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| Thread: the feeling of evil |  This thread is pages long: 1 2 · NEXT» |
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bixie
Promising
Legendary Hero
my common sense is tingling!
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posted November 15, 2009 12:41 PM |
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Poll Question:
the feeling of evil
this might be moved, but i'm placing it here for no other reason apart from...meh, seems the most obvious.
when people think of pure evil, in games, everyone has their own interpretation of it. roughly, it can be split up into several categories.
Fire and brimstone: intense, angry, hate-fueled sort of thing. very traditional interpretations of hell, fire, and so on and so on. Inferno from Homm5.
Ice and frost: Cold, calm, slowly dieing. later part of dante's inferno has satan frozen. the Okinaru part of Okami is fairly interesting.
posionous and fungal: creepy, crawly, decaying. swampy sort of thing, a claggy way to go.
thunder and lightning: high celestial judgement, death from above. this could also be linked with purges and clensing as well.
death and bone: skeletons, skulls, etc etc, any necropolis would suit this.
mechanical and steel: cold, emotionless, destroying nature, sterile. unstoppable to pain and suffering, just marching forever.
Flesh and maws: fleshy, alive, wriggling, all consuming, devouring, tenacles and such.
MaDnEsS and InSaNiTy: trully surreal, strange, dark, scary, twisted.
child-like: innocence corrupted. come on, what's creeper than childhood fears?
what to you guys think is the best representation of evil?
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Love, Laugh, Learn, Live.
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War-overlord
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
Presidente of Isla del Tropico
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posted November 15, 2009 04:00 PM |
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I'd say the madness and insanity Evil. Because that is the most senseless. Whereas the other all have some sort of motivation, this kind does not.
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Vote El Presidente! Or Else!
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rottenvenetic
Known Hero
Derusticated
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posted November 15, 2009 08:31 PM |
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I'd go for the machines. Everything else is a twisted aberration of something good, and with the chance that it might be fixed, it can't beat the cold, calculating threat of intelligent, hostile machines.
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In the darkness, a blind man is the best guide; in an age of madness, look to the madman to lead the way.
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Adrius
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
Stand and fight!
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posted November 15, 2009 10:10 PM |
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Edited by Adrius at 22:11, 15 Nov 2009.
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I think I'll go with madness too.
You can often understand the reason of others, such as anger (fire), or that everything living is unpure (necromantic, machines), but madness...? No, you can't understand that unless you're mad yourself, and maybe not then either. It has no reason, it is chaos.
It's something we really can't understand, and therefore it's also the most frightening imo.
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ChaosReigns
Hired Hero
Rather inept necromancer
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posted November 15, 2009 10:52 PM |
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Honestly, my preference for evil is the "death and doom" one. Icons of death can be intimidating even if the army itself isn't actually undead. Now, if the army facing you is also utterly fearless, totally merciless and completely evil then I think that the icons of death and their silent marching also gives off a feeling of inevitability, that is, inevitable death.
My second favorite representation is the shadow and flame vibe. Peter Jackson and company did a particularly great job with this in The Lord of the Rings, from the Balrog to Mordor.
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MattII
Legendary Hero
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posted November 15, 2009 11:06 PM |
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I'm not voting because the poll is ill-defined, specifically because evilness requires the ability to make moral judgements, which discounts several of the options right at the start.
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Konyev
Hired Hero
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posted November 16, 2009 12:26 AM |
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Of course madness.True evils always insane and want to destroy everything.
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Jiriki9
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
Altar Dweller
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posted November 16, 2009 07:05 AM |
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Quote:
True evils always insane and want to destroy everything.
So the cold-hearted baron killing 10000 peasants in a province to make an example of it is NOT evil`That's not madness, but cool reason.
...I couldn't prefer ONE of the evil themes. It depends on the overall background and for fantasy settings, you will have more than one type always. Not sure about the elemental thigns, though, they could be mixed with teh non-elemental ones (a mad fire-demon, f.e.), but would probably take away thunder - not everyxthign powerful that kills fits as a theme for evil.
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LucJPatenaude
Disgraceful
Known Hero
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posted November 16, 2009 07:33 AM |
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Feeling of Evil?! Is, ultimately the certainty of imminent arrival of possible death.
Ice coming from a wave of Deep Freeze is, something we all feel the fear of Evil of it all towards: Winter. To be frozen completely and, with no chance of defence against it, brings, the result of: Imminent Death.
Fire is the destructive force that consume its natural fuel: Nature itself. Being trapped in a wooden construct is, ultimately, a common fear of being, also, consumed by such entity of destruction. Therefore, the realm of the Damned:Hell itself.
Madness is, only, the mental instabiliy of a person. Or, could be seen as: being possessed by a restless spiritual entity. Being possessed has always been an enormous fear of loss of control over that same person's bodily function and, the results of ill-fated actions and doings.
Being in the position of seeing the status of other beings in their Dead selves right in front of you and, still standing, upright, staring down at you. As if, they seem mad at you for being alive and healthy, is, totally, out-of-your-mind scary and fearsome. Re-animating the dead bodies is quite Evil. Let's count ourselves lucky, that it involves only the animal side of ex-living beings and, not the rest of the Natural environment. Our houses are made of Dead trees, after all.
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Mytical
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
Chaos seeking Harmony
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posted November 16, 2009 08:31 AM |
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Hmm can't go with forces of nature, they are not evil. Fire (aka hatred) can be just misguided. Judgement is again not evil. Nor machines, they have no morality. Same goes for the 'maws', as they are just doing what they do..eat. Cold and undeath might qualify, depending. If just 'mindless zombies' then no, but if THINKING undead..yes.
