The Evil Option

[Vault101]

Yeah, this particularly annoyed me in Mass Effect. I thought the schtick was supposed to be:

Paragon- Idealist, kind, always does what's right
Renegade- Ruthless, does what needs to be done, jackass (but usually with reason)

However it seemed like almost every paragon/renegade decision was more just: choose paragon and be successful, or be renegade and ultimately have it bite you in the ass.
.

exactally, the Idea behined Renegade completly falls flat if its really just a failure state...not to mention "be a jerk to everyone"

Fallout 3, to it's credit, had one mission where choosing the "best" option ended in a massacre. I was pissed at the time, but it was also pretty clever.

yeah, I don't think I ever finished that quest (I help the ghouls because I figured that was the better option..but when the invasion came I was like "this doesnt feel right" so I reloaded and killed the gouls to get the quest over with)

but yeah, funny when you say to the gaurd "I'm going to find a peacful solution to this!" and he's like "yeah...right"

also kind of like how in Fallout New Vegas "collecting the caps" the result is

[spoiler/]a story...oh and some plastic sheifs badges...its like "what did you expect?" [/spoiler]

 

[Lovely Mixture]

Yeah, this particularly annoyed me in Mass Effect. I thought the schtick was supposed to be:

Paragon- Idealist, kind, always does what's right
Renegade- Ruthless, does what needs to be done, jackass (but usually with reason)

However it seemed like almost every paragon/renegade decision was more just: choose paragon and be successful, or be renegade and ultimately have it bite you in the ass.

It would have been much more interesting if occasionally the forgiving and idealistic Paragon Shepard occasionally had to deal the consequences of their actions, like the crimes committed by the criminal they let live, or the loss of a position that they were unwilling to sacrifice men to hold. However for the most part it was Paragon: Better, Renegade: Worse, which was annoying because that's not how the real world works.

It's been a while since I've played ME1 and ME2, but I thought it implemented it well enough. But I do agree that the consequences of your actions were not well implemented.

 

[Unsilenced]

(This might get a bit long-winded, so there will be a TLR at the bottom.)



Skyrim changed that for me. With the Dark Brotherhood, you are building something out of evil actions. There is a goal, and you get there by being evil. While killing a girl for debt money in Fallout might net me some low-level loot in exchange for probably having to fight my way out of town, killing for money in Skyrim got me new equipment and interesting interactions with likable characters.

Sure I was still killing off a massive number of NPCs, but now I had a reason to. It was going somewhere. I might have been sealing off some quest lines by killing important people, but at the very least I knew I would always have new ones from the Dark Brotherhood. My story was expanding with my foul deeds, not contracting.

If you liked that, dig up a copy of Oblivion. The Dark Brotherhood quest line is, in my opinion, superior to the one found in Skyrim and offers the same general appeal that you are talking about here in your post. Well, to be fair, it is just a bit more artistic and intricate. Where Skyrim has a small superiority on this particular score is the randomly generated NPCs to kill continuously after the main line completion - Oblivion's version lacks that follow up. Still, worth looking at if you enjoyed your playtime. Just throwing that out there.

I have played a good bit of Oblivion, though I eventually quit because my character was underpowered (I had points in a combat skill I didn't use. Very bad.) The level with the party at the mansion was just great.

 

[Mylinkay Asdara]

(This might get a bit long-winded, so there will be a TLR at the bottom.)



Skyrim changed that for me. With the Dark Brotherhood, you are building something out of evil actions. There is a goal, and you get there by being evil. While killing a girl for debt money in Fallout might net me some low-level loot in exchange for probably having to fight my way out of town, killing for money in Skyrim got me new equipment and interesting interactions with likable characters.

Sure I was still killing off a massive number of NPCs, but now I had a reason to. It was going somewhere. I might have been sealing off some quest lines by killing important people, but at the very least I knew I would always have new ones from the Dark Brotherhood. My story was expanding with my foul deeds, not contracting.

