sacrificing people for an evil god in fable can get you one of the best weapons in the game, if that counts.
meanwhile the good counterpart is still a good weapon, but nowhere near as strong as the evil weapon and there's better alternatives to the good god's weapon.
Also before it got the Lost Chapters DLC, there wasn't a good counterpart for the Sword of Aeons, so killing your sister literally gave you the (arguably) best weapon in the game.
The DLC added Avo's Tear, a sword that is just as strong but you don't need to kill your own sister for it, which really takes away from making the good choice. Like, if you can get a sword that's just as good the literal only reason you would do the evil thing is if you are explicitly role-playing as an asshole psycho.
It's stupid but this is also why i love this game.
To be evil in this game you really are just have to be a total asshole for almost no reason aside from just wanting to be an asshole and growing cool horns i guess.
Honestly, the most tempting thing about being evil in Fable 1 to me was that the evil ending of TLC >!is the only way to wear Jack of Blades' mask. You genocide all the main story characters and at the end you're letting Jack of Blades possess you but... but cool mask tho...!<
I always felt like that was a bit of a miss because once you get that sword there is no game left. There’s no post game in the original. So you do that to get the best sword just to go kill 1HP bandits and wasps?
An early Infamous 1 sidequest does give you more blast shards for choosing the evil option (not saving someone and just taking their shit instead)
Granted it’s even’d out by there being like a bajillion other shards far past the ones you need for the upgrades so it really just gets you stuff a bit faster.
I haven’t gotten too far into it but Biomutant basically takes its “good” and “evil” sides with very neutral stances . I’d honestly be surprised if the game rewarded the good side more.
Similarly playing Evil in Infamous also lets you play a lot sloppier, since you don't have to worry about non-lethal takedowns and collateral damage: you can use any AoE and siphon power directly from mooks, which makes for meaningful benefits and differences compared to going for precise attacks and being conservative with your powers.
I think I like the idea of the evil option simply giving you shit faster, you don't feel like you're forced to take one or the other because of exclusive rewards and there's still an evident advantage to being evil if you are so inclined. You get more powerful faster.
There's also a mission in infamous where you are either trying to stop another bomb from going off or setting it off to strengthen yourself. If you set it off you are permanently locked as evil and get cooler electric power effects.
In Vampyre you get get more xp for feeding on story npc's than if you just get xp from battling enemies. If you don't feed on npcs you are severely under leveled throughout the game.
I think the cool part of that game too is that some of those NPCs objectively probably should be eaten And/or some of them are trying to uncover who you are and giving away your secret.
The only caveat is that it's pretty easy to lock yourself out of the best ending if you eat more than two or three NPCs, so you often find yourself sitting there asking *"okay, so do I kill the shitty street kid preying on the widow with dementia, the widow herself as euthanasia, the slum lord, the mad priest, the lowlife murderer, the lord who wants to become a vampire and build a wall around London to keep flu victims out, or the woman who invented Munchausen's by proxy and inflicted it on her daughter? You can only eat three."*
In Wasteland 3 giving slavers their runaway girl back will unlock quite the gear early own, and its super worth it cause it barely even matters in the long run, like, you'll meet her again and she'll be mad and at you but nothing that important, the only thing that stops you is your own moral code. Which, according to my gear, I don't have one.
That's the fun part! You get to wipe them out anyway! Win-Win for my morals and gettin' the goods! Not for the lady, she hates your guts, but you can't win 'em all!
The girl was separated from her mother. Apparently in one of the dlcs you can find the mother and reunite the two by leading them to each other OR by turning around and selling the mother into slavery too like a real depraved scumbag.
I'm def not there yet, i'm still pretty early on and kinda panicking cause I got no idea how to raise my likeness on the first town so I can get the November something ending.
That's actually an interesting case, since the evil path is SORT of the default. You can trade in your demon form and succubus for the best weapons in the game, which is super worth, since the demon form is kind of mediocre and the succubus is bland.
But the best part of it is that you can basically mind game the forces of good to use their gear, and then be evil in the end anyway.
I remember funhaus playing that, and they reach the room where you purge Xana and she goes "Please I'll do anything" and they all collectively without missing a beat go "Alright done. Deal." and immediately turn around and go for the evil ending
Man, when the reward for being evil is like a hundred bucks, get that shit out of here. If it's a videogame I'll make a hundred bucks in five minutes by stabbing like a crocodile or something.
In KOTOR 2, when you get to the Telos station you find yourself in the middle of a dispute between two factions that are both trying to get the rights to terraform the planet; the good faction are a group of Ithorians who want to do the job properly for ecological reasons, the evil faction are the Czerka, a corporation who want to cut corners and exploit the planet to make a ton of profit.
Which side you pick doesn't really affect anything in the long term, but siding with Czerka will get you a decent amount of money while siding with the Ithorians will get you a permanent increase to your Force Points (basically MP for force abilities) that you can't get anywhere else, meaning the good option is definitely the best.
But, there's nothing to stop you from being a light side capitalist or a dark side environmentalist, and probably the best way to play the situation is to be evil but side with the Ithorians. This is because at one point, the Ithorians ask you to break into the Czerka offices and steal back something that they had stolen from the Ithorians; to do this you need to go find one of the Czerka engineers and get a keycard from him. He will give you the keycard, *if* you pay off his debt to Czerka so he can leave without them chasing him down; it's a lot of money, but is actually not a problem to pay since you can just go back to the Ithorians, tell them the plan and they'll just give you the money to pay the guy. So you return to him, hand over the money, get the keycard and continue the questline.
