Terrible 'evil' character roleplay in most games

[f0Ri5]

I'm currently replaying some CRPGs including pillars of eternity and pathfinder kingmaker, and the evil roleplay is... bad. However, I've come to realize that's the case for most RPGs, which can't seem to give the player anything other than chaotic stupid as a choice. Like, why is 'evil' always just being a supreme assehole or a murder hobo, nothing in between? The answers I've gotten is just to pick the good choices and pretend to be a bad guy in disguise, but if there are no consequences for that, what is even the point?

Honestly, if devs are going to botch it this badly, I feel they might as well not include the option at all.

I think the reason for this is a misunderstanding of what 'evil' really is—someone who will do anything for power. Sure, you do get the odd guy who just likes to cause suffering and doesn't care about short or long-term consequences, but ultimately, being 'bad' is just acting purely in one's own self-interest without consideration for others.

And how exactly is advertising one's own bad intentions at the top of your lungs to all the good guys around you acting in self-interest? Not that these games have consequences for acting chaotic stupid anyway. Most of the time, it doesn't go any further than a companion leaving you, but there's always a replacement waiting in the wings anyway.

I don't get it.

 

[ArsMagna1337]

The player character from Fable 3. It's either be evil or be destroyed.

 

[EmailAddress]

Is good roleplay significantly better? Maybe I tried bad CRPGs but what I have seen it was universally offensively stupid (like "good" choices that were rather stupid choices being made retroactively smart ones for unreasonable reasons).

 

[f0Ri5]

Is good roleplay significantly better? Maybe I tried bad CRPGs but what I have seen it was universally offensively stupid (like "good" choices that were rather stupid choices being made retroactively smart ones for unreasonable reasons).

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Good is just vanilla. I honestly don't know what well-done 'good' RP would even look like. Every game basically goes with the formula of the player character being the hero and striving to beat some big bad.

 

[TheMidnightRook]

The player character from Fable 3. It's either be evil or be destroyed. A real estate mogul.

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Ftfy.

 

[Heaven Canceler]

Evil storylines is generally an afterthought in RPGs because studies have shown most players don't do evil playthroughs at all. Due to that generally you end up with the good, the tempered and the "let's kick the baby" option.

A lot of the time evil routes also just kill off people without replacing shit with new lore for that reason. Wanna join the evil raider Goblins in Baldur's Gate? You kill off a bunch of people, lose access to plotlines they are necessary for and probably lose half your party because they hate you and replace them with the hot Drow chick and nothing else. And I think her most expanded storyline was a redemption plot if I remember right.

Combine that with the fact that often evil gives the worse reward... Well, the "smart evil" thing to do is often just being a good guy, completing quest and then turn around and kill your allies. Which just ends up being schizophrenic because these games generally have no "I am lying to get in their good graces" plot available.

Edit:

I think the reason for this is a misunderstanding of what 'evil' really is—someone who will do anything for power. Sure, you do get the odd guy who just likes to cause suffering and doesn't care about short or long-term consequences, but ultimately, being 'bad' is just acting purely in one's own self-interest without consideration for others.

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That is Neutral, a character who doesn't particularly care whether their actions are good or wrong and more about if they are getting something out of it. They will fund an orphanage if it helps their personal standing, but also undercut it if they will be gettign an advantage. Many RL people fall into this to one degree or another though it ranges depending on what they would get vs. what they would need to do.

An evil character desires harm to others like a good one desires others happiness. It may not be their main goal across their whole life and they may not need to kick every puppy on the street, but the main instinct of a real evil character is that doing bad is good. Evil by its definition is malevolence.

 

[f0Ri5]

Evil storylines is generally an afterthought in RPGs because studies have shown most players don't do evil playthroughs at all. Due to that generally you end up with the good, the tempered and the "let's kick the baby" option.

A lot of the time evil routes also just kill off people without replacing shit with new lore for that reason. Wanna join the evil raider Goblins in Baldur's Gate? You kill off a bunch of people, lose access to plotlines they are necessary for and probably lose half your party because they hate you and replace them with the hot Drow chick and nothing else. And I think her most expanded storyline was a redemption plot if I remember right.

