Good vs. Evil in Games
on April 6, 2012 at 7:41 pmThere are a good number of games where you can make choices that affect how your in-game character is perceived. One of the first games I remember really emphasizing this was Black and White, which I loved. I’ve recently been playing Mass Effect and it has a lot of that stuff in it as well.
The thing is, at least for me, there is never a choice. I always have to be good. If I play through a game again, I’ll go for the evil approach just to see what’s different, but first runthrough is always as the good guy. I want characters to be happy to see me in video games! I want all the characters to be my friends! Also, I always have this feeling that being mean, or choosing the “evil” choices will burn bridges with characters in the game. Maybe 10 hours later in the game, some character is on the other side of a locked door and they still remember that time when I told them that they smelled funny. I don’t want that.
This made me wonder if any of you play it “evil” on the first run-through of a game. Or maybe you’re only evil at certain times? I wanna know! If you can avoid spoilers, that would extra rock.