin! That's so hot!). But for the most part, it can work no matter what. The Knight can be either Anakin at his best or Anakin at his worst; the Consular can either be Yoda-like or one step from total insanity; the Warrior can either have a sense of warrior's honor or be as cold a killer as Darth Vader; the Sorcerer can be either a true student of The Force as a whole or embrace the Dark Side only; the Trooper can be either a proper protector of the people or a thug with a gun; the Agent can either break away from the Empire and become a free agent (the most Light Side choice I could find) or embrace Imperial ideals and be fully committed to the cause; the Smuggler can either be Han Solo (a scoundrel with a heart of gold) or can become the most notorious pirate in the galaxy; the Hunter can be either a professional with standards or...a thug with a gun (honestly, the Dark route for Hunter isn't that different from the Trooper's, and I like playing the Honor-bound Mandalorian anyway).
This game is probably one of the best choices for playing the specific way you want.
@@natalia499 Also one of your followers changes completely depending on your choice, potentially unlocking a romance route
I started playing as a LS Inquisitor, but there was always a hint of selfishness in my choices, though only if it didn't lead to too serious damage. However, I can point out the EXACT moment when I decided to fully embrace the dark side, because I had to kill an NPC I actually liked thanks to a "minor" DS choice in a much earlier quest. Even then, though my choices were motivated by what led to the most power gained to my character, I didn't engaged in Sith's petty evil.
On my Imperial Agent, I played diffently, as a Empire loyalist, and picking choices that, in my opinion, were the most pragmatic and with the best result for the Empire, leading to roughly neutral-aligned playthrough, as some of those choices were DS, other LS. But still, since the first planet, I had to deal with cleaning up the consequences of Sith stupid petty evil actions (including killing another NPC I liked, because it seemed like safer choice than leaving him go), and about halfway through the campaign, I went rogue (as much as I was allowed to), because the other option would be to accept the (stupid) Sith in charge. Still choosing to help the Empire, but very much standing against anything the Sith did, with the character being against the idea of Force users being in charge of anything, Sith or Jedi.
I also played Republic loyalist Trooper, greedy what-pays-the-most Bounty Hunter and a good guy Smuggler (who still liked being paid, but not if it involved too questionable stuff), so I can say I loved the breath of possibilities how to play various characters. But none of them impressed me as much as the Inquisitor and Agent storylines.
it's because being evil comes with a sense of freedom and it's not possible to code every possible option or outcome
The issue is usually that being evil is an afterthought, it was never a real choice.
That and rarely the good choices actually challenge you, there's no real reason to pock the bad options.
What most games fail at is giving you strong motivation to be evil. If the game encourages and rewards you being evil, suddenly being evil is a whole lot more fun.
Hence why crime sandbox GTA style games are so beloved. You're the bad guy but the game rewards you immensely for being the bad guy, quite often.
totally true, in gta you want to rob banks and kill cops because thats how you get more money
-The Fable series has entered the chat
While in D&D style games, you get evil points for killing a quest giver, get a few coins and miss out on the experience and loot of that quest...
the infamous series has some of the best evil ending of gaming but the first 2 are the bast i never played the new ones
You are not being evil in GTA; the game is fun because of game mechanics, not because you are 'rewarded for being the bad guy.' People attach this morality nonsense ex-po-facto and think it explains stuff, when it is litearlly coming after the cause (game is fun because of mechanics; everything else is aesthetic; yes, even morality is an aesthetic in video games, because it isn't real).
A good game with evil choices is one where you can unlock another way of playing. Instead of you getting punished, you get to experience stuff you couldn't with a good playthrough.
I think the infamous games do a really good job of this, especially Infamous 2
Absolutely
The problem with "evil" choices in games is that it is usually a misunderstanding of what makes a human being actually choose to commit the horrific acts they commit. The desperation of poverty, The mental illnesses and the emotional breakdowns that causes someone to commit horrific acts that the average person who isn't emotionally and mentally compromised would ever do or finally the Ideological struggles that mankind finds itself in when facing choices that some may consider questionable while others would find admirable. In our reality we see every day people who justify and are sometimes deified for their acts of cruelty and death in whatever reasoning they and their society has come up with to accept their actions when their enemies and victims see horrific evil being cast upon them. Do you think the people in war ever truly believe they're the bad guys? The best games and stories have villains who aren't just mindless evil caricatures but complex individuals with sometimes very reasonable arguments making choices that will bring people to question who is actually the hero and who is the villain in the story. They'll have compelling reasons behind their actions and in the end we are shown that there is no true good or evil in this world but just different shades of gray as we all make our way through it.
Your work is great, and I highly recommend playing Classic Fallout and Fallout 2. Not to compare them to new Fallout, I love them all. But the evil choices in old Fallout are sooo tempting because you *need* the money to survive.
