Quote: Original post by Trapper Zoid

Quote: Original post by GairenKarrandeas

Quote: Original post by Nytegard
You want evil? Someone who will do horrible acts for absolutely no reason. But it won't sell. Imagine a villain who gives no explanation for his acts. People wouldn't like it.

Kefka did evil things for no apparent reason, and everyone likes him.

I didn't like him [smile]. Actually I don't see what people like about Kefka; to me I thought he was a thematically weak main villain. Admittedly I'm not a big Final Fantasy fan so I might be missing something.

It's the 8-bit laugh, the corny one liners, the poisnoning an entire city on a whim, the INSANITY.


And his fashion sense. He's dressed so hideously that it makes him look GOOD.

Quote: Original post by GairenKarrandeas

Quote: Original post by Trapper Zoid

Quote: Original post by GairenKarrandeas

Quote: Original post by Nytegard
You want evil? Someone who will do horrible acts for absolutely no reason. But it won't sell. Imagine a villain who gives no explanation for his acts. People wouldn't like it.

Kefka did evil things for no apparent reason, and everyone likes him.

I didn't like him [smile]. Actually I don't see what people like about Kefka; to me I thought he was a thematically weak main villain. Admittedly I'm not a big Final Fantasy fan so I might be missing something.

It's the 8-bit laugh, the corny one liners, the poisnoning an entire city on a whim, the INSANITY.


And his fashion sense. He's dressed so hideously that it makes him look GOOD.

I didn't like Kefka, because he is insane. That to me is an honestly pathetic excuse for evil. I'm talking about a villain who is perfectly rational, who does something evil for little to know reason.

An situation of what I'd consider evil. This is a situation similar to the TV series 24, or the movie Red Eye, but with a little difference.

Your villain watches a person, finds out who their family is. Kidnaps the family, and the father. Threatens the father to kill him and his family, should he not assassinate a specific person.

Situations which can occur.

The father can try to fight back in which case he's wounded, then allowed to hear his wife and kids screaming to their deaths via phone, and then he's killed.

The father can ask to make sure his kids are okay before he agrees to anything, and the villain tells him he's in no position to make such a request, and if the father keeps requesting, the villain gives him the phone to listen to his family being killed, at which point he's told it's his own fault for stalling.

The father can try to make a deal, but is told he's in no position to deal.

The father can refuse, and once again his family is killed and then he is.

The father can commit to the act, but at the end, his family is still killed, and then he is.

At the time when he's being told to commit the act, he's told that if he is killed, he's not only responsible for his family and his death, but the death of the poor sap & family who will end up replacing him.

The villain isn't insane. They do this because it's their business. They're perfectly rational.

And what's the reason the father and his family are put in the situation? No reason. They just happened to be unlucky.

And this type of situation will most likely never occur in print or film. Why? Because there is no reason. There is no chance for a happy ending. Nothing the father can do will fix the situation. The best scenario, he's responsible for his family and his deaths, along with a target. At worst, he's not only responsible for his and his families death, but the target, as well as the new father and family who takes over for him. The villain is neither stupid, insane, nor has stupid help, and wins in the end. The villain is really a neutral character who is apathetic to evil. They don't want to be evil just for evil's sake. They're evil because they don't care about being evil.

As was posted above, when bad things happen, the viewer typically views it as a fault of their own. Well, what if there is no fault? What if it all comes down to the simple philosophy that bad things just happen? Would you honestly want to play a game like that?

On the same line of thought, would it be too "evil" to tell the players that the reason their main character has mental problems is because he or she has been raped as a child then done jail time after killing his or her abusive parents and then (lots of things can happen in prison...)

No.

Freaky and disturbing and somewhat evil, but not TOO evil.