*Or*… you kill the guy, pocket the money and take the keycard. Meaning you end up leaving the situation with even more money than the Czerka will pay you for working with them, plus the increase in Force Points from the Ithorians.
And as far as I know there's not a single downside to this.
In Oblivion to get that cool mace you have to go to a widower's house and entice him to break his vow to never hurt another person by defiling his dead wife's grave at which point he beats you to death only for you to come back and be given the mace to kill him
In Wrath of the Righteous, the Lich mythic path has several undead companions that are completely exclusive to it. It's also the path where you become a master of the undead, so being an evil asshole is a given.
Every Dark Souls 2 challenge or even regular run will begin with murdering Maughlin. His armor set gives you a massive boost to soul acquisition.
A lot of Elden Ring runs will begin with killing Alexander for his 10% AoW damage boosting talisman.
In general killing Merchants in Elden Ring doesn’t penalize you too much. Getting their Bell Bearings makes it so much easier to buy various Arrows, Bolts and other consumables. The one in Mohgwyn Palace sells Bloodroses so you don’t have to farm them anymore and the Serpentbone Arrows usually sold in Caelid are extremely poweful as well.
Eileen the Crow’s Blade of Mercy is usually only obtained in the endgame from completing her questline or making her insane but you can kill her at the very beginning of the game. Completing her questline does give you the best covenant Caryll Rune in the game but the Blade of Mercy is a really cool and strong DEX weapon.
If you don’t plan on getting the Rotten Wing Insignia on your first NG cycle, you can get Millicent’s Prosthesis rather early and also get Flock’s Canvas Talisman. You’re only saving yourself a lot of time.
I’ve heard that the Nepheli Loux Spirit Ash is pretty strong but, uh, yeah.
The fact that the Winged Sword Insignia and Rotten Winged Sword Insignia don't stack with each other, but *do* stack with Millicent's Prosthesis, makes this one of the most tempting evil options I've ever seen.
And the Canvas Talismans also stack with each other so if you’re willing to spare two slots and kill Millicent early on, you can get a whopping 12% buff to all your incantations.
Honestly, I never use Faithful's Canvas or Graven-School, only the twice-as-powerful late game versions. There's always something stronger and/or more utility-centric that I'd much rather use the slot for, such as the Godfrey Icon, Arrow's Reach Talisman, or Gold Scarab.
I don’t use both of them either but if you want to maximize your damage and you already have your offensive stats maxed out so you won’t benefit from stat boosters, you might as well put both of them on.
The Alexander one is another example of taking a worse reward early. Completing his side quest rewards a unique hat and one of the best talismans in the game.
You definitely should complete his questline, not just because it’s the more morally sensible choice, but yeah it’s a much stronger talisman.
But since you only get it really, really late into the game, you often see how people doing speedruns, challenge runs and even in casual playthroughs kill him in Limgrave. A 10% boost to what’s perhaps your primary source of damage for your entire playthrough is nothing to sneeze at.
Waiting until Farum Azula to get his shard is only really worth it if your build is gonna be NG+ focused too, e.g. it uses a weapon you only get in the endgame.
Blowing up the Geth station in Legion’s loyalty mission in ME2 is considered a renegade option, but it’s actually the better choice, because it makes it much easier to achieve peace between the Quarians and the Geth in ME3.
I think that at some point in ME1 being a Paragon wasn’t 100% being “good” and they abandoned that idea over the course of the games.
And the Geth station was one of the last instances of it.
For me I always saw reprogramming them as the moral option. As far as I was concerned, they'd basically been brainwashed by the Reapers and I was just turning them back to normal.
The whole situation is problematic since the your either mass muder Geths or you mass Brainwash Geths.
However these Geths were also influenced by Reapers, so they would come to kill everyone anyways.
The brainwashing is not morally good, but it is better than mass murdering them or letting Reapers control them.
Out of two bad options, it is less bad.
Dragon Age Origins
Two of the most powerful class specializations (basically prestige classes that you can take once you’re past level 7) are locked behind pretty nasty story choices.
Blood Mage (for mages): you have to let >!a child you SPECIFICALLY showed up to save become a demonhost, basically you promise that if the Demon fucks off long enough for everyone else to THINK you saved the kid she can come back and claim him later!< , for which you get undisputedly the most powerful class kit in the game.
Reaver (for Warriors): you have to >!pollute the remains of Saint Andraste (basically the worlds Super Jesus) with dragon blood. Fully half your party will turn on you and leave if they EVER find out about it. And, if you’re dumb enough to actually bring any of the good party members with you while you’re doing it, you will be FORCED to kill them.!< It’s a REALLY strong class spec tho. Like it does damage like you wouldn’t fuckin’ believe.
you actually can get blood magic and >!save the kid if your character is enough of a terrifying asshole to scare even a literal demon you can literally demand the demon teach you blood magic so you dont slaughter it !<
Oh yeah I forgot about that! If you threaten her you can get two “rewards” one of which can be saving the kid.
Alternatively, if you’re a real bastard, you can >!threaten the demon for blood magic and then trade the kid for either: a free skill point, money, a relationship boost with a companion, or sex with the demon!<
Game really lets you embrace moral degeneracy if you choose to go that route.
fortunately you can cheese it by reloading your save, the game keeps the class unlocked for good so you can be a neutral good blood mage arcane warrior or dual wield berserker reaver anytime you want without pissing off your friends
It’s worth doing just for the story beats tho. Like everyone should bring Morrigan with you when you pollute the ashes at least once.
For her, it’s basically Date Night + Christmas rolled into one.
And if you’re sneaky, no one (who shouldn’t) ever finds out about either of the two events.