Eh I mean, in fallout 1 and 2 you can get a lot of money by cheesing the casino in junktown and New Reno by having atleast 60 points in gambling and a quicksave, but each to their own i guess.
I see clips of the dialogue exchanges in those games and I'm tempted to play them more and more. I do gotta ask though: Do the games crash often? I really went through it while trying to record footage for the new fallout games lol. The crashes were ridiculous.
Also thank you!
Yeah i remember how can go into new reno and support any bandit group you want to conquer the city, and despite one being somewhat objectively good, other groups also have good points on how to improve the city.
@@StrictlyMediocre if you want you can try to use fallout fixt for fallout 1 and f2 restoration project for fallout 2, it basically fixes bugs, restore cut contents, stop crashes, and probably many more.
(if you see both comments of me, then youtube probably delete the one with link, so i am just gonna tell you to this instead)
@@StrictlyMediocre I think the current versions are stable, I know fallout 2 running full screen works well, at least for me, meanwhile fallout 3 and nv keep crashing because of that weird bug where the memory keeps stacking and eventually the game runs out or whatever.
i think Red Dead 2 is probably the best example of morality in videogames. When you kill certain people and loot them, you can find wedding rings, letters to loved ones; and even (once or twice) be confronted by their widow who will say how you murdered her husband. Plus with how alive the world feels, being evil feels evil, and being honourable feels honourable.
Was looking for this comment. Red dead 2 definitely does a better job at making you feel bad for killing npc’s there’s a genuine low honor high honor system and being evil with Arthur is hard for a lot of people to do.
New vegas does the approach well as well but the conplete opposite, being evil or good doesnt matter bcs its a post apocalypse
I love how Red Dead 2 forced me to beat up that guy so Arthur could get sick, I didn't feel bad for his family.
@@griffore6404 felt bad for the son but only after when we go to the mine same as arthur is portrayed feeling for him
It’s also definitely not boring playing evil (the Wolf). Having to keep yourself from being recognized to avoid having bounties and lawmen chasing you wherever those bounties lie, people who could’ve been helpful if you were honorable with them are now avoiding you or even hostile. No discounts in shops, and scavenging becomes more viable than risking being seen in town to get supplies, but also can be exciting getting in and out without drawing attention.
Then the camp. You literally feel alienated going back to it and like you no longer belong there, unless you actually are an A-Hole.
While it is true that Good choices are what most people gravitate towards, the fact that there is a choice is the most important part. Even if you don't play evil, you feel like you are good by choice, not because the game's narrative forces you to. That is really important in these types of games.
my first Skyrim playthrough was an evil character... but not one that is openly psychotic and murder crazy, or a silver tongue only interested in his benefit, he was more of a Thanos or Funny Valentine type, an anti-Villain, interested in basically doing what Talos did on steroids, he was interested in usurping the Gods and becoming the sole deity that everybody would pray to, and he'd shape the world in his image, based on what he deemed to be "righteous".
The character used magic you'd typically see a bad guy use, like lightning, necromancy and illusions, in terms of the civil war, he despised both sides, but saw the empire as easier to manipulate in the future, seeing as the elves had already done it, and the stormcloaks, in their stupidity, might have the gull to try and opose him if left unchecked, so taking care of them now as a mere independent adventurer siding with the empire and not an almighty God abusing his divine power against a group of mortals might save him the trouble of being seen as an evil God to be praised out of fear later down the line. He used the mace of Molag Bal to steal the energy of his opponents and add it to his own, collected every single divine artifact he could get his hands on from the Aedra themselves, blissfully unaware of his true intentions, absorbed every dragon soul he could, and because the game ends after you defeat Alduin, his story is left as an open-ended cliffhanger on if he managed to go through with his plan to defeat the Gods and steal the power for himself, or if the Gods always were privy to his intentions and struck him down effortlessly once Alduin was taken care off.
My idea with his story was, "what would happen if an average person attained Godhood?" Sure, Talos already did this, but realistically speaking he was no average person, the guy is basically a superhero with all the stuff you hear about him in legend, he effectively earned his rank amongst the Gods through his deeds, but what if somebody who was truly average decided that this world was unfair? that if it was up to them, things would be much better for everyone? I found through playing him, that you end up with a character who treats the people fairly, donates to the poor and strikes down corruption and crime where he sees it, but all because he wants to be seen as a favorable hero by the people, so that when the time comes for him to become THE God of this world, the people will praise him as their savior from the evil Daedra and the useless Aedra that never heeded their prayers, and thus allow him to reshape the world in the image of what he deems to be correct and good, which I purposely tried to not think about so that it could be left open ended, yeah he says he wants to do what's best and all but what would that look like exactly? If several deities came up with this world and it's still unfair, how can one mortal claim that they'd be able to do it better?