Combine that with the fact that often evil gives the worse reward... Well, the "smart evil" thing to do is often just being a good guy, completing quest and then turn around and kill your allies. Which just ends up being schizophrenic because these games generally have no "I am lying to get in their good graces" plot available.

Edit:



That is Neutral, a character who doesn't particularly care whether their actions are good or wrong and more about if they are getting something out of it. They will fund an orphanage if it helps their personal standing, but also undercut it if they will be gettign an advantage. Many RL people fall into this to one degree or another though it ranges depending on what they would get vs. what they would need to do.

An evil character desires harm to others like a good one desires others happiness. It may not be their main goal across their whole life and they may not need to kick every puppy on the street, but the main instinct of a real evil character is that doing bad is good. Evil by its definition is malevolence.

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I'd argue acting purely in self interest is commonly considered evil by most people. Because doing that means, when choosing between someone else and yourself, you pick the latter every time. Impossible to go through life with this kind of philosophy without fucking over a ton of people.

 

[Heaven Canceler]

I'd argue acting purely in self interest is commonly considered evil by most people. Because doing that means, when choosing between someone else and yourself, you pick the latter every time. Impossible to go through life with this kind of philosophy without fucking over a ton of people.

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Ehhh... that assumes that the best action at all times for a selfish person who acts on their own interest is to fuck people over all the time. Which is quite questionable to say the least. Something like a person who has ASPD/Psychopathy is perhaps the best equivalent, the kind who lacks empathy for others etc... but we would assume they have no violent urges. I believe such people can and often are succesful contributing members of society. In everyday life there isn't much reason to fuck over people as the harm done from their resentment would be potentially more harmful than any short term gain.

As such for a person that favors self-gain over everything else, whether that be glory, recognition, wealth etc... they would generally be perfectly functional persons unless they were particularly stupid or in an extreme situation where their long-term success is dependant on harming others like say life in a violent area where its kill or be killed. They could be doing harmful things like manipulating people and tricking them, but only if doing so gets them something that would be worthwhile and wouldn't risk undue harm and problems.

It arguably boils down to the question of whether Enlightened Self-Interest is a legitimate thing or just people being dumb.

Now, in fiction these types of characters can be evil, they also can be functional support characters or at times even heroes when their goals align with the cause of goodness. (i.e. a highly intellectual callous type whose main desire is to fight crime to gain recognition and glory, they may be kind of an asshole who don't care much about others happiness but can still be doing much more good than bad.)

 

[Stanley_Jeb]

I don't get it.

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For the same reason most "choose your own adventure" games don't have choices that matter in the long run: You have to effectively double up your game's length and lock it behind choices a lot of players aren't going to explore anyway. No point in developing two storylines when just making one dedicated to the lowest common denominator is enough for the release, so why bother doing more work for about the same amount of money you're ultimately gonna get? Those few games who do allow for evil choices generally just cut out good-aligned content and give a small nod to your "evil deeds". About the one game which didn't do that was Shadow The Hedgehog, and you only have to look at the game to know that the necessary sacrifices for that left the game with more holes than cheese, if you get what I mean.

 

[Blundo]

f0Ri5 play Age of Decadence. It has what you're looking for, if you can handle less than impressive graphics and a combat system unforgiving enough that a hybrid social/combat build is probably going to be beyond most players on first playthrough.

Evil storylines is generally an afterthought in RPGs because studies have shown most players don't do evil playthroughs at all. Due to that generally you end up with the good, the tempered and the "let's kick the baby" option.

A lot of the time evil routes also just kill off people without replacing shit with new lore for that reason. Wanna join the evil raider Goblins in Baldur's Gate? You kill off a bunch of people, lose access to plotlines they are necessary for and probably lose half your party because they hate you and replace them with the hot Drow chick and nothing else. And I think her most expanded storyline was a redemption plot if I remember right.

Combine that with the fact that often evil gives the worse reward... Well, the "smart evil" thing to do is often just being a good guy, completing quest and then turn around and kill your allies. Which just ends up being schizophrenic because these games generally have no "I am lying to get in their good graces" plot available.

