My friends and I recently started our “super evil” playthrough of Baldur’s Gate 3… but I guess there are some lines we just can’t cross.
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My friends and I recently started our “super evil” playthrough of Baldur’s Gate 3… but I guess there are some lines we just can’t cross.
This is literally me but in every game in existence lmao
My RP playthroughs go differently – I want to make an evil/a**hole run but then I get tempted by better rewards when choosing more rightful solutions… Oh, the thrill of efficiency. 😀
kinda funny considering the “dark side” is supposed to be more tempting/easy because keeping up with morals has to be a constant choice
Video game morality is ridiculously simplified in most cases, though. You’re either glaringly evil like Darth Maul, or a paragon of virtue like Optimus Prime or Superman. The choices are stupidly binary, such as “Burn down the orphanage” or “rescue the children.” Most people in real life aren’t cold, unfeeling sh*tstains on the underwear of humanity, so of course they’d have crises of conscience when trying to play the “evil side”.
And then you have games that are basically FULL of double-edged swords. Especially common in gritty survival-choose-your-decision-type games where all the choices will have murky, vague advantages on top of PLENTY of rather obvious disadvantages.
And often in the same games, the ones that are not so murky are basically do-gooder-naivitivity traps in disguise. Like how rescuing dogs will lead to the orphanage losing their food source and starving to death…
I feel like that’s what makes video games unappealing to some people. There isn’t a lot of morally gray areas, and when there is, people begin to be uninterested in the game. It’s a shame to be honest.
Truthfully, I only saw moral choices done right only once, and that was in Infernax. Good made things tougher or required not performing bad deeds for tangible payouts. Being evil skipped bosses and filled wallets, making the game easier but more corrupted with events and endings. Each choice affected the game meaningfully. It’s not about sainthood vs evil without utility, a well constructed moral dilemma is more of a question of do you do what’s right or what’s easy.
Even evil has standards, it would seem. I can’t ever do full evil runs, I run into stuff like this, and immediately feel my heart threaten to crack. The closest I get is quick saving and yeeting Nazeem off a cliff, or something like that.
evil does have a standard, but in situations like this you have to think which course of action is more evil, to kill it or leave alive with trauma of witnessing murder of parents. Geting teary eyes or hesitation because of puppy eyes disqualifies from being evil.
As for myself, it’s just an animal it will serve a purpose in death, mostly by being delicious.
I can’t do “evil runs” because I think that being evil for evil’s sake is just plain stupid. Nobody just wakes up and is like, “Which should I do today? Burn down the orphanage, or kick all the puppies at the shelter?” Even complete psychopaths do those things for reasons – the same reason why they mask for 95% of their lives as good people and act out the “good” role. No, I can’t do “evil runs,” but I *can* play a character who essentially has goals that would be considered “evil” by many. For example: playing a High Elf… Read more »
I enjoy playing a lawful evil character in my D&D games. The way I play it and rationalize my action everyone in the party is convinced I’m playing a lawful good character. The one time they thought to cast detect evil they were convinced the spell backfired. Evil always has a compelling reason, otherwise it wouldn’t exist, doesn’t mean it is right though.
The way I see it, there’s three different types of “evil” in fiction, and it all depends on how you perceive yourself. There is, “No one truly believes themselves to be evil.” These are antagonists who believe themselves to lean ‘good.’ I honestly believe that the majority of antagonists fall under this. It’s that, to them, they’re doing the right thing, or the necessary thing, or the correct thing. The thing they’re doing, it might cause problems, but in their mind they’re doing it for the right reasons. Elijah would be one of these, as would Deathblood and Eugene, and… Read more »
I think evil is something that a person can cultivate through acts of corruption, maybe a “fourth” type to the types you laid out. Whether that evil is forged by an outside party acting upon someone, or that someone is essentially self editing, or “mutilating” their own morals gradually, there does seem to be a type that can be self aware of the evil, yet still choose it. I think my favorite portrayals of this kind of evil were some antagonists appearing in the “Joe Ledger” series of novels by an author called Jonathan Maberry. Some of his evil antagonists… Read more »
I’m really bad at being bad…I mean…the real life already has a lot of monsters that just trying to do an imaginary world a better place sounds like much better
Nah, it’s just a game… Off with their heads! 😈
Tim lives! I was beginning to wonder what was going on with so much space between new comics. I know he’s got a family and all, but we miss him when he’s not around 🥺
…huh?
