Now I'm not talking about you, the player, I'm talking about the game protagonist. And while you can definately be villainous in some games like Mass Effect and Fable you're end game is usually somewhere on the lines of saving the world. And thats <- generally a good thing.
I was thinking about it and I realized that in most games today the protagonist is usually a complete dick. He's still saving the world but I suppose shoving glass into people's mouths, shoving people out windows or tying a whore to your horse and galloping across the countryside makes me think that this is something an antagonist should be doing. Not that we can't have (loosely defined) "gritty realism" in games but if we're standing right at the edge of the divingboard of a pool of crazy batshit insane whats stopping us from jumping right on in?
The closest I've ever been to being a straight up villian was in Fallout 3. If only because I took the term
survival to the utter extreme and was bent on killing everyone I could because that meant that there was no chance that they could kill me later. Don't get me wrong, I killed everybody. I even killed everybody except for the two litte kids (because they're invincible) in Megaton
before I blew it to kingdom come. Because if I had blown it to the moon beforehand I couldn't have gotten all that delicious exp and all their stuff. But unfortuantly Fallout 3 karmatically balances itself out because the game gave you the option to massacre in the same hand as the option to save everyone. And thats the problem, its perfectly fine to suffocate an entire village in their sleep because you also
could (but won't) fix their house to look better than a shiny car on a warm day, buy them nice clothes and do their dirty laundry.
But Flailing," you might say. "Games do exist where you do nothing but be a massive twat." And while I guess thats true those games are generally shit. For example I had the misfortune of playing Overlord 2 a couple months ago because it sounded like a good idea. Who doesn't want to play as a cruel and satanic overlord that destroys the entire world by throwing little, retarded monkeys at it. The stupid part is that destroying the world slowly becomes more of a day job than anything else. Sure, you're destroying the world but its so tedious by the end all I wanted to do was sit in my evil fortress and mope all day.
My point is in a bucket load of games today you can fuck, maim, torture and massacre your way to
saving the known world. I remember thinking at the end of Dragon Age II that Kirkwall must be pretty empty by now; because I had killed thousands of people by then and I still got the good ending. And if you can shoot kneecaps, break bones, strangle people in their sleep, cut off fingers, fuck prostitutes and extinguish entire villages while still being completely "Paragon" whats stoping games from letting us play as Pyramid Head or a serial killer. The MO may be different (mostly bandits and Nazis) but thats exactly what we're doing.
So yes, games do exist where you are nothing but a total and complete asshole. But too few games exist where you are nothing but a total and complete asshole that are actually good. There are games out there that "allow you" to be a total and complete asshole but thats not your only choice. And I've been seeing fewer and fewer games where being a
good guy is a hard and difficult slope to climb (like it should be).
I don't know if many of you remember the Dragon Age: Origin's dlc where you get to replay the final battle through the eyes of a darkspawn but imagine if there was an entire game like that. Where your ultimate goal is pretty much to destroy the world. Instead of having the option to help people you could just have the option to not kill them. Which is just as good by some rights. Imagine in Limbo instead of playing as the little large head boy you played as the world itself. And carefully set and set off traps as little large headed boys wandered through them. The death animations wouldn't be anymore gruesome than in regular Limbo but whats stopping an idea like that from taking flight?
...
I guess so 16 year olds won't think that shooting up their school or punching their little sister in the face is a good idea.