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This strikes me as a self-reinforcing problem. Like yeah obviously very few people will do evil playthroughs when being evil:
- Is half-assedly written

- Gates you off from immense amounts of content, while enabling little to no content good routes are gated off from

- Often has worse rewards from a gameplay perspective. At most gets some short term advantage but ends up being worse long term. (I think it'd be far more interesting if the immoral choices often had unequivocally better gameplay rewards. No sidegrades, just straight up better items, more xp, whatever. If consistently choosing the path of good was not, in fact, easy mode.)

One of the big issues with RPGs and games which aim for reactivity in general is that a lot of devs are pants-shittingly terrified of not letting players experience nearly all content on a single playthrough with the most common build (good-aligned human male warrior). For a brief period this was not the case, but those days are long gone.

 

[FelOnyx]

I usually default to good in games, but Starfield has done a really good job of making me play evil. Quest bugs out and can't be turned in even though I completed everything? Slaughter everyone at the camp where I got it, should be enough on their bodies to make up for the reward.

 

[shadowdice]

Baldur's gate 3 has the guards extort you of like 400 gold to enter the city

i have played dnd and know prices

that is the cost of breast plate

that is a month of living like nobility

Almost anyone I have played with would decide violence is the answer if not sneaking in

edit

And people playing the game have outright slaughtered the guards

there is a point of npc idiocy where it is begging the player to kill them

 

[Sho'vothar]

Lawful good: "JUSTICE!"

Lawful Neutral: "The law is the law. Basic decency, common sense, objective reality, none of this matters before the law!"

Lawful Evil: "Ah, but if you read the fine print...See, i own you now!"

Neutral Good: "Everyone deserves to be happy"

True Neutral: "Meh, not my problem"

Neutral Evil: "Nothing matters, but eating babies sure is fun"

Chaotic Good "Freedom! Liberty! Fun, joy and happy times!"

Chaotic Neutral: "LULZ!"

Chaotic Evil: "Fuck you, got mine!"


Examples of mindsets that can be expected from each alignment.

 

[Soupervan]

Evil for power is a little overdone too, not just in games but books and movies too.

What I really want to see more of is evil done for inane reasons; a villain for fun like a reverse One Punch Man, that's fairly rare. I'd say only Vaudevillain over on royalroadl does it well.

 

[ReplikatoR Chanel]

Well if you want agood evil crpg - try tyranny. Evil stories must be a core not an variable to be good.

 

[Bochinator]

Mass effect has you save the galaxy but the way you do so is up to you. So if you play as a renegade you make a lot of hard calls, kill characters that could otherwise be saved, that sort of thing.

 

[gereh]

I'm currently replaying some CRPGs including pillars of eternity and pathfinder kingmaker, and the evil roleplay is... bad.

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I may completely misremember this but my first play through of Kingmaker was a lawful evil Inquisitor and there was some pretty good evil roleplay there. Because whenever the "Evil" option was "stupid evil" there was a "Lawful" one you could take. (It has been years since I played, so I could completely misremember and/or confuse this with another game)

 

[ArsMagna1337]

Lawful good: "JUSTICE!"

Lawful Neutral: "The law is the law. Basic decency, common sense, objective reality, none of this matters before the law!"

Lawful Evil: "Ah, but if you read the fine print...See, i own you now!"

Neutral Good: "Everyone deserves to be happy"

True Neutral: "Meh, not my problem"

Neutral Evil: "Nothing matters, but eating babies sure is fun"

Chaotic Good "Freedom! Liberty! Fun, joy and happy times!"

Chaotic Neutral: "LULZ!"

Chaotic Evil: "Fuck you, got mine!"


Examples of mindsets that can be expected from each alignment.

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Lawful Chaotic: I have a strict moral code but no one can figure it out.
Chaotic Lawful: Malicious Compliance. I'll follow the law to the extremes for maximum chaos!

 

[FTR2017]

Planescape: Torment for PC got you covered, as it is a game that has an Evil-aligned storyline so vile that most players can't stomach it.

It is also, incidentally, one of those games whose storytelling and writing is so great that no other game has come up close to it in terms of thoroughness.

