Recommendations on games in which you don't play as the "good guy".
2mon 17d ago by programming.dev/u/emotional_soup_88 in asklemmy
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. :)
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.
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.
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
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
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.
I'm too dumb to play that game. I tried and kept dying during dialogue.
I didn't know you could die in a game from saying the wrong thing. But I did multiple times. A few hours in. I was playing on switch and it made me restart from beginning.
So I gave up and just watched a YouTube on the story.
Idk I've never played a game like that and I'm not sure how the mechanics work. Obviously too dense to figure it out.
Very cool art style and world building though.
A few hours in and you restarted from the beginning? That's weird considering the game has autosaves, unless there's a quirk about the switch version.
Do you remember what dialogue you died on perhaps?
Yeah it made me start completely fresh both times I died. I was like. Okay well fk this.
It was on the switch and the way saves work on it are generally different. It didn't have a "load a specific save" option.
It just has one save. Automatic.
Shocked to see no one's suggested Tyranny yet which is an isometric RPG where you specifically play one of the bad guys. Yeah you can make some "good" decisions but ultimately, you're a foot soldier for the bad guys. It's got plenty of that conflict about what's right and wrong that you're looking for too!
I admire Tyranny from afar, but I think it'd depress me too much.
I thought so as well but it was pretty funand the plot lines are versatile.
You can enslave the younglings, you dont need to murder every one of them however delicious they may be.
Maybe I have gone soft. I should just turn up my GWAR collection and rock that funky chicken.
Factorio, you literally colonize alien species and pollute their worlds because you feel like it.
Satisfactory in the same regard as well. At first I felt bad about disrupting the natural landscape. But then I needed more power, and land for my factories. And then more land for more power for more factories on more land. It's a fun cycle.
It's like a different kind of bad guy... a real world kind of bad guy, really.
Well, maybe not just because you feel like it.
I think the premise is that you crashed on an alien planet and need to build a spaceship to return back home?
The fact that you are destroying the entire ecosystem of the planet to do so is just a slight inconvenience.
I think that's Factorio.
In Satisfactory you're a Pioneer sent exactly for the purpose of exploiting the planet.
Ig mincecraft in the same vain, if you want to interact with mc villagers in any meaningful/efficient way.
To get cheap villager trades, you can traumabond them to you by repeatedly letting them get killed by zombies and then resurrecting them.
If you want your villagers so be safe, as well as have them all near eachother and sorted after traids, you build a "trading hall" where each villager is trapped in a one by on by two big area where they only have a workstation in front of them as well as a window for you to talk/trade with them. (They would probly die sooner or later if you let them run around the world freely, so building this is kinda a must if you spend a significant time getting the good villager traids, which you kinda have to do if you want good enchantments on your tools cuz all the other options to get them suck compared to villagers).
Villagers are also a good/the only way to automaticaly farm iron or crops, for crops you just trap them in a field and let them work for you. For iron you repeatedly scare them with zombies, so that an iron golem spawns, which you immediately kill in lava, so you can get the iron that it drops.
Saints Row games. They're like GTA, but increasingly over the top in their parody. You're the boss of a criminal gang. 2 is still "normal parody" and a bit dated, 3 jumped the shark while doing a kickflip with a jet ski, 4 is even more insane.
Sleeping Dogs you play as a cop, but you can betray the law and side more with the criminals.
Warcraft 3 (old but gold) - the human campaign of the base game gets you from a hopeful young paladin prince into a cold, vengeful psychopath; the following undead campaign is said prince (well, king now) finishing the job of killing everyone and further fucking everything. The expansion has 3 extra campaigns, none with "good guys"
Divinity Original Sin (1 and 2) lets you play as big of an asshole as you'd like. Of the Elder Scrolls games, Morrowind is the one that lets you be the biggest bad guy around (you can still finish the game even if you kill every important npc and break every quest)
Divinity Original Sin (1 and 2) lets you play as big of an asshole as you'd like.
I haven't gone through it myself, but I think Baldur's Gate 3 has ways to side with "bad guys", I believe I've seen patch notes about expanding the content there, so that's also an option from the same devs.
But the origin characters generally aren't perfect and have their motivations, especially The Dark Urge.
Dungeon Keeper.
Destroy all humans.
Spec ops the line.
Braid.
Manhunt.
Oh, Spec Ops was great. I totally thought it was going to be a COD-like game all pew pew go America let's shoot up a burger king and teabag the enemy, but holy shit.
It's one of those things where I want to forget everything so I can experience it again.
Same, I think that's why it never was big, everyone just saw it as another 3rd person COD shooter. I played the game like 5 years after it was released and was totally blown away by the story. It's mediocre gameplay but the story is so damn good.
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?
Destroy all humans is so good, and they did a great job on the remaster!
Dungeon Keeper 2 was just great.
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
I don't think Spec ops is spoilers to reveal you're a bad guy, not in 2026: you play the US, in the Gulf. You play the US doing US imperialism, it doesn't hide that from you. It's just later in the game it confronts you with what that really means.