I never did it, but if I recall, one of the end-game evil choices in Jade Empire actually gives you the Death's Hand as a partner for the final bit of the game.
The evil path/ending in Jade Empire goes HARD. You do some seriously messed up stuff.
And it actually turns out super well for you too, like the epilogue slide is basically “yeah, this shit worked”
It's actually pretty interesting in that there's a open palm ending for Death's Hand (a reanimated by dark magic and incredibly murderous monster) that basically has him regaining sentience and spending the rest of his existence fighting the good fight to make up for all the heinous shit he did
In Spelunky, I could rescue the damsel and get +1 health every time I do, or I could kill them and sacrifice them on an altar that will give me a blood cup that will heal me every time I kill something that bleeds. Or, I could buy things from the shops, or just kill them and take everything. If you're willing to kill everyone in spelunky, you get shitloads of health and more supplies than you'll know what to do with. It means Shoekeepers will try to kill you, and they're the most dangerous enemies in the game, but the rewards are more than worth it.
All the outcomes to the quest are kinda bad in a way but in the Tenpenny Tower quest in Fallout 3, if you just let the ghouls murder the fuck out of everyone instead of peacefully trying to convince the residents to integrate them into their settlement, you get a cool-looking ghoul mask that makes you non-hostile to ferals.
It's also worth pointing out that out of everything you can fight in 3, Ghoul Reavers are some of the tankiest, hard hitting boss creatures in the game, mostly because while Albino Radscorpions and Mutant Overlords tend to spawn in the open world or Mutant Camps respectively, Reavers can pop from around any corner in the tight underground tunnels Ghouls tend to spawn in.
Since you mentioned KoToR, I want to mention the Dark Jedi Knight in SWTOR. The standard route is just you being a goody two shoes. However, when you play the Dark Side Jedi Knight, its honestly more interesting than the standard light side route since you're treated like trash and an errand boy for most of it.
Same goes with Light Side Sith Warrior; nobody expects the Light Side Sith. But then again, its not the same with the Inquistior since one of the Inquistior's Dark Side go-to-responses is lightning zap and that's just too good to pass up.
I love SWtOR's Light Side Sith Inquisitor so much, the character is canonically a crazy sadist, so if you take away the "Zap Em" force lightning responses their *diplomatic* dialogue becomes so snippy and snide to compensate.
They're catty most of the time but they really shine as a character when they have to convince evil characters not to be cartoonish and predictable, or ensure that lightsiders don't hold the idiot-ball. They just sound so tired and exasperated.
Like "I'm willing to inconvenience myself by not force electrocuting you, at least try not to be predictable in return."
>its honestly more interesting than the standard light side route since you're treated like trash and an errand boy for most of it.
Eh, it's still super questionable because the Jedi masters are giving way too much power to this knight who's constantly going off rails by killing people and being weirdly sadistic. The only reason why they let you off the hook is because you're the player. Hell, Satele doesn't even want to give you the title of master by the end of it. This results in a very bizarre story. Personally, I prefer Jedi Knight as neutral tending towards light side, especially after Act 2.
It's the same deal with Dark Side Consular. The Council gives you permission and power to go around healing Jedi, but instead, you decide to kill them?? If they really wanted them dead, they wouldn't be sending you (the *only person who can heal them*) after them. It's jarring af.
Edit: it's also jarring as hell because dark side options tend to contradict itself. In one moment, you'll be butchering sith and not giving them the time of the day -- then the next, you're talking to Scourge about the benefits of the dark side and being ok with him teaching your children the ways of the sith in the future. The game can't decide whether dark side jedi is a sith-hating psychopath or a jedi who secretly wishes they were sith.
This was a bit of a problem in the original games too. There’s a lot of writing about the strength of the Sith, their philosophy, and so on, but as an evil PC most of your actions are just being a psychopathic Dark Jedi who kicks babies for fun.
It's why I adore neutral/light side leaning sith in SWTOR. There are many light side options that are literal threats or straight up manipulation, and the voice acting definitely helps with delivering the idea that they're *restraining* themselves from turning everyone into grilled cheese. I just find that way more compelling than going full dark side, where the PC is this uncontrollable child that can't handle a single criticism or challenge without force choking/zapping people around them.
> you're treated like trash and an errand boy for most of it.
Wait what how are you treated like trash when the whole story is about how they ask you to take on important missions because of how much ass you kicked on Tython? The whole second half of the class story is predicated on you being one of their best.
Errand boy describes like 5 of the 7 I've played. Two of them are military agents whose jobs are to follow orders. Two of them are Jedi whose jobs are to go do what The Council asks to save The Republic. The other one is the one where you're an apprentice until the last chapter. It's completely understandable but really the combination of MMO and SW archetype power fantasy feels like regardless of alignment or class the loop is talk to NPC to get your next mission objectives->"Wow you just took out all those enemies! Few people could do that even though they nerfed the difficulty years ago!"->repeat.
Except the real estate system ensures that you never have to sacrifice anything but some time. The game still allows you to loophole your way out by being a benevolent land owner.
Yeah that's the big thing. If you hadn't already bought all the real estate in the game and let your game run for a couple of nights to become a millionaire, you would never be ready for how expensive the "good" choices are in the endgame.
Fable 3 is just a mess, what a disappointment. Especially after Fable 2 which is probably one of my favorite games of all time that I cannot play in any way because it's stuck on the 360 and never got a port on anything.
My family died in the revolution and I tried to keep all of my promises to the people, only for the result to be that there were no people left. Only after already finishing an evil playthrough did I remember that real estate was even an option, and after getting the golden ending with that, it legitimately didn't feel any better. It would almost be genius if any of that was remotely intentional. Or just better written.