if any of what I said doesn't fit with elder scrolls lore, it's because I didn't know anything about the lore when I started playing, the character sort of just developed in that direction somehow over the course of my game and as I watched youtube videos of the lore I got the idea for it. Also since this character used the Ebony mail and Ebony armor, I sometimes like to think that whenever I fight the Ebony Warrior with future characters, I'm actually fighting that first character I made, who has seemingly attained his goal to some extent at least, the Gods are still around clearly, but so is he, he's gotten taller, stronger, but he also doesn't have that spark of ambition he used to have... Now seemingly just wishing for... death? Perhaps the Gods as punishment for his audacity made him their divine errand boy, and now in-between doing the will of each Deity on the mortal plane, he seeks out worthy adventurers to see if one of them could finally put an end to his misery
When I played Fallout 3 for the first time, I explored around a bit when I left the vault, then found myself in Megaton. Met some people, got some quests, then found that guy who asks you to detonate the bomb for some bunch of rich shmucks over in Tenpenny Tower. I listened to him, heard him out, and then when he finished.. I stood up, looked around, got out a revolver I'd found, and shot him in the head. There was a sudden firefight and I'm not sure who all died there, but by the end of it I was on friendly terms with Megaton, and a lot of bounty hunters wanted me dead.
That quest is a wonderful example of Bethesda doing such a bad job that this guy made this video and applies that trope to everything. Even if you do "blow up the town" the tutorial quest giver Moira is still there in the same place and has the exact same voice lines and isn't even mald at you she's just a ghoul now. She wants you to do the exact same tutorial quests. It's truly babbies first fallout. I'll never stop hating 3. 4 isn't so bad not because 4 is some pinnacle of fallout but because 3 is there and exists.
The issue with evil playthroughs is that most directors/writers can not write a story that is multidimensional for an evil player. It’s almost always just being a terrorist with no conflict. You can’t grow your character because the story was written to be for hero’s, and the player given the option to be a killer.
They need to stop hardlining stories and quests into open world rpgs mainly. We're at the point where the CPU can unfold a unique story by giving the NPCs their own social and financial economies. every playthrough having the same start point with you being the "x factor" in the environment
I mean, how creative are you as a player? There's games where you can go from being evil to having a redemption arc/change of heart and saving the world. Hell, I see Fallout 4 which everyone rags on for not having choices as a slow, gradual change from a suburban parent to the most evil prolific killer in the region, all in the name of rescuing your kidnapped child. THAT is compelling storytelling if you have the sense to pick up on how your character really is changing over time. If you join the Institute you literally go from grieving parent/spouse to being just like your enemy who stole your child and kidnapped your spouse. In fact you find out the exact same thing happened to him to make him this way. That is GOLD. It flies over most people's heads.
@@majorpwner241 "I mean, how creative are you as a player?"
Tha'ts the problem: I didn't pay full price for a campaign in a game just to be told it's on Me to figure out how to make the story engaging.
If my hyper-complex redemption arc hinges on me making up context around the janky mechanics of a game, then I'm the one doing most of the work inventing a moral arc the game devs flat out didn't design.
Why would the game devs get credit for work I'm putting in?
@@patchwurk6652 'URR This game isn't even a real RPG!!' *As a player, refuses to engage in roleplay in the open world which has been provided to you.
Enough said I think. Can you really criticize games being lacking when you're a lazy player? Go play New Vegas then, or some other game with a little cartoon bearded devil man in your log telling you how evil you've been. Being real with you though, that stuff is cartoonish and so is your idea of moral choices in games. If you have to be told something is bad, if you really need an A or B option that is so expressly good or evil, the story in your game is about as deep and stimulating as cardboard. I'm tired of hearing otherwise.
@@majorpwner241 "'URR This game isn't even a real RPG!!' *As a player, refuses to engage in roleplay in the open world which has been provided to you."
Not what I said.
"Enough said I think. Can you really criticize games being lacking when you're a lazy player? "
You're calling me lazy for not giving the developers credit for ME having to make up a completely nonexistent plotline on my own just to have fun with it? You do realize you're defending Bethesda here right? The guys so phenomenally lazy that their games popularity is entirely thanks to Modder communities fixing their incomplete games, and you call ME lazy.
"Go play New Vegas then, or some other game with a little cartoon bearded devil man in your log telling you how evil you've been."
The fanboy is thick in your insecurity. How desperate are you to simp for a gamedev who couldn't even be bothered to release "A Finished Game" while still demanding fullprice from you?
"I'm tired of hearing otherwise."
