games where you play as an evil character

[Dalisclock]

God of War III, no question. It features, literally, while not exactly puppies, inordinate amounts of kicking dogs, killing characters who don't deserve it, bringing about an apocalypse and horrendous mutilations each more graphic than the last one. Beginning with first-person eye-gouging from the perspective of the victim, which sort of gives you an idea of the level we're at.

Having recently played through the GOW series, totally agree. Kratos in the first one at least had a legitimate beef with Ares. Kratos after that pretty much just wrecks the world because he's angry at Daddy(Zeus. If you think that's a spoiler, you clearly haven't read much Greek mythology). Oh, at the end he admits it was his fault, even though he saw what was going on before that and carried on anyway.

That and he's just plain psychotic. He kills people/Deities that are trying to help him, because reasons. I wonder if it surprises him that everyone hates him.

 

[MercurySteam]

As long as we're not counting games with moral choice systems (God, I hope we're not) then I'd say Dawn of War II Retribution where you can play as Chaos Marines. War For/ Fall of Cybertron where you play as Decepticons was pretty good too, gave a bit of perspective in the civil wars.

 

[WolfThomas]

I know you said not Fallout 3. But New Vegas has far better being evil options than "just nuke megaton for the lulz". Caesar's Legion is perfect for evil characters, it's whole survival of the fittest, might makes right.

 

[CrystalShadow]

Only things I can think of off the top of my head are dungeon keeper and evil genius.
(evil genius being on sale on GOG at the moment.

But those are strategy games. Still, they explicitly make you out to be the bad guy.

Evil genius is especially amusing about that...

If you do well, expect a surprise attack from a james bond like figure... >_>
(oh, and you can get an actual bonus from telling the 'hero' your plans at length. But the longer you talk, the more likely it is they will escape. XD)

 

[Lightspeaker]

Or Evil Genius, where you're an "evil" Bond type villain. Except all the worlds governments are supposed to be super corrupt and tyrannical. And you never do anything truly evil! You never drop a nuke on London. You never steal orphans from China to start a death-cult of minions. You never have enemy agents(of either gender) raped or brutally tortured. You never go around just murdering innocent old ladies. You're never "evil"! You're only chaotic good or at worst, chaotic neutral. You never do anything Catwoman or Garrus wouldn't do.

Did you play evil genius?

Firstly, you do torture people. Most of it is "comedy" torture like making them watch really awful dance moves, but there's one animation in which a torturer presses a lit cigarette against someone's skin, for example. It's a comedy game, so I don't know why the hell you would want or expect people to be raped in it (as if you could even show graphic rape in a deadly serious game).. As for murdering innocents, quite a few of the people you torture are just random people with useful skills. This is actually the key method of upgrading your minions, you go out and kidnap someone with the appropriate skillset and then torture them to death.

The game has three different endings depending on which doomsday device you construct. In one, you create a device which cancels out gravity, causing all the people (and cute puppies) in an affected area to be sucked into space where they presumably freeze or suffocate, the second causes massive city-destroying earthquakes and in the third, you release a gas which erases the individual personalities of everyone affected by it and transforms them into generic minions.

Furthermore, the world's governments are not particularly "corrupt." They're parodies of real-world cold war defensive alliances, so HAMMER and ANVIL are communist dictatorships, but the rest are never presented as particularly unjust.

Again, it's all done in the style of campy humour, but the evil genius is certainly not "lawful good".

Yeah I'm with the cat here. Evil Genius is most definitely not a "neutral" game. You are a bad, bad person in it.

Deception 4 mentioned above is also a good call but it can be a difficult game style to get into or so I've found. I really need to settle back into working my way through that one.

 

[Elementary - Dear Watson]

Star Wars: Force Unleashed had a few cool extra missions which saw you in certain modified scenes from the original trilogy where you change things for the dark side... You even get to kill Luke Skywalker!

 

[Tilly]

Has no-one mentioned Shadow of the Colossus? Would've thought that was an obvious one. The best one too!

 

[Glongpre]

I heard Planescape Torment was very good for playing an evil character. Only played through as a good dude, but hearing that makes me want to give er a go.

