Best Game Worlds That React Realistically To Evil Players

Key Takeaways

• Red Dead Redemption 2 enforces player morality through impactful consequences in a realistic world.
• Undertale challenges players to make moral choices with emotionally weighty consequences.
• Spec Ops: The Line demonstrates the psychological toll of war and the consequences of evil actions.

Being able to play the “bad guy” in video games is nothing new, and many developers have sold their games by allowing “evil playthroughs,” including the option to theft, torture, and mass murder for fun. However, while ravaging a virtual world can be cathartic, many gamers find worlds that allow them to continue their adventure after committing atrocity after atrocity immersion-breaking.

While they do allow for a certain amount of player freedom, these games strive to depict a world that realistically dishes out consequences for those players who feel the need to burn it all down, whether that’s by the in-game state’s monopoly on violence (the law) or by the inhabitants’ reaction to immoral behavior.

Red Dead Redemption 2

Honor Is Everything, Even To Outlaws

In Red Dead Redemption 2, even outlaws on the frontier are held to certain standards. Although American law officials didn’t have a total monopoly on violence in 1900, it isn’t totally “wild.” The honor system, tied to how the player behaves (or doesn’t), directly impacts how the world, built with the same painstaking detail, realism, and immersion, reacts.

Committing crimes such as killing innocents, robbing stores, or torturing captives leads to immediate consequences. The sheriff’s deputies, bounty hunters, and even the gang itself respond to moral corruption. As honor decreases, NPCs on the road or in towns begin to avoid or confront the player, and Arthur Morgan will begin to experience a toll of violence as the world becomes increasingly hostile.

Undertale

Becoming The Real Monster

This cutsie-looking love letter to early pixel-era RPGs is infamous for flipping the player’s expectations about empathy, power, and morality in video game worlds. In Undertale, the line between good and evil is drawn clearly through the player’s actions. The game offers a “pacifist” route that lets everyone live and, conversely, a “genocide” route, which demands the casual slaughter of every creature in sight, as is common in just about every other video game setting.

However, unlike other games where evil acts are abstract, Undertale confronts players with the emotional weight of each decision. NPCs react to each death with startlingly realistic and tragic humanity (despite literally being monsters), and the world becomes darker and more desolate. Characters like Sans hold players accountable for their actions, forcing them to face the monster they’ve become. The narrative adapts to reflect past choices, even between saved games, showing that once the path of evil is taken, it’s nearly impossible to turn back.

This War Of Mine

How The Evils Of War WIther People Away

War is a vicious, lawless time. While this is an appealing idea to some, in reality, most would buckle under the weight of its horror, either becoming evil or losing the will to go on. Unlike the vast majority of games that depict such an environment, This War of Mine does not glorify the violence of war but instead allows players to experience what it would take to survive it. In the ruins of a city devastated by artillery, sickness, and chaos, players are forced to make difficult, morally complex decisions.

While nobody is around to dole out justice or punishment, stealing food or harming innocent civilians to stay alive often comes at the cost of each survivor’s morale. Each act of violence, theft, or betrayal can weigh heavily on the humans that persist in the war zone and may refuse to cooperate or fall into despair. However, all too often, the only way to avoid evil actions is to give up and let the whole group die.

Spec Ops: The Line

What Happens In War-Torn Dubai Doesn’t Necessarily Stay In War-Torn Dubai

Very few video game studios have the guts to tell the player that they aren’t the chosen oneMary Sue at the center of the world, never mind a bad person. However, that is the central premise of Spec Ops: The Line, a game that masterfully outlines how the glorification of war and the long-term black-and-white thinking that it demands leads directly to evil actions and consequences.

The consequences for committing truly horrific acts in this game world are as much psychological as it is physical or social, as Spec Ops: The Line’s “hero,” Walker, is just as much hounded by his increasingly frayed conscience as he is by reprimand, a transformation that is also reflected by the attitudes and increasingly chaotic behavior of Walker’s squad.

Daggerfall

All Evildooers Shall Halt! Before The Glory Of Justice

Fans of the Elder Scrolls series will occasionally complain about “psychic guards” who are able to perceive crimes as they happen through walls and shadows, which results in an unrelenting chase of the player until they are fined, jailed, or executed. While this does remove the thrill of first escaping before being found out, the fervor with which Imperial soldiers or hold guards universally pursue perpetrators is foundational to the prevention of evil people just being able to do whatever they want to whoever they want (at least in theory).

Although its graphics and systems may seem basic now, Daggerfall is actually one of the best examples of how to simulate a system of law in its reaction against evil deeds. Not only is a thief or murderer pursued by the authorities but they are also tried before a judge. Jail time doesn’t just mean lowered stats; it can also mean failing time-sensitive quests. Evil player characters of a charismatic nature or wealthy disposition may be able to argue or buy their way out of jail time, respectively, adding another layer of realism to the world.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance

Judgement Comes Under The King’s Law

Just as it operates today, law in medieval times was mostly intended to benefit the powerful. However, probably to prevent a peasant uprising, there were some laws on the books that were supposed to prevent evil people, regardless of how shiny their armor was or how much gold they had to bribe, from getting away with murder (or otherwise), as depicted by the historical RPG, Kingdom Come: Deliverance.

The obvious evil actions, such as stealing and murder, are covered by law enforcers, who will attempt to apprehend and punish the wrongdoer, but animal cruelty, threats, and recklessly riding a horse to the endangerment of pedestrians are also punishable. While the legal system may not always be perfectly just, it actively tracks the player’s actions, as do the common folk. If the player makes Henry commit evil often enough in the presence of others, he will be shunned, feared, and hated, and such a reputation is almost impossible to repair.

Fallout

Bad Even By The Standards Of A Post-Apocalyptic Wasteland

Although the core premise and fantasy of the Fallout series has always been the collapse of civilization and, subsequently, humanity, there are still embers of decency in the hearts of those scattered across the Wasteland. The Vault Dweller still carries a reputation, good or bad, which determines who will speak or trade to them at best and how much retaliatory violence they should expect at worst.

This is best demonstrated in Fallout or Fallout 2 by players (with a North American copy of the game) who decide to do one of the most evil actions in the series that would rival anything done by even the most evil characters in the Fallout universe: killing children. Doing so will result in the Vault Dweller being shunned and effectively exiled by most of society and hounded forever by vengeful bounty hunters.