The "Authority Versus Rebellion" conflict

[Nocta-Aeterna]

Aside from the traditional Good v. Evil conflict, the Lawful v. Chaotic conflict, to put it in simple terms, frequently pops up in games. As far as I know, it usually manifests itself as either a group of stalwart heroes opposing the evil Empire, or the noble soldiers protecting their homeland from guerilla insurgents (Chaotic Good v Lawful Evil & Lawful Good v Chaotic Evil). Occasionally, the story will present itself as one kind, only for it to reveal itself as being the other one in a twist, somewhere around the midway point. Evenso, in the end the morality of both sides is still clearly divided.

I think it would be good to see a few more games where both sides are equally sympathetic, make strong points, have their flaws and then have the players decide which side is in the right, without the writing staff labeling one as specifically the Bad Guys.

The original Deus Ex did something similar. At the end, you could choose to either free the world of oppression, but subsequentialy bring everyone back into the Dark Ages; install a benevolent dictatorship or,EDIT less well-intentioned, reinstate the Illuminati as the world's governments' puppeteers. However, the choice came only at the very end and though there are many interesting player choices along the way, as far as I know they had little influence on these options. The next Deus Ex prequel may do something intersting with the Augmentation v Purity conflict.

 

[Ordinaryundone]

Chaotic doesn't have to mean "Fight the power" . It can sometimes be as simple as a character being a free spirit who lives outside of societal norms. Morte from Planescape: Torment is a good example. The "Chaotic" aspect of his chaotic good personality really only manifests itself as a tendency to snark off at anyone and anything, and the fact that he's a habitual liar. He's got no problem with the balance of power in Sigil, and is a very firm believer in the "Don't piss off the Lady" rule.

Likewise, Lawful doesn't mean "believes in authority and institution", even on the Evil side of the spectrum. Sometimes, a Lawful character can be defined by simply having a very clear view on right and wrong, and tends to act based on this morality. Lawful is more a symptom of rigidness of thinking, rather than any sort of belief in the actual law. Rorschach from The Watchmen is a good example. Rorschach has NO respect for any sort of authority or law, and is perfectly willing to break into private property, steal, beat up people on extremely flimsy pretext and kick the crap out of cops and such. However, he has an EXTREMELY defined and rigid belief in good and evil, and doesn't allow his idea of evil to exist, no matter what kind of authority it may represent.

Any kind of story that bothers to show the dichotomy typically tries to subvert it, simply because its so easy to subvert. Hell, the "lovable Rogue" or "Dashing Pirate" stereotype is extremely old. Likewise, anyone familiar with comics can probably rattle off a dozen "Lawful" characters who do not follow the law. The problem with not having a side to label as "The Bad Guys" is that stories typically lack direction without a clear antagonist or problem. If there isn't SOMETHING driving the protagonists to do something, then you don't really have a story at all. Heck, the villain doesn't have to be something or someone concrete, it can be as nebulous as "poverty" or "racism", but there still has to be one. The moment you humanize your antagonist to the point where you don't want to fight it is the moment it stops being an antagonist, which can kill the entire focus of a story.

In more choice driven games, the "evil" factions are usually evil because they lack any sort of goals or future. They represent stagnation, which is anathema to the story. To use your Deus Ex example, MJ12 is only interested in maintaining their power over the world. They already have their hands in everything, all that's left is just rooting out the occasional resistance and staying the course. If the game let you join them, then the story would effectively be over. You'd have nothing to do except running around doing...well, nothing really, because that's MJ12's whole business plan. You can apply this to any generically bad group, like Sauron's marauding Orcs, the forces of Chaos in WH40k, the raiders in Fallout, whoever. The thing they all share in common is a lack of future. If they win they will run out of things to kill or burn or steal or whatever. And then they are done. No more story, no more game. No more anything. There is no story in that.