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Post by
588688
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Rankkor
It's a trend yes, I've noticed it too. Can't go play any new game, or watch any new show or movie without finding it riddled with grey morality. And as a trend, it will pass eventually. It's only popular right now because people think its "new" and "original". Not because they're universally better than black vs white, but because it's "new" and "hip".
ejem. its not "new"
Why do you think Starcraft became so darn popular? grey morality, I mean, the zerg were OBVIOUSLY evil, but then you had the terrans, and the protoss, who of them was the good guy? neither, there were a$$holes and evil bastards on both sides, (Arcturus for example on the terran side, the conclave on the protoss side) just as there were noble people on both sides (like Raynor on the terran side, or Fenix on the protoss side)
Why do you think Mass Effect got so popular? I mean yes the reapers are OBVIOUSLY evil, but then you had the geth vs the quarians, salarians vs krogan, turians vs humans, and who was the good guy in all these inter-racial conflicts? neither. Both had their share of a$$holery and nobility.
I prefer the antagonist to have a rational reason for their actions, but that the way they are trying to solve their problems is despicable.
Such as, the antagonist is trying to protect his people, by wiping out everyone else, and has zero care for the members of any other people, just him and his own. He thinks he and his people are the only things that matter, everyone else is beneath them. He wants to kill everyone else because he thinks they're beneath them so they don't deserve life and so that he can take their lands after wiping them out and let his people prosper on their lands.
erm....... bro' you just described a grey antagonist.
Someone who's grey, often does the wrong thing for the right reasons, whereas a black antagonist would do bad things just for the evulz and the MUAHAHAHAHAHAHA factor.
Joker is a clear black villain, there is no rationality for what he does, there is no justification for his actions, he does unspeakable evil just for the sake of being evil.
Unlike Logain Mctyr on Dragon Age, who became a dictator, a Tyrant and a regicide (killed his own king by treason) in order to unify his people by force to combat a larger threat. He did something bad, for good reasons.
Or Saren Arcterius on Mass Effect, who betrayed his race and his galaxy and tried to turn everyone into slaves to a gigantic race of eldritch abomination space c'chulu machines in order to save the galaxy from total annihilation.
Or at least, that's how the antagonist would start out, and eventually become more and more corrupt as the story goes on to the point that he only cares about himself, and starts treating his people as tools and nothing more.
I also like it when the villains evilness is explained by them having a mental disorder, such as psychopathy or sociopathy, making it so that they are evil because they either don't understand the difference between good or bad, like Voldemort (all he understood was power, he couldn't feel love or care for others) or they just don't give two &*!@s.
now HERE you described a black villain, one that does evil for the sake of evil. and hey, there's nothing wrong with that, heck 2 of my ultimate favorite villains fall in this category (Joker and Kefka)
I love how all the grey vs grey fans love to say how grey morality stories are "realistic" as if fantasy is supposed to be completely realistic.
*cough* I think you are confusing the plot and the setting here. You CAN have a sci-fi or fantasy setting, and still have a realistic story, just as you can have a realistic setting and a half-assed story that in no way could possibly be believable.
I personally don't want to sit around wondering till my hair goes grey who the good guys and bad guys are in a story, I just want an actual real focused plot and likable characters.
humm, just because a story is grey doesn't mean it wont have likeable characters. Starcraft is 100% grey and it has some of the best characters ever made by blizzard (With Raynor, Fenix and Zeratul being my ultimate favorites) as for focused plot, that also is irrelevant to the morality of the story.
As for world of warcraft, it's always had a high focus on black vs white morality, and is extremely tame in terms of grey morality.
not really bro', Warcraft started as black and white (on warcraft 1 and 2) and then became grey from warcraft 3 onwards (It started on 3, where everyone could see the evil side of the alliance, and the good side of the horde)
A grey vs grey story quite often DOES has a major villain that is completely evil, and 100% black, while having multiple factions fighting said evil, but those fighters are grey themselves.
A few examples:
On Dragon Age, the darkspawn are 100% evil, and the major bad guys, but those that fight them aren't squeaky clean, I mean, neither the templar knights or the mages are good, neither the elves or werewolves are good, neither the fereldans or orlesians are good.
On Mass Effect the reapers are 100% evilness incarnate, but each of the alien races that fights them aren't squeaky clean either, as the krogan, quarians, geth, salarians, asari, turians, humans, ect each have their own skeletons in their closets.
