a friend and i were catching up the other day—he's been spending a lot of his free time as of late playing divinity: original sin, and i baldur’s gate. we were discussing the similarities and differences between the two and what we liked and didn’t like. i mentioned this in january’s monthly media, but i also told him about how i didn’t think i had it in me to kill the entire druid’s grove just to recruit minthara, especially after finding out the goblins immediately start trading tiefling horns like pokemon cards.¹

“well it’s just so unsatisfying to do an evil/villain run anyway”, my friend said. i realized this was something i had unconsciously thought about the few rpgs i’ve played that allowed you to be a bad guy. why haven’t i ever actively sought out doing evil runs? i mean, other than the fact that i wince at the thought of picking the mean dialogue option in rpgs whether it affects the game or not.

to me, evil runs usually feel like a supplement to the main story. it’s like the creators intend for you to do a good (or at least neutral) playthrough first and if you like the game enough to stick around for another run, you can do an evil one. this is because evil runs are rarely ever as fleshed out as their good counterparts. the writing can sometimes come off as an afterthought or an alternative and not something more intentional like what would happen in a good run. sometimes there isn’t even a story or motivation for your character to be this way so you just end up being a murderhobo.

evil runs being supplementary to the main story also come from the fact that a lot of npcs will typically disappear from the world, either because you kill them or because they disagree with your actions/are terrified of you. if you tried to do an evil run for most rpgs as your first playthrough, you’d end up missing out on a bunch of side quests and details that are pretty intrinsic to the narrative.

i think most of the problems i have regarding evil runs essentially boil down to it being almost the same as the good run, the only difference being that pretty much everyone hates you now.

i know the main reason evil runs aren’t usually very fleshed out is because of the fact that it would be incredibly resource intensive to write and produce an entirely separate story for one game. it would be expensive, and i’m not sure many game developers would be willing to put in the money, especially when you consider the fact that evil runs are already pretty uncommon for the average player to do.

it won’t stop me from wishing evil runs had an entirely new and different narrative though. i think it’d be a lot more interesting if evil runs were quite literally like playing from the villain’s point of view. i also think it’d be pretty cool to introduce evil npcs equal to all the good npcs that you lose from pursuing an evil route—although i can imagine that in some circumstances the protagonist being all alone for an evil run would make sense.

with that being said, i know there are a handful of rpgs with great evil runs that make sense for their worlds, but the truth is that a vast majority of evil runs feel unrewarding and lackluster. i think having a morality system in your game should open a lot of room for creativity and variety in the world and how one interacts with the overarching story. i’ll throw a bone out to more neutral runs too, wishing they had their own unique twist since games usually only reward you best when you pick either side of an extreme. ah, well. maybe one day a game with a perfect morality system will come along.

until next time!

1. it’s also the fact that like half of the companions from act 1 actively hate you for doing so, which is understandable, but i’d die having to see gale or karlach be upset with me!↩