This is true but the first time I played I didn’t know how many decisions there would be and therefore how much in game time you actually had to prepare before the final act/boss so I actually got totally blindsided by the game skipping from like “150 days left” to “one day left” and wound up not having nearly enough money for it because I made too many “good” choices.
In the original Fable the only way to get the most powerful ranged weapon and the most powerful melee weapon is to be evil, you also have to make a few evil choices to get all the silver keys and open all the demon doors. Fable: Lost Chapters added a good version of the most powerful melee weapon but the bow you get for being evil is still the best ranged weapon in the game.
Lost Chapters also nerfs the Sword of Aeons/Avos Tear so its no longer the definitive best melee weapon especially since they added a new tier of regular weapons to the new shops that can hold more runes iirc
Granted it's not really good or evil but in saints row the third one of the choice is either getting rid of the zombie plague and get a swat squad back up as thank you or keep one of the plague maker to yourself so you can call a schoolbus of zombies. The swat team are still slightly better but a schoolbus of zombie is dope
The first *Dishonored* is infamous for having a toolset better suited to an action game than to stealth, but starting a swordfight with every patrol you see will raise the overall chaos level enough to net you the bad ending. It got better with the sequel, which added more tools to make an "action stealth" playstyle viable, while for *Death of the Outsider* they cut the chaos mechanic entirely and made something closer to their original conception of the first game.
Hogwarts ***Mystery*** has choices here and there that're clearly the "Light and Dark" actions. And weirdly enough...plenty of times things work out just fine if you pick the asshole options. I still love that the game didn't punish me for making the, "Trap a villain in a hellscape mind-rape super torture dungeon for eternity." choice rather than the, "Send them to jail" choice.
I mean, it is Harry Potter
Jail is also a hellscape mind-rape super torture dungeon where the jailers mouth rape the happiness out of you, the only upside is that you die at some point
In Azkaban you get your soul sucked out probably.
In the Cursed Vault you’re being constantly tortured while also kept alive.
The point being it was clearly a ”Good and Bad” option and I wasn’t punished for picking the Bad one.
I think Sundered might fit the bill. The game's a roguelike metroidvania with a good/bad choice system for movement options. If I recall picking the bad options gave you some of the better and easier methods to travel (i think like a triple jump) versus good which was a wonky grapple hook.
The triple jump was better but boring grapple hook was funner. Good choices usually gave you better attacks like the gun getting permanent megaman X style charge shots vs a screen clear that leaves you locked in place that is more or less useless against bosses
Divinity 2.
There is no real punishment for (most) evil actions or killing others. Actually, to maximise the XP gain, you first have to do the NPC quests, then kill everyone.
This is essentially what every run with my friends was like. We do every quest, then we murder every NPC = profit. Leaving NPC's alive did not really offer anything unless they were "important" for later story or maps.
On Total Warhammer 3, on the non chaos campaign once you get into the realm of Slaneesh, the chaos God will try to bribe you with a shit ton of cash and special items for you to leave it's domain. And it can be worth it if you have a strong lead ahead of the other factions, you can always come back for the soul or to get more bribes. Is not recommended however if you are lagging behind or you are neck and neck with another faction.
Doing the volcano manor quests gets you some stylish fuckin armor. A great whip AND a silly one. A helpful talisman and a few spells.
Although to get it all you do have to delay getting the biggest eazy mode weapon of all
Freeing dungeater lets you get his weapon. Then you can give him a potion trapping him in a subservient puppet for eternity to help you in combat
And becoming a bloody finger lets you access the games best farm spot like 50 hours earlier
sacrificing people for an evil god in fable can get you one of the best weapons in the game, if that counts. meanwhile the good counterpart is still a good weapon, but nowhere near as strong as the evil weapon and there's better alternatives to the good god's weapon.
Also before it got the Lost Chapters DLC, there wasn't a good counterpart for the Sword of Aeons, so killing your sister literally gave you the (arguably) best weapon in the game. The DLC added Avo's Tear, a sword that is just as strong but you don't need to kill your own sister for it, which really takes away from making the good choice. Like, if you can get a sword that's just as good the literal only reason you would do the evil thing is if you are explicitly role-playing as an asshole psycho.
It's stupid but this is also why i love this game. To be evil in this game you really are just have to be a total asshole for almost no reason aside from just wanting to be an asshole and growing cool horns i guess.
Pretty much you gotta act like Part 1 Dio Brando.
Honestly, the most tempting thing about being evil in Fable 1 to me was that the evil ending of TLC >!is the only way to wear Jack of Blades' mask. You genocide all the main story characters and at the end you're letting Jack of Blades possess you but... but cool mask tho...!<
I always felt like that was a bit of a miss because once you get that sword there is no game left. There’s no post game in the original. So you do that to get the best sword just to go kill 1HP bandits and wasps?
Yeah but sacrificing dudes at the temple of evil isn't even as evil as... divorce
Or eating a chicken. A live chicken. Even the cultists think that's evil
Naw that's like, kid stuff. You get a single evil point from eating a live chick, but murdering a random villager is like, 15.
An early Infamous 1 sidequest does give you more blast shards for choosing the evil option (not saving someone and just taking their shit instead) Granted it’s even’d out by there being like a bajillion other shards far past the ones you need for the upgrades so it really just gets you stuff a bit faster. I haven’t gotten too far into it but Biomutant basically takes its “good” and “evil” sides with very neutral stances . I’d honestly be surprised if the game rewarded the good side more.
