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Honestly RPGs regardless of the setting rarely give you a well written path to play as an evil character. Even the "dark fantasy" settings aren't really great at it most of the time.

Sure, you might get a few evil quests here and there, but it usually just devolves into killing everyone and taking everyone's shit, which if you played the really old RPGs, you did that anyway while playing as a traditional hero.

With games, the motivation for a playable character to be evil is usually just the actual player wanting to be a little gremlin and screw everyone over. In turn, it usually kind of becomes comical and shallow; like watching a cartoon but the villain always wins.

I really like games like the Witcher for this because rather than just giving you a good choice or an evil choice, it gives you actual moral dilemmas a lot of times. Of course, Geralt is usually a good guy, so you never actually have the option to go full tilt evil.

Another game that I thought did this really well was Detroit: Become Human. Connor's story in particular was written in such a way that I could take both his good and evil paths seriously. His so-called evil path is really just him working to accomplish his directives with maximum efficiency. Who doesn't love an honest, hard worker?

I wish more games chose to experiment with the gray rather than just thinking of morality as something binary like good/evil.

Actually, on a somewhat related topic, when I was first writing Ignis and Aero (yes, shameless self-promo, sorry), I realized that allowing the protagonist to have more options also requires leaving their beliefs and their sense of morality vague. You can't say the protagonist is a good guy and then give the player an option to kill a random sheep for no reason.

Conversely, the more freedom you want your players to have, the more generic and vaguer you have to make your character's personality.

But I wanted to have my cake and eat it too, so I made the protagonist be strong-willed and have their own wants and desires (Ignis) and I made the person that the players control have a bit more of a vague personality but still have some stake in the protagonist's actions (Aero). In general, I made the story less about the player character and more about the characters that surround them. I'm sure veteran interactive fiction writers probably have better ways to do this than my approach though.

Regarding Ignis and Aero, I just want to say that I really loved the game. I played the game recently, and man it was so fun. It was a treat trying to get to all the 6 endings.

At some points it felt like I was getting video game cut scenes, with the switches in perspective to the dad, the brother, and to Helen. The game was really fun and immersive, and I thought you did a really fantastic job.

The idea for the golem's core was cool, it felt like I was playing a fantasy video game, it was great.

I think Skeptic might have been my favorite ending because Aero was being a terrible brother in that path, basically thinking of Ignis as a stupid kid and lying to him, so I really empathized with Ignis's frustration and anger.

Aww, thanks for the kind words. :]

I'm actually working on another story in the same universe. I did think of enrolling into Corgi's contest, but I'm not entirely confident that I can make the deadline because of Christmas stuff occupying my free time. Rest assured that it will be coming out soon though. ;)

Can't wait for it, I'm sure it will be really good!

I thought the pacing was really good, I love how you slowed down the fight with the golem and gave us choices to approach it that felt like a video game. I should have read and reviewed a lot earlier, this was great

This was the same reason I avoided the contest.

Tis the season to be distracted indeed XD

Sometimes, being the good guy means being taken advantage of. I don't really see much of that happening in games though. So maybe the escape is being a good guy and not having people take advantage of you? Or people actually being grateful and stuff?

I personally always pick the good guy options because it's sometimes impractical to do that in real life.

I pick the good options because it's not fun being an edgy dick to perfectly nice NPCs.

But yeah, there's probably something to the idea of the escapism of not only having clear cut good choices but being able to act on them effectively too. IRL, it's being a selfish asshole that pays.

You make a good point about effectiveness.

In games, you can stick to your principles and usually end up changing the world or at least getting a satisfying outcome for your efforts.

In real life, it's easier to change yourself to adapt to how the world is.

I mean from a meta gaming standpoint it’s usually more advantageous to play as the good guy to get the best loot and outcomes since like I mentioned above RPGs rarely bother writing a proper evil path and its usually just half assed most of the time.

Now I think there have been better attempts in recent years, but really playing as an asshole in an RPG is typically just ramping up the difficulty level without actually raising the difficulty level. You potentially cut yourself off from various quests, choices, story, etc. but hey ain't no rest for the wicked.

Split the thread to preserve the grimdark purity.

Anyway, nowadays I typically play through the evil paths if possible in games (or what exists of them) since I don't really have time to do an evil and good playthrough and I figure most are going to do the good playthrough anyway so I can find out what I missed from someone else.

Still even then, I'm probably never maximizing the evil since I'm probably still treating followers decently because they're useful in a fight or other reasons. Or at least keeping them around as long as possible before they leave because I'm being too much of a dick to everyone else.

I think Tyranny is the only game I've ever played that has really satisfying, archetypally evil options. By the end of the game, they do end up railroading you on the type of evil you can be, but the end for anything other than the kind of "canon" path reeks of rushed writing and for a hot minute it feels like they genuinely were gonna allow you to be different kinds of legitimate malicious asshole throughout the whole game and kind of have it make sense.

That's probably because the default in that setting is evil, so being a bastard was the primary thing in mind with the writing.

Really I think just going 100% villain protagonist like Tyranny did is probably the best way to writing the evil path. (Obsidian just has a terrible habit of releasing games half finished with a shitload of cut content)

I feel like to a certain extent the setting of Tyranny was also cheating and pulling an Overlord, because it also did a lot to make you the lesser evil compared to the Emperor no matter what. That was kind of a disappointment because they did a good job of making it feel like one of those omnipresent unsolvable cosmic problems, but I guess it wouldn't be a CRPG if you don't blow one of those up with magic at the end.