Poll: Playing Evil

[DementedSheep]

I play evil in games but not often and usually only in for the lulz playthoughs. Generally ?evil? options in games seems pretty stupid to me and often don't really make sense. It usually cartoonish evil which I do on occasion but I'm rarely in the mood for it. I?ll play a self centered asshole just fine but but doing evil things when its seem more likely to dick yourself over for no real benefit just seems silly. It's just a mind set I can't really get into.

 

[MeChaNiZ3D]

Honestly, I don't think I'd want to play an unscrupulous, aimless evil person without a good reason to be evil. I'm all up for being an enforcer or antihero utilitarian, but I just don't generally go for evil for the sake of it. The one thing that overrides that is my completionism, which basically means my character loses all integrity once I have to kill someone for a unique item or weapon. I don't want it to happen, and the only time I can keep it at bay is when I've already done everything possible in the game and are free to RP, but that's the case.

Although that said, killing Gough in Dark Souls is a serious quandry for me while running over pedestrians by their dozens in GTA is just another day. Which I think is a fair reaction considering GTA makes no effort to have you sympathise with pedestrians and their deaths have no real consequences.

 

[Ed130 The Vanguard]

I can easily be a dick in games, but actual dyed in the wool evil is a little harder.

Running over random pedestrians, ok.

Backstabbing someone I know and setting fire to the orphanage, not really my cup of tea.

This, however I label senseless killing evil. So by running you are being evil.

It isn't my fault!

They keep on jumping out in-front of me! I even steal police cars to use the siren to warn them that I'm approaching!

 

[sXeth]

I try to play "evil" in games...I really do. I just...I can't

Funny enough, it's not my actions that make me feel too bad but the way I interact with my friends. I have absolutely no problem shooting a man in the back or running over Grandma because she just wasn't fast enough to get out of the way of my car but the second I act like an asshole to one of my NPC buddies, I feel bad. It's a strange reason but I've never been able to play "evil" in games because of this.

There's this, which is often the case with the stock cartoonishly exaggerated sociopath choices you get in the binary choice systems. I think I've broken it down in other threads, where the games that put evil option in all too often have the evil option consist of actions and attitudes that would get the character completely killed by sheer mob justice and lack of allies unless they were a living omnipotent god.

Theres also the fact that very few games really bother with establishing consequences for the evil path. As someone mentioned above, you could take every evil option on the map in BG, or NWN, or DA and still be the world savior. In Skyrim, the main quest doesn't care about you, you're still the Dragonborn, and even the aside quests don't bother acknowledging it.

 

[Exius Xavarus]

I like playing evil when there is an actual evil side of the story. Let us play the main antagonist's side of the story. I liked the way they did the dark story in Sonic Adventure 2 Battle. Actually got to play the evil characters doing things to further their evil plot. T'was quite fun.

 

[Evil Smurf]

I can easily be a dick in games, but actual dyed in the wool evil is a little harder.

Running over random pedestrians, ok.

Backstabbing someone I know and setting fire to the orphanage, not really my cup of tea.

This, however I label senseless killing evil. So by running you are being evil.

It isn't my fault!

They keep on jumping out in-front of me! I even steal police cars to use the siren to warn them that I'm approaching!

I use a dildo bat, if they won't run I is not my fault.

 

[VeneratedWulfen93]

I play Dark Eldar in 40k, the single most OTT, drug abusing, slave torturing, super-villains in fictional history. Because I can and my squads get power from pain.

Other than cartoonishly evil I'd say yes again. Nobody thinks they're evil, they think they are in the right at all times.

 

[Absimilliard]

I often play evil characters. In one role-playing campaign I'm in, I play a character with absolutely no regard for human life, meaning that if his enemy is in a given town, he will cheerfully burn it down. (However, he's not a sociopath, he's just been engineered to not give lives other than his and his allies' value.) When I played Dishonored, I played a Corvo who hated the upper classes with the exception of Emily, so I went ape at the party (also, I got really annoyed when one of my stealthier plans failed...).
It's not all I play, mind you. Another d&d-character of mine is a good cleric who in any down-time visits hospitals for the poor and expends all his healing-spells (and remove disease, obviously).
A lot of people play the characters in a game as they would act themselves, but as a seasoned role-player, I'm, fairly comfortable with doing something completely different.
Incidentally, there are two kinds of "evil": the "it's easier this way"-path (like going ape at that party in Dishonored rather than finding your one and only target, or when a friend and I blew up a populated planet in a sci-fi game 'cause our sworn enemy was on it and we had no resources or contacts there - ah, the look on the GM's face), and then there's evil for the sake of evil, where you go out of your way to be extra evil. An example was made by a parody villain in a comedy once: "Evil is not just not flushing, evil is taking a dump in someone else's chocolate ice-cream!" I have played both variates of evil (though never done that exact act), but the latter will require a background that makes sense of it all. (Or rather "sense" of it all...)