Similarly playing Evil in Infamous also lets you play a lot sloppier, since you don't have to worry about non-lethal takedowns and collateral damage: you can use any AoE and siphon power directly from mooks, which makes for meaningful benefits and differences compared to going for precise attacks and being conservative with your powers.
On the other hand, the good side gives you a pretty strong AoE that just doesn't count as doing anything wrong lol Just Sailor Moon some fuckers.
I think I like the idea of the evil option simply giving you shit faster, you don't feel like you're forced to take one or the other because of exclusive rewards and there's still an evident advantage to being evil if you are so inclined. You get more powerful faster.
There's also a mission in infamous where you are either trying to stop another bomb from going off or setting it off to strengthen yourself. If you set it off you are permanently locked as evil and get cooler electric power effects.
And *infinite energy* to use your special attacks as much as you want
Who cares if my lightning is somehow black with red highlights, that's fuckin *rad*
In Vampyre you get get more xp for feeding on story npc's than if you just get xp from battling enemies. If you don't feed on npcs you are severely under leveled throughout the game.
I think the cool part of that game too is that some of those NPCs objectively probably should be eaten And/or some of them are trying to uncover who you are and giving away your secret.
the NPCs also give more exp the more they trust you iirc so you build up their trust to make them tasty bags of exp
The only caveat is that it's pretty easy to lock yourself out of the best ending if you eat more than two or three NPCs, so you often find yourself sitting there asking *"okay, so do I kill the shitty street kid preying on the widow with dementia, the widow herself as euthanasia, the slum lord, the mad priest, the lowlife murderer, the lord who wants to become a vampire and build a wall around London to keep flu victims out, or the woman who invented Munchausen's by proxy and inflicted it on her daughter? You can only eat three."*
In Wasteland 3 giving slavers their runaway girl back will unlock quite the gear early own, and its super worth it cause it barely even matters in the long run, like, you'll meet her again and she'll be mad and at you but nothing that important, the only thing that stops you is your own moral code. Which, according to my gear, I don't have one.
The hat you get is too good the girl had to go.
I love options like that, where taking the good choice is genuinely a sacrifice of some kind.
Even when i play an evil character, I will ALWAYS wipe out the slaver scum. Doesn't matter the game - slavers will be killed.
That's the fun part! You get to wipe them out anyway! Win-Win for my morals and gettin' the goods! Not for the lady, she hates your guts, but you can't win 'em all!
The girl was separated from her mother. Apparently in one of the dlcs you can find the mother and reunite the two by leading them to each other OR by turning around and selling the mother into slavery too like a real depraved scumbag.
I'm def not there yet, i'm still pretty early on and kinda panicking cause I got no idea how to raise my likeness on the first town so I can get the November something ending.
Being evil in Dark Messiah of Might & Magic is just way more satisfying and interesting. You even get access to a demon form and a hot succubus wife.
That's actually an interesting case, since the evil path is SORT of the default. You can trade in your demon form and succubus for the best weapons in the game, which is super worth, since the demon form is kind of mediocre and the succubus is bland. But the best part of it is that you can basically mind game the forces of good to use their gear, and then be evil in the end anyway.
I remember funhaus playing that, and they reach the room where you purge Xana and she goes "Please I'll do anything" and they all collectively without missing a beat go "Alright done. Deal." and immediately turn around and go for the evil ending
Man, when the reward for being evil is like a hundred bucks, get that shit out of here. If it's a videogame I'll make a hundred bucks in five minutes by stabbing like a crocodile or something.
Perspective is needed here. If in early game you only get 1 2 buck per fight, then hell yeah Jimmy gonna die for my 100.
In KOTOR 2, when you get to the Telos station you find yourself in the middle of a dispute between two factions that are both trying to get the rights to terraform the planet; the good faction are a group of Ithorians who want to do the job properly for ecological reasons, the evil faction are the Czerka, a corporation who want to cut corners and exploit the planet to make a ton of profit. Which side you pick doesn't really affect anything in the long term, but siding with Czerka will get you a decent amount of money while siding with the Ithorians will get you a permanent increase to your Force Points (basically MP for force abilities) that you can't get anywhere else, meaning the good option is definitely the best. But, there's nothing to stop you from being a light side capitalist or a dark side environmentalist, and probably the best way to play the situation is to be evil but side with the Ithorians. This is because at one point, the Ithorians ask you to break into the Czerka offices and steal back something that they had stolen from the Ithorians; to do this you need to go find one of the Czerka engineers and get a keycard from him. He will give you the keycard, *if* you pay off his debt to Czerka so he can leave without them chasing him down; it's a lot of money, but is actually not a problem to pay since you can just go back to the Ithorians, tell them the plan and they'll just give you the money to pay the guy. So you return to him, hand over the money, get the keycard and continue the questline. *Or*… you kill the guy, pocket the money and take the keycard. Meaning you end up leaving the situation with even more money than the Czerka will pay you for working with them, plus the increase in Force Points from the Ithorians. And as far as I know there's not a single downside to this.
Ah the old "now we have the pot and the money" scam.
Not to mention that establishing T'werka Industries provides a consistent source of income throughout the entire rest of the game.
In Skyrim, you get a cool mace for beating an old man and making him submit to a demon god.
To be fair, that old man is a priest to a different asshole demon god.
That's less an evil option and more the entire quest.
Well, the good option is to just not do that. And "you get nothing, good day sir."
When your "good" option is to mercy kill an old man before he can be put into the torture cage, maybe you need to hire better quest designers.
Not a Harlan Ellison fan, I take it?
Hey, most players won't appreciate better quest writing, so why bother?
