Evil and Games
Evil in games is often funny.
Have you ever watched a movie where you were rooting for the bad guy because all the good guys were just so -- you know? Sometimes, you are that bad guy. And in games where you have total freedom, you have to start testing the bounds a little. You have to see what happens. Now, slaughtering villages of generic people is honestly not so much fun that I will do it more than rarely, although it can be entertaining when it's unpredictable. (Mini-game for Oblivion players. Hey, any Bethsada game players. Pick a generic NPC saying, such as 'where is that slave' in Morrowind or a different piece of gossip for each Oblivion town. Every time an NPC says that, you have to get offended and punch them in the face.) But you will note that this is the kind of evil we might call "puppy-kicking." It's funny because it's ridiculously over the top. It's also funny because you're reacting to NPCs that are obviously randomized pixels pulling from randomized phrases. (I guess we can also argue that a steady diet of it is bad for you, but if we're talking on principle? We'd better ban Overlord as well as Grand Theft Auto and our very tame Morrowind. Those hobbits had hopes and dreams, you know.)
But the thing is that total freedom games are often not really total freedom. You often can't just punch an NPC in the face and not have an entire village attack you. You really do often fall into three categories: law-abiding citizen, otherwise law-abiding citizen that will occasionally do really horrible things that are nonetheless arguably in character, and random puppy-kicker.
These are the same categories that more railed RPGs also fall into. As my semester of death draws to a close, I am playing Dragon Age: Origins again, which prides itself (not altogether with warrant) as dark and edgy. And I am playing it as a puppy-kicker.
Not all games allow puppy-kicking. I've been slowly reworking through Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2 as a "bad guy," but Mass Effect will only let you be so evil for the most part and I have to confess, I didn't go as far as I could for plot reasons (sometimes the long-term consequences are boring, okay?). When I'm able to play Planescape: Torment again, I intend to test the limits of its purportedly more subtle evil. But Bioware's Knights of the Old Republic - oh did that allow puppy kicking in the extreme. And based on some of the conversation options I passed over in Dragon Age playthroughs like WHAT, WHO WOULD EVER DO THAT? Dragon Age also allows for a crazy amount of puppy kicking. (By the way, I do not consider puppy-kicking terribly dark and edgy, because it usually makes so little sense that it is something the player does to see what happens. It is usually hard to justify in character and is so easy to satire that sometimes even the game satirizes it with giant what the hecks in bold letters. But hey, they let you do it!) So without further ado, behind the cut is my itinerary of raw, purposeless evil in the early gameplay of Dragon Age.
So the "origin" part of the Origin playthrough is the only completely unique part from playthrough to playthrough, and it's short. The time for puppy kicking is short. Nonetheless, I found some ridiculous things to do. Inspired by bethos, I decided I must play as a female dwarf with a big hammer, so Dwarf Commoner origin it was.
-Crime boss asked me to find out if some dwarf was cheating him - if so, kill him. Killing the dwarf would have been plot-related. Promising not to tell the crime boss if he handed over all his contraband and then killing him was arguably puppy-kicking.
-Repeatedly asking the crime boss's lieutenant what her name was and then asking her if she was sleeping with the boss was not puppy-kicking, but was funny.
And then the origin part is over and on to the main storyline. Even this first bit is fraught with puppy-kicking opportunities and we have a special present. Our first real party member! Say hello to Alistair, a good-natured, straight-laced, sensitive kind of guy. Supposedly, you cannot make him mad enough to leave the party unless you do something-something near the end, so he'll be with us for a long time. (Some other party members, alas! May never make it past hello.) So how did we traumatize Alistair today?
-Minor puppy-kicking. "Alistair, I think your dad figure's kind of a lame, sorry."
-A starving deserter is hung up in a cage. He begs for food and water and promises to give you a key to a treasure chest if you feed him. (Well, I guess this is an RPG, but they lampshade it a bit with where the key has been all this time.) Instead, I murder him and take the key. Alistair thinks that was a little abrupt, the guard demands an explanation, but is easily waved off with "uh, he lunged at me."
-Minor puppy-kicking. I tell an elf-messenger running around that I'm supposed to receive that sword he's carrying. I give it to Alistair. Does that make up for the murder earlier??
-Unacknowledged puppy-kicking. A mabari hound is dying, but if I could maybe go in and muzzle it, maybe they could medicate it? I kill the dog instead. Yes, folk, puppy-killing. (And there goes a prospective party member.) No one is much bothered. Mercy kill, right?
-But then I mercy kill a moderately wounded soldier on the road and no one is at all understanding. WHAT, guys? Alistair goes so far as to call me insane and that is just uncalled for.
-Not puppy kicking, but I find out that if you give Morrigan a hard time in her first appearance, the conversation goes on quite a bit longer.
And that's it. I lose steam because we're about to have a long and not at all hilarious battle. We will have to pick up puppy-kicking another day.
