Fuck Being a Good Person

[Robert Ewing]

Being the absolute good guy is rarely worth it at all. Only in times of extreme peril are good guys really necessary, and that isn't often. Other than that, go with good neutral, or chaotic good.

 

[Wicky_42]

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.

Perhaps one way to deal with this in a video game is how you might with an unruly table-top player: stack the odds. If you've got an expansive sandbox full of characters, but the player's just slaughtering them all, then perhaps because you've killed certain key people the conditions for the big bad's victory advance to the point where it's next to impossible to get the maguffin to beat him, or those in positions of power hire stronger flunkies, towns fortify and villagers arm. Perhaps you reflect the rising barbaric trends the player is causing with larder roaming bands of bandits and kill squads, with fewer friendly villagers and rising shop prices. Bring some real consequences in that players have to deal with and not only will they get more satisfaction from letting rip and seeing have an impact on the world, but you can use that to make social commentary by making it harder to do good through evil means.

Perhaps if you follow this line through you could include mechanics that allow a proper "evil" ending, with a world torn apart by strife and violence and the player either ruling through fear or revelling in the anarchy. Rather than binary conversation options deciding the world's fate and your character's personality have the whole thing more organic and told through action and reaction.

I think these days we have the technology to do that sort of thing really impressively - it just requires enough people to desire something that more accurately simulates consequences and to work out how to do it in a fun, non-penalising way.

 

[Treblaine]

I agree with all points.

But I also think with publishers still bashing developers for time limitations...

It's just not reasonable yet.

He's asking for Depth + Breadth + Time. That is deep dialogue, wide possibilities, over a long game. Any one of those is difficult but lots of all three is more than difficulty squared, it's difficulty cubed. So say writing and voicing for an anime is hardness of 10, such a game would be a difficulty of 1000. It's 100x harder.

The only way it might be possible is as text-only, possibly achievable if they found a way to have a game with a realistic sounding yet made up language but was actually procedurally generated and the subtitles "translation" was actually just the game text a-la Zelda. So you wouldn't have to hire for a thousand hours of voice actors for all the possible permutations of conversations, but for relatively fewer key phrases. After all, so many of these games are set in weird alien places, the far future or tolkien-esque universe it's not inconceivable that they won't speak English nor any known language.

It would also make localisation easier. Yeah, consider the localisation factor in games that really depend on sale in non-english speaking countries.

 

[Xenedus]

Well if you really want to play as the bad guy in a game I would recommend "God of War". Sure the game likes to try to portray the rest of the gods as bigger dicks than your character could ever hope to be but if you really look at the story it's pretty hard to view Kratos as anything BUT the bad guy.

 

[tmande2nd]

Its always a problem when an RPG forces something on you that the developers wanted.

I can be an uber renegade pro-human racist dick....yet every time you deal with Liara and Garrus they are your uber BFFs.

Which is why I liked Jade Empire since I could really be a bad guy, and not just an ahole who saves the world.

 

[Manji187]

Well for starters, no sandbox game is truly a sandbox. They've all got pre-written stories that, one way or another, follow the Good Guys vs Bad Guys format. Quite simply: they don't want a game where the bad guys win. I'm not saying I've played every game out there, but personally I liked Knights of the Old Republic because you actually had the genuine choice of "I'm gonna be a Sith, Mother-Fuck the god damn Republic, I'm gonna take over this *****!" And sure enough you can kill your treacherous apprentice, reclaim the Star Forge, and realize your dark ambitions once and for all!

The point is that KotOR is perhaps the only game that I, personally, can think of that has a genuine "The Bad Guys Win" possibility for an ending. But see KotOR actually had a good reason/story that allowed for it to have a Bag Guys Win ending. KotOR's story progressed with you assuming you're a good (or at least neutral) guy at the start of the game, or at least there's room for conflict because the bad guys (Malak's forces) are trying to kill you. So you progress through the game and don't officially find out that you're really some ultra badass who used to be pretty damn evil. From there you're given the choice of renouncing your evil ways and becoming the shining beacon of hope and justice the Jedi's always hoped you would become...or you can choose to reclaim your dark mantle of Lord of the Sith, strike down your treacherous apprentice, and take back your empire.

With today's games, you're not given such a choice to return to a past of darkness. The game puts you in the situation of a hero and your only choice is really "Are you a true hero? Or are you an anti-hero?"