If you liked that, dig up a copy of Oblivion. The Dark Brotherhood quest line is, in my opinion, superior to the one found in Skyrim and offers the same general appeal that you are talking about here in your post. Well, to be fair, it is just a bit more artistic and intricate. Where Skyrim has a small superiority on this particular score is the randomly generated NPCs to kill continuously after the main line completion - Oblivion's version lacks that follow up. Still, worth looking at if you enjoyed your playtime. Just throwing that out there.

I have played a good bit of Oblivion, though I eventually quit because my character was underpowered (I had points in a combat skill I didn't use. Very bad.) The level with the party at the mansion was just great.

I confess, I find Oblivion playable after level 10 or so only if I move the difficulty slider to about the 40% mark, just because of the odd leveling system and the disconnect with the combat skill and scaled monsters. 30% if I'm not playing a "kill from stealth" character.

 

[Indecipherable]

I could write an awful lot on it as I have basically played P&P RPG for ~25 years and almost always as part of an 'evil' group. I'll just try to give a tiny summary about why it's so hard to write for evil in a computer RPG.

Motive and complexity of character.

If you're 'good', it's easy to have someone kidnapped or a village under attack and you go off and do that. Simple. If it leads to a bigger more evil plot, you've already worked it in there.

If you're 'evil', you may or may not care to help. Evil is complicated. Evil doesn't necessarily mean you aren't helping people and frequently doesn't acknowledge itself as Evil. Evil tends to write its own plots. It instigates rather than reacts. That's why you so often find an "evil" choice in RPGs that is childish and totally out of context, reality or reason. Those evil choices are nearly without exception never 'legacy' building of any sort. You rarely make an Evil thieves group, you instead fight one. It's too complex.

It's just much easier to write a plot with a bad guy in it and expect the goodies to go off and fight it.

 

[Asita]

Well the thing is, at the end of the day a good portrayal of good and evil choices is often one of subtlety. And let's be honest with ourselves, subtlety is something that this medium doesn't tend to excel at, and as a consequence, evil actions have a tendency to end up...well, cartoonish. Let me give you a little scenario.

Choice: Do you put money towards funding this orphanage? Y/N?

Consequences: For funding this orphanage you get Light Side points. For refusing to fund this orphanage, you get Dark Side points...and 50 credits from Snidely Whiplash.

Criticism: Now the above seems like a pretty reasonable distinction, doesn't it? Well, the light side option at least does. The Dark Side one...kinda stupid all things considered. That aside though, at least the Light Side reward seems appropriate, right? Wrong. The action itself appears altruistic at a glance, but motivation can change that interpretation dramatically. If you're doing it because you honestly sympathize with the poor kids, then yes, Light Side points would seem appropriate. But let's also think about this from a smart villain perspective for a minute. Funding an orphanage provides good press, which is useful to a Lex Luthor like villain. A Sith might check in on it every now and again to find a youth strong enough in the force to warrant training as an apprentice or an assassin. A warmonger might construct it near a military zone to deter enemies from bombing the area. A mad scientist might see it as a source of test subjects...in truth it's remarkably easy to justify an evil character not only doing this 'good' choice, but making use of that fact, especially if we use the same low standards seen in the original results.

Here's another fun scenario. You're the Dark Lord of the Sith, waging war on the galaxy, and doing a remarkable job of winning that war. You're in the middle of conquering a system, and you're faced with a choice. You can either decimate the planet, or preserve as much of it as possible. Which option's the Dark Side option? Trick question. First option's arguably more evil, but in it's "Stupid Evil". The latter option preserves more of the planet's infrastructure, ensuring they remain useful to you and that you don't end up emperor of a thousand and one garbage planets. What's more, you can use that to help fuel your war effort. With that motive in mind, BOTH can be considered Dark Side options. And yes, I did borrow that example from the backstory in KoTOR.


That is where morality systems seem to always fall apart, from what I've seen, they tend not only to sell evil actions short, but also tend to judge the action more often than they judge the motive, which strikes me as very shortsighted.