When was the last comic before this one posted, MasterofBalance?
Yeah there’s comics three times a week. This is just one of those folks that only likes certain ones. And also apparently not enough reasoning skills to figure out that story arcs only pause at certain beats.
If this is true, it sounds like you’ve somehow bookmarked the “ctrl-alt-del only” archive instead of the cad comic site, resulting in missing a bunch of Starcaster Chronicles and Analog and Dpad.
Any chance you are navigating the comic in a specific category and not in the full archive?
I don’t believe so. If I tap the button to go to the previous comic it says it was posted at the end of March
Ok, so I think I see what happened. My browser remembers one specific Ctr+Alt+Del and I tap on it then hit the button to go to the latest comic. Evidently it hasn’t been taking me to the very latest comic as I’ve managed to miss several of them. You can see where I would have become confused. Guess I have to figure out where I got lost and catch up
VLDL has a great video about this.
My wife and I have done a couple of evil runs, and the rule is always “good animals are safe.” Even on our run where we only killed everyone. As little dialogue as possible. Just murder every single thing we came across. Except good animals.
I’ve never even wanted to do an evil run. I like being a good person. I know it sounds horribly boring to always play a goody-two-shoes, but oh well, I just don’t really see the point in trying to force myself into a role that feels unnatural to me.
Same. At least in the game, the world is fixable. Feels like cleaning the mess and witnessing the result.
I’m the same way. “I’ll choose the Dark Side this time!”. Yeah, I don’t.
You’re not the only one. I want to be the hero, not the asshole, even when I’m gaming.
The only time I do an ‘evil run’ is basically when I go full Lawful Stuffy Paladin ‘ends justify the means’ and beat up anyone who does something I think is bad because it’s the easiest way to get rid of evil people.
I guess the only way to be THAT evil is to get a QA role in a game like this!
Then it’s your JOB to test every possible branch, but at least you get to have a good enough explanation to your conscience 😉
Therefore the next time your want to go full evil but can’t muster yourself to do so, just pretend you’re the QA doing the run.
Don’t mention it.
Now THAT is funny. And clever.
Saying some words for recaptcha.
Recaptcha plz.
To be fair, killing the owlbear cub’s mother, taking the cub with you, and never feeding yourself to it is pretty damn evil.
Even Evil Run players despise Kennel Lady.
Me every time I try to do an evil/asshole run of a game. The first time I risk making some random NPC feel bad I chicken out.
This reminds me of an unmarked quest in Fallout: New Vegas…
In the legion camp there’s a little girl who’s been kidnapped and abused by her captors, who also stole her only source of comfort – a teddy bear.
If you manage to find it, you can give it back to the girl – or tear it apart in front of her.
I’ve seen someone playing an evil-as-possible kill-everything playthrough *still* refuse to tear the teddy in front of her 🤣
i don’t blame you. i picked up a “Kill everything” run myself. Still spared Us and Shovel.
Shovel is awesome at taking care of those backline isolated ranged fukers. I mean. He`s NEVER forced into battle. I think he’s broken.
This is why I hate playing an “EVIL” run. I’d rather play “high reward/low reward” playthroughs. Where its all about how Selfish the character is
“I am a villain, not a monster.”
And this is why I stay strictly on the side of good. I don’t want my games making me feel like utter crap. It’s the reason that to this day I haven’t even played Undertale.
You know that you don’t have to do the Genocide Route in Undertale, right? I never touched it.
