Poll: Do you need an established good vs evil in your games?

[Kotep]

I definitely think there's room for both. While moral ambiguity is certainly realistic, there's no reason why games have to be wholly realistic. I thought one of the downsides of KotOR 2 was that they tried to shoehorn moral ambiguity into a setting that doesn't really work that way.

I mean, in Alpha Protocol, that sort of thing makes sense, but when you're talking about mystic knights in a sci-fi/fantasy setting, there's more of a suspension of disbelief.

Plus, when done well, morality can provide good gameplay. There's one RPG I played where in a certain instance, to take the good choice you have to lose some of your own stats in order to give them to someone else. Or even in Oblivion, where the 'morality' was just situational, and leads to more realistic thinking. If you want to, you can sneak into someone's house and murder them, and as long as you do it quietly without anyone watching, no one will know.

 

[Mallefunction]

I just need a goal, something to work towards. XD

 

[Soviet Heavy]

You don't need good and evil, as long as your story can stand without it. Dragon Age 2's fault isn't that it has no main villain, but that it has no real direction. The plot structure is really disjointed, which brings it down, not the lack of a baddy.

 

[Laser Priest]

Frankly I don't like it. Game writers have a lot of trouble with this.

Heroes generally are good because that's the nice thing to do and villains are generally evil because they either want power for no good reason or for "Fuck it all, let's be evil!"

 

[Kotep]

Black and white? Why can't I make the morally BLUE choice? Your standards are all so low!

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BlueAndOrangeMorality

 

[bushwhacker2k]

I generally prefer more a grey area, pure black and white is kind of boring and overall not really realistic IMO(please don't start quoting me and talking about how magic isn't realistic either, it's quite a different thing).

But on the other hand I have had situations where I'm in a situation where I have to make a choice, they make the choices in more of a morally grey area, but the choices are both crap and I could easily see a way around either choice. An example is if I'm forced to choose a side but I'm pretty much an unkillable badass who could destroy either side by myself.

So when I say morally grey, I want freedom of choice, and I want to justify my own choices, I don't want things forced on me.

 

[triggrhappy94]

NO!
Bad for the sake of being bad, or good for the sake of being good kills things for me.
If you're going to have a good vs evil, then you better have motive.

EDIT:
Someone mind helping me find and post that one scene from Donnie Darko?
I'm sure anyone who's seen the movie knows what I'm talking about.

 

[StriderShinryu]

I think it, as in many cases like this, depends on how well it's done. Simple and obvious good/evil sets things up easily and doesn't require much effort or ability in crafting a world/setting/story/etc. When there is too much grey area, or it's just done poorly (and it's very easy to do complex morality poorly), you end up with unlikable and/or bland characters and the player just isn't hooked. All told, I'd rather have pedestrian obvious good/evil than poorly done grey where I don't end up caring about the game at all.

As a side note on likable characters. I don't mean that the characters need to be someone you want to be have tea with, they just need to be interesting and compelling. They need to be a character that you like the design of not necessarily a character you "like."

 

[Frotality]

no, but you need a goal. DA2 is probably the worst example of presenting gray morality in a conflict; sure theyre is no clear-cut "bad guy", because both sides could qualify; theyre both horrible, horrible people and i at least felt nothing choosing either one over the other. it wasnt the lesser of 2 evils, it was one evil against an equal evil, very much bordering on black vs black morality, which is boring. way too much was left to the player to decide which side was 'right', your choice has next to no effect, and it ended up completely undermining the one thing all gray conflicts should have going for them; some degree of sympathy for both sides, not just equal amounts of contempt for them.

having morally gray conflicts is more difficult to pull off than good vs evil, but hardly impossible; all you need to do is make the player work for something more than "they are evil, they must die". in bioware games, that is usually choice; instead of focusing on a clear cut conflict, they focus on your choices and how they effect that conflict. that isnt to say you cant have a linear gray conflict, but choice is the one thing a game can offer that other mediums cant (choose you own adventure books excluded).

all you need is something the player will want to work for, and a big part of that is simple presentation, so its hard to nail down any examples of what else a game could be about besides "kill the bad guys". there is always personal reasons for conflict; take scarface, the motive of the protaganist isnt to defeat anyone, but just to make his way in america. or....conkers bad fur day: the whole game is just you finding ways to make money, simple but effective, and presented in a ridiculous enough way to keep your interest and develop plenty of side conflicts; alot of the conflict you come across is just about as selfish as you, but that is secondary to getting your moolah, so you are free to pick favorites in a way that doesnt impede your goal. that might be a strange example, but hey, its a gray conflict that worked...

 

[ChupathingyX]

I like the way it was in Fallout: New Vegas where all the options were very grey and you decided who to ally with depending on their views.

Although personally I think the independent path is the worst and would result in utter anarchy.

 

[AbsoluteVirtue18]

I make my own morality. I do what I think is right, regardless of which side it puts me with.

 

[Appleshampoo]

Maybe not 'good vs evil' in a direct sense that it needs to be slapped everywhere, but hell yeah I do need a clear enemy to fight. I've nearly finished Dragon age 2 and I still don't know who the hell I'm supposed to be angry at. I just refuse to play the game because simply I don't care.

Starcraft 2 though? That was the last game that had me hooked with the story. There was a clear objective. And was it good vs evil? Well, that's all up to your interpretation really isn't it?

 

[WorldCritic]

I do like a good old fashioned good vs. evil plot, but grey vs. grey usually has more thought put into it and usually makes for better stories. It all comes down to are you really the good guy no matter the choices you make.

 

[Aris Khandr]

I really hope not. The Total War series would be really messed up if they had to shoehorn in "good" and "evil".

 

[infohippie]

Nah, a definite "good" and "evil" is kinda shallow and boring. I want characters with complex motivations, and whose actions have both positive and negative aspects. I want to be unsure whether fighting the big bad really is the best decision in the end. I want to be able to contemplate possibly even joining him, or taking over his role.

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

You need a protagonist/antagonist...not the same thing as good/evil.

 

[drbarno]

Here's what I'd like to see. The established villian of the game being the good guy.

A scenario.
Let's say someone kills the heros parents. so the hero decides to go ahead and kill him for revenge. as the hero travels over the land, you find out the person who did it was a king and you see an area where his people are suffering, which the hero thinks that defeating this king will help them, and leaves. eventually, once you defeat the king, you find out that the death of the heros parent was a genuine accident (possibly research on something to help the kings people that went horribly wrong) and that the king was actually a genuinely good person that always helped out his people, but that the hero was too narrow minded to notice the kings effects.

that's what I'd like for a game.

 

[Lordpils]

I prefer a game that doesn't judge your actions, but does show you the likely consequences. I.E. kill the orcs to the last of them and you're seen as a genocidal maniac and the orcs are seen as the victims and in retaliation orc-blooded citizens rise up and destroy your home city or the orcs rise to a glorious new empire and crush many cities beneath their heel. Either way you're a dick.
That morally grey area wasn't exactly perfect, but I feel I made my point even if I forgot what it was.

 

[Fragged_Templar]

Mostly this

I make my own morality. I do what I think is right, regardless of which side it puts me with.

With a nice slice of death to the things I don't like!

 

[iamthelizardqueen88]

hell no i dont need a designated good or evil. in Tales of the Abyss it could go either way if youre the bad guy or if the guys youre fighting are evil and in my opinion that game has possibly the best RPG story of all time. i mean yeah sure they try to kill you but once you find out their grand "evil" scheme and actually take 2 seconds to think about what theyre trying to do its at most only slightly evil and you guys are the monsters for trying to stop them. (if i remember correctly there are a few moments when even your party acknowledges this)