 

[ultrachicken]

I know what you mean. I'm missing like 200 gamerscore from Fallout New Vegas because I'm not going to do the Legion quests. Ever.

The only reason to be evil in that game is to be an asshole, and I'd like to think that I'm not an asshole.

The Legion always leaves a taste in my mouth like being on the back end of a human centipede. They're just evil without purpose. They want to take land with brute force so they can rule it with brute force. Everyone living under their rule is miserable, and even those who rise through the ranks are still in a miserable situation because they constantly have to fight in horrific battles with nothing but some light armor and a machete. It also doesn't help that 90% of the game world's inhabitants (rightly) hate your guts or will outright shoot your ass if you're a known associate of the Legion.

That's how you do the evil option wrong.

 

[Darks63]

Yeah another problem using FO:new vegas as an example is if you side with the legion you cut yourself off from many quests from NCR while the legion has less than a handful other than the main questline not to mention their total lack of bases past the Colorado river.

and also as a faction even with mods they are just terribly hollow and boring.

 

[EclipseoftheDarkSun]

I know what you mean. I'm missing like 200 gamerscore from Fallout New Vegas because I'm not going to do the Legion quests. Ever.

The only reason to be evil in that game is to be an asshole, and I'd like to think that I'm not an asshole.

The Legion always leaves a taste in my mouth like being on the back end of a human centipede. They're just evil without purpose. They want to take land with brute force so they can rule it with brute force. Everyone living under their rule is miserable, and even those who rise through the ranks are still in a miserable situation because they constantly have to fight in horrific battles with nothing but some light armor and a machete. It also doesn't help that 90% of the game world's inhabitants (rightly) hate your guts or will outright shoot your ass if you're a known associate of the Legion.

That's how you do the evil option wrong.

Yeah it makes about as much sense as getting the slaver tattoo on the forehead in Fallout 2 - you'd have to be a complete moron to do that ( I could never be bothered)

 

[LetalisK]

Here's another fun scenario. You're the Dark Lord of the Sith, waging war on the galaxy, and doing a remarkable job of winning that war. You're in the middle of conquering a system, and you're faced with a choice. You can either decimate the planet, or preserve as much of it as possible. Which option's the Dark Side option? Trick question. First option's arguably more evil, but in it's "Stupid Evil". The latter option preserves more of the planet's infrastructure, ensuring they remain useful to you and that you don't end up emperor of a thousand and one garbage planets. What's more, you can use that to help fuel your war effort. With that motive in mind, BOTH can be considered Dark Side options. And yes, I did borrow that example from the backstory in KoTOR.

And then people get scared you might propose an interesting moral dilemma, so they retcon your ass to simply be mind controlled by the Big Bad. You know, to make things simple and easy.

-still bitter-

 

[Buzz Killington_v1legacy]

there needs to be a reason for a player to want to do evil beyond just loot and the spoils of war

You...you mean that's not enough?

 

[TheCommanders]

Yeah, this particularly annoyed me in Mass Effect. I thought the schtick was supposed to be:

Paragon- Idealist, kind, always does what's right
Renegade- Ruthless, does what needs to be done, jackass (but usually with reason)

However it seemed like almost every paragon/renegade decision was more just: choose paragon and be successful, or be renegade and ultimately have it bite you in the ass.

It would have been much more interesting if occasionally the forgiving and idealistic Paragon Shepard occasionally had to deal the consequences of their actions, like the crimes committed by the criminal they let live, or the loss of a position that they were unwilling to sacrifice men to hold. However for the most part it was Paragon: Better, Renegade: Worse, which was annoying because that's not how the real world works.

There was one paragon option that let a terrorist get away, but I don't think he killed anyone after that (game one DLC.) There's also the thing where Zaeed may become permanently disloyal if you're paragon.

