Midnight In the Game of Good, Then Evil

"Will you reco'nise me
When I'm stealing from the poor?
You're not gonna like me
I'm nothing like before"

Emeli Sande - Heaven


I hadn't really gotten into cRPGs by the time the movie adaptation of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil came out, or I would have probably immediately latched on to its pivotal scene... about pivoting... as a great gimmick for an interactive medium. Accused of murder, a local Savannah, Georgia citizen turns to a local witch to magic his-self a favorable trial outcome. They spend two hours in the graveyard rolling bones and recanting incantations and whatnot. The first hour, before midnight, is relegated to good magic, while the second, after midnight, for the working of evil. In the context of a murder trial, it brought to mind the question of inherent murderous ability and the turning point from quirky but upstanding citizen to KILLKILLKILL.

Which happens to fit computer gaming like a glove. So how would an hour for good and an hour for evil translate into cyberthingies? First of all it would have to be single-player. In multiplayer there's no half-point and the question's moot: everyone goes for the win, for harming other players as much as possible or for imbecilic grandstanding. Single-player's where we flatter ourselves, pretending to be heroes. To stay true to the core concept, the game would also need a true midnight, a distinct shift between good and bad behavior. It must be deliberate, with the player actively choosing between beneficence and maleficence. This means the same events would take place but only the player's role would shift.

So we can pretty much rule out a story-based RPG as too inflexible. With the main events predetermined and such a tight focus on the player's moral choices, a sandbox would also be less than ideal. Also, sandboxes tend to be infinite rather than an easily divisible fixed duration. A survival horror or first person shooter might fit the bill for the basic setup. It strikes me that I don't want this to be a slow slide into despotism, as Frostpunk so artfully portrayed. Thus, some game element must serve as incentive for the player to suddenly betray everything he's done so far. To break his stride. To break the game. No other genre handles that quite so well as roguelikes and their spin-offs, with their randomized and often game-breaking loot drops and enemies.

So:

Option 1 : Rappin' in da hood
First-person with the limited (but critical) personal agency of a survival title and some rogue-like game-breaking elements like randomized encounters / drops to force the player to switch sides around mid-game.

Option 2 : Fallen Angel
Ally the player with one of two factions. Faction resources get used up as you advance. Around mid-game you'd have no choice but to turn coat as you run out of steam, then become ever more dedicated to your new cause as you advance.

Option 3 : Bad Cop
Murder most foul. Or pickpocketing most foul. Or licking someone else's ice cream cone without permission most foul. It's not the crime that gets you, it's the cover-up. Start the player off as an upstanding citizen, a crimefighter even, then have him commit some petty crime and cover it up with an even bigger crime, then slippery slope the whole thing off to a grand finale like nuking the city.

That last option sounds the most novel to me, and it's restricted to a transition from good to evil. (The opposite could be true but opportunities for escalation once flipped to good are somewhat more limited.) Most game developers would likely opt for an uplifting redemption story to cater to degenerate snowflakes, but for gut-punch value and memorability you can't go wrong with going wrong. Very, very wrong.

Of course the two halves have to be balanced somehow. The player must be incentivized to both build up a karmic balance and to reverse it starting around mid-game. Option 2 offers an easy balance in the two factions' available resources. If both good and evil barely add up to enough to get the player to the endgame, this would create an incentive to hold out as long as possible with the first faction before turning. Starting the player off as a superhero slowly descending into supervillainy would probably tie all three options up quite neatly.

Just so long as the entire game pivots on fabricating a single moment in which the player is given the option between good and evil and freely chooses the opposite from what he's been doing so far.