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[Vattic]

I don't think evil fighting evil makes either side necessarily less evil (Dungeon Keeper comes to mind). A war between demons would be plenty evil. Ultimately it depends how it's framed storywise. Wouldn't fit your definition of a bad guy game admittedly, but Solium Infernum has you fighting other demons for the throne of Hell.

Here's the question: Is the character know what are they doing, how bad someone they are fighting and if they know about how bad it is?
Things like this invariably fail when the character KNOWS who he's fighting is a bad(der) guy. But when the character didn't know that they are fighting for the lesser evil, and everyone he fight is like that, it's not about who is he fighting anymore; It's more how he generally do things.

This is the quote are you looking for?

I was more so commenting on you and Broseph Stalin's conversation and Broseph Stalin's rule about evil vs. evil in OP.

You don't really do anything very evil in Dungeon Keeper, you just have evil set dressings.

You have gambling in the sequel. More seriously I'd say you were doing something pretty evil in the campaign mode. Sure you could call the story a set dressing, but it so often is in games.

[Niveras]

I was going to point out that all the territories you conquer in the DK games end up being smoldering ruins after you're done with them. Presumably that involved a lot of pillage and murder at the minimum. But then, these things are more narrative than gameplay. It's not the player themselves that is ordering the villages to be burned, rather just the player's avatar outside of gameplay. It's just a result that's forced on the setting. So I can understand it not being "play as evil" so much as "evil as set dressing."

[askovdk]

Based on the EuroGamer review
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2015-07-17-deception-4-the-nightmare-princess-review
I picked up Deception 4 for my VITA.
I’m enjoying it a lot, but it is definitely the most evil game I have.

You are attacked by ‘heroes’, so it’s kind of fair to fight back, - but there is no need for doing it with combos that earn points for sadism and humiliation, - except for the !Fun!. The design choice that you as the player have to activate each trap adds to the evil, as you have the choice for stopping a combo on an already KOed hero, - but don’t.
It’s so evil, yet feels so good.
(I’m not through the story, so it might turn out that a plot twists eventually makes you a good girl who doesn’t release the prime devil on the world, - but I hope not.)

A good 2 minutes (Japanese) video on what the action is about (not showing how to place traps, - or how to rip of the clothes of your victims).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4wBFMt64Uw
(Customer warning: it is a ‘lazy port’ as it doesn’t use any of the touch functionality of the VITA, and PS4 owners says that the graphics are not next generation.)

[TempAcc]

Wait, deception still exists as a series? I remember having deception 2 and watching a lets play for the first one, but never realized they made a fourth one. I'll check it out.

Every deception game pretty much puts you as the evil guygirl (you only play a male character in the first game) one way or another, altough you can always do some shenaningas and come out as not so evil, since every game has multiple endings.

EDIT: it seems it became more "wacky" and less brutal in nature. The previous games had you crushing and burning people alive, grinding them on weird meat grinder-ish machines, stealing their souls and trading it for magic power or gold, killing your siblings, etc.

[Vattic]

I was going to point out that all the territories you conquer in the DK games end up being smoldering ruins after you're done with them. Presumably that involved a lot of pillage and murder at the minimum. But then, these things are more narrative than gameplay. It's not the player themselves that is ordering the villages to be burned, rather just the player's avatar outside of gameplay. It's just a result that's forced on the setting. So I can understand it not being "play as evil" so much as "evil as set dressing."

I can certainly see your point. I guess it comes back to whether good or evil can exist without choice. The main reason I brought up Dungeon Keeper was because it often pits you against other narratively evil foes, as well as good, and I was arguing that evil fighting evil doesn't necessarily lessen the evil of either side.

Using choice as the standard I'd wager most games fall short and would be morally neutral without the plot. Mechanically you are often just killing hordes of enemies. Even when the narrative has you playing as the good guy vs. evil you often can't choose not to be the hero beyond turning the game off.

Oh and in Dungeon Keeper you can capture and torture your enemies which most would consider evil, even if your enemies are bad. You can also sacrifice creatures in the temple in return for different boons.

[Bohandas]

I was going to point out that all the territories you conquer in the DK games end up being smoldering ruins after you're done with them. Presumably that involved a lot of pillage and murder at the minimum. But then, these things are more narrative than gameplay. It's not the player themselves that is ordering the villages to be burned, rather just the player's avatar outside of gameplay. It's just a result that's forced on the setting. So I can understand it not being "play as evil" so much as "evil as set dressing."