Too bad fanboy, your game of choice sucks and you're a loser for not expecting better.
To me, for being Evil there's a lack of a few factors:
Reaction- to your actions/presence that comes with being evil, fear or hatred that isn't just a trigger to flee but a 'voice' of how characters think of you or impact locations, emotion ranges, etc. It's an on/off switch when it could be more authentic, could evoke the feeling of being evil in the game from how those react to you.
Scope - for being evil what can you do? Either be a dick or make people dead, there isn't 'reveling' in despair or range of effect to those enact evil onto. Even extremes like torture, imprisoning, etc. Compared to other evil factions, our characters give a "bad, but not as bad as that guy" type feel.
Depth/Flair- Again, being evil tends to just being a dick rather than more refined, or crazy, or grandiose in how your evil presents itself. Many mediums have stories that being Evil makes sense or can even feel like 'the right side' to corrupt good/rule. Even as retribution against people/world for what it has done to you but generally there isn't a catalyst of why you could be Evil than a mood.
Outcome - Either lack of rewards or reducing options (killing being primary 'evil' option) compared to Good playing that opens up more. When playing Good there is an established 'bad guy' that is enemy. When playing 'evil' there isn't a counterpart to that. Would be fun to see the results of our evil bring forth a 'hero' to try and stop us or factions banding together launching an assault.
Oh you're a villain alright, but you're not a supervillain.
been loving bg3 lately which I'm sure you've got a massive earful of.
I betrayed a man and lead an evil horde to the place his friends were seeking safety. When he asked me why, I said "Because I'm sin incarnate, idiot, lol."
at the end of the massacre, one of my friends is drinking herself stupid and going "yeah that was SUPER FUCKING NOBLE how we SET A BUNCH OF WOMEN AND CHILDREN ON FIRE I totally feel AMAZING ABOUT MYSELF" and I just went "yeah but we won, stupid'
"villain and loving it" isn't done nearly as often as it should be.
another quote from hte game: "IT'S ABOUT TIME SOMEONE RECOGNIZED MY GLORIOUS DEPRAVITY"
in GTA you play a fully fledged character; In games like Mass Effect or Fallout you're encouraged to play yourself. At least that's how I feel. It's more fun to make decision based on what I, myself, would do in that situation.
The characters from most RPGs are blank slates on which you can project yourself.
There's exceptions ofc
I'm currently running my 12th playthrough of Mass Effect 😂 I'm an addict I know. But this is my second renegade playthrough and I've been trying to be super evil but its hard. I'm ruthless but still reasonable. I know what I signed up for but its hard. I'm looking forward to my next playthrough when I can make my actual decisions
@@reggiestockton8166 When I play renegade I'm nice to crewmates and evil towards the rest and it works for me.
I think that the issue with "evil being boring" is the fact that these games are made with the good playthrough in mind, then the evil choices are just duct taped on for the sake of having choices in a roleplaying game. When the evil choices are actually interesting is when the game is designed around the good and evil path. While I haven't finished Tyranny, far from it... very far from it, I have a bad case of making new characters and basically never leaving the tutorial, anyway, in that game, the good path is the difficult choice, the one that means there might be large ramifications in the future. Because the God herself is "evil", and you play as her (essentially) Priest. So the evil path is the "correct" and "easy" path, while the good path is the path that you have to figure out how to do good while not directly disobeying your God. You could also just directly ignore her laws and be good, but then bad things will happen to you. So you kinda have to balance the good and evil if you wanna stay within the good graces of Kyros.
And because they are not worth effort since most people dont care about that
I enjoy when the gameplay changes depending on your morality. Like how the Infamous games had different abilities depending on your morality
I also like it when games add some world-building based on your play style, like Dishonored.
If you go stealth/pacifist, there are fewer guards, rats, infected folks, and wanted posters.
If you go loud/murderous it’s the opposite, and the wanted posters will have a sketch of your character instead of a blank question mark.
@@xxiSHTAr9000x Death Stranding also comes to mind if you run around killing enemies
Infamous is a perfect example of how to do morality well, it did good not to unbalance the incentives for being good or evil and the Evil Ending wasn't a Bad Ending... and then there was Second Son which threw most of that out the window.
Something else about GTA is that it's basically impossible to play the game without killing anybody or stealing cars. Even if you try a pacifist run, you'll probably run over somebody within minutes. So it doesn't feel evil when it's your only realistic option.
Being good in GTA is being a lighter shade of gray in a world of black and gray.
You know what's impossible? Finding your will to live, cuz that's gone faster than your father who walked out to get milk after watching you fail kindergarten.
There is one speedrunner who tried to do a GTA V pacifist run and it took literal years of glitch running and IIRC isn't truly pacifist.