 

[King of Asgaard]

If a game gives me a choice of being good or evil, I ALWAYS gravitate towards the dark side.
Thing is, I don't play stupid evil; if it suits me more to do a good action, I do it, but most of the time, being evil suits my character more than being good.

In games like Infamous, it makes more sense to pick a side and stick with it, rather than flip-flopping, because you have to be all the way along one side to get the best upgrades, but even then, the evil side is more enticing.

 

[Lazy Kitty]

Would I?
Games like Overlord or Dungeon Keeper are my favorite kind of game.

"What is the world without Elves" -Ghost Elf after me causing the Elves to go extinct while getting gold in the process (As opposed to saving their species and not getting any gold.)

"A better place" -Minion

 

[immortalfrieza]

When given the option I always play the goody good the first time I play a game because that tends to be the canon alignment in most games, and then I play the complete monster the second time around. Between the two though, I'd say being evil is much more fun, since going around screwing over and slaughtering people tends more amusing and entertaining than being the character who's out to right every wrong, the evil character also tends to be more interesting overall than the comparatively flat good character. The only time I've made an exception to this rule that I can remember is Steambot Chronicles, I was good on the first playthrough, but I found the characters so damn endearing that on subsequent playthroughs I just couldn't bring myself to screw those characters over, no matter how hard I tried.

As for morality systems in general, the problem with them is that the choices that the player is presented are always so pathetically transparently good or evil. The only way to be good or evil in games is to either be this knight in shining armor type who saves people left and right even without any context for even if they should or any thought of reward, while throwing money to any random idiot who asks for it or to be this complete sociopath that insults, torments, tortures, and/or just kills random people for no real reason. There's never any real subtley or grey area involved, and worse, it's not about doing what's more intelligent to do, but rather what's more morally right or wrong to do. I also don't care for the fact that morality is tracked and rewarded with something or another when it reaches a certain threshold, it makes the player want to shoot to max out a particular alignment rather than doing what they actually would do in a given situation. My ideal morality system game would be one which the choices are very morally ambiguous and would see tangable negative or positive results based on what would logically happen, rather than some unrealistic cynical or idealistic outcome. There would also be no visible alignment meter of any sort, your morality would still be tracked but the effects it would have would be very subtle at most, only the ending would be affected by your unseen alignment in any real manner, so you would never know it even if you played the game several times that it was happening. Dragon Age apparently tried to do this, but the dialog choices still ended up being much too blatantly good or evil for it to work I think.

 

[KingsGambit_v1legacy]

In a single player game, with good and evil offering different story elements or play styles, I will usually play through once as both. KOTOR2 not only had different story elements, but different companions and love interests depending on alignment and gender.

Online is different. I think this is something that changes as we get older, genuinely. I'm more inclined now to play a villain than I would have been a decade ago. When rolling a character in a new MMO for example, I'd choose the "evil" option now. It's hard at first, when playing a game with binary morality to go the evil route. AAA games don't do subtle anymore, evil is evil for evil's sake now and may involve killing for no gain or taking without need. It's hard to take at first, but then you suspend disbelief and become a gamer vicariously playing out a story of a villain. Then I just get on with it.....though I have to admit even my renegade Shep wasn't that renegade; somethings I couldn't bring myself to do.

 

[Azahul]

It's pretty clear that a lot of video games (RPGs in particular) are pretty terrible at making "evil" choices make any sense at all.

Tabletop RPGs though... woah. I'm in the midst of running a game of Unhallowed Metropolis. Given that the world suffers from occasional zombie outbreaks, most of the living are extremely poor and crammed into urban slums and rookeries, while the rich live incredibly long lives and consort with vampires and mad scientists in attempts to prolong their lifespan even further, it's really not surprising that a lot of the characters aren't all that saintly. The rules even advise you to construct your character like someone out of a Greek tragedy, with a built-in hubris that will eventually see them commit horrific acts to eke out another day of existence. Every single character has a dark side in this game, "Lawful Good" is nonexistent.

