Games where neither character is right

[BrotherRool]

It's a sign of a good writer and good story when two people have strong beliefs about something but the story never shows one as being 'more right' than the other. They're both instead faithfully portrayed as if both of then have very understandable reasons for thinking what they think.

So what are some of the strong examples of that happening in a game? (And does something like getting Paragon points for supporting one guy in a game like Mass Effect mean that that's the side which is being portrayed 'right'? Or how about when the game overall gives you a better reward if you take a certain person's side?)

 

[WhyWasThat]

Killzone springs immediately to mind. Neither the ISA nor the Helghast are good guys, they're all just a bunch of racist assholes fighting a futile and never-ending war. Sure, one side or another may have had semi-legitimate or even understandable motives at the beginning, but by now that's all undermined by numerous atrocities committed by both sides.

Kinda like real wars, really.

It's such a shame that the Killzone single-players suck, because they really have crafted what potentially could have been a fascinating universe. More and more though I'm thinking they did that by accident.

 

[Zhukov]

What's that you say, another opportunity to say nice things about The Last of Us?

Well, don't mind if I do!

(Vague spoilers for TLoU follow. I'll word it so as not to give anything away to those who haven't played it.)

So yeah, The Last of Us. The ending in particular. You could make a very convincing argument for either side being right or wrong and the game portrays both sides with a measure of sympathy. Personally, I think there would be a slightly stronger case for Joel being in the wrong, something that's immensely rare in a game story, especially a mainstream triple-A one. However, even if that's the case, he is given very understandable reasons for doing what he did.

Some of the scenarios in Mass Effect would count. The Krogan Genophage being the big one, as well as Mordin's Genophage renewal project. You might say the Quarian-Geth conflict as well, but I always thought the Geth were totally in the right on that one. Then again, people have said I'm crazy for thinking that, so who knows.

Also, a few of the scenarios in The Walking Dead. (Once again, vague spoilers.) Larry, Lily and Kenny in the coolroom come to mind. Also, Lily's actions afterward, at least somewhat.

Y'know, that's about all I can think of off the top of my head. Most games don't dare stray out of black and white morality and those that do usually end up just making everyone an arsehole.

 

[Qvar]

Say what you want about Skyrim's civil war questline, I enjoyed how, in the end, neither side was rigth and it was just a matter of personal belief. Both sides were kind of rigth and a dick at the same time. After the disappointment on how Fallout: New Vegas failed to deliver their promise of grey & grey, it was quite refreshing.

 

[Zhukov]

Killzone springs immediately to mind. Neither the ISA nor the Helghast are good guys, they're all just a bunch of racist assholes fighting a futile and never-ending war. Sure, one side or another may have had semi-legitimate or even understandable motives at the beginning, but by now that's all undermined by numerous atrocities committed by both sides.

Y'know, I keep hearing this about the Helghast in Killzone, but I'm really not seeing it. The games seem to be casting them as complete villains at every turn.

For a start, they're named the Helghast. "Hell Ghast".

Oh but that's just their name, right? Maybe it means "peaceful flower" in Swedish or something. You can't judge them on that.

Well, they also wear gas masks with glowing red eyes and all their insignia and imagery looks like it came straight out of Hitler's Home Decorating Handbook.

Hey, quit judging a book by it's cover! Wearing a coal-scuttle helmet doesn't make you a Nazi!

Ok fine, I'll lay off the imagery. But they still spend the entire series being huge jerks. Their leaders are always cartoonishly malevolent. They're always torturing and executing people. The latest game opens and the very first thing you see a Helghast do is callously shoot an unarmed fleeing civilian. Then they drive a bunch of people out of their homes. Then they shoot a bunch more of them. Then they try to shoot a kid. Then they stomp on a kitten and laugh when its mother sits by the dead body mewling piteously.

Now, I've never made it all the way through a Killzone. Never maintained my interest long enough. Maybe in the last quarter of each game the Helghast all take off their masks like Darth Vader, apologise for being jerks and swear an oath to uphold world peace. But all I've ever seen is them being jerks. I realise they have some backstory about being a prison colony or something, but it's hard to care when they're wearing Nazi helmets.

The ISA on the other hand are presently as regular, rugged, manly hero types. About all that they ever do wrong is run around being incredibly macho military sterotypes. (They'd have court marshalled him years ago for insubordination, but damnit, nobody can deny that the man gets results.) You could argue that they use overly destructive methods, but it's always they Helghast who start the wars.

Maybe the fans regard it as an act of brilliantly subtle misdirection. Set up one side as cliche evil and one side as cliche heroic, put the player on the heroic side, then pull the rug out from under them. However, nothing else in the game convinces me that they're capable something like that. Besides, they're, what... four games in now and the rug has yet to be pulled.

