Evil Review: Choices Part 2

Now last part I said that games with Good/Evil choices rarely have a good motive for the main character to do the evil actions.

So that's where I'll start today. Motives.

Most actions are not good or evil. It's not the what, it's the why that makes a person evil.

Of course, games don't think about the why.

You are given points based on what you do, not why. For example, in Knights of the Old Republic, you gain light-side points for saving a sith from killing themselves, they then side with you.

However, my evil character saved her for the sole purpose of using her later.

And of course, the game didn't know what I meant to do with her, and just assumed that it was a good action.

Or what about Fable I? It gives you good points for killing bandits or undead, but why? I'm being attacked by them, I'm not killing them to free the souls of the dead, I'm not killing the bandits to stop crime, I'm killing them so they'll stop killing me!

Though probably the worst kind of good/evil choice system, in my opinion, is when there is one pivotal choice near the end.

This pivotal choice being something like "Destroy the world" or "Don't destroy the world"

It's ridiculous. Why? Because everything that the player has done, heroic or evil, until now is cancelled out by one action. I can understand forgiving someone after they repent and start doing good actions, but I don't understand forgiving the mass murderer evil psychopath because he saved a few hundred people compared to the thousands he's already slaughtered.

At the very least they'd still be cautious about him instead of just worshipping him as a hero.

And as one Mr Croshaw pointed out, being Evil isn't fun if the game expects you to be evil.

The entire point of being evil is breaking the rules. If the rules tell us to be evil, there's no winning. There's no evil. The only reason anyone wants to be evil in a videogame is because they want to screw everything over. It's the reason Trolling exists, the reason Griefing exists. People like breaking rules.

If you want to be evil in a videogame, don't play Fable, don't play InFamous, don't play Knights of the Old Republic...

Play Sims. Watch them burn. Slowly. Perhaps starving or drowning might be more entertaining. Then see if you can kill Death itself when it arrives.

Play Halo. Kill all of the other soldiers. Who cares if they might be useful later? You don't need them. You're evil.

Play any game where you are expected to be good and do the complete opposite. It is much more satisfying than being evil in a game that expects you to be evil.