Games where neither character is right

[Zhukov]

Which is exactly what the Quarians were trying to do to them, simply for existing.

You make the same mistake as the previous poster by projecting the 'crimes' of a few onto an entire race.

E.g. Imagine Earth has geth and the American FBI tries to shut them down with the geth responding with an attack. By your own logic, you, me and billions of people unrelated to this decision are "guilty" of the FBI's crime.

It wasn't "a few". Especially not once the violence started. It was the entire Quarian military supported by most of their society, barring those dissenters who were regarded and treated as traitors by the Quarians.

To use your example, it wasn't just the FBI. It was every army on Earth, and by extension the industries and populations that maintain those armies.

But yeah, once it escalated to a total war scenario, they set about killing out every Quarian they could. They're machines, after all. As far as they're concerned a non-combatant Quarian is a resource to be denied to the enemy and a baby Quarian is a combatant waiting to happen.

And you support such tactics in warfare?

Given that their alternative was submitting to the complete destruction of their entire species in a war they neither wanted nor started?

Yup.

That's 1% more than the Quarians were planning to spare of the Geth. The fact that they did not pursue the Quarians who fled the planet shows that the goal of the Geth was mere survival, not extermination. The same cannot be said of the Quarians.

I must repeat my previous statement of "You make the same mistake... by projecting the 'crimes' of a few onto an entire race."

Of course by this point it'd be silly for any quarian to desire peace seeing that the geth are more than comfortable killing billions of non-combatants regardless of their ideological position.

You mean the exact same thing the Quarians were doing? The thing they set about doing as soon as they realized the Geth had awoken?

The Quarians started a war of total annihilation against a species that meant them no harm. They have no right to complain when they lose that war.

Their only contact with organics post-awakening has consisted of organics trying to wipe them out. Given their position and history, excessive caution backed by force is not only to be expected, it's downright advisable.

So you're saying they want re-unification with organics but don't trust organics so they'll avoid any kind of contact with organics, will not in any way show a desire to reunify with organics and will kill all organics who come near them.

Nah, I didn't say they wanted re-unification, the other guy said that. I don't think they did. Their experiences had left them far too cautious of organics to ever actively seek out re-unification. I was merely saying that their extreme border protection was understandable and advisable given their experiences with organics.

 

[Reikan]

I don't have an emotional attachment to my computer, and have none to the robots either. End of mass effect 3 rolled around and I destroyed the reapers and the geth as a side effect.

No matter how close it is, still ain't alive.

Rare day when the evil guy could be good, or good guy could be bad. Though I can't recall specifics, I have seen the logic in some "evil" plans. In a well written "evil" plan the goal tends to come off as admirable, while the methods are the issue at hand.

Mass effects ending choices of 1 and 2 had the problem of most renegade options being evil just to be evil, what I call cartoon villany. Heinous acts committed with no point. But the ending choices played it out better, with the renegade options being seen as evil but actually they are just the reasonable, if not humane, choice to make.

 

[Imperioratorex Caprae]

**snip**

You're equating data as experience, which isn't the same thing. You can tell someone something, but if it doesn't match up with things they've experienced, how can they believe you? A machine that has learned to think for itself, just because it has access to all this information doesn't mean it understands the implications of it all. You're thinking from your point of view, not the Geths which is why you're wrong. Quarians made a mistake of trying to kill all of them off, rather than speak to them, making them the first aggressors. And neither were the Geth perfect beings themselves with any form of knowledge of the outside worlds and the concepts of morality and such. They were born into conflict with their creators and even tried the surrender lets talk option which they were rebuffed on. As I said, the access they had to the data doesn't mean they understood it all, nor does it mean they could substitute that knowledge for life experience. You're also trying to attribute human qualities of right and wrong to a non-human race, to a race that for all intent and purpose knew nothing by experience BUT conflict. 300 years for a race that for all intent and purpose won't die of age means little so I'm surprised it was so short of a time. Nor did they harbor resentment but rather extreme caution towards organics.
Simply put, if you were born into a war, raised in a war, knew that there was only conflict between your species and another, and your species had won its freedom but still maintained a caution when it came to the other species that was making war on yours, do you really think you could just overcome all of that just because you had a bunch of data saying there were other ways when your own tried the other ways and were STILL killed for it? It wasn't their nature, it was a product of what they'd been through, their EXPERIENCE which is much more defining than just simple knowledge.
But hey, you don't have to agree with me at all. Its just that you can't prove to me the Quarians were in the right for starting a shooting war without any good reason except fear of a sentient machine. Nor could you tell me Quarians were right for killing their own who harbored the non-combatant Geth. That, to the Geth meant it was open season on the Quarians though later they did learn remorse for their actions and decided not to pursue the Quarians nor any other organics, just adopt the isolationist policy. Note also the Quarians never brought up the fact they killed their own people in their attempt to eradicate the Geth. They opened the Pandora's box so-to-speak so its hard to really have sympathy except that it was tragic that both Geth and Quarians had to die just because of the Quarian's fear.

 

[Zhukov]

It wasn't "a few". Especially not once the violence started. It was the entire Quarian military supported by most of their society, barring those dissenters who were regarded and treated as traitors by the Quarians.