I can certainly see your point. I guess it comes back to whether good or evil can exist without choice. The main reason I brought up Dungeon Keeper was because it often pits you against other narratively evil foes, as well as good, and I was arguing that evil fighting evil doesn't necessarily lessen the evil of either side.

Well Dungeon Keeper (or at least Dungeon Keeper 2) also has the "heroes" that you sometimes go up against and who are basically just reskins of your regular enemies

[Sergius]

I don't know if God of War qualifies, I know you are supposed to be an anti-hero and the gods evil or whatever but it seems like you're just on a murdering spree of gods and they're not being very cooperative. But I haven't actually played those except for the first couple of levels of one of 'em.

[Shadowlord]

I can certainly see your point. I guess it comes back to whether good or evil can exist without choice. The main reason I brought up Dungeon Keeper was because it often pits you against other narratively evil foes, as well as good, and I was arguing that evil fighting evil doesn't necessarily lessen the evil of either side.

There's always choice, even if the game you're playing doesn't present one. I chose to quit playing Dishonored relatively early, because I couldn't see any effective way to not kill everyone that was hostile to me, or more importantly, to not cause massive amounts of deaths due to the plague as a result of killing all those people. I'm not too troubled about killing people who attack me in a video game, especially after I've been framed for something, but in Dishonored doing so just screws over everyone else, all the citizens, and you're doing it all just to potentially rescue a couple people, if they're even still alive when you get there. Why is that worth it?

By comparison, in Skyrim, when the guards in Markarth decided to frame me and came to get me (and killed Lydia in the ambush outside the temple by hitting her with a spell aimed at me while she was kneeling), I didn't even consider surrender. I just killed them until I started to wonder if they were respawning, somehow, and then I left and killed all the Markarth guards I met on my way out of the province for good measure.

On the other hand, at the end of VtM:B, someone tried to attack me who couldn't really do me any real harm, and I just walked past them, ignoring them completely. If they can't hurt me, and aren't going to hurt anyone else I care about, I have no reason to retaliate.

[Bohandas]

What about games where the protagonist was the villain of a previous game (ie. Warioland, Donkey Kong Country, etc.)?

[LordBucket]

What about games where the protagonist was the villain of a previous game (ie. Warioland, Donkey Kong Country, etc.)?

Wizardry 4 and Malcolm's Revenge both come to mind. Wizardry 4 definitely meets the stated requisites in the OP. You are absolutely a villain and your opponents are explicitly the good guys. Malcolm's Revenge kind of does, but it's debatable. You're a bad guy, everyone thinks you're a bad guy, your opponents are the heroes from the previous games, you get points for stabbing innocent bystanders and wildlife, heckling performers and generally ruining everyone's day, but the end sort of kills it even if you choose the "I'm definitely a villain" option.

[Cthulhu]

Evil is dependent on choice but that doesn't mean you should let them live.  Gnostic space warriors shed one tear for their enemies, just the victims of a mad space god's space whims, then they cut their heads off with a laser sword.


Quitting the game is my go-to assertion of free will when a game denies it otherwise.  For example, when Spec Ops The Line presented me with two men and asked me to choose who dies, I tried to shoot both.  The game didn't let me, so I never played it again.

[Shadowlord]

Wizardry 4

Reading the wikipedia page about it, it sounds brutal. (The difficulty, that is!)

[Cheeetar]

Quitting the game is my go-to assertion of free will when a game denies it otherwise.  For example, when Spec Ops The Line presented me with two men and asked me to choose who dies, I tried to shoot both.  The game didn't let me, so I never played it again.

Without getting into spoilers- If I'm thinking of the same moment, you can choose to kill both of them, but there's a moment between killing the first and making the decision to kill the second.

Nope. I was thinking of a moment much later in the game I think.

[Bohandas]

In Postal 2 you poach endangered animals, piss on a man's grave, and blow up a town with an atomic bomb

[Vattic]

There's always choice, even if the game you're playing doesn't present one. I chose to quit playing Dishonored relatively early, because I couldn't see any effective way to not kill everyone that was hostile to me, or more importantly, to not cause massive amounts of deaths due to the plague as a result of killing all those people. I'm not too troubled about killing people who attack me in a video game, especially after I've been framed for something, but in Dishonored doing so just screws over everyone else, all the citizens, and you're doing it all just to potentially rescue a couple people, if they're even still alive when you get there. Why is that worth it?

I did mention turning the game off frequently being the only alternative.

Didn't know killing everyone had that effect in Dishonored, but I played it late and avoided all talk in case of spoilers. Killed only a handful of people early on before realising the stealth was more enjoyable. Felt the alternatives to outright killing your main targets left me more uncomfortable than killing them, but still did that for the challenge.