On Starcraft, the overall villain is the zerg, and yet the other factions arent neither good nor evil.
On Vampire: The Masquerade, the Tsmitzse clan was PURE EVIL, (Think satan-level evil) but the other clans weren't squeaky clean either, as the Camarilla did had a LOT of crap among their ranks
On Warcraft the ultimate evil are the old gods and legion, but everyone else isn't necessarily 100% purity.
Post by
229054
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Rankkor
As for world of warcraft, it's always had a high focus on black vs white morality, and is extremely tame in terms of grey morality.
I'd argue that post-Warcraft 3 Warcraft lore has a gray and gray morality between mortal nations and a black and white between evil immortals and their servants versus mortal nations + good immortals and their servants.
Just saying, WoW has very little in terms of grey morality. Moral ambiguity definately isn't the focus of the game, I mean. It's pretty much black vs white with a little grey thrown in here and there.
WoW has all three, black, white and gray. Mortal nations are mostly gray with the exception of the draenei.
and the tauren :P dont forget the tauren.
As for wheter or not Wheel of time is a morally ambigous story, u're gonna have to wait for funden to show up bro' , I havent read that book, and while I wanted to play the game, it never arrived to my country.
Post by
229054
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
588688
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
229054
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
588688
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
229054
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
588688
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
306612
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
229054
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
588688
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
oneforthemoney
I believe there's an off-topic thread for this.
Post by
Rankkor
Except they do it very poorly and are successful regardless. Simply put, they give the protagonist (aka, YOU) every single tidbit of information in order to make the right decision YOU believe is right, except it's most often hinted which is the better situation by who's the lesser !@#$ about it. You are always given far more information than a character in the protagonist's position would have and thus can always be trusted to make the "right" decision, even if it goes against everything the protagonist would otherwise stand for.
hey that's not quite right.
take starcraft for example, in there there are no choises to make, you play the campaign in a linear way (much the same way as you play wow in a linear way, there's not too many choices to make here, in fact there's only 2 quests IN THE ENTIRE GAME with over 5000+ quests that let you decide what's right or wrong)
And yet, its a pretty nice story all in all. You can't go saying that in starcraft the terrans are the good guys, because there's pricks like the confederation that treats their citizens like crap, and then there's tyrants like arcturus who rise to power by backstabbing everyone arround him, and then there's your average greedy bastards in every single colony.
likewise you can't go around saying the protoss are the good guys because there's pricks like the conclave, who were willing to PURGE the members of their race who refused to follow the religion of the kalah, and who go around hapilly NUKING planets infected by the zerg, even if there's innocent people trapped there trying to flee.
as for games that do allow for desition making, again wrong dude
Simply put, they give the protagonist (aka, YOU) every single tidbit of information in order to make the right decision YOU believe is right, except it's most often hinted which is the better situation by who's the lesser !@#$ about it
not right, check dragon age, where you must side either with the Templar Knigths or the Mages.
at simple glance, one would think the Templars are the good guys, given that they are a church organization, use light-based powers, and their job is to protect the citizens from rogue mages, who are a beacon for demons to enter the mortal plane and possess them. But after taking more than a simple glance, you see things like Templars abusing of their position to bully mages, even those who are harmless, practicing lobotomy on mages they deem to weak to temptations, using their position to vent their rage at whatever mage happens to be in sight, and being incredibly harsh and cruel to ALL mages, treating them like freaks of nature who deserve nothing but contempt.
At simple glance, one would think then that if the templars are so cruel, the mages must be the good guys right? because the templars are so full of jerks, then the mages are the poor victims here, people who are born with the gift of magic wether they ask it or not, and who are at a 24/7 constant risk of being possessed by demons who wish to enter the mortal plane via their bodies. They just want to be treated like human beings rather than monsters, as being born with magic is not something done by choise. But then after taking more than a simple glance, you see mages practicing blood magic (forbidden school of magic that allows them to use people as living puppets) openly making pacts with demons to increase their power, nuking churches to express their rage against the templars for the injustices commited upon them, and overall causing mayhem once their egos get high enough that they believe to be unstoppable.
this from a bioware game.
now you tell me who among these is the good guy? because both on the first part and on the second part you HAVE to take a side, you must judge who among them is the lesser evil and go with that.
