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On Good and Evil in videogaming

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Alex C:
I hear ya.

It particularly drove me nuts in Jade Empire, since they bullshitted so much about how the alignment system wouldn't be the same as the Light/Dark side dichotomy they had in KOTOR. It started out OK, and even sounded pretty cool, in theory; the old master of the Closed Fist at Tien's Landing made it sound like it was a system that prized self-interest and relishing challenges. He said that by Closed Fist standards, being purely altruistic was considered foolish; if you learned or gained nothing by helping someone out, you were actually doing more harm than good, since you were denying them the opportunity to learn for themselves and gain strength. So, in theory a Master of the Closed Fist might not help a villager get their cart out of the mud but he might consider defending the villager from attackers if he felt he had something to gain by doing by doing so, even if that something was just an opportunity to practice his ass-kicking skills.

In practice though, the game totally dropped the ball. The Open Palm was the light side and the Closed Fist ended up as the dark side. There were even examples where you had 3 options: Help people for nothing, help people for something, or just viciously screw people over for no god damn reason. Often only the third option gave Closed Fist benefits. It was super lame and made me feel hella disappointed.

I know I've pointed it out before, but I still feel like the first half of KOTOR 1 was a case study in how NOT to handle villainy followed by a second half that was almost shockingly fulfilling as a bad guy. Prior to the Leviathan, being a Sith just seemed to mean being rude and shaking people down for their lunch money. Post Leviathan, you had an agenda, motivations and a genuine grievance against the Jedi to pursue if you wanted. I actually started out that game as Yahtzee's stereotypical virtuous flower child and ended it as Dark Lord of the galaxy.

Chesire Cat:
I find the notion of being a bad guy quirky at best:

1. First of all, its at odds with how I learned to win at video games, completing everything.
2. In games that offered more than one choice generally it was a pittance to be had up front for being a prick, but a fortune if you stayed the course
3. You dont act as a truly evil person would, you generally act as a petulant sociopath
4. In the realm of suspended disbelief, acting like me only a little nicer and a little tougher, and the hero to EVERY GODDAMN CARTOON IVE EVER SEEN is alot more natural than acting like some kid who watch Saw too many times in a world with no law enforcement. 

I just couldn't make playing it feel real.  No internal motivation to being the villian, no character motivations to be evil.  Its like you have to write in an evil (immoral) main char to the story to make it work a la GTA.  Otherwise in history and literature, when someone kills everyone in a single village, its not,  "just cause I felt like it".  In reality its party of a greater plan, be it forming a government which dude-guy as leader for life or whatever.  The games make evil seem petty, and good be noble. 

It seems Petty Vs Noble is a pretty easy choice when you are doing it inside a video game, and most of the day to day stuff involve killing a bad guy for a good guy and generally playing the game.

*edit*

I lost my focus like 19x during this post, sooooo if it doesnt make sense, build a bridge... get over it.

Jackie Blue:

--- Quote from: Chesire Cat on 04 Nov 2008, 10:24 ---3. You dont act as a truly evil person would, you generally act as a petulant sociopath
--- End quote ---

Nail on head there.  I have no problem doing "evil" things in GTA games because they're written in such a way that, while to varying degrees the main character is usually a pretty bad guy (though the protaganist of San Andreas was actually a pretty "good" guy) they always go out of the way to humanise him (Niko is a great example of this, and the main complaint I have with GTA4 is that there aren't enough missions where he shows his character).

est:
I have split this out from the Zero Punctuation thread because I thought it was worth breaking out on its own.

For the most part games seem to cater for "overly heroic" and "unremittingly evil".  As some of you have already said I'd love for there to be more shades to their system.  I would love to play a self-interested character, and for the most part when given a sandbox game I will, especially if the plot is shit.

For example, in Oblivion I ran through the first dungeon thing and once I got out in to the world what you're expected to do (I guess) is to run straight to the town they asked you to go to in order to report the Emperor's death and start the main quest.  I had very little interest in that shit, because with the whole "you're a prisoner and the guards treat you kind of badly" thing I didn't really feel much driving me to help these fuckers out.  So instead I went treasure hunting and killed a bunch of folks and got myself a bit more well-equipped before going to see what all the fuss was about.  Even once upon the proper main-quest path I only did it half-heartedly, preferring instead to dungeon crawl, roam the wilderness and do side-quests.

Sure, the game let me do it, but it didn't feel right.  The main quest line was all "rush rush rush, this is terribly important", but they did not bat an eyelid when I went wandering into the wilderness and only certain scripted events made the plot advance.  I am not really sure that there was a viable option for a truly evil character in that game, as the stealing/stealth/resale of goods and the faction system was remarkably badly implemented.  In much the same way, I think that choosing to be a self-interested, or almost disinterested character did not advance the plot at all and left you with a much less rewarding experience.  If the game provided more incentive to go through the quests, or if the game world in some way changed due to your lack of action (ie: the bad guys actively come after you to retrieve the royal items, or you see more and more demons to the point of you being required to take action in your own self-interest) then it would have been a lot better.

Chesire Cat:
I think Oblivion took an idea that theres only two types of characters in game, NPCs and the Player.  The player is inherently heroic, but you can do good or bad things along that scale.  A good hero, or a bad hero, but a hero nonetheless.  And for that matter, most hero/villain games take that approach.  I guess being a hero in inherently noble and solitary whilst a villain is alot more multifaceted.  And growing up we watch cartoons that instill this in us via countless cartoons with a small cadre of good guys and a villain hierarchy with countless henchmen.  But the world in which those occupy revolve soley around the good and the evil characters.  A villains role is very slow and plotting, a hero acts very reactionary.  They just simple dont lead to comparably fun experiences.

In a game that really makes evil work, it needs to be very fleshed out and autonomous.  There needs to be very real reactions and consequences to your actions, generally a video game character fights an uphill battle against a seemingly omnipotent.  I really dont see how it can be done more than superficially, and since I dont see it being done well as a reasonable expectation, Im willing to offer game manufacturers a decent amount of leeway.

Though one game that I think does a fairly good job of making it possible and mediating the rewards for this good vs evil hero is Bioshock.  But alot of that is due to the closed nature of the workspace they have to work with.  There are no cops, theres no one to punish the wicked (kinda the problem to begin with) so it does leave with with two decisions, one clearly moral, another clearly immoral.

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