I think the purest evil can be 'mankind'. Because they often know better, but do things anyhow. Might fall under the 'maw' category...
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Message received.
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bixie
Promising
Legendary Hero
my common sense is tingling!
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posted November 16, 2009 09:48 AM |
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i'm not saying these things themselves are evil, but in many fantasy games, you always have the faction that's evil, and then they usually add another element in order to give the evil a bit of substance.
Inferno in the Homm series is a prime example. it has always been based in fire. the same with necropolis, always based in death related stuff.
can't we have a Homm that has other evil factions with one of the aforementioned themes. it will be brilliant to have a faction that alters reality so that they could win, or is based solely in unstopable machines.
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Love, Laugh, Learn, Live.
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Mytical
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
Chaos seeking Harmony
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posted November 16, 2009 09:59 AM |
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True. Sort of like the Machine or Insect theme myself. Something so forein to our version of morality that we can not begin to comprehend their thoughts. That see us no more then an obsticle, or food, or such.
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Message received.
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Daystar
Honorable
Legendary Hero
Back from the Dead
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posted November 17, 2009 08:33 AM |
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Machines, but Insanity was pretty close. Machines because I'm a treeshagging pixie.
Then again, I don't really define evil as an absolute concept. I think Evil, visually represented, is best done as like, absolute order. Think Mechanical but with organic things. Machines can be turned off, if people are acting like machines there ain't nothin' scarier.
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How exactly is luck a skill?
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Mytical
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
Chaos seeking Harmony
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posted November 17, 2009 08:49 AM |
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Which is why the Borg were so popular. The original species (before they started assimilating) gave up their individuality for cold merciless mostly machine life. They are worse then evil, they are amoral. Even Infants were not spared from them. They would stop at nothing to turn every organic creature into them.
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Message received.
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rottenvenetic
Known Hero
Derusticated
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posted November 17, 2009 07:52 PM |
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Well, to be sure, everything else on the list is not evil per se, not by any definition I know. They might be destructive, chaotic and yes, apt to evil; even the lost and perverted innocence of a child usually just means that someone made a huge blunder or satiated a very counterproductive urge.
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In the darkness, a blind man is the best guide; in an age of madness, look to the madman to lead the way.
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Siegfried
Famous Hero
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posted November 17, 2009 10:57 PM |
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Well, interesting.
Although pure emotionless mechanical opposition can induce the most terrible fear, it is itself neither good nor evil. Good as well as evil need some emotion and motivation, some knowledge of good and bad. Mechanics do neither have knowledge nor emotions. So they can't be evil. They are pure neutral (if at all something like that is applicable).
Basically fear is evil. Hate results from fear. So hate is evil, too. The abnormal desire to control everything results from fear. The necros want to control even life and death. This is evil.
The problem with pure mechanical opposition is that it is that strange, ununderstandable and far far apart from anything what any living could really understand. This is what causes fear. But mechanics never is evil.
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Jiriki9
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
Altar Dweller
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posted November 18, 2009 12:30 AM |
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Quote:
Basically fear is evil. Hate results from fear. So hate is evil, too. The abnormal desire to control everything results from fear. The necros want to control even life and death. This is evil.
No and 1000times no!
Emotions themselves aren't evil. THough that belongs maybe more into soem other forum...
But fear especially ain't evil - it just can LEAD to evil. NEcromancers, btw, neither need fear (though it's common amongst them, since its the most common reason for going to necromancy) nor hate nor to be evil.
And, for teh overall debate about factions in fantasy strategy games...there's no need to have ONE Evil faction with only opposites imo.
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MattII
Legendary Hero
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posted November 18, 2009 07:11 AM |
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Edited by MattII at 07:21, 18 Nov 2009.
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There's no real need to have 'any' evil faction, after all, if the Academy persecutes the Necropolis, which one is the evil one? Also, Siegfried raises a good point, evil actually needs a guiding hand of sorts, which means that the Borg were only ever 'evil' when the queen was around, beyond that they were just following their programming.
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rottenvenetic
Known Hero
Derusticated
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posted November 21, 2009 07:04 PM |
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Fear is a basic and powerful survival tool without which, even in our regulated and well-ordered world, lack of fear would bring a swift death to 90%+ of the human species.
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In the darkness, a blind man is the best guide; in an age of madness, look to the madman to lead the way.
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Siegfried
Famous Hero
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posted November 22, 2009 12:06 PM |
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O.k., fear to some degree can help surviving. But fear beyond that is the root of all evil, because it leads to all sorts of evil.
So then, based on that, even a cleric faction may become (or be) evil, if the reason for sticking so close to their type of religion is fear of anything different 8which in turn may be simply fear of erring themselves). So here you see the main difference. The difference between good and evil is fear. If the main motivation behind what you're doing is fear then it's evil.
So indeed the borg (or the undead in fantasy) are themselves indeed not evil. They are just some kind of tool. And a tool has no fear. So the decision between evil and good is done by looking at their leaders.
Imagine a pure mechanical faction, where even the "leaders" are just some mechanical things. This faction would neither be good nor evil. This faction would just follow their program, without the need to eradicate everything else, but also without the need to preserve them. It's just not related. Evil and good needs some type of relation.
A nice example where those "twisted" priests, peasants, knights, gryffins in H5. And too in H5, 1 knight (as far as i remember his name was Godric) was the perfect good knight, while Isabel could be considered as beeing evil.
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