@@FreeRobux712true
@@FreeRobux712dawg?
Its hard to be evil when the truly evil actions arent ussually possible
It doesn't help, that for the most part, it always feels like the npcs that you WANT to give their comeuppance in an evil playthrough are protected, and beating them to 0 hp a few times may be fun in the moment, but because you are not intended to kill them it's common for that to make games bug out, or do weird things. Like say you go beat up Ulfric Stormcloak, then leave because he's immortal, and then later when you come back in the actual quest where you can finally kill him, he bugged out, and is still kneeling and invincible until the game lets him stand back up, but he just won't stand back up. Now the quest is locked. Then on the other hand, the characters the game DOES let you screw over in an evil playthrough end up being the ones you actually like. Those are the ones who when you get to the end of a quest to return their sentimental mcguffin, you get the option to go "nah, I'm gonna keep it. It was a lot of work to get" just to be a dick for an item that is useless to you as the player.
Evil options in games just always feel either cartoonishly evil like blowing up megaton or stealing candy from a baby for the lulz, or perssonally ruining the life of the npc that actually helps you. They need to let you do more petty evil, let us hear a snide remark from a stranger, shoot him in his new bum leg, and ward off anyone who tries to say something like "he had it comin, you want it to?" without making the entire city and 40 guards suddenly dogpiling you until you run away or kill them all. Small petty fights happen, and overcompensated retribution for small personal wrongings from others and more sidequests where you get offered jobs of doing the dirty work for someone will feel like a much more genuine evil playthrough.
I always thought the stormcloaks were the best faction. Honestly the only thing wrong they have going on is the racism. Other than that, they are really the best guys in the game. I think bethesda added the racism because they realized any practical logical playthough would have to side with the stormcloaks and they wanted players to have a reason to not pick them.
@@johndeerdrew I mean it's also the Elder Scrolls universe. Racism is par for the course there, Bethesda just hasn't always been the best at showing that in game though.
@@johndeerdrewin the thalmor embassy you can read a document that says the thalmor would rather have the stormcloaks win than the empire. they really want the war to drag on for as long as possible so both sides are weakened but if they cant keep it going indefinitely a stormcloak victory at least means the empire is down another province and the aldmeri dominion has a better chance of winning the next great war.
That’s one good thing about Cyberpunk that I like as an RPG. The game just lets you be ruthless- in fact, doing so has a lot of perks such as using strength for intimidation. The only thing I don’t like is you rarely get rewarded or recognition for knocking people out instead of killing them. You MIGHT get more pocket money but it’s not totally worth it, and doesn’t affect gameplay outside of different animations for each. That combined with rarely being held accountable for either good or bad decisions just kinda makes me feel railroaded into being a morally grey guy.
TL;DR It’s too normal in the world of Cyberpunk to be an unhinged psycho, so being an unhinged psycho isn’t as fun as it should be.
@@LordButtsauce Actually, the document says they want the war in a deadlock so that the Empire commits less resources to competing with the Dominion. The war ending for either side is suboptimal for the Dominion either way as if the Stormcloaks win Skyrim becomes a hostile area of operations, and if the Empire wins the Legion will move forces back to face off the against the Dominion again.
The best 'evil' playthrough I have had in a long time was playing a Bleak Walker Paladin in Pillars of Enternity. Your methods are brutal and uncompromising but its for a purpose. As you get to a point where your reputation is so feared your opponents surrender outright stopping unnecessary blood shed in the long term. Its a lawful evil approach where the ends justify the means your not restricted in the factions you choose, your methods for achieving their goals are just different.
Like a pirate. It's just good business.
POE?
@@eneco3965 Pillars of Eternity
@@eneco3965 Pillars of Eternity! It's a great CRPG.
this just confirmed my want to play PoE finally, downloading it now
Most games just don’t have the writing ability to support a viable “evil playthrough.” New Vegas does.
Well because hardly anyone ever has that ability. That's called two stories instead of one. Every story ever has a point and a purpose not two points and two purposes. It literally is two games in one which is why RPGs that do that have bugs and shit game play b/c it all went into the writing. Gotta pick and choose where your resources are spent including manpower obviously.
It can be done easily by having one person write this and one person write that in terms of writing or the idea. Its implementing it in game play, voice overs, and literally 100s of other variables that go into it that is the problem.....because like that I said that's called two games instead of one so better to do two games instead of one.
Fallout sacrificed like most obsidian and black isle games and basically every cRPG ever sacrificed on game play and bugs and variety in other areas.
@@SM-nz9ff Your example is wrong because Fallout 2 exists. Plenty of player choice and consequence with great gameplay and no bugs.
Also, if you’re referring to New Vegas, that game was unpolished because they had less than a year to develop it, not because they put incredible effort into creating high-quality writing.
