Edit: holy shit I turn my head around for one second and I got 40 replies? THANK YOU ALL :D <3
I just rewatched Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight trilogy and following Bane’s and Miranda’s story made me realize that I’m a bit saturated in regards to playing as the hero, the protagonist, the “good guy” in PC games. While I love saving the world as much as the next person, I’d love to play as some perhaps self-righteous villain, or antagonist, or simply somebody portrayed in a way that’s meant to make the player sympathize with questionable morality or, at the very least, be conflicted about why you suddenly find yourself rooting for them.
I’m mostly looking for story driven open world single player games, but any recommendations are welcome. :)
The GTA series might be a good example. All of the protagonists of the games commit exceedingly worse crimes as the game progresses but they’re made to be sympathetic since they just want success in a world with not much other opportunities.
Games with karma systems may work as well if the bad option isn’t overtly evil. I’m thinking games like Dishonored, Fable 3, Undertale, or any Bethesda game.
Anti-hero protagonists like Kratos from God of War, Arthur Morgan from Red Dead 2, and V from Cyberpunk could also somewhat fit the bill.
Edit: just watched an Outside Xbox video that summarizes a few games with just this premise.
Disco Elysium’s protagonist is a walking disaster and there are a lot of ways you can play him. Honestly playing him as a totally morally upright professional is one of the harder ways to play. You definitely don’t feel like a hero while you’re playing
Honestly playing him as a totally morally upright professional is one of the harder ways to play
Oh so I was just playing it wrong lmao
Yeah, it’s a little spoilery to say but the game tries to force you to learn that lesson. Trying to be a good cop and being straight edge is pretty frustrating. Then once you take a morally gray choice and it advances the plot, you use some drugs to meet a check and there aren’t really consequences. Then by the end of the game you’re high on 4 different drugs punching children and you understand the point they were making
I think that might have been my problem with that game as well. I felt like I was going absolutely nowhere about 1 or 2 hours in.
I should probably restart.
I’m too dumb to play that game. I tried and kept dying during dialogue.
I didn’t know you could die in a game from saying the wrong thing. But I did multiple times. A few hours in. I was playing on switch and it made me restart from beginning.
So I gave up and just watched a YouTube on the story.
Idk I’ve never played a game like that and I’m not sure how the mechanics work. Obviously too dense to figure it out.
Very cool art style and world building though.
A few hours in and you restarted from the beginning? That’s weird considering the game has autosaves, unless there’s a quirk about the switch version.
Do you remember what dialogue you died on perhaps?
Yeah it made me start completely fresh both times I died. I was like. Okay well fk this.
It was on the switch and the way saves work on it are generally different. It didn’t have a “load a specific save” option.
It just has one save. Automatic.
Not even one mention of Prototype. What have the world become.
Prototype. Man. What a fucking BLAST that was. The super powers you had by the end of the game combined with the techniques you could use.
Surfing corpses, eating people alive to clone their appearance. Slicing, smashing, or just tearing apart tanks. Throwing cars. It was just absolute mayhem and I doubt we will see another game quite so unhinged.
Yeah, when Activision still make good and innovative game. Prototype is a rare gem that escape a lot of people’s radar somehow, despite that game selling quite well back then. I blame the name.
I somehow only remember that like a fever dream.
Shocked to see no one’s suggested Tyranny yet which is an isometric RPG where you specifically play one of the bad guys. Yeah you can make some “good” decisions but ultimately, you’re a foot soldier for the bad guys. It’s got plenty of that conflict about what’s right and wrong that you’re looking for too!
I admire Tyranny from afar, but I think it’d depress me too much.
Factorio, you literally colonize alien species and pollute their worlds because you feel like it.
Satisfactory in the same regard as well. At first I felt bad about disrupting the natural landscape. But then I needed more power, and land for my factories. And then more land for more power for more factories on more land. It’s a fun cycle.
It’s like a different kind of bad guy… a real world kind of bad guy, really.