 

[RJ 17]

Some of the scenarios in Mass Effect would count. The Krogan Genophage being the big one, as well as Mordin's Genophage renewal project. You might say the Quarian-Geth conflict as well, but I always thought the Geth were totally in the right on that one. Then again, people have said I'm crazy for thinking that, so who knows.

Really just wanted to get your attention to say that I like your festive hat. :3

Also, yeah, after all the Geth-Quarian history you learn throughout ME2 and ME3, it seems pretty clear that the Geth were more or less completely "innocent" in the war with the Quarians being genocidal aggressors.

OT: The KotOR games - the 2nd one more so than the first - really try to establish that Jedi and Sith are just two sides to the same coin. The Sith aren't "bad", really, at least in terms of those games. They just prefer strict and absolute order as a way to run the galaxy rather than the Jedi's freedom-based views. Both sides had their pros, both sides had their cons. Neither side was really established as "These people are completely in the right."

Like I said, this is more so in the case of KotOR 2 than it is in KotOR 1, what with Kreia trying to guide you along the bold, unwavering path of...neutrality, chastising you any time you stray towards one extreme or the other.

 

[Casual Shinji]

What's that you say, another opportunity to say nice things about The Last of Us?

Well, don't mind if I do!

Thanks for taking that burden off my back. Sometimes it's like people are making these threads just to lure out my Last of Us fanboy.

OT: That little sidequest in Mass Effect where the guy wants to reclaim his late wife's remains from the military. Both sides are in the right with the husband wanting closure, and the military wanting to examine the wounds made by unknown weaponry for the sake of creating better protective gear.

 

[Silvanus]

There's a valid case to be made on behalf of the Necromorphs, I always feel. Isaac and the living humans haven't experienced Glorious Convergence, so how do they know whether it's awful or not? They shouldn't knock what they haven't tried.

Seriously, I can only think of Skyrim's civil war and the Luxon-Kurzick conflict. I also have a lot of sympathy for the Dredge in the Guild Wars series.

 

[Tom_green_day]

It's a sign of a good writer and good story when two people have strong beliefs about something but the story never shows one as being 'more right' than the other.

Why does this show a good writer or a good story? Other than perhaps your opinion?
A good writer/story is one that can make anything work, maybe two side that are no more right than each other, or very evil vs. very good. Look at LotR, Harry Potter, Mass Effect, Borderlands 2, 24 etc. There is always one side that is good and one that is evil and they're still great stories and tales. Just because you like the morality to be ambiguous doesn't mean it's correct to have it so.

 

[Eve Charm]

Tales of Symphonia had it pretty good of how the two worlds worked. Now it doesn't really happen in the game but the worlds were running of a long history of one world always thriving and the other one always dying where the thriving world was the side that "Won" the battle when the world connecters or something where all active once every so and so years. It's been a long while >.<

Also another one is Skyes of Arcidia. Your good pirates but your still damn pirates.

 

[Fappy]

SMT: Nocturne (or Lucifer's Call in Europe) is a good example of this. The basic plot premise is that the apocalypse has happened at the behest of Kagutsuchi (God) and only a handful of humans have survived. In order to make the world anew they must aspire to form their own Reasons (philosophies that will shape the new world). All of their Reasons have their own merits and conflict with one another, so it is up to the player to decide who he will support in the end.

You can choose one of the three Reasons and follow God's plan, OR you can go against him and attempt to bring the entire farce crashing down by allying yourself with the Demon Lord, Lucifer. A radical path to take, but no less morally ambiguous than siding with any of the three Reasons. And then there's the fifth option that's a little too spoiler-y to mention. All-in-all, it's a pretty deep, philosophical game. Highly recommended JRPG (and it's metal as shit!).

 

[Blitsie]

NiER is a pretty decent example, the game sets it up as a whole good vs evil thing but that facade fades pretty quickly once you go through new game+, where everything gets revealed and you finally notice that it was all just a matter of perspective, and you definitely didn't have the right one.

And then you cry, uncontrollably.

 

[Evonisia]

The antagonist and the Americans of Black Ops II are portrayed as equally wrong and right in their causes. Yeah the villain wants to use America's kill drones and it's own citizens to destroy western civilisation but honestly western civilisation ruins everything that's not them, and they also have thousands of kill drones.

It's better than Ghosts where the enemies are in the wrong because they stole your weapons and destroyed you.

 

[BrotherRool]

It's a sign of a good writer and good story when two people have strong beliefs about something but the story never shows one as being 'more right' than the other.

Why does this show a good writer or a good story? Other than perhaps your opinion?
A good writer/story is one that can make anything work, maybe two side that are no more right than each other, or very evil vs. very good. Look at LotR, Harry Potter, Mass Effect, Borderlands 2, 24 etc. There is always one side that is good and one that is evil and they're still great stories and tales. Just because you like the morality to be ambiguous doesn't mean it's correct to have it so.

