Playing as the "evil" guy/girl - Is that possible?

I think it's extremely difficult to market a game as "purely evil"
I can only think of these... what's it called "Manhunt", I haven't even played it myself, so I wouldn't really know
The uncencored versions of "Carmageddon" could qualify as well, although the focus remains with winning races

But there are too many associations to evil in reality. A strategy game where you are meant to play as a truly evil invading power, we would have to deliberately circumvent any redeeming factors. The invasion would have to be aggressive - civilians would not only not be spared, but targeted. Does that remind us of something?

Or a shooter, where you deliberately target the innocent, while systematically avoiding any redeeming factor

Apart from a handful of indie-games, I just don't think such games can exist.

 

Do you need to do good to win FNV, though? It's been a while, but I think you can finish a playthrough while doing evil stuff only.

 

There's very little you *have* to do in NV, a theoretical evil playthrough could involve-

-Go to Vegas
-Meet with Caesar
-Kill House
-Murder all the Boomers
-Convert the White Gloves to Cannibalism
-Murder the Brotherhood
-Either Kill Caesar yourself of sell Arcade into slavery.
-Assassinate Kimball
-Rout the NCR at the Dam.

That's sufficient to complete the game, everything else you'd have to do is either morally neutral (blowing up the robots at the fort, how you deal with Benny), or optional.

 

You are pretty evil in Saint's Row 2, which makes sense as you are a criminal trying to reclaim your empire.



In Star Wars The Old Republic the Empire classes work well with evil characters if you don't overboard with dark side choices. In fact the bounty hunter story doesn't really work with a good character.

 

One example would be Star Wars: KotOR.

Spoiler

You're a former evil guy, brainwashed to try and make you a goody, but you still get to pick a nice evil path, I found. It was a nice reveal (and not *too* predictable), and I actually felt like I was roleplaying someone properly evil.

As in, not in a "kick cats gratuitously in the street", but have a plan, and destroy the ones in your way.

 

Good call, Arcanum.

Just like KotOR, it's one of the very few games where I thought about something along the lines of 'Meh, I'm sure the game won't allow me the freedom to do that', and it just delivered by giving me exactly that choice. Those moments are just pure gold in a gamer's life.

 

Most of us are
I think we all lean towards good-guy play, while appreciating the option to play dickhead routes

This is also why good-guy plays have to be written better, and the FO4 feels so weird, because its too nice. It was the same in FO3, with the cringeworthy first encounter with Three Dog, where you can either tell him to go suck a dick OR whine about how much you miss your daddy. There's no option to be - just and fair, while not a complete sissy.

In FO1 and 2 you could be good - but still badass.
(my personal favorite is the "up yours and have a bullet breakfast, asshole"-response to those Vault15 guys who kidnapped that girl. You are being a good guy, saving a girl - while also being a total, ice-cold badass)

 

Hatred

Spoiler

lol

 

Many urban open-world games like Scarface, Mafia, GTA, Saints Row, put you in the shoes of a gangster.
Many dungeon managers like Overlord, Dungeon Keeper, Dungeon, put you in the shoes of an Evil Overlord.
In Starcraft Series, (and quite some other RTS) you have campaign for each race. Some are more evil than others.
In Hotline Miami series you play several sociopath. In Hitman/Assassin's creed/etc your job is too assassinate people.
In Party Hard, you assassinate partygoers because they make too much noise.
In Postal series, you just cause mayhem.
In some cyberpunk series like Syndicate, you are just a mercenary that do the job no matter how shady it is.
The Age of Decadence seems to be about backstabbing and politic.
Some games are about prison escape, like the escapist or prisonscape. Usually, there isn't so many nice people in prisons.
There is Blood in which you play a total sociopath that was betrayed by an evil overlord. Not only you can kill civilian, but sometime, you are even required to kill civilian without even the game telling you about it. It just assume that you kill them all. (some civilian hold the key to the next door. You cannot move forward if you don't kill that civilian and loot the key. The game doesn't tell you. Also, all civilians are counted on the kill count. So if you want to have the maximum kill of the level, you have to kill them. At last, the protagonist kill other civilians in the cinematics/cutscenes)

 

While we are at it... What I absolutely hate is if a games "evil path" is pretty much "kill everything" - it's a main issue with RPGs. People always assume that you are evil if you kill everything that moves. Me personally, I'd say this isn't evil, but crazy / madness. Evil would be if you could manipulate other folks into doing bad things, or plotting a coup that gives you something of value while everyone else gets out of it really bad, etc.

 

I would love to see a game with an Evil Pacifist route. Go around the place breaking people's spirits, conning them, manipulate others into doing your drity work, etc.

 

Hatred for sure

also dungeon keeper and destory all humans if comic book villain style can be considered as beign evil.
and mass effect series.

 

I think we have indeed to make the distinction between 'evil' and complete sociopath.

Seeing examples like Postal... yeah, sure, your actions are evil, but it's in a such a nonsensical, random way that to be honest it doesn't really grab my attention any more than a silly candid narrative where I'm forced to play a do-gooder.

As for gangster games... again, it's more about douchebaggery than anything else.

As the couple of previous posts are saying, what is often missing is a rational evil path - something where your evil actions happen because they actually have a reason to exist, and yield significant benefits compared to the 'good' path.

I like Walpknut's view. It's also why I quoted KotOR, which made me feel like you weren't evil for the sake of it, but you had good reasons. And it wasn't about just kicking the elderly and shooting babies just so that the developers could say how edgy they were, it was about implementing a domination scheme.

In that respect, I've always liked slavery in video games. it's done for lucrative reasons, it's a lot more rational than just killing everyone, and it's cold hearted and calculating rather than mayhem-motivated.

 

I think it's because, when you consider it seriously and soberly the choice of "should I be good or evil" is more or less one of the least interesting moral dilemmas you can face, since even evil people don't think they're evil. So what you're seeing instead is a game posing a choice between principle and expediency, which is a trickier knot to untangle.

Like an evil character should never think he or she is evil and shouldn't be doing things for the greater glory of evil. They should just be a person who follows a code believing in their actions being right, but that code or conduct is abhorrent to others.

 

Some that come to mind:
Overlord games: Well you play evil overlord...

Gta 5 You play as hardened professional criminals

Syndicate games: You play as executive for corporation that doesnt put much value on human life or a religious cult bent on destruction of mankind