@@Salvo_Your_Problems They had 18 months.
@@potatoman305which is less than half of what most games get
New Vegas is a really complicated game when it comes to morality, but that's probably because it's a pretty central theme to the story and to the DLCs' stories. I think where it shines is when you try to do the right thing all the time, but it ends up that whoever you help first is often the only one you can help. The game kind of forces you to make a choice, because it knows that being good all the time isn't an option. On the other hand, you can blow up all the powder gangers and gain karma why? Cause they kill people? Something like that. The karma system doesn't really make sense, but the actual plot is very smart about morality.
I feel like nobody is doing genuinely evil playthroughs. If you're going around killing people or refusing to help, you're just bad. Bad is an impulse. You did something bad because you felt like it. That isn't evil. Evil is more along the lines of accepting a mission to help find a kid's dad, going through the trouble of reuniting them, and then coldly murdering the father in front of the son right when they have their reunion. Evil has to know the difference between right and wrong, and still make a conscious decision to do what is wrong anyways. If you're just doing bad things because you feel like it, again, you're just being bad; but if you're capable of doing the right thing and still make a conscious decision to do something bad, that's evil.
I like when the 'bad ending' is actually the 'good' or more interesting ending. I can think of a game that's good ending actively makes the world a worse place. Specifically breath of fire 4. The bad ending has you fight your friends, but because of the coddling it did to the villains and the narrative as a whole It felt more complete than the normal good ending.
shit, bro, bof4 from 2000
I'm reminded of Postal 2, where there's a non-violent solution to a sizable number of errands, but it's usually so aggravating to do (and in Paradise Lost it might even deceive you into believing that violence is the only option, like with the Wipe House) that you'll probably resort to mass murder anyway.
Postal? Like, Post Office. Too funny this is a game. I found myself very interested in those workplace violence they often are infamous for. I never understood how that environment sprung do many incidents. But I know they are less reported over the years. Or an investigation can find no motive. But that's to keep people from using this as a form of retribution. Especially as wages stagnate and inequality worsens. That's the one that's not reported on. Or reported as a personal outburst. It's fascinating.
@@ButtersCCookie The reason for this was that post offices used to employ war veterans who were often psychologically damaged, suicidal and violent.
@@huks9380 And the term "going postal" I guess postal shootings were the school shootings before Columbine
Worth noting that going postal was a thing since 1993 at the latest since that's the oldest known written use of the phrase, 4 years before the first game came out in 1997.
13:20
I used to be a summer camp counselor. We had this thing where we separated the boys and the girls to do tasks for the first day.
A young boy asked the girls if they needed help with something. They accepted and he helped with stuff.
Other boys asked him why. He simply responded "it's nice to be nice".
i remember the face, but i forget the name. i forget the year. i forget what the nature of the help was. it must have been over a decade ago, but it's always stuck with me.
Best of luck to both of you.
Did the girls sit laughing and pointing whilst the 'nice' boy did all their work for them?
@@AndrooUK stop visiting incel forums
@@AndrooUK Your so lammmeeeeeee
@@AndrooUKthat was whack bro. Why are you stooping so low?
You don’t have to sacrifice anything to be evil. In games like Bioshock your moral choice is to be evil or be good and get a better reward. If someone is evil they probably would still pick the good option if there’s more in it for them, it completely trivializes your choice to be good.
A problem is that it’s not so easy to define “evil”. Nobody is just “plain evil”. Nobody does evil stuff just for the sake of being evil. Everybody has motivations, and sometimes people choose to hurt others in order to achieve their goals. So your character does not really feel right if you are just choosing the “evil option” for the sake of being evil. One of my main characters in Skyrim for example is a Vampire Lady with a sneaky fighting style and quite a low opinion of normal people. She does not randomly kill people just because she can, but their lives mean nothing to her and she would kill a human, elf, orc, etc. any time if she gains something from it. If she gains nothing from murdering a random farmer in cold blood, then she won't. If someone pays her to kill him, then she will.
It might be an extreme example, but I'd argue that "plain evil" people do exist in the form of billionaires. Anyone like your average billionaire will sacrifice the wellbeing and potentially the lives of the majority of people just to hoard wealth and power.
Sure, they have a reason, but it's not the kind of reason that's written to make a character more compelling.
@@Draiocht012 That's quite evil indeed, but it's still a motivation they have. Even these people don't just kill someone for no reason.
@neptun2810 I see what you're saying but I'd still argue that such people qualify as "plain evil" and games often play to that by trying to bribe you into being evil. Where they tend to fail is being unwilling to offer you enough money to really matter for balance reasons.
