Fuck Being a Good Person

[zelda2fanboy]

Yeah, Red Dead Redemption was the same way. It "allowed" you to play as a prick, but every story mission in the game portrayed you more as a flawed and misunderstood hero. It's hard for that to translate if you spend the game stealing horses, shooting random people, and generally being a jerk. There was no benefit to playing as an ass either. It would just add up the bounty. I guess the argument would be that the freedom to do whatever you want gave the game a sense of openness (and role playing), but it would have been nice if they had included some sort of reality where you weren't a good guy.

 

[Fanboy]

From a tabletop gaming perspective, the kind of player you are describing is the kind I dislike the most, because it is incredibly hard to tell a good story when all the player wants to do is flex his badass muscles at every opportunity he gets. Solving every problem that comes your way by hitting something with your fist or shouting really loudly might be fun for you, but it makes for a really boring story. In a video game it is even worse, since creating a vast and adaptable story requires significant effort and resources to create, and without limitations the player could very well break the story (Like Morrowind).

Not to say that playing the anti-hero is entirely a bad thing, only there are limits to the level of choice a game designer can allow while still delivering a good story.

 

[Rheinmetall]

I absolutely agree with you. Games often makes us to be "good", "good boys", and even we have the opportunity to be bad, there is always the option to be good in your second playthrough, essentially voiding the meaning of your first approach, and making the whole thing feel like two compulsory playthroughs in order to unlock all of the achievements...
Cheap and sad.

 

[lord.jeff]

Having a main character that is that flexible in personality is really hard to write for, it works in D&D because the story or at least the detail of it get written as you play but a video game has to have every detail planned, written, animated, and programed beforehand, that's a lot of work. Also it's impossible to plan for every type of personality a person can pick. It would work a lot better in a game that is made for the character to always be a jerk, in which case you have God of War.

 

[Varitel]

I agree with you in part. Games like Mass Effect, or DE:HR that are all about decisions shouldn't railroad you very often, though due to the limited space on disks, and the limited amount of time allowable for writing these games, it will still happen. We kind of have to accept that sometimes.

That said, the wall of text rant was a bit much. This isn't the US Senate floor. The title of the thread is also needlessly provocative.

 

[GiglameshSoulEater]

I liked how in fallout (1) you were never forced to be the dood guy. Hell you, could even join the enemy and betray your vault if you wanted.

 

[DSK-]

I remember on a few occassions I refused to do something in DA2 and I couldn't get out of the conversation unless I accepted. I didn't like that at all. I can't think of any examples as it's been a long time since I played it, though.

 

[Austin Howe]

Does anyone else here vocally object when a game forces you to do "the right thing" against your will?

Only when I disagree with what they conceive as right. For example, Fallout 3 docks my Karma when I kill the Overseer. Fuck that, he was a dictator! All fo a sudden Bethesda thinks it gets to make moral assemsments of my socio-political ideology. What the fuck.

 

[Saladfork]

Honestly, I prefer a hero/antihero dichotomy over a hero/villain one.

If you look at a lot of 'evil' options in most games, they mostly just boil down to being an asshole for no reason. KOTOR was pretty bad in that respect up until the end, as well as a lot of games based of of DnD like Neverwinter nights.

I don't mind having options to be a douchbag but most sane people wouldn't go kicking pregnant women in the face if they didn't actually stand to benefit from it in some way.

At least the antihero has the excuse of "the ends justify the means".

 

[ThePenguinKnight]

I'm not only sick of the whole "good" choices but also the "evil" choices. Why must games be so black & white? If they don't make it painfully obvious which choice is which they'll flat out tell you. I'd at least like a game where being "good" gets you brutally punished, because the "good" path should always be the hardest since you're playing by the rules and any of the "evil" alignment could just ignore those rules and step all over you. Fallout: New Vegas did a fairly good job at keeping choices fairly ambiguous.

 

[Sharp Blue]

I remember way back when I tried to play as a evil charictar in Baldur's Gate, I get that I have to save the world or whatever because that was the games storyline. Unfortunitely your "evil" choices come down to a) Be a snide prick and miss out on quests because it pissed off a few NPCs or b) Extort money. In a few places you could sympithise with the less morally sound faction, but if my charictar is chaotic evil I expect to be able to atleast do something evil that makes a difference, I could go murder a few NPCs, that would be evil. It would also be pointless.