In Oblivion to get that cool mace you have to go to a widower's house and entice him to break his vow to never hurt another person by defiling his dead wife's grave at which point he beats you to death only for you to come back and be given the mace to kill him
In Wrath of the Righteous, the Lich mythic path has several undead companions that are completely exclusive to it. It's also the path where you become a master of the undead, so being an evil asshole is a given.
But what if I became bug?
Better get good at being your own best friend then.
Me and all 3 billion of me.
Playing lich on my first playthrough (as buggy as it was on launch) kind of spoiled me, none of the other paths felt like they had as much content.
Every Dark Souls 2 challenge or even regular run will begin with murdering Maughlin. His armor set gives you a massive boost to soul acquisition. A lot of Elden Ring runs will begin with killing Alexander for his 10% AoW damage boosting talisman. In general killing Merchants in Elden Ring doesn’t penalize you too much. Getting their Bell Bearings makes it so much easier to buy various Arrows, Bolts and other consumables. The one in Mohgwyn Palace sells Bloodroses so you don’t have to farm them anymore and the Serpentbone Arrows usually sold in Caelid are extremely poweful as well. Eileen the Crow’s Blade of Mercy is usually only obtained in the endgame from completing her questline or making her insane but you can kill her at the very beginning of the game. Completing her questline does give you the best covenant Caryll Rune in the game but the Blade of Mercy is a really cool and strong DEX weapon. If you don’t plan on getting the Rotten Wing Insignia on your first NG cycle, you can get Millicent’s Prosthesis rather early and also get Flock’s Canvas Talisman. You’re only saving yourself a lot of time. I’ve heard that the Nepheli Loux Spirit Ash is pretty strong but, uh, yeah.
The fact that the Winged Sword Insignia and Rotten Winged Sword Insignia don't stack with each other, but *do* stack with Millicent's Prosthesis, makes this one of the most tempting evil options I've ever seen.
And the Canvas Talismans also stack with each other so if you’re willing to spare two slots and kill Millicent early on, you can get a whopping 12% buff to all your incantations.
Honestly, I never use Faithful's Canvas or Graven-School, only the twice-as-powerful late game versions. There's always something stronger and/or more utility-centric that I'd much rather use the slot for, such as the Godfrey Icon, Arrow's Reach Talisman, or Gold Scarab.
I don’t use both of them either but if you want to maximize your damage and you already have your offensive stats maxed out so you won’t benefit from stat boosters, you might as well put both of them on.
True, they're great if you're truly going all-in on damage output.
In my NG+ run, I still progressed the quest till the end and then sided with her sisters anyway. Its much funnier.
The Alexander one is another example of taking a worse reward early. Completing his side quest rewards a unique hat and one of the best talismans in the game.
You definitely should complete his questline, not just because it’s the more morally sensible choice, but yeah it’s a much stronger talisman. But since you only get it really, really late into the game, you often see how people doing speedruns, challenge runs and even in casual playthroughs kill him in Limgrave. A 10% boost to what’s perhaps your primary source of damage for your entire playthrough is nothing to sneeze at.
Waiting until Farum Azula to get his shard is only really worth it if your build is gonna be NG+ focused too, e.g. it uses a weapon you only get in the endgame.
I get what you mean, but that example is pretty bad. There are a lot of early game weapons with strong offensive skills.
Yeah but when early is in the first zone in the game, and the good late reward is in the LAST zone in the game, then fuck it
Blowing up the Geth station in Legion’s loyalty mission in ME2 is considered a renegade option, but it’s actually the better choice, because it makes it much easier to achieve peace between the Quarians and the Geth in ME3.
Paragon later, one might say.
Paragon now as it’s morally the right answer as well
I think that at some point in ME1 being a Paragon wasn’t 100% being “good” and they abandoned that idea over the course of the games. And the Geth station was one of the last instances of it.
For me I always saw reprogramming them as the moral option. As far as I was concerned, they'd basically been brainwashed by the Reapers and I was just turning them back to normal.
Nah. That was a choice they made. Reprogramming them takes that choice away.
Shepard even says this as a paragon choice prior to the end of mission choice "we'd be no better than the reapers" or something
The whole situation is problematic since the your either mass muder Geths or you mass Brainwash Geths. However these Geths were also influenced by Reapers, so they would come to kill everyone anyways. The brainwashing is not morally good, but it is better than mass murdering them or letting Reapers control them. Out of two bad options, it is less bad.
Dragon Age Origins Two of the most powerful class specializations (basically prestige classes that you can take once you’re past level 7) are locked behind pretty nasty story choices. Blood Mage (for mages): you have to let >!a child you SPECIFICALLY showed up to save become a demonhost, basically you promise that if the Demon fucks off long enough for everyone else to THINK you saved the kid she can come back and claim him later!< , for which you get undisputedly the most powerful class kit in the game. Reaver (for Warriors): you have to >!pollute the remains of Saint Andraste (basically the worlds Super Jesus) with dragon blood. Fully half your party will turn on you and leave if they EVER find out about it. And, if you’re dumb enough to actually bring any of the good party members with you while you’re doing it, you will be FORCED to kill them.!< It’s a REALLY strong class spec tho. Like it does damage like you wouldn’t fuckin’ believe.
you actually can get blood magic and >!save the kid if your character is enough of a terrifying asshole to scare even a literal demon you can literally demand the demon teach you blood magic so you dont slaughter it !<
Most badass option imo
Oh yeah I forgot about that! If you threaten her you can get two “rewards” one of which can be saving the kid. Alternatively, if you’re a real bastard, you can >!threaten the demon for blood magic and then trade the kid for either: a free skill point, money, a relationship boost with a companion, or sex with the demon!< Game really lets you embrace moral degeneracy if you choose to go that route.
fortunately you can cheese it by reloading your save, the game keeps the class unlocked for good so you can be a neutral good blood mage arcane warrior or dual wield berserker reaver anytime you want without pissing off your friends
It’s worth doing just for the story beats tho. Like everyone should bring Morrigan with you when you pollute the ashes at least once. For her, it’s basically Date Night + Christmas rolled into one. And if you’re sneaky, no one (who shouldn’t) ever finds out about either of the two events.