[Edited by - GairenKarrandeas on October 20, 2006 12:12:47 AM]

The AP raises an interesting question as I was thinking of doing a character creation system that involves going through the past of the player's character with him, drawing some random events and giving him some control over other events. And since I was thinking of a dystopic world and I was also thinking that the player's main goal in the game would be to conquer the world, I was thinking of having freak events like that in the database of possible events of the character's past (you know to give him a reason to be insane enough to want to conquer the world).

Quote: Original post by EmrldDrgnraping small children

That not so much evil as it is plain sick.

Time to poke this discussion some more.

Well we as would be writers for games are attempting some form of catharsis, or trying to raise some kind of emmotional response be it love, hate etc. from within our audience. The reason plots are lame or just uninteresting? They fail to emmotionally connect with the audience. In that capacity as long as you remember who your relative audience is (eg. 5 year old or 15 year olds), theoretically speaking there is no such thing as 'too evil' as the notion of 'evil' is a reactionary force in response to the demands of the environment in which the character is situated. For a character to be classed as evil they must have somthing to draw comparison with so the more negative one character, the more positive another character must be to maintain balance else the effect is lost and one extreme becomes the accepted norm. If you fail to provoke some form of questioning within your audience it is effectivly indocrination at which point the conventions of what is morality sort of goes out the window. Besides propaganda dosn't sell well in the long run unless you can isolate the market or plunge into a dark age.

Thats why films such as Sin City thrive, Fight Club and Pulp Fiction or games such as GTA thrive on questioning conventional morality and pushing the boundaries of audience expectations(at least thats opinion). People want to be entertained, not preached at.

In short: bring on the well crafted evil!

I was watching the film Hostage the other day, in that they have plenty of cliched evil guys which do plenty of bad things or potentially bad, for no reason, or just because they enjoy doing that sort of thing, they do this because they want to appeal to your baser emotions. They want you to hate the bad guys and in films as such as these they usually have the good beaten upon by the bad guys, and in the end the good guys beat down the bad guy with smiling gratuity. In those setup beginnings they couldnt have it end any other way.

Personally I am fed up with stories like that where they tell you how to feel. Its not too say their arent people out there that enjoy doing bad things, there are, but if you are going to have the bad guy do bad things then you may have to be careful about how you handle them, if you dont want the viewers to be dissapointed if you didnt give them a decent payoff at the end, for all the bad emotions you gave them earlier on.

Well I'd like to input a movie I see everyday, V for Vendetta. Now in the original graphic novel (comic book) V is portrayed as a anarchic terrorist who makes attacks against the government for absolutely no reason, but in the movie, he is protrayed as more of a Freedom Fighter who kills for justice and to force the Sociopolitical Britian government to change its ways.

Some of the things he does however could protray him as a good or bad* guy. Bad would be things like blowing up the Bailey, or killing the survivors of the concentration camp he was located at. Not to mention his dressing 100 people in his costume to escape, getting innocent people shot and killed. Also he tortures the main character, Evey, into a state of fearless-ness which benefits her but could also be looked at as inhumane.

Really, unless it's basic cut and dry, a person being evil is totally up to the player/person who is reading/playing/watching the story take place. It's all up to how one views the action of another. Osama Bin Laden doesn't think he is evil but most Americans do. In a game where you're fighting cops, like Enter the Matrix for example, they may be portrayed as the bad guys but they are really upholding the law and you are removing fathers and brothers and husbands from their families.

Anyways, I want my game to have a V for Vendetta feel. The villain* can be viewed as Evil or Good it justs depends on how the player looks at it.

Quote: Original post by KidAero
Well I'd like to input a movie I see everyday, V for Vendetta. Now in the original graphic novel (comic book) V is portrayed as a anarchic terrorist who makes attacks against the government for absolutely no reason, but in the movie, he is protrayed as more of a Freedom Fighter who kills for justice and to force the Sociopolitical Britian government to change its ways.

In the graphic novel, he was targeting the key operators and administrators of the camp he was held at. They more or less happened to also be key players in a totalitarian England. That's what the whole "Vendetta" part is about.