 

[pimpn aint easy]

Shin Megami games get pretty dark if you take the evil path. In one of them you sacrifice your friend to the devil then go off and kill god.

 

[Rabbitboy]

clubbing seals to death

Why is that a bad thing? Fuck seals! Fuck em right in the holes where their deceptively cute puppydog eyes used to be.

OT: I geuss prototype and maybe GTA. Although in the last one you are always fighting against people who are more "evil" than you are.

 

[Bad Jim]

Hostile Waters might also count, depending on how you feel about their, uh, utopia, but it's less "puppy-kicking evil" and more "do your duty for your actually kinda horrific government and stop the Apocalypse while you're at it".

I'm not sure the government is any worse than say, the United States government. Sure, they spy on practically everyone who might cause trouble, and seem to have used a few 1984 naming conventions, but they are at least democratic enough that the Cabals' attacks are creating political pressure to surrender. The daily death toll was 'only' in the thousands, which would not force an authoritarian government surrender.

Also, if they were running a police state they would have forces ready, they wouldn't mess around with a carrier that had spent the previous twenty years at the bottom of the sea, even if it does work remarkably well.

 

[Jack Action]

I'm not sure the government is any worse than say, the United States government. Sure, they spy on practically everyone who might cause trouble, and seem to have used a few 1984 naming conventions, but they are at least democratic enough that the Cabals' attacks are creating political pressure to surrender. The daily death toll was 'only' in the thousands, which would not force an authoritarian government surrender.

Also, if they were running a police state they would have forces ready, they wouldn't mess around with a carrier that had spent the previous twenty years at the bottom of the sea, even if it does work remarkably well.

That's actually kind of the problem. Yes, yes, 20 years since the last war, but soldiers don't just blink out of existence when wars end, and MiliTec (or was it MilSec?) clearly doesn't have that many on staff, or it would send them to provide support for Antaeus, but the best it can scrounge up are a squad of technicians to help with repairs.

How come there's no one who can think of simply bombing the chicane out of existence?

How come they don't have missile shields? Did it honestly not occur to them that with Assemblers you could make a cruise missile in roughly 0.5 seconds?

Antaeus has an uplink, you'd think that when things go horribly wrong MiliTec would download the schematics and start manufacturing assault vehicles and transport craft like there's no tomorrow; 00 is 20 years old and can cross half the world in a single day, delivery wouldn't be an issue. There shouldn't be any shortage of veterans ready to pilot the damn things, either, because it's mentioned that the atmosphere is full of Assemblers tasked with healing people.

Now, assuming there's an explanation for all that that doesn't involve the mass extermination of 99% of military personnel for the greater good, we're still left with the issue of a government that seriously expected a pair of battleships that spent two decades at the bottom of the ocean to defend an entire planet.

And there's also whoever or whatever's in charge of the Assemblers which are floating around everywhere, and whatever that is, it basically has the power to reduce most of the things on the face of the planet to atomic dust if it's having a bad day.

 

[Bad Jim]

I'm not sure the government is any worse than say, the United States government. Sure, they spy on practically everyone who might cause trouble, and seem to have used a few 1984 naming conventions, but they are at least democratic enough that the Cabals' attacks are creating political pressure to surrender. The daily death toll was 'only' in the thousands, which would not force an authoritarian government surrender.

Also, if they were running a police state they would have forces ready, they wouldn't mess around with a carrier that had spent the previous twenty years at the bottom of the sea, even if it does work remarkably well.

That's actually kind of the problem. Yes, yes, 20 years since the last war, but soldiers don't just blink out of existence when wars end, and MiliTec (or was it MilSec?) clearly doesn't have that many on staff, or it would send them to provide support for Antaeus, but the best it can scrounge up are a squad of technicians to help with repairs.

How come there's no one who can think of simply bombing the chicane out of existence?

How come they don't have missile shields? Did it honestly not occur to them that with Assemblers you could make a cruise missile in roughly 0.5 seconds?

