(This might get a bit long-winded, so there will be a TL
R at the bottom.)
Evil options are often weak points in open-ended games. It can be hard to find a reason to want to be evil, especially when doing so cuts you off from other parts of the game. If an evil option destroys a town or permanently turns a faction hostile, the game world contracts and becomes more restricted as opposed to opening up to new possibilities. If you're being evil for the lulz, you might end up just not being able to do much as the world shuts down on you.
Fallout 3 was the first really open-ended game I ever played. I had played one or two sandbox games, but none that let you, say, shoot someone in the face after talking to them just because they wore a bad suit. It was a smash hit, an instant favorite that completely revolutionized my taste in games, but what did I do with my new-found power? I was a hero. I helped people in need. I destroyed Paradise Falls and helped freed slaves. I fought the Enclave and brought fresh water to the wasteland. It was all very fun.
But then I went back after beating the game and decided I would take a different route. I decided to be evil. I made a character that looked like the Joker and decided I would try to raise as much hell as possible. I was totally going to rip the wasteland a new one and watch everything burn to the ground.
It didn't work.
A few hours and a handful of quests later, I had moderately good karma and was on my way to Arafu, where I probably would have resolved the situation peacefully.
What happened?
Well, every time I was faced with an evil option, I had to think about what I knew about the game. I had played it through before, and knew where most things went. The real, obvious evil options such as Nuking megaton or killing someone over a debt collection were almost always dead ends.
If I save Megaton, then I'm a hero and my reputation grows. People love me and my story is carried throughout the waste; a prequel to my great deeds yet to come. I make friends and allies in the city, and can start interactions there that last for the entire game.
If I destroy Megaton, there's no more Megaton. Tenpenny kind of likes me or something but whatever. I lose a valuable trading spot and numerous interesting characters. I am cut off because I destroyed part of the game, and I can never come back.
Even playing as an evil, sadistic freak, I don't want to completely destroy the game world because I live there.
As a counter-point to Fallout 3, I am going to use Skyrim; the first open ended game where I was an evil bastard on my first playthrough. I did not start up Skyrim intending to be evil. I don't usually intend to do anything with first characters. I just do whatever occurs to me at the time. In Skyrim, it was becoming an assassin and a thief.
To be fair, I started the game as a khajiit, so "noble axe warrior" was probably never in the cards, but I could have been a fire mage.
Still, I played through a good portion of the game being little Mrs. Helpful, running errands for the locals and slaying dragons. I stayed that way until a certain little boy asked for a very particular favor, and I obliged. From that moment on, my character was ruthless. She killed for profit without a second thought. She was completely mercenary, willing to do anything for anyone with the gold.
So why was she so different from my characters in other games? What had changed? Why was I more willing to kill and destroy than I had been in other games?
It took me a while, but I finally figured it out: I wasn't. I had always played mercenary characters. From Fallout to Mass Effect to Bioshock to Red Dead Redemption, I hadn't done what was right: I had done done what was interesting. By killing or pissing off characters, I would have closed off opportunities. Pressing the "renegade" button to take a shit on someone's desk may have been funnier at the moment, but would probably mean less quests for them later. Being good had an objective, I was building something from it. By being consistently good, I would achieve the best possible end result. Evil on the other hand was just destructive. There was nothing that I could achieve only through evil in the way I could achieve through good.
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.
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.
R at the bottom.) Evil options are often weak points in open-ended games. It can be hard to find a reason to want to be evil, especially when doing so cuts you off from other parts of the game. If an evil option destroys a town or permanently turns a faction hostile, the game world contracts and becomes more restricted as opposed to opening up to new possibilities. If you're being evil for the lulz, you might end up just not being able to do much as the world shuts down on you.
Fallout 3 was the first really open-ended game I ever played. I had played one or two sandbox games, but none that let you, say, shoot someone in the face after talking to them just because they wore a bad suit. It was a smash hit, an instant favorite that completely revolutionized my taste in games, but what did I do with my new-found power? I was a hero. I helped people in need. I destroyed Paradise Falls and helped freed slaves. I fought the Enclave and brought fresh water to the wasteland. It was all very fun.
But then I went back after beating the game and decided I would take a different route. I decided to be evil. I made a character that looked like the Joker and decided I would try to raise as much hell as possible. I was totally going to rip the wasteland a new one and watch everything burn to the ground.
It didn't work.
A few hours and a handful of quests later, I had moderately good karma and was on my way to Arafu, where I probably would have resolved the situation peacefully.
What happened?
Well, every time I was faced with an evil option, I had to think about what I knew about the game. I had played it through before, and knew where most things went. The real, obvious evil options such as Nuking megaton or killing someone over a debt collection were almost always dead ends.
If I save Megaton, then I'm a hero and my reputation grows. People love me and my story is carried throughout the waste; a prequel to my great deeds yet to come. I make friends and allies in the city, and can start interactions there that last for the entire game.
If I destroy Megaton, there's no more Megaton. Tenpenny kind of likes me or something but whatever. I lose a valuable trading spot and numerous interesting characters. I am cut off because I destroyed part of the game, and I can never come back.
Even playing as an evil, sadistic freak, I don't want to completely destroy the game world because I live there.
As a counter-point to Fallout 3, I am going to use Skyrim; the first open ended game where I was an evil bastard on my first playthrough. I did not start up Skyrim intending to be evil. I don't usually intend to do anything with first characters. I just do whatever occurs to me at the time. In Skyrim, it was becoming an assassin and a thief.
To be fair, I started the game as a khajiit, so "noble axe warrior" was probably never in the cards, but I could have been a fire mage.
Still, I played through a good portion of the game being little Mrs. Helpful, running errands for the locals and slaying dragons. I stayed that way until a certain little boy asked for a very particular favor, and I obliged. From that moment on, my character was ruthless. She killed for profit without a second thought. She was completely mercenary, willing to do anything for anyone with the gold.
So why was she so different from my characters in other games? What had changed? Why was I more willing to kill and destroy than I had been in other games?
It took me a while, but I finally figured it out: I wasn't. I had always played mercenary characters. From Fallout to Mass Effect to Bioshock to Red Dead Redemption, I hadn't done what was right: I had done done what was interesting. By killing or pissing off characters, I would have closed off opportunities. Pressing the "renegade" button to take a shit on someone's desk may have been funnier at the moment, but would probably mean less quests for them later. Being good had an objective, I was building something from it. By being consistently good, I would achieve the best possible end result. Evil on the other hand was just destructive. There was nothing that I could achieve only through evil in the way I could achieve through good.
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.
TL
R/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.