You raise a good point, but maybe I can defend myself a bit, I didn't really explain myself well in the OP and I think I've confused people as to what I mean. I really did mean 'characters' not factions and I didn't mean antagonists either. I just meant two characters who have different perspectives but neither has the 'right' perspective.

Broadly speaking, I would say that if you can only write from one perspective, one character is always right, one way of doing things is always the right way of doing things, then you're probably not a good writer.

I've hid my specific thoughts on Harry Potter, LOTR and Mass Effect in terms of this underneath spoiler tags because it's a lot of text, sorry

Spoiler

Harry Potter doesn't do this, there are characters in Harry Potter who disagree with each other but neither is 'right' in what they disagree about. When Snape has a go at Dumbledore for what Dumbledore did to Harry, Snape isn't right but neither is Dumbledore. They both have reasons for what they do and JK Rowling respects both. Snape in general is an excellent example of a character who is often in conflict with other people but JK Rowling doesn't write him off as wrong for feeling the way he does.

Mass Effect is another great example of writing that doesn't do it. It's a bit spotty, but in general Mass Effect respects each characers motivations. Ashley is xenophobic but she has reasons for it and can come round to the other side. Mordin wasn't wrong to do what he did with the genophage but it wasn't a great thing either.

And the places in Mass Effect where the writing is really, really bad is when the writers are incapable of doing this. When they make Cerberus pointlessly evil, when they make the council bureaucratic to the point of stupidity and refuse to understand why the council people behave as they do and act as they do. Mass Effect is not a game that gives the council dignity and allows them to be justified in not arresting their head Spectre because one Commander who only has the second-hand report of a drunk and a thief makes a wild accusation. And that's bad writing. A better writer would have still had the conflict between Shepard and the Council, but they would have understood that their are tenable reasons why the council would behave as they did and not dismiss them as 'politicians'.


Lord of the Rings doesn't have a lot of examples of this because Lord of the Rings is lightning in a bottle that almost no other author can ever hope to copy. Successful authors who try to write LOTR stories end up making them sound like bad fanfics because Tolkien broke so many rules but somehow made it all into a work of genius. Each character in LOTR is more of an archetype with the weight of history behind them than a mere character in itself.

What got me onto this line of thought is Sheperd Book in Firefly. I always think it's a great ability for a writer when they can write someone with religious views other than their own and not have them ultimately be wrong. But even better than that, Joss Whedon allowed Book to have the dignity that Book believes his religion will give him. It's such an easy trap to be religious and write an atheist whose ultimately short-sighted or stupid or lacking a special something in his life. It's a good thing to be able to write one instead whose thought about his life choices and lives his life in a way that he's generally happy with

 

[IllumInaTIma]

SMT: Nocturne (or Lucifer's Call in Europe) is a good example of this. The basic plot premise is that the apocalypse has happened at the behest of Kagutsuchi (God) and only a handful of humans have survived. In order to make the world anew they must aspire to form their own Reasons (philosophies that will shape the new world). All of their Reasons have their own merits and conflict with one another, so it is up to the player to decide who he will support in the end.

You can choose one of the three Reasons and follow God's plan, OR you can go against him and attempt to bring the entire farce crashing down by allying yourself with the Demon Lord, Lucifer. A radical path to take, but no less morally ambiguous than siding with any of the three Reasons. And then there's the fifth option that's a little too spoiler-y to mention. All-in-all, it's a pretty deep, philosophical game. Highly recommended JRPG (and it's metal as shit!).

Yeah, can we just say "SHIN MEGAMI TENSEI" and be done with it?
SMT4 got 3 basic endings (by basic I mean you don't have to sacrifice a goat to get to them) and each got its own merit. You can join with Angels and sacrifice yourself and city of Tokyo to preserve peace and status quo. Or you can join with Lucifer and bring about chaos to the world to reform it later. Or you can say FUCKYALL and destroy everything and in this way tell The God to go fuck himself.

 

[Fappy]

SMT: Nocturne (or Lucifer's Call in Europe) is a good example of this. The basic plot premise is that the apocalypse has happened at the behest of Kagutsuchi (God) and only a handful of humans have survived. In order to make the world anew they must aspire to form their own Reasons (philosophies that will shape the new world). All of their Reasons have their own merits and conflict with one another, so it is up to the player to decide who he will support in the end.

You can choose one of the three Reasons and follow God's plan, OR you can go against him and attempt to bring the entire farce crashing down by allying yourself with the Demon Lord, Lucifer. A radical path to take, but no less morally ambiguous than siding with any of the three Reasons. And then there's the fifth option that's a little too spoiler-y to mention. All-in-all, it's a pretty deep, philosophical game. Highly recommended JRPG (and it's metal as shit!).

