See No Evil
I’m playing Overlord on the 360 and minor irritants aside (camera, lack of in-game objective map), I’ve been having an enjoyable romp. There’s just something truly satisfying about watching a throng of pint-sized terrors who look like goblin refugees from Warhammer smash, loot, pillage, and destroy all that they touch.
One thing that I’ve noticed though is that for an evil overlord you’re not really that evil. You’re definitely not big ‘E’ evil, and frankly your character isn’t even small ‘e’ evil. Sure, your character has glowing eyes and bad-ass armor, and a tower overseer that sounds an awful lot like the Cryptkeeper, but what’s your first adventure? Rescuing a town of humans from a halfling work camp.
The humans you’re rescuing are a harmless lot, a bunch of country rubes, while the halflings are a disgusting bunch of critters led by a hygienically challenged corpulent ball of buttery hero. Even if I was supposed to be playing a noble warrior I would have no problem smiting these vermin from the lands.
There is a corruption factor involved in the game from doing bad deeds (i.e. slaying the rubes) yet it doesn’t seem like it’s really much of a factor. At one point I needed to spawn new minions. The resources used for minion creation is the lifeforce of fallen creatures, so I walked into town and acted like a one-man Untouchable Trio +1, hacking and slashing everything in sight. After a couple of kills the townspeople revolted against me and started to fight back. A few moments later the game told me I had “suppressed” the town and everyone went back to liking me. Hmm, okay.
And what exactly is up with lording over a town of bumpkins? The game explains that as an Overlord you need followers, which I understand, but wouldn’t it make more sense to have dominion over tribes of orcs, hobgolins, kobolds, and other ne’er-do-wells? Good Lord, I have the mayor of this ‘burg wanting to buy me, the Dark Overlord of all that is Unholy and Vile, a beer!
Basically the developers, Triumph (makers of the excellent Age of Wonders series), have given us a standard fantasy world with the usual bad guys dressed up as what we normally consider the good guys. Don’t worry though, because they still act like the bad guys.
Now, this isn’t meant to be a huge complaint. Like I said, I’m having a lot of fun with Overlord and stayed up way too late with it last night. It’s just an observation that when it comes to digital gaming there are few games that actively portray the protagonist as a truly evil person. I imagine Overlord, which has a Terry Prachett-like feel, would be extremely different if instead of chasing down fat, disgusting halfling cooks you smashed halfling babies against the wall while their mothers were ravaged by your pack of minions. But who wants to play a game like that?
This is something that folks like the British Board of Film Classification (who just banned the upcoming Manhunt 2, which got me thinking about all this), Jack Thompson, and whatever other flavor of the month anti-game group there is, fails to understand. While there have always been some games that cast the player as an antihero, typically within the game’s context you are facing off against miscreants and other deviants. From my understanding of the Manhunt series this pretty much sums up the experience, as your opponents are generally not nice people to begin with. And in those games where innocents can be harmed (every Senator’s favorite whipping boy, the GTA series) it is a matter of player choice, not requirement. The only game that I can think of in which it is fairly central is the Postal series, but considering those games are crap and no one plays them, who cares?
Which brings me to another point. There seems to be a belief amongst some that gamers are drawn to games because of the violence, when in reality it is first and foremost the gameplay. You can create the most violent game you want but if the game surrounding it sucks, no one is going to play it and it will be forgotten about (see Postal) except by government watchgroups. Likewise, you can create a great game that people enjoy and feature barely any violence. Consider how popular anything with the word “Sim” before it has been or Microsoft’s Flight Simulator series.
There is no question that there are violent games that could be considered excessive, but there are few (and even few may be too high of a figure) computer games in the past three decades that have wallowed in abject immorality. Playing true evil, as anyone who tried to DM an all-evil D&D campaign can attest to, is simply not a lot of fun. Violence, in the proper context, is perfect acceptable. Immersing the player in a world of filth, with terrible actions inflicted on the helpless (i.e. Hasborg presents Dr. Mengele’s Operation!), is not acceptable and makes for a very poor gaming experience.
Now back to a cartoon world of fantasy violence. I have a mistress to find…