Braid absolutely, but it's 17yo at this point, any reasonable spoiler policy* has worn off. Meets the criteria, gets you all empathetic for the little shit, Tim, then makes you question it all. I think a first play through is impactful even knowing he's a villain... It's not that he's a villain that is cool, it's how you find out he's a villain.
*Except for Outer Wilds the spoiler policy on that is eternal.
Eh, compare Spec Ops to its contemporaries and it's definitely an outlier for treating you like a bad guy. Call of Duty, Battlefield, and Medal of Honor were definitely treating you like a hero. Still Spec Ops is much better than those games so if the discussion gets people to play it then I'm on board
No one's said Infamous yet. Shocking. Well Infamous. You get to choose if you're going to be good or bad and it's super satisfying either way. Dishonered has that same sort of choice, also amazing whichever way you go.
Infamous 2 was my favorite of the series, but it's stuck on the PS3 and doesn't emulate well.
Infamous 2 Second Son (corrected from 2) was my first time seeing someone from a North American indigenous tribe as the protagonist in a (edit: video game) story. Also not an "Indian" archetype of any sorts and without clichés.
Cole was in Infamous 2, and he's a white guy. You must mean Delsin from Infamous: Second Son. I liked that as well! Connor Kenway of Assassin's Creed III is half-Mohawk, if that counts.
Ah, yes, thank you!
The original Prey was an excellent game, and the protagonist's heritage was a large part of the game (though fairly heavily clichéd).
Is that the one where you had to spray paint stuff by holding the controller sideways like a spray can and acting like you were spraying in the air?
No, that was Second Son, the one that took place in Seattle. Infamous 2 was New Marais (New Orleans).
Great games.
And this reminds me of Prototype as belonging here.
Spec Ops: The Line?
They delisted this shit from Steam right before shit popped off next to Dubai in real life.
Eh, it was delisted a couple years ago because of expired music licenses. Game was banned in the UAE upon release though.
Still worth a playthrough. That game was the whole reason why I knew Deep Purple was a band.
And this is also like the third comment in a row I've made about the game lol
🏴☠️
you're here because you wanted to feel like something you're not: a hero.
This game hits hard.
Well there's always Grand Theft Auto.
Baldur's Gate 3. Not only can you make an evil character, one of the premades is a special evil character called the Dark Urge and basically forces you into doing things that are often even more fucked up than the basic bad guy stuff.
Most cRPGs are like that, actually. Rogue Trader is another good one. Being a paragon of good is nigh impossible in that one, since you're basically a tyrannical land baron in the WH40k universe where everyone is garbage. 😃
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.
The dark urge can be played sort of good too. I watched the Christopher Odd playthrough and he stayed mostly morally good I'd say, although eventually did become a mind flayer.
Spec Ops: The Line
The willy pete scene fucked me up for a while.
Planescape: Torment
Disco Elysium
Prototype
Crackdown
Already mentioned elsewhere but seconding the recommendations: Infamous I and II Bioshock Infinite
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.
The only bad thing about Spec Ops: The Line is you can't talk about what makes it so good without massively spoiling it.
Yes. But anyone else reading this comment needs to know it is so good.
Came here to say this. It holds up really well and remains relevant.
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?
Way to legitimise piracy
Probably music licenses expiring. The game's soundtrack has a lot of prog rock in it.
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.
Peacemaker The Game.
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.
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
"Evil always finds a way."
Carrion
Mafia series - You play as a murderous mobster
Tropico series - You play as the dictator of a small banana republic
Red Dead Redemption - You're Arthur Morgan, an outlaw who kills for money
Buuuuut I kill bad guys when I play RDR2 so I feel good about it!
While you do get to feed KKK members to the gators and gun down anti-sufferagettes, you also loanshark and rob innocent people amongst other things
Yeah I didn't like the loan sharking business... and there are some innocent people that get robbed, but much of that is from the story, and there isn't much you can do about it
I loved playing trópico 4 good. Just trying to do the best for my little Sims and never squirreling money away to the swiss bank account.
Helldivers games, you're the exploitative, fascist empire who creates its own problems.
Spec Ops the Line is probably what you want. It's not open world, but the story is excellent.
Bard's Tale is old, but the story is fun and you aren't really a good guy.
Scarface is a GTA reskin that retcons the end of the movie to have Tony Montana live to build a cocaine empire.
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.
Had to scroll way too far for this. The MMO SWTOR is also great, and has several good stories available (without needing to play with or against other players, if you're not into that).
Command & Conquer 3
Kane was really rocking that Evil Abed™ look before Abed even existed
Kane just copied the look of Derek Vinyard.
Cruel. Cruel cruel cruel.
Basically Westwood game
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.
The Witcher is quite famously morally grey, with no "good" choice to many of the major decisions.
Never tried this, but you could play New Vegas with the Legion.
Dungeon Keeper 2
Prototype
Fallout New Vegas
The number of opportunities the game gives you to be an absolute piece of shit is ridiculous.
Here are some examples:
Get the Terrifying Presence perk and literally become evil incarnate: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXBC2OYLM0k
Or just level up speech and be mean in general: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STptNbHOXWg
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.