Yeah, can we just say "SHIN MEGAMI TENSEI" and be done with it?
SMT4 got 3 basic endings (by basic I mean you don't have to sacrifice a goat to get to them) and each got its own merit. You can join with Angels and sacrifice yourself and city of Tokyo to preserve peace and status quo. Or you can join with Lucifer and bring about chaos to the world to reform it later. Or you can say FUCKYALL and destroy everything and in this way tell The God to go fuck himself.

While the alternate endings in SMT IV are nice to have (as that is what the series is known for) I didn't site it as an example because the Neutral Ending (the one you have to sacrifice a goat for) is obviously the "good" ending. If you've played through it yourself you'll know what I mean by that. When comparing the endings side-by-side there is almost no logical reason to choose any of the paths except Neutral unless your PC is a complete sociopath.

 

[IllumInaTIma]

SMT: Nocturne (or Lucifer's Call in Europe) is a good example of this. The basic plot premise is that the apocalypse has happened at the behest of Kagutsuchi (God) and only a handful of humans have survived. In order to make the world anew they must aspire to form their own Reasons (philosophies that will shape the new world). All of their Reasons have their own merits and conflict with one another, so it is up to the player to decide who he will support in the end.

You can choose one of the three Reasons and follow God's plan, OR you can go against him and attempt to bring the entire farce crashing down by allying yourself with the Demon Lord, Lucifer. A radical path to take, but no less morally ambiguous than siding with any of the three Reasons. And then there's the fifth option that's a little too spoiler-y to mention. All-in-all, it's a pretty deep, philosophical game. Highly recommended JRPG (and it's metal as shit!).

Yeah, can we just say "SHIN MEGAMI TENSEI" and be done with it?
SMT4 got 3 basic endings (by basic I mean you don't have to sacrifice a goat to get to them) and each got its own merit. You can join with Angels and sacrifice yourself and city of Tokyo to preserve peace and status quo. Or you can join with Lucifer and bring about chaos to the world to reform it later. Or you can say FUCKYALL and destroy everything and in this way tell The God to go fuck himself.

While the alternate endings in SMT IV are nice to have (as that is what the series is known for) I didn't site it as an example because the Neutral Ending (the one you have to sacrifice a goat for) is obviously the "good" ending. If you've played through it yourself you'll know what I mean by that. When comparing the endings side-by-side there is almost no logical reason to choose any of the paths except Neutral unless your PC is a complete sociopath.

Well, that's SMT for ya. I mean, in SMT3 the best ending was "The True Demon Ending" in which you destroy the MULTIVERSE and very concept of time and space.

 

[Fappy]

SMT: Nocturne (or Lucifer's Call in Europe) is a good example of this. The basic plot premise is that the apocalypse has happened at the behest of Kagutsuchi (God) and only a handful of humans have survived. In order to make the world anew they must aspire to form their own Reasons (philosophies that will shape the new world). All of their Reasons have their own merits and conflict with one another, so it is up to the player to decide who he will support in the end.

You can choose one of the three Reasons and follow God's plan, OR you can go against him and attempt to bring the entire farce crashing down by allying yourself with the Demon Lord, Lucifer. A radical path to take, but no less morally ambiguous than siding with any of the three Reasons. And then there's the fifth option that's a little too spoiler-y to mention. All-in-all, it's a pretty deep, philosophical game. Highly recommended JRPG (and it's metal as shit!).

Yeah, can we just say "SHIN MEGAMI TENSEI" and be done with it?
SMT4 got 3 basic endings (by basic I mean you don't have to sacrifice a goat to get to them) and each got its own merit. You can join with Angels and sacrifice yourself and city of Tokyo to preserve peace and status quo. Or you can join with Lucifer and bring about chaos to the world to reform it later. Or you can say FUCKYALL and destroy everything and in this way tell The God to go fuck himself.

While the alternate endings in SMT IV are nice to have (as that is what the series is known for) I didn't site it as an example because the Neutral Ending (the one you have to sacrifice a goat for) is obviously the "good" ending. If you've played through it yourself you'll know what I mean by that. When comparing the endings side-by-side there is almost no logical reason to choose any of the paths except Neutral unless your PC is a complete sociopath.

Well, that's SMT for ya. I mean, in SMT3 the best ending was "The True Demon Ending" in which you destroy the MULTIVERSE and very concept of time and space.

True Demon Ending was by far the coolest (that's what I went with), but I thought the "best" ending was supposed to be...

Spoiler

The Reincarnate Ending where you fulfill Yuko's wish to undo the conception and the world is resorted to its pre-apocalypse existence. The Neutral Ending for SMT IV is similar. You don't undo the apocalypse, but it is the ending where basically everyone but God/Lucifer wins.