It’s Time To Get Meaner In RPGs Like Avowed

The curse of the choice-driven RPG is to offer players a whole bunch of cool roleplaying options only for them to absolutely not, under any circumstances, engage with anything the slightest bit mean. It’s a sad conundrum. In order to provide a rewarding experience where players feel like their decisions matter, studios need to put a bunch of work into content that the vast majority of players will never see. When they do it well, as in Baldur’s Gate 3, players love it — despite the fact that most won’t engage with most of the darkest options.

Avowed is the latest example of this trend, as just 0.2 percent of players have earned its Tyranny achievement on Steam. To get it, you need to make only evil choices, from the beginning of the game until you reach the end, losing friends and alienating people along the way.

Evil Choices As A Contrast For The Good

I’m always disappointed when I see how low the stats are for the evil options in games like this one. Developers put in huge amounts of work to provide interesting options for the player. Though most of us will only see the good path through a story — maybe with the occasional dip into the dark side that we promptly save scum our way out of— just as much time and resources are going into making the evil stuff work.

I wrote about this back when I was a freelancer, and actually spoke with Avowed’s director Carrie Patel, fresh off her work on The Outer Worlds. Patel said something thought-provoking about the purpose these options serve for most players.

“I think it’s interesting to consider: what is the point of the evil path? And sometimes I think it’s just to have a counterpoint to the more heroic path,” Patel said. “You’re only making a choice if there’s something else available for you to do.”

In this conception, developers are playing god — but not a micromanaging, predestining one. Instead, they’re the deity who honors free will. In the same way that you can only choose to do good if there is the option to do bad, you can’t have a choice-driven RPG unless there are, well, choices. While most players will choose the ‘right’ options, those choices only have weight because the developers put in the work to make all that stuff you probably won’t see but is there, waiting to spring into action the moment you decide to break bad.

What Lies Beneath

It’s the iceberg technique. If those two words don’t send your mind reeling back to high school English class, the basic idea is that, if a writer is any good, only ten percent of their work will be visible on the page — like the portion of an iceberg that is visible above the water. The other 90 percent of their work happens in the background, making the characters feel human, the world feel believable, the before and after of the plot complementary to the portion we get to experience. It’s like the massive chunk of an iceberg hiding beneath the surface of the water. Developers of RPGs are doing similar work, creating emotionally resonant or heartbreaking or despicably violent narrative arcs that most players will never see.

But, I say, let’s start seeing it! Too many players pick up an RPG and play idealized versions of themselves. They make the good choice. They’re kind to their companions. They don’t murder innocents, and they definitely don’t side with the bad guy. They might steal, and they probably do a whole lot of killing to further the plot, but they mostly try to stick to the straight and narrow, at least as the game defines it. They’re goodie two shoes. Sorry, but that’s boring.

If you were experiencing a story in another medium, would you like a protagonist who was that vanilla? Do you like to read novels about characters who never make mistakes and have no regrets? In a video game, would you like it if your companions were great, unconflicted people who always pressure you to behave perfectly? No. We like scars, we like depth. Baldur’s Gate 3, for example, is so good because the characters in your party have dark pasts that they’re trying to hide from or grow beyond.

If you wouldn’t like it in the characters you don’t play, why do you accept it in the one you do? Start playing your characters as characters, not just lawful good self inserts. Pick a character you like from a movie, or a person you know in real life, and make the decisions they would. Create an original character, write up their backstory, and roleplay as them. If the choices are nice, great. If they’re mean, fine. At least they’ll be something motivating them beyond the desire to not step on anyone’s toes.

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