But even with all that in mind, one of my players is doing a terrific job of scaring the crap out of me. He's playing a psychologist with an interest in psychic potential. At the start of the campaign he was being rather altruistic, helping psychics too poor to afford the appropriate drugs/treatment to keep their powers under control. As time has gone on though, his experiments into hypnosis and psychosurgical inductions have seen him increasingly trying to outright enslave his patients, and even turn non-psychics into psychics through rather gruesome procedures. And he still insists he's the good guy, that their powers will allow his patients to climb out of the rookery and into prosperity, while his hypnosis prevents their latent insanity from destroying the lives of all those around them. It's awe-inspiring to watch. We're not playing out the story of a group of heroes anymore, we're watching an honest to god descent into darkness, a good man going evil because of his good intentions.

The really scary thing is I can't tell where the player and the character's morality are overlapping. It's kinda unnerving, how much he insists his character isn't on a path into darkness.

 

[DarkhoIlow]

It really depends on the story really for me, but most of the times I don't roll with an evil character in general.

I really don't enjoy killing people (in RPG's) without any reason or if they deserve it, usually play a chaotic good type. The only exception I made was playing a Dark Side Sith Marauder in SWTOR.

 

[Lieju]

The thing is, people don't consider themselves 'evil' (unless they're cartoon characters). They generally believe they're doing good or don't think of the consequences, or believe they're doing morally questionable things for the greater good.

I usually play a character who is good, but is willing to do forbidden magic or science just to see what would happen, because of curiosity.
Sometimes I play a character who has gone through a lot and so has become hardened and only has some close people s/he cares for, but is willing to do whatever it takes to protect them.
Both the kinds of characters that could easily be the villain for another character.

However, if the world is cartoonish, and everyone is insane/a jerk, I can enjoy just playing a cartoonish supervillain. Like in Saints Row 2.

Right now i can't think of any game where i think being evil actually worked. In Dragon Age, Neverwinter Nights and generally in games where you're out saving the world, being a dick to everyone you meet just feels completely out of place.

Depends on your definition of 'evil', but in a game like DA:O, even if your character has no empathy and hates everyone, it can still make perfect sense for him/her to save the world, because s/he is living in it.

I made a female human noble in one of my DA:O-playthroughs, and played her as someone who just manipulated everyone to get power (and eventually get growned as a queen), was racist and anti-mage (but not cartoonisly so, it just made sense considering her upbringing) and I ended up despicing her and feeling bad for Alistair for manipulating him to marry her...

She was pretty nice, if snobbish, to people she thought she could get something out of, but did show her anti-magic/racst attitudes, and would jusitfy all kinds of shit with her religion.

In contrast, my other character was a mage who lacked social graces, having taken away from her family as a kid and been imprisoned in the cirlce ever since, so she was a jerk to people and would steal their stuff, but wouldn't consider elves or dwarves any worse than humans, and would genuinely try to help people a lot of the time (apart from her cleptomanic tendencies)

 

[Taimaishoo]

If the character is inherently evil, set up without my influence as evil then yes. Or the game is so cartoonish in it's depiction of evil acts (see Fable series) then also yes. But most games with a morality system which "grows" your character either good or evil, give me trouble to chose the bad side.

Thing is, most of the bad choices don't give a clear sense of progression. It's never really obvious if you'd just simply progress to the same end goal with a few alterations, or if you'd taking a complete left turn in the story. And especially on first playthroughs, i'd want the most revealing and complete story experience.

Playing the evil side of a game with a choice always feels like a second playthrough option anyway, since i'm good at my core and making the evil choice doesn't "sit right" anyway.

 

[MammothBlade]

From what I have seen on these forums, it seems that playing an evil character in a game is almost unthinkable.

Urgh I blame outspoken moralfags, ruining other peoples' sociopathic fun just because.

I love playing evil characters, but often games just don't do it right. If I'm going to be an evil badass I want the game to make me feel infamous. Often games don't give you the option to be truly cruel or become a social pariah, just avoid saving others which makes you a neutral anti-hero at best. Fallout sort of goes there but being evil is a lot of work since good karma is more easily gained than bad.

 

[[REDACTED]]

I love playing evil characters, but I hate playing assholes. Far too many games equate the two, and far too few allow you to be somewhat subtle about it. Planescape: Torment is how you do an evil character right, and Fallout 3 is how you do it wrong.

 

[Fijiman]

I can play an evil character, but most games generally give better rewards for choosing the good path so that's why I usually choose it.