I learned I had this problem back in KotOR…
“Alright time for the dark side playthrough…”
*later that day*
“…why do I have so many light side points?”
I was DMing Dnd with friends of mine and they were murderhoboing every single pc or npc I made them meet, pretty much. So I made them encounter a band of bully street urchins, all below 10 of age. Being all Dads, they just could bring themself to do anything but listen, to me bulling them into a “questline”.
” Hey watch your tongue old fart,or I stick my knife in you! You want to get stabby stabbed? Yeaa? We the boss round these street yeeeh!”
“yeeaahh! stabby stab! Yeeeeeaahh! haha! “
fun fact: BG3 won’t let you kill kids, but from far enough away adult halflings and human children are the same size, so sometimes you “accidentally” a cloudkill in the city and like 4 kids walk away unscathed from the horror you have unleashed on a crowd.
And that is how, on my Darkest Urge run, I created Orphan’s Gate.
I think it’s ironic that you can’t kill kids. At the same time one of your first choices can lead to the death of a child, you can roast Owlbear cubs, and leave ghost children to roam the land, cursing that land for an eternity. “No kids were harmed” feels kind of disjointed at times.
Games are weirdly skittish about letting you do that. IDK why.
It’s worse when you want to do the right thing, but your prior choices force you to be evil. I was playing Stellaris, as an ravenous swarm fungoid hive mind. I found the last surviving member of a 10 million year old tree hive mind, stuck in a vat, alone on a failing space station. After having learned their story, I felt kinship with them, despite them being a relatively peaceful race juxtaposed against my xenocidal one. I (the player) wanted to save it, give it a home amongst my empire. The hivemind felt different, and consumed it for it’s… Read more »
Gotta channel your inner Minthara on this one. Sending a hatchling into the world alone to fend for itself is the evil play. The child either survives to become strong, or perishes to the wilds of the world.
I mean, that last panel is kind of evil from a certain point of view.
Just remember that thing is an absolute unit when you get to the final fight. Save it, gaslight it into thinking that you’re it’s friend and then throw it into combat using it as 2000 pound meat shield for the climatic battle. Having disposable minions is very evil.
Yeah…I can’t do evil runs. I have too many morals no matter what I do to squish them down.
And then there’s my friends. We started our 4th play through, finally trying to tackle an evil route. The Owlbear cub? Didn’t stand a chance. That ball ‘o fur was on the BBQ immediately after the fight, it’s salty tears seasoning the meat. We go out and continue, meeting Scratch. I’ve been shepherding him in every single campaign. Do I want to say any last words? Too late. The only word they had for Scratch was OVERKILL, and exploding the corpse right after. After witnessing that my heart fell out. Perfect for an evil run. Where the campaign will be… Read more »
Power Word: Overkill?
Haven’t heard about that spell before… 😉
Are you saying we shouldn’t have burned down the Towel-Chair Club? Drying racks were invented for a reason, dang it!
Sparing the Fowl Lair Hub I can understand, it’s the best place to get evil chicken nuggets.
What I have a hard time with is completing Wyll’s mission in act 1. It hurts so much to do it.
So often when I try to do ‘evil’ runs in games that allow them, what happens is I end up picking the choices most beneficial to my character. There is a clearly evil choice, a clearly moralistic choice, and a clearly most beneficial one and so often I can’t see my villainous character actively shooting themselves in the foot for short term evil instead of long term benefit.
I dunno man, most games seem to have a real problem with their evil decisions being punishments to the player. BG3 does this ESPECIALLY often.
BG1 and 2 did that as well. I don’t remember if it affected immediate rewards, but low reputation led to high prices in stores (shouldn’t at least some shopkeepers be terrified of you and give good prices for that reason?), and at the lowest rep, guards attacking you whenever you entered a new zone in the city. Especially in BG2, where you eventually have killed things like vampires, beholders, possibly a dragon or two, etc., you’d think they would learn after you massacred a couple teams and left their bodies to rot. Angering the Cowled Wizards in BG2 was done… Read more »
Lisa Simpson: Mr. would you like to adopt a puppy?
