Does anyone else think the Sith in Old Republic are ridiculously evil? To a cartoonish degree

[LilithSlave]

Oh no, I agree with Yahtzee on something. I feel dirty now.

 

[Foxglove]

I mean through a lot of these quests they aren't even goal oriented any more. They are not just evil for the sake of evil (itself a cardinal writing win) But they are evil to the point where they jeopardize their own plans and goals just to be evil.

A good example is the Black Talon instance where evil characters kill the freaking captain of the ship you are on while on the way to an important mission. This turns out to be a pretty grave mistake as his inexperienced lieutenant makes judgement errors in how to proceed which lets the enemy board the ship with sabotage droids. Its only the game balance alone that saves the mission but what kind of logic is this?

This is not just evil but stupid-evil and dark side oriented characters are forced to do it anyway.

Good and evil are just 2 different ways to approach a problem with each side thinking they have the best solution with varying degrees of moral compromise but the Sith in Old Republic seem to use Evil as an end rather than a means to an end.

The first time I got light side points for choosing what was best for the Empire instead of choosing what was batshit insane I realised I'd was going to have to metagame if I wanted to be dark or light.

It provides a few laughs though when you choose the stupidest crap and it starts justifying itself in improbable ways to make the story progress anyway.

 

[Kopikatsu]

It's no worse than it was in KOTOR. As the narrative tends to be less high minded, it's actually a little better than KOTOR, as the story is more directly focused on you and you alone. "This is the story of an insanely evil idiot", you can say to yourself, and have a good little chuckle while you force lightning innocents.

Whatever the case, Star Wars is about as Black and White as universes get, and Bioware have always struggled with shades of grey even when they're at their best, so it's not really a winning combination when it comes to presenting the player with moral complexity.

I think the best example of neutrality in KOTOR was Jolee Bindo. That guy was awesome, although if I remember Jolee correctly, he was less "balance in the force" and more "I'm a nice enough guy, but mostly I just don't give a shit."

There was a 'grey' force user at one point. Unsurprisingly, he ended up wanting to destroy the universe to 'return it to nothingness' or some such Nihilistic thing.

 

[Gennadios]

The problem isn't the writing but the BIOWARE MORALITY SYSTEM. They suck at writing for it and the system itself sucks, but in their single player games it didn't really effect gameplay enough to take note.

In TOR, there are actual gameplay advantages to maxing the bar one way or the other, so people will take the morality choices they want to inch the bar further up. End of story, everyone in my guild does, and that's really the only reason they have for their actions.

You don't exactly have to do it, the relics those max points give you are purely end game items, and since I'm planning to jump ship as soon as Guild Wars 2 goes beta, so I have the advantage of being able to play the way I want.

 

[Marcus Kehoe]

The sith are stupidly evil, that's why they usually end up screwing the pooch at some point.

 

[LordFisheh]

don't confuse the dark side with simply being evil, it's more about passion and emotions.

Also, you can't really blame the star wars setting for this, bioware always struggled to seperate being evil with being an asshole.

But that's just it. I wanted to play a generally good Sith, who drew his power, as you say, from strong emotions that weren't just anger and hate smash grr. But everyone around him just boiled down to HARNESS YOUR RAGE AND FEED ON PAIN AND KILL KITTENS. I couldn't see any IC reason why my character didn't just finish his training, betray the Sith and wander the galaxy as a badass renegade.

 

[RJ 17]

That said, however, at least in the Knights of the Old Republic games, many of the Dark Side choices were so ridiculously evil that they were actually comical. The type of stuff that you can't help but chuckle and say "Good god....that's just flat-out MEAN!"

Look at their source material though. Look at Palpatine. Look at Vader. Look at the insufferably noble Rebellion. We can hold Bioware's feet to the fire all day long for their silly binary morality, but they're actually being loyal to the source material in this case. If they tried to do Star Wars in shades of grey Lucasarts would probably have a fit.

Actually, Palpatine's version of evil was incredibly subtle. He didn't assassinate anyone or murder any puppies, he orchestrated a war, playing both sides to his own personal benefit and no one suspected a thing. That's how he was able to rise from senator to chancellor to emperor. He didn't kill his way to the top, he played his way to the top. If he was being overtly evil the Jedi council would have been on to him WAY before the birth of the Empire. He used a delicate touch, even with his seduction of Anakin. Smiles and grins and gentle nudges to get him to think "yeah, the dark side isn't as wicked and evil as the Jedis say it is...in fact, there is a tale about an old Sith Lord who could bring people back to life...in the end he could save everyone but himself. How selfless and noble of him."

Vader had only ever been Palpatine's puppet, a weapon for the emperor to use against his enemies. Which is why he is so cruel and overtly wicked.

 

[gewata]

Bioware have said they are going to be adding rewards for people who play grey. They just haven't said WHEN.

 

[Snotnarok]

Of course they are, just like Jedi are cartoonishly good, which is why I think Star Wars was stupid in the jedi sense. Why couldn't there be a dark jedi? Well darkside is evil of course, right what was I thinking. I heard it was different in the books but I'm talking about the movies/games.