 

[Neh-Toth-Amon]

I'm currently replaying some CRPGs including pillars of eternity and pathfinder kingmaker, and the evil roleplay is... bad. However, I've come to realize that's the case for most RPGs,

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Yes. %)
Part of the reason is probably just the remnants of the whole Angry Moms From Heck movement which threatened to shut down D&D in the 80s. And led to the publishers censuring themselves to a degree which was sometimes frankly ridiculous. The whole "we don't get devils, we have baatezu" thing, among others. And current developers are often guys who grew up on this ... mmm, kiddie stuff? Not sure how to formulate it better - but the whole thing reeked like this to me at the time. Plus, later it was reinforced by the whole "Don't be an edgelord!!!11!" Hello-kittie fad.
Current editions of most table-top games are in this vein, which is why I mostly stopped playing them some years ago. So can't provide an analysis of the specific reasons for most current design decisions, sorry. But I think the reasons above are the main ones.
Also, for some computer games at least I saw a bit different thing than you mention: the self-serving, aka "Eeevil" choices would be classified as some good - some evil. For why would the character decline to do the work he's being payed for just because it is "good"? And - as a result this lands the protagonsit firmly in the "gray" zone - for which the devs were too lazy to make some interesting storylines! %( Dropped some initially promising games like this. %)
So, that's my 2 cents.

 

[Karnven]

Mass effect has you save the galaxy but the way you do so is up to you. So if you play as a renegade you make a lot of hard calls, kill characters that could otherwise be saved, that sort of thing.

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That's a horrible example. Renegade is 'I'm an asshole' and most of the outcomes are just worse for it.

 

[Neh-Toth-Amon]

f0Ri5 play Age of Decadence. It has what you're looking for, if you can handle less than impressive graphics and a combat system unforgiving enough

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Thanks for the recommendation. Will try it, seems like what I like. )

f0Ri5
This strikes me as a self-reinforcing problem. Like yeah obviously very few people will do evil playthroughs when being evil:
- Is half-assedly written
...
One of the big issues with RPGs and games which aim for reactivity in general is that a lot of devs are pants-shittingly terrified of not letting players experience nearly all content on a single playthrough with the most common build (good-aligned human male warrior). For a brief period this was not the case, but those days are long gone.

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Yes. I definitely agree. And yes, aim for reactivity is one of the main roots of the problem. Though, of course, this is itself rooted in general propaganda of our days: Good Boys must be reactive. %)) Thanks for reminding of that again.

 

[Stanley_Jeb]

Often has worse rewards from a gameplay perspective. At most gets some short term advantage but ends up being worse long term. (I think it'd be far more interesting if the immoral choices often had unequivocally better gameplay rewards. No sidegrades, just straight up better items, more xp, whatever. If consistently choosing the path of good was not, in fact, easy mode.)

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I am reminded of Bioshock 2. Sure, killing the little sisters and going for the evil ending is arguably easier... At first. Weather a couple waves, and suddenly you find yourself with a surplus of resources, simply because the enemy waves would not have spawned otherwise. Practically speaking, you can't murder and loot as much if you're not a good guy. And ain't that ass-backwards?

 

[Scygnus]

Bringing up another example- Infamous 2. In 1 your only choice was to be a complete douche or a total paragon. In 2 there are a few choices you can make for 'evil' that are more reckless actions to obtain power than plain douchebaggery, and the end...

I was pissed when I heard they decided to retcon the ending to make 3 based on the 'Good' ending.

If you haven't played it... not going to spoiler anything because it's probably more than a decade old at this point. I think.

So, at the end of the game no matter what your alignment is, you can choose whichever ending you want- ironically, the two potential waifus do just that, the wild fire lady who encouraged you to do dumb evil shit going with the 'good' path of killing all three of you and every other Conduit (super) in the entire world to stop the virus, while the responsible FBI ice lady decides she wants to live.

The 'Good' ending is meh, the only good point is them making Cole a Saint, which is funny.

The 'Evil' ending is... I've never had a harder time pushing a button in a video game. It's got a kind of intense emotional impact I feel like you rarely see in games. All over a single choice.


So, part 3... goes with the good ending of every Conduit and every potential Conduit in the entire world keeling over immediately. Except they didn't actually, because then you wouldn't have superpowers in the third game, thus retcon.

I recommend picking up 1 and 2 though, if you have a way to get them. They're both hella fun gameplay-wise. Oh, even if you're doing a (mostly) good run in 2, go with the fire lady when you find the machine- the power she gives you is way more useful.