Snake: No! But I’ll steal one!
*Draws gun and takes a puppy*
Snake: I love and cherish it and there nothing you can do to stop me!
*Enters getaway vehicles, gives puppy a kiss*
You aren’t saving an innocent animal here. You are training a future terrifying beast to waylay travellers. An apex predator in the wilderness. Yes, it definitely has nothing to do with those big round eyes and fluffy feather coat.
It really depends on what kind of evil playthrough you are doing. A chaotic evil playthrough (aka being a psychopath)? A neutral or lawful evil playthrough?
I maxed out my Dark Side meter in SWTOR in no time while playing a Sith Inquisitor. Ask the guy in prison a question? Heck no. Force Lightning it is, he knows why I’m there. And some of the early missions they took out, made you decide some very bad choices. I always took the worst one. Oddly, I’m quite charitable, volunteer, help those in need, etc. But being an evil monster at times in a game can be quite therapeutic as it doesn’t define me. However, working in the corporate world for over 25+ years, I’ve seen some truly… Read more »
I remember when I first finished KotoR2, and immediately started a second run wanting to go evil. I managed to stick to it, but there are some choices that are truly EVIL. Normally I don’t have any issue being a douche-bag within the fantasy world of a video game, but there were at least a couple decisions in that game that gave me pause even in the setting of a video game.
A lot of those playing a ‘good run’ still end up doing so much evil on a modern scale.
‘Lets not take the time to find law forces to notify and arrest all these bandits – just kill them all, loot the bodies AND all the tombs contents they’re based in while we’re here.’
An evil/chaos run is hard simply because the rewards are more often aimed at doing the socially moral thing for the primary events, think more chaotic if it helps justify the occasion good choice.
I had the same thing with Mass Effect.Wanted to do a full renegade run a few times. However there’s certain lines I just…won’t cross even on an “evil” run. Like killing Wrex. Or picking Morinth over Samara.
Though not picking Morinth is more of a logical thing for me. I have a fully loyal (at least as long as the mission lasts) justicar already on my side. Why would I ever pick an unstable, untrustworthy serial killer over someone like that just because “she’s just as powerful as her mother”?
Samara warns Shepard, that if he/she strives too far from what is acceptable for her Code, she might have to hunt them down later, after the mission is complete. So I guess that could be one reason for Renegade to try and get rid of her.
Though trusting Morinth is still stupid… especially if you also agree to have sex with her, which ends badly. Who would have thought that an unstable serial killer could be lying, eh? 😛
I usually pick good-osh options in RPGs, too.
But then there’s RimWorld, called a war crime simulation for a reason…
So a friend said. 😉
“An hour later.”
Dang these guys are blazing a trail. Getting off the Nautiloid takes like an hour itself.
It’s fine, you’re planning to raise it into a fearsome monster mount to consume your enemies with! Still evil! Just long term evil, sometimes you gotta do some good to do long term harm! Like rich people donating to charity so people will defend them from being taxed and doing more good in total!
See, this kind of thing is why I think most people are genuinely terrible at writing/RPing ‘Evil’: They mistake evil for pointless dickery being the character’s guiding star. Or as D&D vets might say, “chaotic stupid”. Going around saying “I’m evil so I’m going to hurt the owlbear cub” isn’t playing evil, that’s playing Bizarro himself, simply inverting your concept of desirability. “This is bad, therefore my evil character should be onboard with it.” No! That’s not how opposite alignment works! Evil is when your character will hurt the owlbear cub because you hate owlbears, or because you want to… Read more »
Well said, as a Roleplayer (both ttrpg, writing, and rpg variants) I run into this misconception a lot with people. And it’s good to understand these nuances for when you do wanna play a morally bankrupt character or villain. Makes for much more compelling storytelling when the villains make sense.
No Exceptions. Sorry cub, you’re getting rfk juniored.