 

[Soviet Heavy]

It's a Bioware game. The last time they played with Star Wars, you could set a Wookiee on a fourteen year old girl and have her be brutally murdered by her only friend in life. Then you killed the Wookiee later because he realized just how cartoonishly evil you ever.

 

[Soviet Heavy]

On a side-not, the News update for Penny-Arcade on Wednesday actually touched on this very subject. "Gabe" was complaining that even in the SW books, the Sith are just ridiculously evil with names that specifically state how evil they are, apparently in one of the books there's a tale about an ancient Sith Lord who was some sort of necromancer and his name was apparently pronounced "Darth Undead-u".

That would be Darth Andeddu. He's a Sith Mummy. And I agree on the uber evil sith. More recently this has been a major problem in the Star Wars expanded Universe. Instead of creating new, interesting villains like the Yuuzhan Vong, they instead decide to bring out a new Sith faction. It's become so ridiculous that within a four year time span in the Universe, there have been no less than SIX separate factions of evil Sith, all unaware of each other, fighting the Galactic Alliance.

 

[Talshere]

Well that is the point. Some of the commanders are ok but the idea is that the dark side is the quick path to power and so corrupts absolutely. Technically by allowing the character to chose sith they should force dark side, though in the actual sith religion as apose to the sith faction they believe that the force was neutral and that the end could justify the mean meaning that you could kill with the force if it furthered a worth goal. It was largely corrupted when the Jedi forced the sith into exile, IE the events leading up to the old republic.

 

[ZeroMachine]

I haven't played SWTOR, but if KOTOR is any sign, they think Dark Side=Dick.

 

[ZeroMachine]

It's pretty ironic, huh? BioWare always claim that their games' moral-choice systems have difficult and ambiguous choices, and yet your one and only choice with BioWare villains such as the Reapers and Darkspawn is to slaughter them all like cattle. Seriously, how come most other villains can be persuaded to join the good guys, but not villains like the Reapers and Darkspawn?

Because the Darkspawn are mindless beings who hunger and only follow the command of an ancient corrupted dragon god that they themselves corrupted (this is, of course, if we don't take the Architect into account), and the Reapers have a completely different moral compass than us. It's a case of Blue and Orange morality.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BlueAndOrangeMorality

 

[SnakeoilSage]

don't confuse the dark side with simply being evil, it's more about passion and emotions.

Also, you can't really blame the star wars setting for this, bioware always struggled to seperate being evil with being an asshole.

Anakin Skywalker just wanted to hug those Jedi children with his lightsaber, that's all.

 

[RJ 17]

Well, the original Star Wars trilogy was, after all, aimed at children upon their releases between 1977 and 1983. And, because these three films were for children, the villains were supposed to have no reason to be evil other than that the heroes need something to fight against.

In fact, Old Republic wasn't the only BioWare game with generic villains who have no reason to be evil other than to give heroes obstacles in the way of their goals. When you look at the Reapers from Mass Effect, as well as the Darkspawn from Dragon Age, they were pretty generic as well.

Spoiler: Most of the other villains encountered in those two games could still be persuaded to atone for their evil ways and instead side with the good guys...

Such as Teryn Loghain and Legion, for example.

Not the Reapers and Darkspawn, though, as because they have no reason to be evil, there is also nothing to give them in-exchange for peace and friendship except a massacre.

It's pretty ironic, huh? BioWare always claim that their games' moral-choice systems have difficult and ambiguous choices, and yet your one and only choice with BioWare villains such as the Reapers and Darkspawn is to slaughter them all like cattle. Seriously, how come most other villains can be persuaded to join the good guys, but not villains like the Reapers and Darkspawn?

Because the Reapers and Darkspawn our their respective universes' incarnation of absolute "evil". Though technically the Repears aren't evil. They're cold, calculating machines who invade the galaxy every 50K years and have been doing it apparently for a very, very long time. Their motivations are unknown, but given the ending of ME 2, I'd say they harvest organic life during each of these invasions to facilitate their "race's" version of reproduction. They're just doing what comes naturally to them, it seems to be part of their very life cycle to commit mass genocide on all advanced organic life. So in other words, they're not being evil just for evil's sake.

The Darkspawn, on the other hand, are indeed just "Generic Evil Army #184." Hell, in Dragon Age Origins they look identical to the orcs as presented in the Lord of the Rings movies. They're led by an Arch Demon, which is literally described as a god of evil and darkness. And their only motivation is "Kill anything that isn't a dark spawn." There's no reason behind it, no over-arching goal. Just "We're an evil army and we kill stuff."

 

[bliebblob]

I know right?? I watched 10 minutes of inquisitor dialogue and all I could think was how the f these guys ever managed to form an order/society/empire/whatever. All they ever seem to think of is what back to stab next. I'm pretty sure even the lampposts in the streets are scheming to murder the ones across the street and take their place! muahahahaha!.

 

[emeraldrafael]

We're talking about a game set in the world where youre either completely good or completely bad when you have magically superpowers caused by microorganisms in the blood and people fight with laser swords right?

yeah just checkin.