To use your example, it wasn't just the FBI. It was every army on Earth and the industries that maintain those armies.

Most of this is speculation.

Granted, the game never gives you a detailed census of Quarian opinions at the outbreak of the Morning War. However, every reference to the Quarian's intent and actions except the one mention of dissenters (who were promptly killed by Quarians) describes them as seeking to destroy the Geth. I'd say that indicates a vast majority of them wanted the Geth dead and gone.

If that's baseless speculation, then so is your assertion that many or most of the Quarians were completely unassociated and blameless in regards to the attempt to annihilate the Geth, which is the entirety of your argument.

Given that their alternative was submitting to the complete destruction of their entire species in a war they neither wanted nor started?

Yup.

As I pointed before after a large chunk of the quarian species is wiped out (e.g. 50%) they are in no way substantial threat worthy of systematic extermination.

"We set about trying to wipe out your entire species even though you never tried to hurt us. Now that you have the upper hand, I think you really should stop at just 50%."

I'd say that given what they attempted, they should be grateful for the 1% that were allowed to flee and the fact that the Quarian species was allowed to continue to exist.

To quote myself again: "You make the same mistake... by projecting the 'crimes' of a few onto an entire race."

To quote myself again: "It wasn't a few."

They have no right to complain when they lose that war.

To put this rationale into action.

After defeating the German military in WWII the Allies should have systematically exterminated every German man, woman and child. They of course have no right to complain because they lost the war.

Actually, I was thinking of WWII when I typed that.

Anyway, no, that would not have been justified since the Germans never attempted to destroy the entire populations of the Allied nations.

However, a better parallel can be found on the Eastern Front of WWII. The Germans committed terrible atrocities in Russia. When the tide turned and the Russians invaded Germany, they committed atrocities of their own (although not on anything near the same scale). While what crimes the Russians committed are still on them, I'd say the Germans had no right or reason to expect restraint.

 

[ThreeName]

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.

I'm the complete opposite; it's not that either character was right, it's that both sides were completely the same and utterly generic, boring and stodgy. I actually stopped playing Skyrim because of that stupid questline. I know it wasn't the main plot, but it was so damn pervasive I couldn't stand it. They were all utterly unsympathetic assholes.

And, on the contrary, I really enjoyed New Vegas. Though it did piss me off that the Legion were relatively generic bad guys that could have been handled at lot fucking better, House, Yes Man and the NCR have a nice dynamic going. Authoritarian order, bureaucratic order or no order? That's a choice, not Skyrim's bland nonsense.

OT: I guess the WH40K universe, where everyone's a complete jerk only out for their own race/desires. Other than that... Civilisation?

 

[Auron225]

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.

I'd agree, only exchange "both sides being right and a dick" to "both sides were dicks". Even so, it plagued my moral judgement for weeks on which side I agreed with more. In the end I went Empire - just seemed like everyone would be better off in the end. But it took so much though to get there, it was the very last questline/quest I did.

OT: I was completely cut in two during Fallout 3's The Pitt questline, when the twist happened. What seemed like such a one-sided battle (morally) suddenly made me pause the game, put down the controller, and just think for a long time. I don't regret the choice I made in the end - it was in my mind the lesser of two evils. But it was still outrageously evil!

 

[Erttheking]

I'm really surprised to see a lack of Dark Souls being mentioned in this thread. Not only is the story brilliantly interwoven with the items descriptions and locations, the environment, the dialogue, and game events, leaving much of the unbelievably rich world history and possible futures to be pieced together by you, but also a choice you have to make, where either one could be the right choice depending on your interpretation.

Oh Hells yes. When things start out, you think it's a classic battle of good versus evil, then you figure out it is nowhere near that simple.

 

[JayRPG]

Tales of Xillia did an amazing job of this, I think.

Spoiler

It is so hard to hate Gaius or see him as the bad guy, so hard in fact that he became one of the most loved characters of the Tales franchise - of course Jude and Milla also had perfectly reasonable intentions as the good guys as well.

 

[Colt47]

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.

I actually like the Killzone games and I agree with you.

I think the problem is that the Helghast leaders are always loud, hammy and endearingly crazy, especially compared to the ISA's lack of any standout figures. So instead of the order of events going "support the Helghast's goals -> like the Helghast characters more," it goes "Helghast leaders are insane and entertaining -> find reasons why Helghast are sympathetic."

Killzone Helghast leaders are what I would expect for a defining leader of a faction. Anyone who has a more neutral standpoint is likely not going to take a face leadership position because they don't have a really strong sense of dedication one way or the other. Heck, I think the Killzone series would be a lot more entertaining if it had more politically charged leaders on both sides.

 

[Single Shot]

What got me onto this line of thought is Sheperd Book in Firefly.

"HTTP 404 Not Found" - Now that is a truly inspirational quote. I'm guessing you mean something to do with this quote.

"I've been out of the abbey two days. I've beaten a lawman senseless. Fallen in with criminals. I watched the captain shoot the man I swore to protect. And I'm not even sure if I think he was wrong."