For instance, I finally got done with my Full Renegade playthrough of ME 3...annnnnnd yeah, ReneShep gets the job done just as well as ParaShep, the only real difference is that ReneShep is just the most backstabbing son-of-a-***** in the entire galaxy. Between Mordin, Wrex, and having to put Legion down like he's Ol' Space Yeller ("HOW IS THAT A THING?!" ) ReneShep proves that there's no one he won't throw under the bus and utterly betray as long as it suits his purpose. ParaShep proves that she'll bend over backwards to make and spread peace to serve her purpose. The thing is both of them have the same purpose: defeat the Reapers. ReneShep isn't trying to defeat the Reapers so that HE can control the galaxy (like Darth Revan wants to defeat Malak so that HE can control the Sith), he's just not afraid to make any sacrifice necessary to win.

In short: games that have a morality system don't really let you choose between being a bad guy or being a good guy, they're choosing "Do you want to be a nice guy on your way to achieve your goals? Or do you want to be a fucking asshole?"

I'd say the Bioshock games, though, make an admirable attempt at having Good Guy/Bad Guy endings. BS 1: Leave Rapture vs Take It Over and Become Splicer King. BS 2: Free a benevolent super powered girl who will help mankind progress to the future vs Unleash a malevolent ***** who cannot wait to to exercise her "daddy's" bloody wrath upon society.

Annnnnnnnd I'm officially starting to ramble so I'll kindly shut the fuck up now.

Damn, those are some coherent and insightful ramblings! By all means, do continue.

Why do you suppose developers have, more or less, abandoned a genuine "Bad Guys Win" scenario?

 

[RJ 17]

And what do we burn, apart from witches? MOAR WITCHEZ!

Damn, those are some coherent and insightful ramblings! By all means, do continue.

Why do you suppose developers have, more or less, abandoned a genuine "Bad Guys Win" scenario?

Why, thank you. I thought it was a pretty good little shpeel as well.

As for why I suppose developers have given up on games like KotOR which have a genuine Bad Guy Wins ending? I really can't say. I can't imagine that it was all that difficult making KotOR the way they did, best I can guess is it's either laziness and/or being rushed too much. Really all KotOR had to do was make two endings for their game that were exact opposite of each other. Sith win vs Republic wins. But like I said in my previous post, the story plays a large part of why KotOR was able to do this.

You couldn't, for instance, have a Mass Effect series if Shepard meets Saren on Virmire and says "You know what? You're right. Screw fighting when we're just going to be annihilated, I'm joining with you and the Reapers."

But wouldn't the be fucking sweet? ME 2 and 3, if you made that choice, become Shepard leading the Reaper forces in cleansing the galaxy... >:3

 

[LeroyJenkinsthe2nd]

And what do we burn, apart from witches? MOAR WITCHEZ!

Damn, those are some coherent and insightful ramblings! By all means, do continue.

Why do you suppose developers have, more or less, abandoned a genuine "Bad Guys Win" scenario?

Why, thank you. I thought it was a pretty good little shpeel as well.

As for why I suppose developers have given up on games like KotOR which have a genuine Bad Guy Wins ending? I really can't say. I can't imagine that it was all that difficult making KotOR the way they did, best I can guess is it's either laziness and/or being rushed too much. Really all KotOR had to do was make two endings for their game that were exact opposite of each other. Sith win vs Republic wins. But like I said in my previous post, the story plays a large part of why KotOR was able to do this.

You couldn't, for instance, have a Mass Effect series if Shepard meets Saren on Virmire and says "You know what? You're right. Screw fighting when we're just going to be annihilated, I'm joining with you and the Reapers."

But wouldn't the be fucking sweet? ME 2 and 3, if you made that choice, become Shepard leading the Reaper forces in cleansing the galaxy... >:3

You know, that would be pretty awesome, getting to destroy cities alongside brutes & banshees, maybe those giant flying beetle things from the second one. It would kind of streach one's suspension of disbeleif since theyd be giving command over their forces to somebody they consider less than an insect, but screw believability, playing as reaper synthetics would be badass!

 

[RJ 17]

Damn, those are some coherent and insightful ramblings! By all means, do continue.

Why do you suppose developers have, more or less, abandoned a genuine "Bad Guys Win" scenario?

You know, I've actually thought some better...well thoughts on the matter since I posted last, it kinda goes along with this:

You know, that would be pretty awesome, getting to destroy cities alongside brutes & banshees, maybe those giant flying beetle things from the second one. It would kind of streach one's suspension of disbeleif since theyd be giving command over their forces to somebody they consider less than an insect, but screw believability, playing as reaper synthetics would be badass!

Basically the problem is that most every RPG that comes out these days is meant to be part of a series, as such you can't have a main character making a choice that utterly derails the rest of the story. When you think of KotOR, despite the fact that it had a sequel, it really was more or less a stand-alone game. That is, the actions of Revan in the first game really have no impact on the events in the 2nd game. Since it is essentially a stand-alone title, it was free to end things with two opposite endings.

