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Heroes, Anti-Heroes, and Pure Evil
April 8th 2008, 23:52 CEST by Caryn
A couple of months ago a friend insisted that I should play Jade Empire, a classic Xbox game from Bioware, and I found myself completely hooked. I didn't expect to be so won over given that I really disliked KOtOR, but Jade Empire really turned me around. And so having finished that game last week, I started playing Mass Effect this weekend.
These games have gotten me thinking about the Good and Evil spectrum that's such a standard in recent Bioware games (I'm not too familiar with Bioware games pre-KOtOR). I notice that when I'm given the choice to move my character along these spectrum, I find I want to initially play the evil bad ass because that would be dark and cool, but I'm hesitant to do so for what seems like such a stupid reason: I get the sense that developers always build a game around the idea that you're a hero, and thus inherently good, and that playing the evil path is really more of a side game that you play later just to see what it's like, after you've seen the "real" game the developers intended you to see.
And I don't know why I think this, but I suspect it's because games are typically built on very black and white stories with simple concepts of good and evil, and the hero always prevails even if we're being given the option to play the bad guy and even win as that character.
This is where Mass Effects gets interesting for me. Rather than creating a simple good and evil spectrum, they have the Paragon and Renegade spectrum, a spectrum with names that are less associated with black and white concepts of good and evil and more associated with taking the high road versus getting the job done no matter what it takes. I created a female marine and chose the Spacer and Ruthless options for my character, because she looked like the type of person who was career military and who wouldn't take shit from anyone.
Then I worried that I would be forced to take her down a purely dark and evil path, but have happily found out that you can play your character as an anti-hero without losing too much of the hero aspect. It makes me wonder what most people like to see in these types of games -- do you like your choice-based games to have strong concepts of good and evil? Do you always choose one particular side to play, and what do you choose first if you play more than one? Do you feel that having morally ambiguous paths for your character waters down the enjoyment of a game and makes it less heroic and epic? Does it take games closer to other forms of storytelling like movies and novels when your character isn't so black and white, and is this a good or a bad thing for games?
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