Actually:

Spoiler: Minor Mass Effect 3 Spoilers

That was Balak. He does show up in ME3 in possession of some security codes that he uses to commit a few terrorist acts around the citadel, which are prevented if you killed him. If you only imprisoned him he still has the codes, but the consequences are slightly less severe. The thing is, you only get him as a War Asset if you took the full paragon option (let him escape to save the hostages) or the paragon twist of the renegade option (capture him, but turn him over to the alliance). So renegade is still the worst option.

The Zaeed mission was one of the few examples of Renegade affording any sort of advantage.

 

[Xixikal]

I completely agree. Being good always seems to have an ultimate goal, a solid reason for being the virtuous hero, e.g. getting a super fantastic rainbow laser gun of doom.

There is no motivation to be evil in many games, more often than not, your evil deeds result in a negative outcome for you. There is no tradeoff as there is in a game such as Knight of the Old Republic (2003), where you sacrifice morality and general douchebaggery for heaps of gold and super lightning power of mass destruction (a.k.a. Force Lightning).

While choosing one end of the morality scale over the other can cut off many options within the game, it also opens new opportunities of equal value. The game can be brought back to an equilibrium where sacrifice is rewarded, no matter your choice.

All I'm saying is:
We need to make Bad feel good.

 

[Aurora Firestorm]

Yeah, this particularly annoyed me in Mass Effect. I thought the schtick was supposed to be:

Paragon- Idealist, kind, always does what's right
Renegade- Ruthless, does what needs to be done, jackass (but usually with reason)

However it seemed like almost every paragon/renegade decision was more just: choose paragon and be successful, or be renegade and ultimately have it bite you in the ass.

It would have been much more interesting if occasionally the forgiving and idealistic Paragon Shepard occasionally had to deal the consequences of their actions, like the crimes committed by the criminal they let live, or the loss of a position that they were unwilling to sacrifice men to hold. However for the most part it was Paragon: Better, Renegade: Worse, which was annoying because that's not how the real world works.

That's weird; I'm playing ME2 right now, and Renegade gets things done just as quickly, or even better with some characters, like Grunt. He seems to respect Renegade. Same with Jack. My main beef with Renegade vs. Paragon was that it seems like both of them work almost all the time, so it depends on how I view Shepard, not how the world works or the NPCs work. (Save for a few.)

Anyway, I think what we really need to do is give Evil options more ability to open the world. Instead of being hated forever and shut down if you nuke a town, why don't you unlock some clout in evil groups? Maybe you can join a gang, or a crime mob, or enlist yourself as an assassin if you kill people, or whatever. Maybe you can intimidate NPCs into doing what you want instead of cajoling them. Maybe you gain the respect of some sketchy higher-ups that see your ruthlessness as an advantage.

I don't know why game developers don't like this idea. Maybe everyone is really twitchy about the idea of rewarding evil behavior? But you're not going to have a decent moral choice system where both sides are interesting, unless the "bad" choices open the world as well, and in different directions than the good ones.

 

[WanderingFool]

TLR/Summary: In order for there to be a proper karma/morality system in a video game, there needs to be a reason for a player to want to do evil beyond just loot and the spoils of war, because there are plenty of bad people they can kill for that. It's not enough that games just let players burn the world down; there should be a reason to do it, and it should be interesting to watch.

You know... I always wondered why I took the good path in games that had morality systems. I always thought it was because I just wasnt able to play a bad guy. But after reading your Post, and putting some thought into it, I realized you are right! In a game like Bioshock, there is no motivation for harvisting the little sisters, as you get roughly the same amount of adam for saving them, plus a big daddy plasmid and an achievment.

I like this line of thought...

 

[royohz]

In Bastion, <spoiler=MAJOR SPOILER ALERT! Click below to view> in the end, if you save Zulf (do not continue reading if you didn't choose that option and want to see it yourself, which you should)

Spoiler

...you get to hear an awesome song, namely Zulf's Theme Mother, I'm here.

 

[Someone Depressing]

You know what? Fuck "good" and "evil".

Imagine this: You're playing a game where your in a wasteland, and there's a small girl who has been sunburned to the point of a very serious cancer and may die without treatment, but is in extreme pain.