Really great game. Awesome stories.
This game isn't exactly niche, but Red Dead Redemption II is a really good one. You play as an outlaw on the run from bounty hunters while your gang is falling, their ideals are crumbling, and society no longer wants them. Arthur Morgan is part of a dying way of life.
The game also has an honor system where your status is determined by how evil or good you are. Help strangers = high honor. Rob and murder indiscriminately = walking nightmare
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.
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.
Party Hard. You're trying to murder everyone at a series of large parties without getting caught. I guess you're fed up with your neighbour's loud parties. Retro graphics. Humorous. Lots of creative mayhem.
You and this game took "sympathize" to a whole new level.
Tyranny. I mean, you could end up being the good guy, depending on what that means to you, but you start leading an army to conquer part of the world at the behest of Kyros the Overlord. I think I would classify Kyros as a sort of Lawful Evil type. He seems to want to bring peace and order to the world, but chooses to do it through conquest and harshly enforced laws.
Any strategy game while you are evil laughing nefariously.
Dungeon Keeper comes to mind
Becoming the crisis in stellaris and cracking planets
I've just started The Necromancer's Tale, which lets you explore a minor noble's fall from grace into (I think) lichdom. Just came out last summer. The art style is what you might expect from a small, ambitious studio; the writing so far is rather good.
It looks good, ive wishlisted it for when i have the money. Thanks :)
Happy to recommend! Been looking forward to it since I grabbed it on the winter sale; had to finish a Factorio run first :p
The Dark Queen of Mortholme. You play as the boss, repeatedly killing the hero who comes back stronger and more skilled.
No recommendations, but just wanted to thank you for a real good question.
Since you left room for interpretation I have to mention Factorio :D
What are you talking about? The engineer just wants to get home.
The engineer destroys the planet, those monsters are just trying to fight back against pollution!
After the engineer leaves the pollution cloud retract and the biters will expand again returning Navis to its original state.
My fully automated base will keep exploiting the natural resources.
Until the resource patch dries up.
How can it be murder when a murder victim needs to be human?
Black and White
I wish there was a reliable way to play this on modern systems. It'd be great to play on the Steam Deck.
I haven't tried to play this game in a while, Im got my other maxis games from that time running on Linux, i guess i will give this one a spin.
If you get it running please let me know! I'd love to have another crack at B&W!
Will do. 👍
If you're open to Pokemon romhacks, there's a good one where you play through the Kanto region from the perspective of a Team Rocket grunt. https://rocket-edition.com/
This reminded me of those gory Pokémon roms.
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.
Destroy all Humans, Call of Duty, Bioshock
Carrion
It's a modern 2D pixel art reverse horror game, it's real fun.
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 Yhorm 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.
Mouthwashing.
You could do a durge run in Baldur's Gate 3. Maybe also Hitman, but I think that's more anti-hero.
minecraft
you show up in a mostly peaceful world and just start destroying it, enslaving villagers and treating peaceful mobs inhumanely to farm them so you can go kill more mobs that were leaving you alone
This should go on their wiki.
Stray. You're a cat. Cats are evil.
The Knights of the Old Republic SW games. You can join the dark side.
Civilization. Choose Ghandi. You're welcome.
Dune 2. You can play as the Harkonnen
The Tropico series of city builders, you are the dictator of an island.
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
Tyranny
Kinda surprised nobody has mentioned Metal Gear Solid V and Peace Walker.
Well, both play before Big Boss' downfall, and V definitely is us playing the good guys. Diamond Dogs go on humanitarian missions, topple dictators off screen in text-based missions, and save the world. Of course, you can also completely be merciless towards the Soviets or the PMCs in the game.
Came back to say Fable and Fable II are peak evil path RPGs.
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
Sounds like Sultan's Game would fit the bill, just be warned that it can get into some really heavy stuff.
Dope.
Overlord
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.
Civ6
Lets get to war
Fable
Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines
shadows of forbidden gods. the story is kind of what you make it, but you are basically the dark lord in world similar to many fantasy novels. It got multiple evil beings too and each has different playstyle.
Maybe the Darksiders games?
Maybe not exactly what you're looking for, but Wanderstop could fit the bill. It's a little unconventional, but to great effect; going in without too many preconceptions is probably the best way to play it.
This looks awesome nevertheless!!!
RimWorld RTS, survival, colony builder. Survive, stranded, on a hostile planet filled with pirates, ancient mechanoids and giant killer bugs.
You can play however you wish. I always end up playing as drugged-up organ-harvesting slave owners.
There is a very detailed simulation of the human body, with each organ having it's own scars, damages and conditions, all affecting each other. There are also developed systems for drugs, combat, diseases, mood and mental breakdowns.
Honestly it's simpler sci-fi Dwarf Fortress
Disgaea!
Wario World
PotionCraft actually, now that I think about it
The Last of Us (I and II)
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.
Hmmm a day later and no one mentioned braid.
Wasteland 3
I probably sucked at the game, but it felt like if you didn't get the surprise attack, you would get wiped by pretty much every encounter
Evil Genius. Its old but you play as a super villain.