Antaeus has an uplink, you'd think that when things go horribly wrong MiliTec would download the schematics and start manufacturing assault vehicles and transport craft like there's no tomorrow; 00 is 20 years old and can cross half the world in a single day, delivery wouldn't be an issue. There shouldn't be any shortage of veterans ready to pilot the damn things, either, because it's mentioned that the atmosphere is full of Assemblers tasked with healing people.

Now, assuming there's an explanation for all that that doesn't involve the mass extermination of 99% of military personnel for the greater good, we're still left with the issue of a government that seriously expected a pair of battleships that spent two decades at the bottom of the ocean to defend an entire planet.

And there's also whoever or whatever's in charge of the Assemblers which are floating around everywhere, and whatever that is, it basically has the power to reduce most of the things on the face of the planet to atomic dust if it's having a bad day.

I think the real explanation is that it's a simple plot hole, not that the government sent all their veterans to death camps or anything. Why don't they send you a bunch of supply boats with enough scrap for a million units? Why can you only fire a few salvos on any mission no matter how much scrap you collect? Why are you only allowed to use disassemblers for two missions, even though they are highly effective?

 

[Jack Action]

I think the real explanation is that it's a simple plot hole, not that the government sent all their veterans to death camps or anything. Why don't they send you a bunch of supply boats with enough scrap for a million units? Why can you only fire a few salvos on any mission no matter how much scrap you collect? Why are you only allowed to use disassemblers for two missions, even though they are highly effective?

Eh... pretty big plot hole for something written by Ellis, though. You could make the argument that it's for gameplay reasons, like those you listed, true, but, again, it seems kind of weird that it would've slipped past him. Or maybe I'm giving the guy too much credit.

 

[GabeZhul]

I'm not sure if even a completely Light-Sided Sith character in SWTOR can be considered to be not evil. Both are still dark leaders of the genocidal Sith Empire, either a Dark Council member or the Emperor's Wrath incarnate, in other words the Emperor's strongest and most loyal enforcer. Both earn their Darth titles even if they try to be good.

Nah, half the fun of a light-sided Sith character is the moral ambiguity and how every NPC is completely baffled by your character not being a raving chaotic evil lunatic like they would expect. I would say the light-side Sith Warrior is closer to Lawful Evil (holding the empire's interest first and foremost and being a generally pleasant guy, but get in his way and he will kill you, your family and your dog) while light-side Sith Inquisitor is actually closer to True Neutral, with them trying to reform the Empire from the inside and trying to find a middle-road between the sides and such.

No, the REALLY fun evil character playthroughs are for dark-side Republic characters.

 

[Bad Jim]

I think the real explanation is that it's a simple plot hole, not that the government sent all their veterans to death camps or anything. Why don't they send you a bunch of supply boats with enough scrap for a million units? Why can you only fire a few salvos on any mission no matter how much scrap you collect? Why are you only allowed to use disassemblers for two missions, even though they are highly effective?

Eh... pretty big plot hole for something written by Ellis, though. You could make the argument that it's for gameplay reasons, like those you listed, true, but, again, it seems kind of weird that it would've slipped past him. Or maybe I'm giving the guy too much credit.

I think the real answer is that even Warren Ellis couldn't come up with a proper explanation for why an entire planet with industrial capacity far exceeding our own can only send one carrier. Even without trained soldiers, the population could still be given millions of drones and enough people would learn fast enough to be worth far more than one carrier.

 

[Shoggoth2588]

I would point to Dragon Age Origins but the only thing with that is no matter how many evil things you chose to do, you will always have some party members who are like, "That was a good and just thing to do!" Also, you are never called evil by anybody and you don't really get evil points...Finally the most evil thing that you can do in that game (that I can recall, if you want to be spoiled) is murdering a small child in front of his crying mother because he's been possessed and fuck going into The Fade.

 

[BadNewDingus]

Does Stubbs the Zombie count?

You play as a zombie and eat people or make zombies. Albeit the boss is scummy.

 

[loa]

Not much going on beyond dungeon keeper, everything else is only the result of your choice instead of a set theme.
If your mass murder spree isn't rationalized to be "noble" in some way, people stub their toes and get pee in their eyes, as demonstrated by hatred in a spectacular fashion.