By conquering the known world, Kyros’ Empire has imposed a single, very rigid, view of how society should operate on a large number of nations and cultures. Individuality is suppressed in favor of conforming to the Empire’s laws and traditions. Is that evil?
In Kyros’ view, it’s an absolute good. The various nations and peoples of Terratus were constantly at war with each other. Fighting over food, water, and resources would escalate into fights over pride and honor. Entire generations grew up without ever knowing what ‘peace’ was. By imposing a single law over the entire world, Kyros tries to eliminate the differences between people that lead to conflict and war. If everyone just does what they’re told, when they’re told, everyone will get along just fine.
It’s a perfect utopia, as long as you’re the one who gets to decide what everyone else should do, or are someone who agrees with what they’re being told. If you don’t – or can’t – agree, then you are brutally punished or forced to comply with the Overlord’s laws.
One of the reasons I'm dreading this game, despite being a big fan and supporter of Obsidian, is that they have not had a good history of presenting "good vs evil" scenarios or factions with any real success. To be fair, it would be the rare American, or even a Westerner, that could properly do so today as we are all creatures of the wider culture around us, and it is beyond clear that the wider culture has taken the ideological position that the absolute maximization of individual liberty is an unqualified good and that anything, under any circumstances, that inhibits, slows or threatens to reverse that maximization of liberty is, by definition, evil.
Which, of course, is another way of saying that the vast majority of gamers won't have a problem with this central aspect of the story and won't see at all the unintentionally hilarious and very misguided passage in the longer quote above. But it does present a problem for me and, I suspect, for the fellow members of my minority tribe who find the current majority's ideological position absurd, dangerous and near-certain to lead to civil violence in the near future. (Or, regarding Dallas, Baltimore and Minneapolis this year, now).
Setting aside the larger ideological disagreement, and returning to Obsidian's take on this matter's effect on games, the best example I can cite as emblematic of their problem with this eternal struggle in both men's souls and their institutions is the faction fight between the NCR and Caesar's Legion in New Vegas.
The setting and the back story for these two groups is very, very well done, especially when one considers the larger ideological positions in the American mainstream referred to above. Rather than painting the NCR as the noble, democratic state extending freedom, liberty and prosperity in the name of democratic values, New Vegas treats the NCR as a much more human--which is to say, necessarily flawed--institution. If one pays attention, one soon learns that powerful agricultural interests may be driving NCR's stay in the Mojave, there are many who feel NCR's stated intention mask a more base acquisitiveness and, most amazingly through the story of Chief Hanlon, its political leadership may be sticking in a life-killing quagmire for short term gain.
Had Obsidian followed through with the same thoughtfulness it exhibited with NCR for Caesar's Legion, a real human dilemma would have been presented, one that would have reflected in a compelling way the decisions people and institutions make from time to time throughout their lives with regard to what they judge, upon sober reflection, as most indicative of the good.
However, while there are tantalizing hints that Obsidian was indeed leaning this way with regard to Caesar's Legion--most notably in the frequent hints about the Legion's bringing of order to chaos and relieving people from very real day-to-day fear for their lives--in the end the writers were unable to transcend the dictates of the current majoritarian view, leaving them actually unable to portray the Legion as anything other than a cartoon variant of evil, complete with all the bogeymen of modern university Sociology Departments. While NCR's use of violence is explicable within the logic of it as an institution, the Legion is presented as driven by mad, incoherent violence, with people executed at whim and rape seemingly more common than sex.
The in-game effect is to render New Vegas' "good vs evil" choice a laughably easy one. While there is no shortage of people who have played the Legion story line (it is, after all, just a game and no real harm is done by doing so) the *authors* of the game themselves make it abundantly clear that there is no good reason other than sheer bloodymindedness to do so. While one can easily imagine supporting an authoritarian regime to end a chaotic, violent, bloody chaos, there are not many people who can easily imagine themselves thinking "hoo-ray, rape!".
Thus, with Tyranny, I'm worried that the signs are that we're heading for the same illusory, not-well-thought-out choice. Choices and consequences don't really accrue, regardless of the number of branches scripted, when the entire body of the work is telling you that Door Number One is really the only decent option.