Do you kill her, or do you try to get her to a hospital? If you kill her, her suffering ends. If you attempt to get her to a hostpital, she'll be put in extreme care and maybe even life, but she'll suffer much longer and much more painfully, and if the surgeory fails, she'll have died with even more suffering.

That's what a morality choice should be like. Not, kill the person and loot their house, or not kill the person and give them a pie. And them maybe marry them, and steal their possesions anyways.

 

[templar1138a]

One point I believe you're missing (that a lot of gamers miss) is this:

You don't have to be entirely good/evil.

Yes, early games with morality systems did have additional benefits to either one and generally discouraged neutrality (I'm looking at you, KoTOR II). And there are still games made today that use that same polar system, which sucks.

But there are other games that have tried other methods of measuring morality that allow for more shades of grey. I'll list the top three of the ones I've played, from 3rd to 1st.

Spoiler: Star Wars: The Old Republic

Though this game uses a polar Light/Dark morality system, it keeps track of the scores of both and uses the difference as your character's morality rating. What I like about this is that (as an example) I had a Sith Inquisitor who was technically light side, but once he became a Darth, anyone who could see his morality ratings would seen that he made a lot of dark decisions along the way. To me, it added a level of intrigue.

Now, there was still a certain reward aspect to being more light/dark, but it was only in the form of Relics that only increased stats by a small percent when compared to equipment that didn't require alignment scores (Cybertech is my favorite crafting skill).

Spoiler: Dragon Age

Neither Origins nor 2 used the traditional morality system. Instead, your character's morality was measured by what your companions thought of you. When you get right down to it, that's the most realistic way you can view morality. Depending on culture and experience, different people have different views on what's right or wrong.

The flaw with this system in Origins was that companion bonuses only unlocked if they liked you enough. However, this was fixed in 2 when they turned the companion measurement system into a Friend/Rival rating, giving different benefits to each.

Spoiler: Mass Effect

The Mass Effect games had the best morality system I've seen in the Paragon/Renegade meters. Unlike previous morality systems, gaining points in one meter didn't decrease the score in the other. This made it easily to play morally complex characters who could charm or intimidate depending on the situation.

Not only that, but there were numerous instances where gaining Paragon and Renegade points didn't depend on what decision you made, but how you decided to carry it out. In ME1, there's a conversation side-mission on the Citadel where a pregnant widow and her brother-in-law are arguing about how to deal with the threat of a genetic condition the baby may have inherited from the late father. First you choose whether you agree with the widow or the brother-in-law. Then you decide whether to gently explain your reasoning or chastise them.

In that way, Paragon/Renegade isn't so much a measure of your morality as your methodology and reputation. Unfortunately, there were still decisions that were determined to be either Paragon or Renegade when I think both should have been the same option. I'm thinking of Legion's loyalty mission: Both options should have gained Renegade points.

As for Fallout 3, I don't believe there's any benefit to its morality rating other than achievements and the radio referring to you by different titles. And come to think of it, there's at least one Perk that requires you to remain neutral in order to gain its benefits.

So here's my point: You don't have to worry yourself about being all good or all evil. Instead, try inventing a person and figure out what decisions they'd make in particular contexts. It's best if you don't plan those decisions in advance, either.

 

[Stemer]

I like Devil Survivor 2 way of doing it, the multiple endings are not judged to be good or evil, simply what you believe is right.

Agreed, both the Devil Survivor games did a great job of making all the endings at least somewhat appealing without any of them slipping into "and then they all lived happily ever after" mode and all of them having at least some draw backs.

 

[Irridium]

The only game I've played that allowed you to play as a proper evil character is Planescape Torment. And not evil as in "asshole", but evil as in, well, evil.

Never finished my evil playthrough. Because the evil options were just... evil. Couldn't bring myself to go through it all.

Anyway, I really don't like any morality system. What I like are games that just give us choices and consequences, and let us choose what's moral/immoral. 'Tis one reason why I love The Witcher series.