It’s funny how decision based games can really bring out the true colors in me. For instance, take my recent jaunt into Ferelden with Dragon Age: Origins. I decided that I was just going to play how I enjoy games the most, and that is being a heartless bastard. I have let a town burn to the ground thanks to the darkspawn. I fed the corpse of Cailan to the wolves without batting an eye. I let a girl get possessed by a demon. I even killed a little boy after bludgeoning his mother in the head with my sword. The list goes on. And you know what? I am totally fine with my heartless decisions, and that is why Keri now thinks I am a horrible person.
I don’t know why I enjoy being so brutal. My wife couldn’t even sit and watch me play the evil storyline in inFamous because I had no remorse for the evil things I was doing. In fact, I’d totally send Princess Peach a letter telling her to deal with her captivity if there were an option to go have a beer with Bowser and complain about how terrible of a cook she is. She really should stop getting herself kidnapped.
When it comes to video games, yes, I am a horrible person. Maybe it is because playing in such a ruthless manner produces a nice separation of my video game life from my “normal” life. Maybe it is because I can determine the fate of some character, and I choose to let that character die. The results of that choice provides the disconnection from reality that I need to get into some video games. Whatever the reasoning is, if you are a character in my game and I get to decide your fate…..Well, I am gonna go all George R. R. Martin on you.
I’ve been playing video games for quite some time. While I might be an evil heartless prick in the virtual world, I like to believe I am far from it in reality. Please don’t send help to my door. Don’t tell me I need a therapist to work out some deeply rooted personal issues. This is just how I enjoy playing games. I’m nice to my fellow humans for the bulk of the day. Let me murder a virtual town in peace. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a king to go kill. After all, I am Vlad the Heartless.
Abhishek Prusty says
I play as a good samaritan, i will play as i always support good as i do in real world, sometimes its hard , but it is awesome. But i do go evil on second playthrough if i do. So far i regret being good in DA II ! Why ? There are two reason, first a fully equip rogue left you mid way in hard mission and second accidentally getting the Wrong conclusion. fun though !
Andrew Marshall says
I usually play a decent character first, then a “bad” one just see how bad things can get. heh