Best greyscale themed RPG

I agree with Dragon Age: Origins, but then again I actually liked that game enough to finish it.

Ignoring the overall story for a second, if you focus on the individual areas you can find a lot of "grey" morality with some strong writing. To be honest, I only remember three of them, but they were pretty good: the child and the blood magic, the selection of a dwarven king, and the game's "bad guy" justifying his actions. The last of these should have been the focus of the story. I think BioWare totally fucked up their chance to have a strong Dragon Age trilogy by condensing so much story into one game. They should have focused on the bad guy -- a human leader hordes his troops in suspicion of a hostile neighbor, ignoring the overstated "evils" that lurk in the south. Dragon Age could have focused on that -- and then slowly built up to a final battle with whatever that Big Bad Dragon's name was over the next game or two. Dragon Age was pretty popular -- people would have eaten a trilogy right up. Instead we got a dopey story in DA:O, and then an unrelated shitfest in DA2.

 

The Bard's Tale (2004) and SMT: Nocturne were two completely different console games that were both released for PS2 on the same month that did grey extremely well. What's really ironic is how Nocturne was much closer to being a Bard's Tale game than Bard's Tale was.

 

In doubt between Liberal Crime Squad and Nethack.

Oh, I didn't read OP, I thought it meant greyscale as in a game without any kind of colored graphics or ASCII.

Still, for a political satire, Liberal Crime Squad is quite greyscale in morality. Killing people with AK-47s for the sake of gun control while fighting crypto-fascist neocons can be very morally ambiguous, and definitively more grey than any Biowhore crap.

Can't really decide on which would be the best. PS:T is a serious contender considering it manages to feature such in a setting ruled by black and white alignments, when it comes to some NPCs, but not when it comes to the main character, because most of the evil choices are undoubtedly evil, except they are smart evil rather than stupid "kill random filler NPC" Bioware Evil. On the other hand, when it comes to Fallout and Fallout 2, regardless of what the karma meter says, what would be the "good" choice can be very unclear for a first time player, so they excel at making choices and consequences morally ambiguous. For example, supporting one gang against another. Or the regulators in LA Boneyard. How to deal with the water chip and the ghouls in Necropolis, etc.

Same on VTM Bloodlines, political bias born out of RL beliefs influencing in which faction you side with at the first playthrough in-game excluded.

And from playing Age of Decadence's demo, I have to say it excels at this field, except it may be more blackscale depending on how you see it(as in every faction seems devoid of morality).

tl;dr Age of Decadence and Fallout 1 and 2 are definitively the three best IMO.

 

Don't forget pointless combat that served to artificially extend the games length. This wasn't helped out all by the combat not being all the good and the encounters not that varied.

 

The Elf/Werewolf quest in DA:O was also rather grey, you needed allies, and you needed someone to come out on top in order to provide that assistance. Both had wronged each other and you just tipped the balance.

 

Yeah. But there is an ideal solution.

 

There is, but you are not aware of it from the start.

Also, that ideal solution does not net you any werewolves, hence it's a shitty solution.

 

I just remember doing whatever benefitted the hot tits goddess there.

 

Another problem with Bioware. Anytime you have a quest that might involve tough decisions there turns out to be a hidden third way that manages to make everyone happy.

 

The main problem wasn't trash mobs, but that every mob was identical, and you couldn't avoid them at all. If you traveled across the map, you were getting in a fight, and you couldn't just run away Fallout style.

 

This is true. But that is rarely the most interesting solution anyways.

 

Eador

 

Yeah, when I played DA: O, I had a sort of trickster illusionist hedgemage who really, deep down, fed off of tricking people's minds. As his power grew, he felt tempted by blood magic (mind-controlling magic). Then when he confronted the demon inside the boy's mind, one-on-one, the demon offered him the power of blood magic in exchange for secretly promising the boy's soul. That was pretty epic and started my character down the road to blood magic.

DA: O is a good game. I even enjoyed the combat -- was a hell of a lot more tactical than, e.g., KOTOR combat.

 

Okay larp fag.

 

Um, so you min-max in a morally ambiguous way I guess?

 

Hi.

It's called responding to gameplay challenge.

 

Huh?

Point is, DAO gave you choices you could roleplay in an evil or morally ambiguous way. My character chose personal empowerment at the expense of others.

What min-maxing means: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Min-maxing

 

No what you mean was that you created stuff outside of the game, to enhance your gameplay. Hence LARPing.

 

No, I didn't. You are an idiot.

Let me translate for you:

I made a character concept. An illusionist "trickster" mage. He chose illusionist/mental/joke spells like "oil slick" or whatever. I wanted to make him a blood mage, for Fun. The game presented me with the option to follow blood magic (which you can only choose in such an event) by trading a boy's soul for the knowledge of blood magic. That's what I did.

Fuck, did I just have to explain roleplaying to a 2010 registration? This site's motto used to be, quote, "putting the 'role' back in RPG". What the fuck do you DO here?

 

"who really, deep down, fed off of tricking people's minds"
"As his power grew, he felt tempted by blood magic (mind-controlling magic). "

LARP!

Also you are fucking easy to tick off. What have YOU been doing here?

 

You're playing a game that's regularly asking you to make moral decisions and you're calling me LARPer for having a character personality concept?

I'd say I'm right at home, so suck my hairy penis.

 

You literally never make sense.

I made a moral choice that gave my character a whole fucking new class of skills.

 

Seriously, what the fuck are you trying to say? It's demon magic described as evil in the game. All morality everywhere is inside your head, so any time you do anything evil you're merely "thinking" it's evil.

"Trickster mage" is a character build. I based my skill choices off of this idea.

You dumbass kids think roleplaying is LARPing and bad. You're wrong and you give me migraines.

 

It is not, anywhere, described as evil. It's shunned upon because it is hard to control, and favoured by rogue mages. But it never states that it is evil. It's part of the "means to an end"-theme of the game.

 

I sold a kid's soul to a demon to learn blood magic and you guys are calling this LARPing because I call it evil?