Is there a revenge element to the plot? There aren’t any direct plot spoilers here. You only need to avoid reading the post if you don’t want to know whether a character or game’s situation is morally ambiguous or complicated.
The Table of Contents
Early Games and Simple Moral Framing
In the early days of games, when narrative wasn’t much of a concern for most games, plot structures were generally like Super Mario Bros or Doom – you play the (usually male, then as now), the game points you at the bad guy, and off you go. No one plays Pokémon and wonders if they’re the bad guy.
The Rise of the Anti-Hero
As games and game narratives grew more complex, we began to see anti-heroes: player-character protagonists whose values and actions are morally problematic. In the PS3 era, figures like Max Payne sought
criminals for justified revenge, but, in classic noir fashion, didn’t concern themselves too much with keeping their hands clean.
Kratos from the early God of War games was a fierce, vengeful fighter with a softer side. In the PS5 era, as seen in God of War Ragnarök (2018), Kratos is now a father dealing with his violent past and trying to do better.
New anti-heroes like Jesse Faden in Control or Jin Sakai in Ghost of Tsushima also face modern questions about power, responsibility, and the price of violence.
Ethical Ambiguity Without Revenge
Niko Bellic in Grand Theft Auto IV offered a different moral challenge for the PS3 era. He had less to avenge (though a revenge plot was present), and his life of violent crime was more motivated by the sense that this was the best way to get ahead in life and by his evident disgust for America’s complacent consumer society.
Modern Protagonists and Complicated Motivations
In the PS5 era, games like Cyberpunk 2077 and Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 also feature characters with complex motivations. V, for example, has to survive in a world where making ethical compromises is often necessary. Peter Parker and Miles Morales face tough choices about justice, sacrifice, and the consequences of their actions.
Other Rockstar games from the PS3 era, like L.A. Noire and Red Dead Redemption, featured protagonists with similarly morally ambiguous past and present involvement in violence. Today, games like Red Dead Redemption 2 (available on PS4/PS5) deepen the exploration of morally troubled heroes.
When Games Force Players to Face Consequences
Games like The Last of Us Part II make players face the results of their actions. The main characters often cross the line between justified violence and revenge. Players still have choices, but story-driven games now often make them think hard about the morality of those choices.
Karma Systems and Player-Driven Morality
The option to make your protagonist morally better or worse was central to a popular game mechanic in the PS3 era, notably through “karma” systems. Fallout 3, Mass Effect, Infamous, Red Dead Redemption, Dishonored, and Bioshock all explored the protagonist's morality by letting the player's choices determine branching storylines and story arcs.
In the PS5 era, morality systems are more subtle and woven into the story. In games like Cyberpunk 2077, Detroit: Become Human, and Elden Ring, your choices shape not only the ending but also the mood and relationships during the game.
However, these moral systems, such as karma, can sometimes make player choices feel shallow. They often reward players for choosing either all good or all bad actions, pushing them to aim for a specific outcome rather than making choices based on what feels right in the moment.
There are, of course, players who ignore this aspect of the karma system and make decisions based on morality for a more role-play-oriented experience, as well as players who make decisions based on what they think will be most interesting on a case-by-case basis.
Without regard to the karma system or to consistent character development. While these games can lead to anti-heroes, the player can largely avoid that through their choices.
Relationships and Detailed Moral Design
The relationship-oriented game Catherine, from the PS3 era, offered an interesting variation on the karma system, with multiple endings based on player choices along the Good-Evil spectrum.
In modern games, branching relationships and morality mechanics are even more sophisticated, as seen in titles like Baldur’s Gate 3 or Life is Strange: True Colors, in which choices influence not just endings, but ongoing character development and player experience in subtle ways.
Why Pure Villains Are Rare in Games
It’s much harder to find games where you play a straight-up villain with no redeeming qualities (at least story-oriented games, playable bad guys are common in multiplayer modes). Any (mainstream) game with Nazis is going to be a game where you’re a good guy fighting bad guys – I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for a game that puts you in a uniform with a swastika on it unless you’re undercover.
Even in Manhunt, notoriously close to being a love letter to murder, the protagonist has been placed in a situation where he must kill or be killed, lending him some justification and making him not totally unsympathetic.
Troubling Protagonists We Still Care About
Finally, there are games like The Last of Us, Shadow of the Colossus, and Enslaved: Odyssey to the West from the PS3 era, where you play as characters who may not always be doing moral things or even have moral motivations (the disturbing shooter Spec Ops: The Line also belongs on that list).
This trend continues in the PS5 era. Games like The Last of Us Part II and Alan Wake II feature main characters whose actions and goals are troubling, yet players still feel sympathy and remain invested in their
stories.
Why Moral Uncertainty Makes Games Better
This increasing diversity in the moral terrain of video game plots and characters is good, and not only for the dramatic/literary reasons mentioned in my post about The Last of Us. It’s also good because, as players get used to games that let them make their characters flawed and troubling in various ways, good games become less bleak and thus more suspenseful.
We can’t know for sure whether the character we’re playing will turn out to be mainly a good guy, a bad guy, or something in between, and that can be exciting when done well. If they have a gun to the head of a surrendered party, we’ll be less likely to know whether they’ll pull the trigger.
This can pull us into the story and make us think about what we’re having the character do as we play. And when video games address characters that aren’t simply good or bad, opening up to gamers a much wider range of realistic human dilemmas, since most human beings aren’t simply “good” or “bad” people, but conflicted individuals making choices that are good in some ways and bad in others.
Take Infamous: Second Son from the PS4 era, which changed the karma system. In earlier Infamous games, good actions earned praise and bad actions made people dislike you. Second Son made things more complex: doing the right thing could put you at odds with the authorities and make the public fear you.
Modern games like Cyberpunk 2077 and Star Wars Jedi: Survivor make moral choices even more complex. The results of your decisions are often unclear, so you have to think about their impact beyond just good or bad. This change keeps game morality interesting and challenging as the medium grows.
