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.
Stubbs the zombie
You can do some pretty evil shit in Baldur’s Gate 3. Definitely makes you question your morals. The Dark Urge player character story is pretty messed up.
The Witcher is quite famously morally grey, with no “good” choice to many of the major decisions.
Overlord, the first game
Had to scroll too far to find this one.
The 2nd one is better in some minor ways, but the OG is a classic
Some of the better RPGs allow you to play as an evil guy (equally fleshed out as the good guy playthrough), e.g. Baldur’s Gate 3 (it even has a special evil background storyline called The Dark Urge) or (some of?) the Mass Effect titles.
Cult of the Lamb is also a great game where you play a cult leader. Although the game’s design is strong on the entertaining/funny side, it’s kind of dark also.
Stellaris is a grand strategy game where you can play anything, from a ruthless ruler trying to destroy the whole galaxy to a pacifist trader.
Well, I may as well keep plugging my current obsession, Warhammer 40k: Rogue Trader. It’s a CRPG somewhere between BG3 and XCOM in gameplay, with a grimdark-flavored splash of Mass Effect.
You have 3 “convictions” that many lot of your decisions fall under. Iconoclast is kind of your standard good guy, but maybe somewhat naive trying to be that good guy in the Warhammer verse. But more relevant to you are Dogmatic and Heretic.
Heretic is pretty much evil as far as I can tell. Chaos worship and slaughter for power. Dogmatic is more like Judge Dredd, maybe? You make some harsh fucking decisions as dogmatic, like liquefying a few thousand people to power a computer you need to use, but you are doing it for what your character truly believes is the greater good of the Imperium.
Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous, Owlcat’s previous game, has some baddie paths too. You’re still fighting demons, but it’s more of an evil vs evil in some cases. Especially Lich or Swarm.
I ran Lich path on my first run of WOTR and it might be my favorite CRPG experience I’ve ever played. You’re evil, but you’re lawful evil, and the game gives you the opportunity to lean more lawful which I did. Excellent example of being smart evil instead of stupid evil which is exactly how I think a proper lich should be portrayed.
Any strategy game while you are evil laughing nefariously.
Dungeon Keeper comes to mind
Becoming the crisis in stellaris and cracking planets
Dark Souls 3. NO ONE can convince me you’re the good guy in that situation. It’s a shit world that ISN’T worth saving and the people who all realize this are the only ones that can save it and refuse to. so your job is to force them to save it.
All you have to do is read the lore on Yorm and then tell me you’re the good guy.
The endings confirm the Lords were completely right to abandon their duties.
Tap for spoiler
If you take their souls and Link the Fire (as was done in every previous cycle), the First Flame sputters and barely reacts, completely spent after countless eons prolonging Gwyn’s false Age of Fire.
The (IMO) best ending has you reveal the truth of the world to your Firekeeper, who then helps you end the Flame and usher in a new Age.
The secret ending where you take the First Flame into yourself and reunite it with the Dark Soul (presumably ascending to godhood while simultaneously returning the Flame to balance) is a close second, but it’s doubtful anyone other than you gets the benefits.
Life and Suffering of Sir Brante (and the upcoming sequel, of Prince Jerian) sees you play a character who is generally morally neutral - you choose your own path and can absolutely “evil max” and it has benefits sometimes.
Entropy Zero 2. It’s a mod of Half-Life 2 where you play as a combine soldier and it’s actually very well made for a mod.
This needs more updoots.
It is a seriously fantastic mod, has a great soundtrack, just all around awesome.
Mouthwashing.
You could do a durge run in Baldur’s Gate 3. Maybe also Hitman, but I think that’s more anti-hero.
Not even one mention of Prototype. What have the world become.
Prototype. Man. What a fucking BLAST that was. The super powers you had by the end of the game combined with the techniques you could use.
Surfing corpses, eating people alive to clone their appearance. Slicing, smashing, or just tearing apart tanks. Throwing cars. It was just absolute mayhem and I doubt we will see another game quite so unhinged.
Yeah, when Activision still make good and innovative game. Prototype is a rare gem that escape a lot of people’s radar somehow, despite that game selling quite well back then. I blame the name.
I somehow only remember that like a fever dream.
The Dark Queen of Mortholme. You play as the boss, repeatedly killing the hero who comes back stronger and more skilled.
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.