Where I lived it was very dangerous, there were lots of people who would just do horrible things just because "they can" for example a group of teenagers stabbed someone in an alley behind their scool to show off to each other with no other reason than bloodlust @@neptun2810
Caesars legion
Granted I think a big reason people don't prefer evil playthroughs is that it's often just not as rewarding as being good. Like why be evil when being good gets me all the gameplay and loot I want already? I wish there were more games that made being evil just as engaging as being good, because that way choosing to be good has more weight
Maybe Tyranny.
Undertale.
@@Daratango356 Undertale has like 2 cool fights that you basically have to do 2-3 hours of grinding to actually experience. The story changes are cool but it could be a lot better.
@@deesnyder8201 I understand that it's not really that interesting ig but I was just saying that being evil in undertale was engaging with the story changing and stuff
There once was this great, promising new Bioware rpg called Jade Empire. In this game set in a fantasy martial arts Chia you could also go evil, but it was called "Way of the Closed Fist" and was supposed to be about being ruthless and finding the strength needed to achieve you goal no matter what, instead of pure evil. There was a great scene where I think someones daughter was kidnapped by a criminal and you could just fight him and thus free her (good choice) or went full philosophical on her, talking about of oppression and breaking free of ones shackles and then hand her a knife and send her into the next room with the bad guy, whom she promtly murders, literally getting blood on her hands and thus losing her innocent view on the world. That was totally awesome. Sadly, later in the game time constraints reduced most choices to the typical black and white "should I defeat this ghost to let them go on to the afterlive, or defeat and consume their essence in order to become stronger myself". The final major decision was pretty cool, though.
Sadly, in many of Biowares Starwars games, you only had ONE moral choice, and that was the very first choice at the start. If you went Light side, you would be a do-gooder at every opportuninty, as you a full light side attunement made your light side forcepowers stronger, and the same went for the dark side. But going dark side often let to situations where you had to be COMICALLY bad, just for the sake of being bad. In my POV, if you become a powerful evil figure, be it a Sith, a Dark Knight, a Necromancer or whatever, you don't need to go out of your way to ruin everyones life around you, just because. In order to gain dark side points you sometimes had to murder people just for looking at you the wrong way, or take away a beggars 10 bucks just for asking you for money. I mean, common, why should a powerful conquerer care about a beggars 10 bucks? Just ignore that poor sod. Or maybe even give him 100 and recrute him for your army or whatever, thus corrupting him. But the evil path most often forces you to play a manic and comically deranged bad person hellbend on ruining everyones life. Evil nearly never is written in a way that could work, but always this Saturday morning cartoon villain evil, where they dumb tons of toxic waste into the environment, because they just can't stand green trees or something.
Your editor deserves a raise for 6:42-7:30. Theatrical trailer quality.
Playing fallout 3 was a magical experience for me. I jumped into this game completely blind. Not sure how, but my settings were set to the hardest setting, my entire playthrough I had no idea until I completed the main story. So as the game began, while being in the Vault, I chose 100% good options a true hero but the moment I left the Vault, I was attacked by 2 raiders, as they shot me my health was instantly in the red, I was terrified, I ended up barely surviving, killing them both. I limped my may into Mega Ton. I lived in this world as the Dangerous Hell Scape that I believed it to be, so in conclusion, my desire to survive was my motivation, not being a hero or being nice. I looked at everyone as a way to make some easy caps. I was afraid to leave Mega Ton for a very long time lol because I knew how easily I could be killed, so when I got the option to blow up Mega Ton for a ton of caps, my desire to survive was all I could think about, but I wanted to maximize my rewards, I would sneak around and kill everyone I could. Hiding in bathrooms and using VATS to commit my murder and taking there items. I eventually met Jericho, who told me if you wanna join up together I had to be a bad guy. The thought of having someone watch my back in this wicked world was so amazing, so evil I would become. When everyone was dead in Mega Ton, and my inventory looked good, I took a deep breath, so scared to leave lol With Jericho by my side I went to Ten Penny Tower, to blow up the Ghost Town Mega Ton, I got my 2k caps and began my Journey as a monster, helping people if the profits were right, killing them afterwards to take there things, but towards the end of the Journey, I met my Father, who was so disappointed in me, his words hurt me deeply but I was so mad at him, leaving me alone in this Hell World. I helped him in his task but I all I wanted to do was to have our alone time to vent my anger at him but that moment never came. He gave his life so others could prosper. I watched him die, he died to help the Wasteland... The same Wasteland I have been destroying.... After that moment, I vowed to live as a hero, to never take a life unless I had to, as I continued the game, I would hear Jericho say, we made so much more money being evil... I laughed and agreed with him. but Jericho and I were the good guys, in the end. to me, this was a tale of magic. truly an amazing experience. And then one day I noticed, my difficulty setting was on the hardest option.. So I left it there, and laughed so hard... LOL
Lol nice! I actually played it when I was around 10, and I always felt compelled to help people in the game, and even more after wandering into that nightmare school full of raiders... It actually ticked me off, and traumatized me at the same time, How people would just attack a lone wanderer trying to survive, and delight in it!
