Bastard of the Old Republic Comments by John Walker

Haha, great article man! Proper good times in KOTOR. I usually end up like that when I play choice-based RPGs, or Bioware games in general. I try to make the decisions as close to how I would naturally react, and I usually end up more good than bad, but surprisingly close to neutral. This means that some of the choices I made were naturally evil....:S

Heh, I so feel with the author. I too always play the best possible guy. Somehow I try to play such games on 2nd run as evil, but somehow I never can. *__* I just dont think that ending up as evil galaxy ruler, all alone in your throne room is a satisfying story after all.

Ahhh, that was a funny article! Reminds me of the KotoR days. I never did manage to go DS on the 1st game, but I did on the 2nd, it was kind of hilarious after a bit how you ended up killing EVERYONE. Talking to me? Yeah, you die, standing within my field of vision? Yup, you die too!

Great article, even better game. Love it!

KOTOR is the only game I've ever run through as a fully committed evil character. I turned Bastila to the dark side, slaughtered my crew, the whole nine yards.

The only good thing I did was I helped out some Jawas. I just couldn't stick it to those little fellas.

Good times. Being evil got you Force Choke. That made the boss fights so easy. Good times.

Make no doubt my guy was an ass of the highest order. I had to draw the line at the super evil stuff though. Good times.

This article is awesome and also quite coincidental. Some very funny shit.

Recently I've been trying the very same thing in Fable 2. I had been too nice for too long and now it's time to be a complete and utter shite.

I have to admit, though, I felt like a right bastard when I orphaned a child during a botched robbery for the first time. I broked into a house at the dead of night and was shot in the back when looting some crap out the upstairs cupboard. I butchered the husband and wife, looted their corpses then fled. As I was running out I saw their kid sitting at the dining room table waiting for his mom and dad. What have I done??

Is anyone else finding the whole evil thing harder than expected?

I remember being so committed to rescuing Bastila (hawt) from the dark side. I refused to kill her

Great article!!
I still have fond memories of roaming around the refugee camps in Deux Ex, slaughtering young and old.

why is it always good and evil.... so extreme!
why cant we have neutral rpg characters.

what if we want to just put up with everything and not give our money away for some niceness or kick everyone in the crotch for evil points...

I forced myself to play through KotOR evil...and it was just the worst. I had no joy and just felt creepy. And when it was over, I felt empty and hollow. I felt so bad, that I was not able to play KotOR 2 evil at all. I wonder if I could play Mass Effect like a jerk? I don't know. Couldn't play Jade Empire closed fist either.

I'll admit I haven't played KOTOR (allergic to Star Wars nowadays) but am I right in thinking this is pretty polarised? You can't be somewhere between good and evil, either one or the other, no grey shades, just black and white? That seems daft. I played some of Jade Empire until I got sick of not being able to do what I wanted (concentrate on armed combat completely and ignore unarmed), and in that instance every moral choice seemed to reward good actions with actual material benefits, and naughty actions merely with the experience of being evil as if that were its own reward. Thus, given that I see no real advantage to being nasty for the sake of it, I was nice, and profited. Not the only game to do so either.

I think this article highlights quite well, even though unintentionally, a big problem with the Bioware approach to good and evil. All the quests (and pretty much all the dialogues) are made with the good option in mind, and then 'bad' options are added to counter them. But they are completely retarded and also ridiculously evil, with no real point. It's evil for evil's sake, not evil for a benefit, or a choice where you do what you think is best, but others disagree. No, it's always ridiculous, cartoon evil. Press A to save princess, press B to kill princess. Press A to say "Hello, kind sir", press B to say "Yo, dog face."

That's why most people play the good side, not because they have good hearts, but because the evil side makes no sense whatsoever.

Great article. I usually end up being good too. Try to be bad, but it just makes me feel rubbish. Went a bit evil in Fable 2 for a bit, but the guilt got to me and I soon got my halo back.

KOTOR was different, though. I loved the game so much I played it through three times - first good, second evil, then a third time doing whatever I fancied. Don't remember it all that well now, but I do remember feeling more guilty than I had ever done in a video game when I totally stitched up that wookie, who was an awesome character. Can't remember exactly what I did - maybe I've blanked it out of my mind because I can't bear the guilt - but I remember feeling absolutely terrible about it.

I've always ended up taking the good path in games like this simply because I've always worried that I'll miss out on a side plot or extra equipment, or not level up as quickly. Perhaps if I felt I would genuinely have a completely different experience (i.e. end up playing an almost totally different game) if I played evil then I would go for it, but who knows, maybe my moral compass would take over and I'd still be good.