I propose that games should have a sepperate storyline or atleast subplot for my evil choices. At the moment it comes down to this world is mine only I get to be evil here so i'll just pretend to be a bad mannered good guy for a while.

 

[Right Hook]

You know what's funny? I'm not a fan of villains or selfish bad-ass protagonists in games, yet I agree 100% with this guy.

If a game is going to allow you to be a bad guy, then the scripting and the little things in dialogue and actions should definitely reflect that.

I agree, I rarely play a bad guy but I want to have to avoid playing the bad guy, as opposed to it barely being there to begin with.

 

[Unsilenced]

I hate it when the choices are "good" and "hilariously retarded evil."

There was a zero punctuation that addressed this, though I forget which one. Fallout 3 was a major offender.

"Do you want to give this poor guy some water, or kick old ladies off a cliff onto sharpened pikes in full view of a police officer?"

I should be allowed to be evil without fucking myself over. There needs to be some *benefit* to it. If being evil makes it easier to survive a situation, then there's an incentive to be evil. If a character is annoying, there's an opportunity for severely disproportionate retribution. These are evil things the player WANTS to do, and thus they have to weigh the morality of their character against the incentives to do evil.

In both Fallout 3 and FNV I tried to make an evil character, and they failed because the seriously evil options were all just plain retarded. A true evil character should be able to be a backstabbing dick without having to carry around a dead baby on a pike just to show everyone he meets how evil he is.


The Mass Effect games, while slightly less cartoonishly evil, have similar problems. A lot of the time, picking "renegade" is just trying to piss people off. When I tried to be a renegade I often found myself getting paragon points anyways because the renegade options made no sense. "Press renegade to run up to the guy who's help you need and slap him in the face with your dick."

That doesn't help me, game. Give me options that help me.

 

[thatonedude11]

It is not reasonable to demand developers to put in every possible choice in every situation. Developers are restricted by time, money, and their own imaginations. There will always be situations where someone will say "Why can't I do (insert action here)." And that sucks, but hey, no one is perfect, not even game developers.

 

[verdant monkai]

Its hard though because in games you are generally the good guy, and the good guy unsurprisingly picks the right thing to do.
Mass effect is a good example Shepard is trying to SAVE the universe not kill it, renegade Shepard just happens to do it whilst being an utter c*nt. You cannot be Shepard and pick evil choices all the time, because then you are just being evil.

In my mind there are a few ways these things work
1.Games where you are the goody: Character makes positive decisions
2.Games where you are the baddy: Character makes negative decisions

Rpg's are a bit different where you choose what to do so

3.Rpg's where you are out to save the world (or save something) you are able to be a nob but your actions are ultimately just towards saving the world. That is the only kind of Rpg there is really. Unless you count Fable where you can literally just be a nob, but that is rare.

Rpg's where you are out to destroy the world dont really exist they are just the second thing I mentioned. There may be an element of choice but they are generally between two evil choices, or a slightly more grey choice, if the game is any good.


The Dragon age games are great examples
The Warden (DA:O hero): has to save Fereldan from the blight, he/she can be evil but everything they do is ultimately justified by saving Ferelden.

Hawke (DA2 hero): is rather ambiguous he is out to make his fortune, but you ultimately end up trying to save the city the game is based in, so that is really the same as any other rpg where you make choices, some are bad but all lead to a final good.

It comes down to what game you are playing, unless it gives you the choice to play as a TOTAL bad guy, then your choices can be negative but justifiable.

 

[SEXTON HALE]

I get where your coming from sometimes its just horrible to sit there and watch a cutscene
where your character goes and does some absoluteky retarded shit blissfuly ignorant to
you shouting at the screen for them to cop the fuck on!

Or when you given the option to plan your next move and every single choice has no relavance to what you would actually do in that situation it is a massive annoyance to say the least but I digress.

 

[Gigano]

Well, games operate within certain rules, there's a limit to just how flexible you can make a character's options to speak/act out, particularly when it comes to less common desires on what they should do.

Gaming could use a few more villainous protagonists though, and more realistic evils for them to perform (i.e. evil options motivated by credible desires and dilemmas, not generic "I just really like the taste of babies, okay?!"-style motivations).