Alistair Influence Meter: -13
Unnecessary Corpses: 4
Prospective Party Members Killed: 1
Have you ever watched a movie where you were rooting for the bad guy because all the good guys were just so -- you know? Sometimes, you are that bad guy. And in games where you have total freedom, you have to start testing the bounds a little. You have to see what happens. Now, slaughtering villages of generic people is honestly not so much fun that I will do it more than rarely, although it can be entertaining when it's unpredictable. (Mini-game for Oblivion players. Hey, any Bethsada game players. Pick a generic NPC saying, such as 'where is that slave' in Morrowind or a different piece of gossip for each Oblivion town. Every time an NPC says that, you have to get offended and punch them in the face.) But you will note that this is the kind of evil we might call "puppy-kicking." It's funny because it's ridiculously over the top. It's also funny because you're reacting to NPCs that are obviously randomized pixels pulling from randomized phrases. (I guess we can also argue that a steady diet of it is bad for you, but if we're talking on principle? We'd better ban Overlord as well as Grand Theft Auto and our very tame Morrowind. Those hobbits had hopes and dreams, you know.)
But the thing is that total freedom games are often not really total freedom. You often can't just punch an NPC in the face and not have an entire village attack you. You really do often fall into three categories: law-abiding citizen, otherwise law-abiding citizen that will occasionally do really horrible things that are nonetheless arguably in character, and random puppy-kicker.
These are the same categories that more railed RPGs also fall into. As my semester of death draws to a close, I am playing Dragon Age: Origins again, which prides itself (not altogether with warrant) as dark and edgy. And I am playing it as a puppy-kicker.
Not all games allow puppy-kicking. I've been slowly reworking through Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2 as a "bad guy," but Mass Effect will only let you be so evil for the most part and I have to confess, I didn't go as far as I could for plot reasons (sometimes the long-term consequences are boring, okay?). When I'm able to play Planescape: Torment again, I intend to test the limits of its purportedly more subtle evil. But Bioware's Knights of the Old Republic - oh did that allow puppy kicking in the extreme. And based on some of the conversation options I passed over in Dragon Age playthroughs like WHAT, WHO WOULD EVER DO THAT? Dragon Age also allows for a crazy amount of puppy kicking. (By the way, I do not consider puppy-kicking terribly dark and edgy, because it usually makes so little sense that it is something the player does to see what happens. It is usually hard to justify in character and is so easy to satire that sometimes even the game satirizes it with giant what the hecks in bold letters. But hey, they let you do it!) So without further ado, behind the cut is my itinerary of raw, purposeless evil in the early gameplay of Dragon Age.
So the "origin" part of the Origin playthrough is the only completely unique part from playthrough to playthrough, and it's short. The time for puppy kicking is short. Nonetheless, I found some ridiculous things to do. Inspired by bethos, I decided I must play as a female dwarf with a big hammer, so Dwarf Commoner origin it was.
-Crime boss asked me to find out if some dwarf was cheating him - if so, kill him. Killing the dwarf would have been plot-related. Promising not to tell the crime boss if he handed over all his contraband and then killing him was arguably puppy-kicking.
-Repeatedly asking the crime boss's lieutenant what her name was and then asking her if she was sleeping with the boss was not puppy-kicking, but was funny.
And then the origin part is over and on to the main storyline. Even this first bit is fraught with puppy-kicking opportunities and we have a special present. Our first real party member! Say hello to Alistair, a good-natured, straight-laced, sensitive kind of guy. Supposedly, you cannot make him mad enough to leave the party unless you do something-something near the end, so he'll be with us for a long time. (Some other party members, alas! May never make it past hello.) So how did we traumatize Alistair today?
-Minor puppy-kicking. "Alistair, I think your dad figure's kind of a lame, sorry."
-A starving deserter is hung up in a cage. He begs for food and water and promises to give you a key to a treasure chest if you feed him. (Well, I guess this is an RPG, but they lampshade it a bit with where the key has been all this time.) Instead, I murder him and take the key. Alistair thinks that was a little abrupt, the guard demands an explanation, but is easily waved off with "uh, he lunged at me."
-Minor puppy-kicking. I tell an elf-messenger running around that I'm supposed to receive that sword he's carrying. I give it to Alistair. Does that make up for the murder earlier??
-Unacknowledged puppy-kicking. A mabari hound is dying, but if I could maybe go in and muzzle it, maybe they could medicate it? I kill the dog instead. Yes, folk, puppy-killing. (And there goes a prospective party member.) No one is much bothered. Mercy kill, right?
-But then I mercy kill a moderately wounded soldier on the road and no one is at all understanding. WHAT, guys? Alistair goes so far as to call me insane and that is just uncalled for.
-Not puppy kicking, but I find out that if you give Morrigan a hard time in her first appearance, the conversation goes on quite a bit longer.
And that's it. I lose steam because we're about to have a long and not at all hilarious battle. We will have to pick up puppy-kicking another day.
Alistair Influence Meter: -13
Unnecessary Corpses: 4
Prospective Party Members Killed: 1