this post was submitted on 07 Jul 2025
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Dev's usually can't help but incentivise good behaviour. Unless it's Fable, Overlord, KOTOR, Torment? Any others that actually let you play the bad guy?
Most western rpgs let you be the bad guy (Fallout, Elder Scrolls, Baldur's Gate, etc.). But then most npcs will try to kill you on sight.
Also Undertale.
Games often present moral choices that are too binary. e.g. kill everyone or save everyone. In that case being evil would naturally be a lot harder because most characters would try to stop you.
Would be more interesting if the moral question is more ambiguous, or maybe have some moral dilemmas. Like you thought you made a difficult decision but the right one, (perhaps even with many in game characters telling you that you are right), only to find out ultimately you were the bad guy after all.
I've been playing through Cyberpunk 2077 again and they're all bad choices.
The final level of Last of Us had me hesitating, too, because the "right" choice felt wrong. Not that you really get to decide, but it was a cool gameplay moment for me.
For cyberpunk 2077 I figured out the good ending. Just never take that job. You can't leave that one part of the city or see credits roll, but hey.
In most of them there are many decisions that are not black and white. There are many factions you can join or antagonize, and usually you have to decide to help one or another as they are confronted.
Irl the evil choice is usually more, exploit the workers, commit wage theft, be a cop.
I'm still bitter Morrowind vanilla didn't let you side with Dagoth Ur if you decided to also play an evil xenophobic maniac who wants to spread a flesh-eating disease on the continent.
I'd say very few games have a lot of effort put into the evil arc.
Baldur's Gate 3 also let's you take the bad side really well
to me, all you need as a counterpoint to the whole post is GTA-- it does disallow the player doing some terrible things, but not many. and it's enjoyed by millions.
that said, i've played every GTA since OG part 1 and have yet to turn into a murderous car jacking bank robbing mean person
Funny enough, GTA4 was the one I played the most, in part because Niko felt less like a legitimately bad person and more like just a very damaged man. I went out of my way to avoid headshots because I knew I could shoot limbs and the enemies would go down, while Niko would acknowledge it, saying things like "I don't want to shoot you again, stay down!"
It's one of the reasons Tyranny is such a good game. You start out as a bad guy in an evil system. You can try to do good, but you never really succeed because you're trapped in an evil system.
You hace to really look for the non-evil options (yes plural), the game doesnt tell you explicitly they're there, and it still gets messy.
Black and white [ https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_%26_White_(video_game) ].
Though being very evil was much harder than being good, if I remember correctly.
Evil god, good monster. Convert villages with displays of power while your loveable idiot puts out fires and gathers food. Slam dozens of worshippers into the pit to fuel your miracles. Having an evil beast is way more chaotic and you spend a lot of time cleaning up.
This is not the case for RimWorld, where running a slave labor powered human organ farm sounds like the "easy" way.
Yet here I am only imprisoning raiders who wronged me and even then trying to reform them so they can be part of the gang.