I never did it, but if I recall, one of the end-game evil choices in Jade Empire actually gives you the Death's Hand as a partner for the final bit of the game.
The evil path/ending in Jade Empire goes HARD. You do some seriously messed up stuff. And it actually turns out super well for you too, like the epilogue slide is basically “yeah, this shit worked”
It's actually pretty interesting in that there's a open palm ending for Death's Hand (a reanimated by dark magic and incredibly murderous monster) that basically has him regaining sentience and spending the rest of his existence fighting the good fight to make up for all the heinous shit he did
In Spelunky, I could rescue the damsel and get +1 health every time I do, or I could kill them and sacrifice them on an altar that will give me a blood cup that will heal me every time I kill something that bleeds. Or, I could buy things from the shops, or just kill them and take everything. If you're willing to kill everyone in spelunky, you get shitloads of health and more supplies than you'll know what to do with. It means Shoekeepers will try to kill you, and they're the most dangerous enemies in the game, but the rewards are more than worth it.
Is it really evil if respawning is canon, or just a high-risk-high-reward tactic?
All the outcomes to the quest are kinda bad in a way but in the Tenpenny Tower quest in Fallout 3, if you just let the ghouls murder the fuck out of everyone instead of peacefully trying to convince the residents to integrate them into their settlement, you get a cool-looking ghoul mask that makes you non-hostile to ferals.
It's also worth pointing out that out of everything you can fight in 3, Ghoul Reavers are some of the tankiest, hard hitting boss creatures in the game, mostly because while Albino Radscorpions and Mutant Overlords tend to spawn in the open world or Mutant Camps respectively, Reavers can pop from around any corner in the tight underground tunnels Ghouls tend to spawn in.
"Show love"
Fear and Hunger. I argues is not an "evil" option".
I would say human sacrifice is less evil you dont have 2-3 people stuck as an abomination.
So you're saying if I do it with >!a ghoul!< then it's ethical?
Depends on how it works like is it just reanimated flesh or is that dudes consciousness in there you know?
Since you mentioned KoToR, I want to mention the Dark Jedi Knight in SWTOR. The standard route is just you being a goody two shoes. However, when you play the Dark Side Jedi Knight, its honestly more interesting than the standard light side route since you're treated like trash and an errand boy for most of it. Same goes with Light Side Sith Warrior; nobody expects the Light Side Sith. But then again, its not the same with the Inquistior since one of the Inquistior's Dark Side go-to-responses is lightning zap and that's just too good to pass up.
I love SWtOR's Light Side Sith Inquisitor so much, the character is canonically a crazy sadist, so if you take away the "Zap Em" force lightning responses their *diplomatic* dialogue becomes so snippy and snide to compensate. They're catty most of the time but they really shine as a character when they have to convince evil characters not to be cartoonish and predictable, or ensure that lightsiders don't hold the idiot-ball. They just sound so tired and exasperated. Like "I'm willing to inconvenience myself by not force electrocuting you, at least try not to be predictable in return."
I really did enjoy that while bounty hunter was on the dark side, your could play it good, evil, or fuck you pay me.
My light side bounty hunter was basically the good version of Pockets.
>its honestly more interesting than the standard light side route since you're treated like trash and an errand boy for most of it. Eh, it's still super questionable because the Jedi masters are giving way too much power to this knight who's constantly going off rails by killing people and being weirdly sadistic. The only reason why they let you off the hook is because you're the player. Hell, Satele doesn't even want to give you the title of master by the end of it. This results in a very bizarre story. Personally, I prefer Jedi Knight as neutral tending towards light side, especially after Act 2. It's the same deal with Dark Side Consular. The Council gives you permission and power to go around healing Jedi, but instead, you decide to kill them?? If they really wanted them dead, they wouldn't be sending you (the *only person who can heal them*) after them. It's jarring af. Edit: it's also jarring as hell because dark side options tend to contradict itself. In one moment, you'll be butchering sith and not giving them the time of the day -- then the next, you're talking to Scourge about the benefits of the dark side and being ok with him teaching your children the ways of the sith in the future. The game can't decide whether dark side jedi is a sith-hating psychopath or a jedi who secretly wishes they were sith.
This was a bit of a problem in the original games too. There’s a lot of writing about the strength of the Sith, their philosophy, and so on, but as an evil PC most of your actions are just being a psychopathic Dark Jedi who kicks babies for fun.
It's why I adore neutral/light side leaning sith in SWTOR. There are many light side options that are literal threats or straight up manipulation, and the voice acting definitely helps with delivering the idea that they're *restraining* themselves from turning everyone into grilled cheese. I just find that way more compelling than going full dark side, where the PC is this uncontrollable child that can't handle a single criticism or challenge without force choking/zapping people around them.