Getting this now, want to play it again :-)

The Dark Side Zaalbar/Mission ending is just brilliant. My favourite moment in the game.

Great article, very funny, and kinda sad, too. More of this please.

"I wonder if I could play Mass Effect like a jerk?"

It's very easy in Mass Effect because it's so goddamn funny. Most of the time it's a choice between being nice, and having Shepard make a sarky comment before punching someone in the face.

You can play KotOR as a neutral. And the Light/Dark meter is on a sliding scale, and you start in the middle.

The thing is, as in life, the neutral options are by far the least interesting. Say you rescue someone (a common enemy is Simon's only route to this), they might thank you. You could respond by telling them now you'll kill them unless they fork over their cash. Or you can tell them that's fine, see you later. Or you might be able to give them a bunch of Credits to get them out of the trouble they're in. The neutral choice is there, but not as glamorous.

Often, they're the option to opt out of the interaction, as well. You could just not get the rakghoul serum. You could give it to neither the doctor, nor Davik. That's a neutral choice. The argument could maybe be that Bioware should make their neutral choices more interesting. But that's a fairly hefty challenge.

The evil choices so far haven't been purely pantomime responses to the good. They've mostly been narcissistic and advantageous to Simon. Killing Dia is perhaps the most outrageous thing available on Taris, but it's done to score the bounty. To get more rich. When I first played KotOR, and was my usual fluffy self, I was also desperately poor, and unable to buy all the equipment I wanted. Being a dick, I'm accumulating credits at a remarkable rate, and can have anything I fancy. Apart from the sleeping at night.

I called my character Darth Revan...

fantastic article! I loved this game to bits, played through it three times and every time I tried to be evil I just couldn't do it!

Might have to play through again and deliberately be evil too. Looking forward to the next part

@PearofAnguish - I started my second Mass Effect playthrough a few weeks back and I'm doing that as an evil person, it's great!

I was just thinking, I'd probably find it a lot easier to be evil if I didn't have to do it via lengthy conversations - If I could just randomly attack the characters I'm supposed to be interacting with before talking AND THEN have them beg me for mercy and the story progressed from there it would be much more fun. But having to start a conversation and then find a way to be a prick isn't the way of true evil. Can anyone imagine Darth Vader randomly chatting to someone in a bar and then start acting like a dick? No of course not, he would have just force choked the guy as soon as he walked into the room and gone on from there. That's what I want to be able to do in these games.

I usually play an angel in RPGs too, I normally can't bring myself to being nasty. Not for KOTOR or KOTOR 2 though, the dark side powers are so much cooler than light side, I resolved to be evil from the outset. Great fun.

Hmmm, time for a reinstall of these, methinks.

Thanks for the reply, John. To be honest, it was too long ago for me to be able to discuss it properly. I don't remember Dia at all, and even the cure plot is only a distant memory. I think I am also seriously mixing stuff from KOTOR and KOTOR II in my head. Al I can say is that, from what I remember and what I read in your article, it feels like a lot of the choices are build like that. I'm also quite surprised to see that evil gets more rewards. Are you sure you're not simply playing better? I was always under the impression that the rewards were balanced between the two.

And I don't think that neutral choices represent a solution. What you quote there as a neutral choice is basically the choice of not doing the quest. I think the idea is that the situations should be more interesting and complex, so that you can have a variety of interesting choices.

Oh, and I think KOTOR II is more interesting for an evil character, as you can slowly influence the others into also becoming evil. But I still played the good side.

another problem with being "evil" in most RPGS is that it often cuts out large chunks of gameplay. eg:
NPC: "hey, do my 5 hour sidequest!"
good: "anything i can do to help, citizen!"
neutral: "sure, but it'll cost you"
bad: "time to die!"

also the whole idea of the sliding karma/darkside scale is ridiculous. if you murder an innocent in cold blood, you shouldn't be able to cancel that out by doing 4 sidequests for free, or giving many tramps water, etc.

KOTOR, Mass Effect, Fallout 3 - each time I try to tread the path of evil I've rerolled by level 3. Just can't do it.

Marilena has the right of it. There's no option to be evil without being extremely overt and a jerk. I always wanted to play the passive-aggressive evil character, with options like [Lie] Yes, I will help you. Then go and do the opposite.

I managed to play the game through to the evil ending, but for the most part just went with neutral options in conversation, but chose actions that earned DS points.

I can't imagine you found it that hard to be evil.
You have already got sexist down pat.
I dare say, if you had been a teenager during the current "Emo" trend your self loathing would have been fatal.