Edit: holy shit I turn my head around for one second and I got 40 replies? THANK YOU ALL :D <3
I just rewatched Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight trilogy and following Bane’s and Miranda’s story made me realize that I’m a bit saturated in regards to playing as the hero, the protagonist, the “good guy” in PC games. While I love saving the world as much as the next person, I’d love to play as some perhaps self-righteous villain, or antagonist, or simply somebody portrayed in a way that’s meant to make the player sympathize with questionable morality or, at the very least, be conflicted about why you suddenly find yourself rooting for them.
I’m mostly looking for story driven open world single player games, but any recommendations are welcome. :)
Hmmm a day later and no one mentioned braid.
The GTA series might be a good example. All of the protagonists of the games commit exceedingly worse crimes as the game progresses but they’re made to be sympathetic since they just want success in a world with not much other opportunities.
Games with karma systems may work as well if the bad option isn’t overtly evil. I’m thinking games like Dishonored, Fable 3, Undertale, or any Bethesda game.
Anti-hero protagonists like Kratos from God of War, Arthur Morgan from Red Dead 2, and V from Cyberpunk could also somewhat fit the bill.
Edit: just watched an Outside Xbox video that summarizes a few games with just this premise.
Echoing Spec Ops: The Line.
It’s no longer available on Steam, but if you can find a way to play it then you should. Probably the most necessary game about war at the moment.
Third recommendation of this game… I gave it a cursory try over 10 years ago…
Don’t look up anything about it and finish it this weekend. It’s short and linear. If you appreciate a well-crafted narrative with a message, you owe it to yourself to play the full story.
The only bad thing about Spec Ops: The Line is you can’t talk about what makes it so good without massively spoiling it.
It’s not even that old, why’d they remove it?
Licensing, I think.
Though the recent news of Israel engaging in white phosphorous strikes makes a girl think, dunnit?
TIE Fighter. Flying as a pilot for the Empire in Star Wars including flying alongside Vader to save the Emperor. Includes getting pulled into a secret society with a cool glowing force tattoo showing your rank in service to the Emperor.
The game never says your name but in the old expanded universe books you are basically the Empire version of Wedge.
Edit - It isn’t open world but the limited story does do well at making you feel like you should in the role.
I’ll add that the game came with a manual that did have the character name and a back story. Short version is your character was an illegal swoop bike racer on a world that had been in a multi generation war. Includes your father dying. The empire stops it by basically making it impossible to for the two world to even be able to send attacks at each other. Then recruits all the youth that would have fought in their own war and just sends them out to different parts of the empires wars.
Your preexisting flight skills gets you first a mechanic job on a Star Destroyer and then you save a VIP while testing repairs on a TIE Fighter and get pulled in as an actual pilot with a quiet push to get you up the ranks due to your impressive start.
Dungeon Keeper.
Destroy all humans.
Spec ops the line.
Braid.
Manhunt.
The first 2 you are absolutely unequivocally the bad guy, those were going to be my suggestions. I think the second 2 it’s a little spoilery to tell people you’re the bad guy
oh Braid is so fucked up once you realize the story. At the end I was like “why the hell did I help this little prick?”
At the end I was like “why the hell did I help this little prick?”
Am… I this little prick? oh fuck…
One of the books really stuck with me though.
Our world, with its rules of causality, has trained us to be miserly with forgiveness. By forgiving too readily, we can be badly hurt. But if we’ve learned from a mistake and become better for it, shouldn’t we be rewarded for the learning, rather than punished for the mistake?
Disco Elysium’s protagonist is a walking disaster and there are a lot of ways you can play him. Honestly playing him as a totally morally upright professional is one of the harder ways to play. You definitely don’t feel like a hero while you’re playing
Honestly playing him as a totally morally upright professional is one of the harder ways to play
Oh so I was just playing it wrong lmao
I think that might have been my problem with that game as well. I felt like I was going absolutely nowhere about 1 or 2 hours in.
I should probably restart.
Yeah, it’s a little spoilery to say but the game tries to force you to learn that lesson. Trying to be a good cop and being straight edge is pretty frustrating. Then once you take a morally gray choice and it advances the plot, you use some drugs to meet a check and there aren’t really consequences. Then by the end of the game you’re high on 4 different drugs punching children and you understand the point they were making
Wait what point is that
Well, let’s say that you’ll find out your role at the end of bioshock infinite. It depends.
Not open world but man it’s so enthralling.
Darkest dungeon - though you need to make it to the ending to find out why you’re evil.
I could never get past the grind, but it definitely feels like you’re discarding a lot of adventurers
The Witcher is quite famously morally grey, with no “good” choice to many of the major decisions.
KOTOR
I played as the good guy and couldn’t resist getting a little corrupted on the sith planet. My favourite implementation of the allure of the dark side.
This might produce some arguments, but The Last of Us. Joel is far from a good guy. This is established in the first few minutes of the game and you get enough “hints” about that throughout.
There’s actually a pretty new video about that on Second Wind: https://youtu.be/fY1FsMK_cos
Other more obvious games are many many Star Wars games where you can either choose or outright start as the bad guy, like TIE Fighter, the Jedi Knight series, Knights of the Old Republic 1+2 + The Old Republic, Squadrons, those Battlefield games and the Age of Empires clones (can’t remember the names) and Force Commander as well I think. Oooh and Rebellion.
Helldivers games, you’re the exploitative, fascist empire who creates its own problems.
Payday 2 (dunno about 3 since it’s been called out for being a phone it home version of 2) but yea… you’re %100 not the good guy at all. You’re a thief robbing banks and peoples homes.
Slay the Spire (1): Downfall.
It’s a free mod that transforms some bosses and normal mobs into playable characters. It’s very good, could absolutely have been the second Slay the Spire