 

[likalaruku]

The only one I can think of is a modern MMO called RIFT. You watch the cutscenes & unravel the story for both factions, & it seems neither of them are the bad guys. At the same time, I found myself sympathizing with House Aelfwar; a common enemy whom Guardians want to impose their beliefs on them & they are Nature Elements, so they disprove of the Defiant's technology. Each does what they think is right, all morality is grey, they just happen to disagree with eachother. Unfortunately they're not playable.

Some of the NPCs mention that they think the other side isn't so bad but have their reasons, some say that they're wasting their time fighting eachother& should focus on the common enemy, & there's several common enemies.

The other enemies aren't generic either. They all belong to their own separate factions with their own goals in segregated areas. Every area & cluster of enemies has a story behind it.

 

[BrotherRool]

What got me onto this line of thought is Sheperd Book in Firefly.

"HTTP 404 Not Found" - Now that is a truly inspirational quote. I'm guessing you mean something to do with this quote.

"I've been out of the abbey two days. I've beaten a lawman senseless. Fallen in with criminals. I watched the captain shoot the man I swore to protect. And I'm not even sure if I think he was wrong."

Thanks for finding the quote. Since the original guy is banned I guess it's probably not worthwhile quoting him in?

I think that line is still totally in sync with me, I'm a pretty big Firefly fan and I was individually reviewing each episode when I was first thinking about this and I feel like there was only one time when they didn't write Book properly (which was when River ripped up his bible and he gave a talk about how it didn't matter whether symbols were true or not) and even then, it's possible it's deliberate because it was always hinted that Book wasn't a preacher his whole life and when they revealed his secret that's definitely how it turned out.

When he says the line about "And I'm not even sure if I think he was wrong." he's got a lot of agony in his voice and is clearly being legitimately shaken by events. It's not like he's suddenly cast off everything he had previously thought and he gives it consideration and eventually finds something he's comfortable with instead of say, becoming atheist or whatever.

(and of course it's fine to have characters change and convert/de-convert. You just need to make sure y ou're doing it because that's what's right for the story and not because you writing some Atheist/Christian wishfulfillment fantasy where everyone ends up agreeing with your cunning arguments and becomes more like you)

 

[stroopwafel]

The Last of Us, Mass Effect 2(the sub-plot with Mordin and the Krogan), Spec Ops the Line and Fallout NV are really good examples. Fallout NV I probably had the most difficulty choosing sides and making choices. Between the Legion and the NCR I always sided slightly more with the NCR but never had any sympathy with them whatsoever. It was always the 'least worst option'. Their intended peace and stability always came with oppression and militaristic rule, however the 'alternative' of the Legion was even worse. The factions and context in Fallout NV were really murky so the choices you had to make really made you think. It was one thing this game really did well.

 

[IBlackKiteI]

Often when a game sets up a compelling conflict like the Geth vs Quarians it leans towards one side or one outcome over another, which ruins the whole point of a conflict where neither side is meant to be right and discourages you from considering alternatives. I prefer this kind of thing when much of it's details are implied rather than directly shown and its more within the background of a game's story then at the forefront, simply because it's less likely to swing a particular way and because there's less focus there can be more room for interpretation.

There's the conflict between the Freedom and Duty factions in Stalker. Freedom is all for the free trading of the practically magical artifacts found in The Zone to the outside world, many of which can treat diseases or function as extremely powerful energy sources. However since these artifacts can be incredibly dangerous and are basically spawned from Hell on Earth, Duty reckons that they're too dangerous to be allowed outside and actively work to contain or destroy The Zone that creates them, denying the world it's dangers as well as it's benefits. Consider that Duty lives by a strict code of honor, are the most militant faction and seemingly attempts to impose order on the entire Zone. Do they genuinely care about the safety of the world or are they simply trying to deny their enemies their main source of profit whilst they further their own hold on the region? Freedom is by and large the most laid back and welcoming faction you come across yet seem oblivious to the long-term implications of the spread of artifacts and The Zone itself. Are they wholly ignorant of the dangers of The Zone and too shortsighted and unguided to realize they may be putting the planet in danger? Then there's also the fact that Duty has ties to the military whilst Freedom is kitted out with an unusually high amount of NATO equipment, does this point to something bigger going on here?

Considering how completely shit the world of Metro 2033 is, I'm not sure if you can blame a guy for thieving and murdering as a bandit or joining an army of hardcore neo-Nazis to feed his family.

Also someone mentioned the factions in Sins, kudos.

 

[Moloch Sacrifice]

To quote myself again: "You make the same mistake... by projecting the 'crimes' of a few onto an entire race."

I think this here is a fundamental misunderstanding of Geth psychology. As a collective who acts upon consensus, the very idea of the actions of a group not reflecting that of the whole is complete anathema to them. In their entire history, there is only one occasion on which the entire Geth race was not in consensus (being the split of the Heretic faction to follow Sovereign), and this was under the influence of Reaper technology. At all other times, every Geth mechanic has supported the action of every Geth trooper, and vice versa. Therefore, when the Quarian military attacked the Geth, how can they not believe that they did so without the unanimous consent of the rest of Quarian society?