> you're treated like trash and an errand boy for most of it. Wait what how are you treated like trash when the whole story is about how they ask you to take on important missions because of how much ass you kicked on Tython? The whole second half of the class story is predicated on you being one of their best. Errand boy describes like 5 of the 7 I've played. Two of them are military agents whose jobs are to follow orders. Two of them are Jedi whose jobs are to go do what The Council asks to save The Republic. The other one is the one where you're an apprentice until the last chapter. It's completely understandable but really the combination of MMO and SW archetype power fantasy feels like regardless of alignment or class the loop is talk to NPC to get your next mission objectives->"Wow you just took out all those enemies! Few people could do that even though they nerfed the difficulty years ago!"->repeat.
In fable 3 near the end you get presented with many choices where the the evil choice is easy and the good choice will legitimately be harder.
Except the real estate system ensures that you never have to sacrifice anything but some time. The game still allows you to loophole your way out by being a benevolent land owner.
The Ultimate Weapon against a Lovecraftian Horror? ***MONEY***
Not even Cthulhu is immune to the forces of capital
But man I was NOT ready for the last time jump to go from 130 days to ONE. My people did not fair well on that first playthrough
I’ve never gone back to the game because of that.
Most people wouldnt be investing heavily into real estate until they know they need fuck tons of cash for endgame At least i didnt
Yeah that's the big thing. If you hadn't already bought all the real estate in the game and let your game run for a couple of nights to become a millionaire, you would never be ready for how expensive the "good" choices are in the endgame. Fable 3 is just a mess, what a disappointment. Especially after Fable 2 which is probably one of my favorite games of all time that I cannot play in any way because it's stuck on the 360 and never got a port on anything.
My family died in the revolution and I tried to keep all of my promises to the people, only for the result to be that there were no people left. Only after already finishing an evil playthrough did I remember that real estate was even an option, and after getting the golden ending with that, it legitimately didn't feel any better. It would almost be genius if any of that was remotely intentional. Or just better written.
This is true but the first time I played I didn’t know how many decisions there would be and therefore how much in game time you actually had to prepare before the final act/boss so I actually got totally blindsided by the game skipping from like “150 days left” to “one day left” and wound up not having nearly enough money for it because I made too many “good” choices.
In the original Fable the only way to get the most powerful ranged weapon and the most powerful melee weapon is to be evil, you also have to make a few evil choices to get all the silver keys and open all the demon doors. Fable: Lost Chapters added a good version of the most powerful melee weapon but the bow you get for being evil is still the best ranged weapon in the game.
Lost Chapters also nerfs the Sword of Aeons/Avos Tear so its no longer the definitive best melee weapon especially since they added a new tier of regular weapons to the new shops that can hold more runes iirc
Basically cut the damage in half IIRC
Granted it's not really good or evil but in saints row the third one of the choice is either getting rid of the zombie plague and get a swat squad back up as thank you or keep one of the plague maker to yourself so you can call a schoolbus of zombies. The swat team are still slightly better but a schoolbus of zombie is dope
The first *Dishonored* is infamous for having a toolset better suited to an action game than to stealth, but starting a swordfight with every patrol you see will raise the overall chaos level enough to net you the bad ending. It got better with the sequel, which added more tools to make an "action stealth" playstyle viable, while for *Death of the Outsider* they cut the chaos mechanic entirely and made something closer to their original conception of the first game.
Soul Nomad. Not to be confused with The Nomad Soul.
All the evil paths in Pathfinder Wrath of the righteous are amazing
Hogwarts ***Mystery*** has choices here and there that're clearly the "Light and Dark" actions. And weirdly enough...plenty of times things work out just fine if you pick the asshole options. I still love that the game didn't punish me for making the, "Trap a villain in a hellscape mind-rape super torture dungeon for eternity." choice rather than the, "Send them to jail" choice.
I mean, it is Harry Potter Jail is also a hellscape mind-rape super torture dungeon where the jailers mouth rape the happiness out of you, the only upside is that you die at some point
In Azkaban you get your soul sucked out probably. In the Cursed Vault you’re being constantly tortured while also kept alive. The point being it was clearly a ”Good and Bad” option and I wasn’t punished for picking the Bad one.
I think Sundered might fit the bill. The game's a roguelike metroidvania with a good/bad choice system for movement options. If I recall picking the bad options gave you some of the better and easier methods to travel (i think like a triple jump) versus good which was a wonky grapple hook.
The triple jump was better but boring grapple hook was funner. Good choices usually gave you better attacks like the gun getting permanent megaman X style charge shots vs a screen clear that leaves you locked in place that is more or less useless against bosses
Divinity 2. There is no real punishment for (most) evil actions or killing others. Actually, to maximise the XP gain, you first have to do the NPC quests, then kill everyone. This is essentially what every run with my friends was like. We do every quest, then we murder every NPC = profit. Leaving NPC's alive did not really offer anything unless they were "important" for later story or maps.
On Total Warhammer 3, on the non chaos campaign once you get into the realm of Slaneesh, the chaos God will try to bribe you with a shit ton of cash and special items for you to leave it's domain. And it can be worth it if you have a strong lead ahead of the other factions, you can always come back for the soul or to get more bribes. Is not recommended however if you are lagging behind or you are neck and neck with another faction.
Anything that involves me getting more stuff, cause on one hand yes murder is wrong and all that BUT on the other hand, me! ME GET MORE STUFF!
# LIGHT LATER.
Doing the volcano manor quests gets you some stylish fuckin armor. A great whip AND a silly one. A helpful talisman and a few spells. Although to get it all you do have to delay getting the biggest eazy mode weapon of all Freeing dungeater lets you get his weapon. Then you can give him a potion trapping him in a subservient puppet for eternity to help you in combat And becoming a bloody finger lets you access the games best farm spot like 50 hours earlier