I ended up killing most of them, by surviving off the water and using a knife, and was then welcomed by almost everyone in megaton and even given a house almost free. I still had to find my father, but that obligation I had to rid the world of those murdering, torturing, rapist Raiders have always stuck with me.... and Paradise Falls... "I'll let my gun do the preaching"🔥
No game has had an impact on me like FO3, and CoD WaW, and that No Russian mission for MW2 where I turned my gun on Makarov, and refused to kill anyone.
It's like the narrator said in the good karma ending. " But the Lone Wanderer refused to surrender to the vices that had claimed so many others... the values passed down from father to child guided this soul through many trials and triumphs".
That's honestly a really compelling narrative... becoming morally evil, not by will, but by necessity and desperation. And only later truly understanding what being good meant.
thats amazing, your character went through an entire arc. you really made your own story!!
and here i was bored playing fo3 cuz i could loot and kill everything way too easily, i shouldve bumped my difficulty up a little lmao
I remember Yahtzee said one that taking the evil option in RPGs tends to be boring and narratively unsatisfying, which is another aspect that could turn people off. I think now the main reason why people choose evil options is if they're completionists who want to see all the endings.
In Overlord I was like that. Certain evil options I picked just for the achievement one time and not again
There's also just being tired of being used as a fucking chore boy by every weakling and 'good guy' in the world that for some reason or another can't or won't help you so you get the joy of doing all the work while their sit around and jerk off only for your reward to be a smack on the ass and a half-eaten apple or some sht.
That's the main thing that makes me go play a good guy run ONE time, then an evil run for the rest of the times I replay a game.
@@user-rd3ou5ev6o You are the exception and I'm no psychologist but that may say more about you than the game.
The evil route in baldurs gate 3 is the biggest fumble of the game because its so fucking barebones and boring. You help out the goblins in destroying the grove, what do you get? Minthara as an ally, the brand of the absolute on yourself, and in return you lose every single questline involving the tieflings, halsin, last light inn, many great items from those quests. There are no questlines you get in return from the cult of the absolute, you don't get any extra party members to replace wyll and karlach who will not be happy with your new friends, you effectively lose a ton of content for no gain.
its why i enjoy the more evil path in BG3, theyve actually put serious thought into how the evil decisions will effect the rest of your playthrough. Most times quests in games that have an evil option boil down to "the exact same quest with a slightly different ending" and then the consequences for that evil ending stop with the end of the questline. Bg3 is the opposite in a lot of ways, so it doesnt give that unsatisfying narrative that a lot of games do.
My issues with playing as an evil character:
-often the story will assume you're good so you'll be good in those moments but bad when the game lets you
-the evil options are too cartoonish and leave little room for personal expression. It's either save the world or eat babies. No in-between.
-games are often balanced around good playthroughs. You'll end up with a subpar experience because of this.
-a lot of games just flat out won't let you be evil or they'll railroad you so hard you'll have to be good. I played Half Life evil. Can't do that in Half Life 2.
-in some games there's a global stat that monitors how evil you are so NPCs will just magically know you've done bad things without seeing it take place. It basically punishes you for daring to be evil.
You cover some of these. I just wanted to put the ones I feel strongest about.
I bet you cover more of your dinner plate than that.
@@FreeRobux712 Got something on your mind, chum? Parents not feeding you enough?
@@the1necromancer I'm surprised you can tell the difference between your dad's balls and your mom's, you must have a lot of experience with both.
That last point in particular is real bloody annoying ngl. If I'm planning on playing an evil character, it can be fun to be an absolute monster to one group of people and then treat the rest with kindness; hell, it can even be pragmatic in some cases. If I want my evil to be known, sure, let it be known. But if I want to be a bastard in quiet, that should be an option.
I mean, on the one hand, this was a decently put together video and I don't necessarily regret watching it in full. He does a good job of things, as far as it goes.
On the other hand though, dude really just spent 20 minutes telling us bad writing + lopsided risk/rewards = "well golly gee, looks like most human beings conform to human nature."
Like, naw man, for real? No cap? Human beings act like human beings? Wow. Such amazing insight.
But again, the vid was well done and the points you made were conveyed articulately and with appropriate levels of intermittent brevity to lighten the mood and make it more palatable. I like the content, but the subject's ironically quite shallow waters. The rewards for potty-mouthing you too hard probably won't pay off in the long run though, so I'll stick to a good comment run.