Saints Row games. They’re like GTA, but increasingly over the top in their parody. You’re the boss of a criminal gang. 2 is still “normal parody” and a bit dated, 3 jumped the shark while doing a kickflip with a jet ski, 4 is even more insane.
Sleeping Dogs you play as a cop, but you can betray the law and side more with the criminals.
Warcraft 3 (old but gold) - the human campaign of the base game gets you from a hopeful young paladin prince into a cold, vengeful psychopath; the following undead campaign is said prince (well, king now) finishing the job of killing everyone and further fucking everything. The expansion has 3 extra campaigns, none with “good guys”
Divinity Original Sin (1 and 2) lets you play as big of an asshole as you’d like. Of the Elder Scrolls games, Morrowind is the one that lets you be the biggest bad guy around (you can still finish the game even if you kill every important npc and break every quest)
Divinity Original Sin (1 and 2) lets you play as big of an asshole as you’d like.
I haven’t gone through it myself, but I think Baldur’s Gate 3 has ways to side with “bad guys”, I believe I’ve seen patch notes about expanding the content there, so that’s also an option from the same devs.
But the origin characters generally aren’t perfect and have their motivations, especially The Dark Urge.
Spec Ops: The Line
The willy pete scene fucked me up for a while.
Planescape: Torment
Disco Elysium
Prototype
CrackdownAlready mentioned elsewhere but seconding the recommendations: Infamous I and II Bioshock Infinite
Well there’s always Grand Theft Auto.
Overlord, the first game
Had to scroll too far to find this one.
The 2nd one is better in some minor ways, but the OG is a classic
“Evil always finds a way.”
Some of the better RPGs allow you to play as an evil guy (equally fleshed out as the good guy playthrough), e.g. Baldur’s Gate 3 (it even has a special evil background storyline called The Dark Urge) or (some of?) the Mass Effect titles.
Cult of the Lamb is also a great game where you play a cult leader. Although the game’s design is strong on the entertaining/funny side, it’s kind of dark also.
Stellaris is a grand strategy game where you can play anything, from a ruthless ruler trying to destroy the whole galaxy to a pacifist trader.
Mafia series - You play as a murderous mobster
Tropico series - You play as the dictator of a small banana republic
Red Dead Redemption - You’re Arthur Morgan, an outlaw who kills for money
Buuuuut I kill bad guys when I play RDR2 so I feel good about it!
While you do get to feed KKK members to the gators and gun down anti-sufferagettes, you also loanshark and rob innocent people amongst other things
Yeah I didn’t like the loan sharking business… and there are some innocent people that get robbed, but much of that is from the story, and there isn’t much you can do about it
Peacemaker The Game.
Well, I may as well keep plugging my current obsession, Warhammer 40k: Rogue Trader. It’s a CRPG somewhere between BG3 and XCOM in gameplay, with a grimdark-flavored splash of Mass Effect.
You have 3 “convictions” that many lot of your decisions fall under. Iconoclast is kind of your standard good guy, but maybe somewhat naive trying to be that good guy in the Warhammer verse. But more relevant to you are Dogmatic and Heretic.
Heretic is pretty much evil as far as I can tell. Chaos worship and slaughter for power. Dogmatic is more like Judge Dredd, maybe? You make some harsh fucking decisions as dogmatic, like liquefying a few thousand people to power a computer you need to use, but you are doing it for what your character truly believes is the greater good of the Imperium.
Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous, Owlcat’s previous game, has some baddie paths too. You’re still fighting demons, but it’s more of an evil vs evil in some cases. Especially Lich or Swarm.
I ran Lich path on my first run of WOTR and it might be my favorite CRPG experience I’ve ever played. You’re evil, but you’re lawful evil, and the game gives you the opportunity to lean more lawful which I did. Excellent example of being smart evil instead of stupid evil which is exactly how I think a proper lich should be portrayed.
Command & Conquer 3
Kane was really rocking that Evil Abed™ look before Abed even existed
Kane just copied the look of Derek Vinyard.
Cruel. Cruel cruel cruel.
Basically Westwood game
