In Praise of Evil

[Monk]

It's sad to read words as jaded as those in that article. No offense to the author but i feel as if I may have aged ten years by reading the entirety of it. Goodness. I think I need to listen to some jpop or some other bubbly music, or perhaps take a walk outside to lift my spirits. Anyway. Allow me to write a long winded response. You might want to get some snacks.

I think it speaks to our society how socially we are, sometimes. A great example is the movie 'Heat'. In that movie it's obvious that while both Al Pacino and Robert De niro's characters have redeeming qualities, De niro is gunning down cops in the street. He is the clear antagonist to Pacino's protaganist, and yet not a single person i've ever known can watch that movie and refrain from pulling for De niro in the end. If the personal situations of an antagonist or an antihero are compelling, sympathetic, and relatable we cannot stop ourselves from hoping that he will somehow make it through at the end. That's just human nature at work.

How often have we, each of us on a personal level, encountered pure and unadulterated evil? It's such a foreign concept that the idea of the big hero waving the american (insert your nationality here) flag and fighting with a newborn baby in his arms, the guy who never wanted trouble in the first place i might add, can be just as foreign. However, that is still what many stories that are crafted, especially in the genre of gaming, use as their basis when trying to depict the everyday hero. It's something of a storytelling disconnect and very few games have attempted the moral grey area, few still have gotten it right. More often then not a game will contrive a situation where there is obviously no right or wrong answer, simply an answer where everyone involved loses and use the excuse that it's being "moraly ambiguous," which is an even worse sin if you ask me. I've not got as many years as either you or the author of this article (clocking in at only 23, thank you) and yet, I've encountered very few 'no win' situations in my life. I've seen hard times, bad days, terrible choices and worse outlooks, but never so bleak as some fiction would have you believe life might be in their vein attempt to be edgy. Yeah. Still mad about Witcher 2.

I think that ambiguity is more difficult to do in a gaming environment than it is in movies or television because of the many aspects that must be taken into concern. Gameplay, narrative, sound design, fun, visuals, they all have to combine to make the moment seem to have an impact or be relevant to what you're doing at the time. If any one of those fails then what you're doing ceases to be about the game, story, or the moral implications of the act, and becomes a rather arbitrary choice that is based solely on what gives you the best in game reward. I think the nuke in Fallout 3 is a great example of that. There's so little about that game that impacts you on an emotional point that nuking megaton is just a light show. The only pay off comes about 20 hours later when your dad, liam neeson, scolds you. It makes you feel kinda bad, but along the same lines, it was 20 hours ago and the choice really doesn't change anything other than a few lines of dialogue. So how much do you really care? (A little bit, but that's just because he's such a great actor.

That isn't to say that every game fails in this regard, but enough do that moral systems are almost always black and white. Even a series like Mass Effect, which i love to death, is a game that i play predominantly renegade for those very reasons you mention, TC. It's obviously not perfect in its design, and not the way the designers envisioned you playing it. Paragon Shepard is the "best" Shepard, as often, Renegade choices will have you losing out on potential assets later because you made the "wrong" choice, in game terms. It's annoying, and in a way, is a product of the limited creativity of the genre. There's a need there to change the outcome based on a choice you made. How to do that? It's difficult to do without falling into the "Witcher 2 trap" of no right answer i mentioned above.

I guess what I'm saying, if I'm saying anything at all, is that games by and large find it difficult to tackle that grey area. Even more so than other entertainment, which i feel is due to a number of factors. Not only those mentioned above, but as a way of railroading you into the predicted emotional response. Good choice, bad choice, those are definable variables from an emotional and story standpoint. Grey? Most people don't know what to do with grey. Something that I always found amazing was when I read Tolkien as a child, I was never rooting for the good guys. I never felt like I knew them at all, even. The only characters I ever found to be compelling were the Uruk'Hai who captured Merry and Pippin. Those guys were so awesome and relatable, cracking heads and taking names. If i wrote something and the only emotional response i garnered from my reader/player was in relation to a bunch of throw away bad guys killed off screen? I'd be embarrassed.

I'm surprised you killed the little girls in Bioshock though, but I think we can put that difference behind us.. for science.

You monster.

It's similar to why I think Superman is a boring nitwit, but that's another rant.

Do you know the difference between justice and punishment?

While I think the idea of the boy scout hero is outdated, I still think he deserves a place in our hearts from a creative standpoint. Superman is the paragon of altruism and justice, he's superman. He isn't selfish. He acts without thought of payment and wishes only to protect. It's important that he is there whether you like him or not, doing his job to prevent Lex Luthor from stealing forty cakes. Forty cakes, which is four times as many as ten, and is also terrible.





edited: clarified second to last paragraph