The Evil is You

[Badweather4cast]

This post is somewhat inspired by Vox Novus's Thread on recognizing a villain through visual cues, and I was actually going to start discussing it within that thread. However, I realised that this topic would not have fit in so perfectly with it, so I decided to make a new thread for it.


I'd like to ask you about your thoughts on the player themselves being the villain, godlike entity, or so-called "evil," within the game. Perhaps you are led to believe up until the end that you are powerless in the world you are traversing, and are a devastated individual trapped in a bloody and visceral game of chess. But as you play through the game, you are presented with the possibility that you aren't the marionette of the "villains" you fight; quite contrastingly, you are their puppeteer, and all that has happened to this world was brought upon by none other than yourself.


So, does a godlike or evil player work? When conceptualizing a villain, is this something to take into consideration? What does this do for the plot? In what kind of stories does this flourish? I'm super excited to hear your opinions on this complicated matter!

 

[Wavelength]

I've talked about this at various times in the past so I won't go into large amounts of detail here - but I consider it a slap in the face, as the player of a game, to endeavor in trying to save/improve/help the world and then be told by the story "well actually you're the one who ruined it".  This is anathema to everything I wanted to do - why should I play a game that presents me with the exact opposite of what I wanted?


I am not saying that this is bad storytelling, nor a bad story idea.  But I feel that it very rarely has a place in games.  In most media - books, movies, plays, television - the audience is a passive observer to the action.  There is some level of separation between the characters (including the protagonist) and the audience; a sense of "them" not "me".  You can appreciate a work even if you don't sympathize with the protagonist.  If done well, finding out that your perspective as an observer might be wrong - that characters are the opposite of who you thought they were - is a great climactic moment that can add a lot of depth to the way you view the piece.


But video games are an immersive, interactive format that usually puts very little separation between the protagonist and the player (and tend to work best this way, I think).  It is immersion-breaking when you want to do something that the game doesn't allow you to do, and doubly so if you want to be something that the game doesn't allow you to be.  If I am inept or I am evil, it better be because of something that I as a player failed to do or chose to do - if the game is forcing it on me, I lose all taste for the game because of the hostile contradiction between what I see myself as and what the game tells me I am.

 

[ShadowHawkDragon]

I've played with this concept a little my self;


In one idea you were effectively a god-like being practically erasing all existence. The game itself was intended to start with 'you' arriving at the 'last bastion of existence and reality' with no memories and a voice urging you to eliminate everything. The biggest part for this idea was making the gameplay mirror the fact that you were both an 'all-powerful, all-feared' being and 'severely weakened' due to breaking through the barriers surrounding this 'last bastion'. My solution was Insta-death as the MC's basic attacks mixed with puzzle based battle-mechanics (who do you 'erase' first and how).


Generally if I'm going to play as an 'evil' or 'anti' type hero, I'd rather it be set in stone from the start and have the gameplay actually make me feel like a big bad 'destroyer of worlds' or at least someone who 'plays by their own rules', one way or another.


To play as a regular hero with generic motives and capabilities only to learn that said hero was the bad guy all along, just feels like a waste of cool gameplay and storytelling. It's one thing if it were one of the 'supporting cast' you'd come to love/respect but turned out to be the big bad all along even with the many subtle hints you'd ignored up to that point ('Legend of Heroes: trails of cold steel' did this).

 

[BrandedTales]

I somewhat agree with Wavelength on this.  When you are playing a game to be a "hero" and see that the game is forcing you to be a villain, it can be frustrating.  Especially since to do it, you probably end up railroading your player down certain paths which the player wouldn't want to do.  "I don't want to burn down all of these towns to stop the plague?  Why can't I do option C?"  "Wait, now the mob is after me for burning the towns.  I don't want to just wipe them all out.  I'd like to surrender, knowing that what I did was right, but these people have done nothing."   Or even worse, it's railroading in that you are deliberately deceiving your player by having him fight "Monsters" and then during the reveal we find out all these monsters were actually the people of the town.  


THAT SAID.  I think it can work if you are really careful about how you do it.


As far as purely evil, I-Know-I'm-Evil-And-I-Don't-Care, I think in these cases you have an anti-hero... As long as the storyline is fine and the players know what they are getting into, I think this is okay.  Not my kind of story, but I know there's a lot of people out there that love playing Batman (or the Suicide Squad for even more extreme examples).


I'm far more interesting in the other kind of evil story:  The Fall of a Hero.  I love reading about a somebody who starts out trying to do "what makes the most sense" and by the end is somebody pretty dark and terrible... And when we follow the story to see how they get there, it's satisfying to imagine if we would have made the same choices.  But how do we make a game out of that story without the effect described above?


I think there are two ways to turn this story into a game:


1) Have a redemption arc after the fall from grace.  Sure, you were serving the evil empire, twisted dictator, or had been terribly ensorcled to not know friend from foe.  However, halfway through the story you go on your spirit quest or climb Ice Mountain and become a paladin, purging the evil darkness from you.  Now you can set about undoing the damage you have done.


2) Have multiple protagonists, at least ONE of which is not falling.  This creates the separation from characters as described above.  In this case, when Michael Corleone becomes the Godfather, we have some outside perspective of people who are still "good."

 

[Omnimental]

It can be very tricky to do the villain protagonist right.


You can do it upfront, where the player is informed upfront that they're playing the bad guy. [Eg: Overlord]


Or the main character is amnesiac, and doesn't remember that they're the bad guy. [Eg. KOTOR]


Maybe the main character isn't right in their mind, and the player is only shown the character's perception. [Eg. Spec Ops: The Line]


Perhaps the main character is a bad guy, but that fact is hidden from the player. [Eg. Baten Kaitos]

 

[Bitschi]

Oh, I love this concept, and although it's really hard to pull off, I love it when I get... duped? By that in the very end. I remember playing the Witch's House and getting the true end, that was a major slap in the face! Although I really liked it, haha.   


If you have a lot of experience in story-telling and immersion, I say go for it! In the right hands the "You are the bad-guy" archetype is very powerful tool. Despite that, I do feel that can be a double-edged sword, as in the hands of someone inexperienced, throwing it in for the sake of having a plot twist really cheapens the story and makes it really... gimmicky. 


I've been thinking of making a short game based around this concept, but I'm not too sure I have the skills yet to pull it off the way I want it done, so I'll most likely put it off for a future project  ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