I could give you a TON of examples from other bioware games ,where things dont boil down to "whoever is the most jerkass that's the evil one"
Post by
588688
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Rankkor
Just because a race or faction has an evil person in it, doesn't stop that race or faction from being primarily good. In your starcraft examples, I saw nothing to indicate that the protoss are a grey race,
unless the majority of their kind, or half of their kind, are evil like the ones you described
.
ahh then its clear you haven't played starcraft (And you should, warcraft is NOT the only good game made by blizzard, Starcraft is every bit as good as warcraft is)
over 90% of the protoss race is exactly as I described, only a small few refused to follow the kalah religion and to avoid being mass executed they fled to a different planet on a solar sistem with a negative sun to avoid detection (negative sun = cold, no vegetation, barely able to sustain life, but well hidden)
among the 90% who DID followed the kalah, only like 5% chose to not act like heartless bastards and work together with the humans against the zerg, and when I saw "work with the humans" I mean work with a 5% of the human race who was also not rotten to the core (mostly a band of renegade freedom fighters led by Raynor, since the rest of the human race was part of a greedy expansionist empire).
And from what I've heard of protoss, they're supposed to be pretty pure and good for the most part as a race. You can't point out some bad members of a race or faction and then say that the entire race is shady because of that, they can still be a primarily good race or faction.
you heard wrong.
On starcraft 2, Raynor happens to find a planet under attack by the zerg, just then, a protoss judicator, acting like a self-righteous ass, declared that those humans were "beyond saving" and wanted to purge the entire planet.
The protoss are far from "pure and good" they are a race of fundamentalists (Fundamentalist = Someone who believes THEY are right, and everyone else is wrong, when questioned about the righteousness of their cause....... they react violently, in the protoss case, they melt your brain with psyonic attacks)
so no, these aren't random members of the race that act like rotten apples, this is a race where most of them are jerks, and a few of them happen to be honorable people (ya know, like OUR world is, there's 6 billion people in this planet, if you were to put all the bad rotten corrupt evil insane people to the left, and all the pure, generous, honorable people to the right, you'd be surprised at how large the left side is. Even the bible says that the path of corruption is wide and open and many walk on it, whereas the path of the holy is narrow and thin and only few stay on it their entire lives)
Post by
588688
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Adamsm
A good version of Gray vs Gray is the series Alphas; Alphas are mutants, and there are three distinct types: The Good, the 'bad' and the mercenary ones; the antagonists of one of the episodes was everyone favorite android Data as an Alpha with echolocation, who was attempting to deal with a drug which would keep more Alphas from being born. The other was one called the Griffin, who was only doing what she was doing for money. Which of those two are the 'eviler' one? It's actually Kerns, as he's more then willing to kill any of the Alpha team who gets in his way; Griffin actually kills him before he can kill everyone else, and she just mutters about losing out on her bonus.
Warcraft, no matter what people may thing, for the MMO is a very gray vs gray when it comes to the factions: None of them are evil, none of them are good(well except for the Draenei and a portion of the Tauren). But when it comes to the expansion villains, the game turns to white vs black, as it's the combined factions against the threats: the multiples of Vanilla, Illidan and KJ of BC, Arthas in Wrath and now Deathwing. Does that mean every single villain that is part of that group is evil? No; there are still grays: From the Scarlet's, to the forces of Kael, to a portion of the Naga, and even among the most 'loyal' members of the Twilight Cults.
It exists, it will always exists, and this discussion is getting really old. Take it to the actual thread in Off Topic already.
Post by
Rankkor
If 90% of protoss race are evil, aka almost the entirety, then they are an evil race with a few exceptions. Now if they were only filled with evil members, or a little over half, they'd be grey. But if almost all protoss are evil, then they're an evil race.
This is a shock to me because from what I've heard (from posters long ago on mmo-champ) they almost purely good as a race.
its not really so simple dude.
you cant judge a race for what the majority or the minority does.
A civilization is either 100% pure, 100% evil, or grey when it has a mix of both (regardless of which side is the majority)
by your logic, humanity is a race of pure evilness, because I can assure you, the bad sick people in this world VASTLY outnumber the good folk.
In this regard the races of Starcraft follow a grey morality, because they are just as likely to do something noble as they are to do something despicable. You really should play it :P I'd love to educate you on the finer points of Starcraft lore on another thread if u want, its a fantastic game and one you should DEFINITELY give a try.
And while metzen was the major lore overseer on that game (just like warcraft) he has no author avatars there, nor are there any characters voiced by him. And its a common fact that the most badass character made by blizzard is Zeratul from starcraft.
here
you can see him in all his glory.
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