In order to do that in a game series, you'd have to make the "I wanna be a baddie!" decision at the end of the 3rd game (which would be lame and we'd all complain about it seeming forced or token). Or, if you make it at the end of the first game, to REALLY pull it off, you'd have to essentially start making 2 different games for each new one in the series, one that covered the possibilities if the person chose evil in the first game and one for if they chose good. Otherwise you'd have the fanbase bitching and moaning that there's no real choice, some conversations are different but that's the only real effect, blah blah piss moan. So what do you do? Spend a crap ton of time and money developing two similar games that are different at their core and slap'em onto one disc? And repeat this process for each new game in the series?

As badass as that would likely make your company, I can only imagine it wouldn't be fiscally sustainable.

 

[DementedSheep]

But in DE:HR, The Witcher and even Mass effect to some extent (tho you have a bit more freedom here) you aren?t creating your own character. You are role playing as Geralt, Adam Jensen or Shepard and they are not blank slates. You are presented with multiple ways in which that character could react to that situation and you pick which way you want it to go.

There is also the problem of writing a plot without a fixed main character, especially if the character could potentially have no reason to even care in the first place. Then there is the cost of adding more dialogue, more outcomes and more quests. If your character doesn?t care about others at all its harder to write quests that it makes sense for them to be involved in, it?s harder to write interesting quests that both would want to do and a lot of time being ?evil? or at least openly evil just isn?t going to be beneficial to you anyway.

 

[Manji187]

Basically the problem is that most every RPG that comes out these days is meant to be part of a series, as such you can't have a main character making a choice that utterly derails the rest of the story. When you think of KotOR, despite the fact that it had a sequel, it really was more or less a stand-alone game. That is, the actions of Revan in the first game really have no impact on the events in the 2nd game. Since it is essentially a stand-alone title, it was free to end things with two opposite endings.

In order to do that in a game series, you'd have to make the "I wanna be a baddie!" decision at the end of the 3rd game (which would be lame and we'd all complain about it seeming forced or token). Or, if you make it at the end of the first game, to REALLY pull it off, you'd have to essentially start making 2 different games for each new one in the series, one that covered the possibilities if the person chose evil in the first game and one for if they chose good. Otherwise you'd have the fanbase bitching and moaning that there's no real choice, some conversations are different but that's the only real effect, blah blah piss moan. So what do you do? Spend a crap ton of time and money developing two similar games that are different at their core and slap'em onto one disc? And repeat this process for each new game in the series?

As badass as that would likely make your company, I can only imagine it wouldn't be fiscally sustainable.

So, in essence; financial/ economic considerations are "law". And since serial production seems to have become the standard, we are unlikely to see a true "Bad Guys Win" scenario in future games unless some developer goes out on a limb to realize it in the face of all the accompanying risk, whether real or perceived. I.e. unless someone grows a pair, we can wait until hell freezes over?

 

[RJ 17]

Basically the problem is that most every RPG that comes out these days is meant to be part of a series, as such you can't have a main character making a choice that utterly derails the rest of the story. When you think of KotOR, despite the fact that it had a sequel, it really was more or less a stand-alone game. That is, the actions of Revan in the first game really have no impact on the events in the 2nd game. Since it is essentially a stand-alone title, it was free to end things with two opposite endings.

In order to do that in a game series, you'd have to make the "I wanna be a baddie!" decision at the end of the 3rd game (which would be lame and we'd all complain about it seeming forced or token). Or, if you make it at the end of the first game, to REALLY pull it off, you'd have to essentially start making 2 different games for each new one in the series, one that covered the possibilities if the person chose evil in the first game and one for if they chose good. Otherwise you'd have the fanbase bitching and moaning that there's no real choice, some conversations are different but that's the only real effect, blah blah piss moan. So what do you do? Spend a crap ton of time and money developing two similar games that are different at their core and slap'em onto one disc? And repeat this process for each new game in the series?

As badass as that would likely make your company, I can only imagine it wouldn't be fiscally sustainable.

So, in essence; financial/ economic considerations are "law". And since serial production seems to have become the standard, we are unlikely to see a true "Bad Guys Win" scenario in future games unless some developer goes out on a limb to realize it in the face of all the accompanying risk, whether real or perceived. I.e. unless someone grows a pair, we can wait until hell freezes over?

Pretty much how I see it. It'd just cost too much time and resources in order to make a two games out of one. It's a great theory that would likely make for a badass game, but I highly doubt such a game will be coming out any time soon.