Odd storytelling decisions and what people are willing to take on expectations.

[virtualvoyages]

I've noted a time or two already that the factions of SW:TOR do not tidily break down to Good (the Republic) vs. Evil (the Empire).  Which is actually kind of nice and, at least in my opinion, better than the Protagonist-Centered Morality Good vs. Evil of the prequel movies.  (It's even better than the Good vs. Evil of the original movies, especially if people are going to be playing both factions.)  But I've noticed some odd things about it.

The Republic, as presented in the game, is terribly corrupt, fairly prejudiced against non-humans (though semi-quietly), filled with incompetents, and incapable of keeping peace on its own homeworld (okay, the Empire's got a little trouble with that, too).  It is also filled with people suffering in poverty and despair, most of whom are a) non-human and b) being completely ignored or abandoned by their government.  On the plus side, the Republic wants to see itself as the Good Guys and does, on paper, have good ideals.  But we see very little evidence of it living up to these.

Two of the Republic class story lines are put in motion by the Republic abandoning their own.  And that's not counting all the other abandoned groups of people you encounter in the game.  You find Republic - I think they're Republic - military people making people on a war torn planet run sadistic games for food and supplies, and you have no confidence that the ethics officer you report them to will do anything.  Other Republic military people have little power games going on inside the military and kill off people who disagree with them.  The Republic keeps building super weapons and then misplacing them.  They're willing to throw away lives to rebuild Taris as a PR stunt (to the point that the planetary governor has trapped people there).  And I haven't done more than finish Chapter One on my least Republic attached Republic character and get a few other Republic characters to Taris.  The Force only knows what I'll find in the rest of the story!

Yes, the Empire, as presented in the game, is evil.  I'll just put that right out there.  It's a totalitarian government bent on expansion and led by an evil religious cult.  There is plenty of in-fighting, back-stabbing, and utter disregard for sapient life in all branches of the government.  People are openly anti-alien, slavery is legal, torture is widely used, and, frankly, the only reason my Light Sider Imperials (particularly my Agent) are even alive is because they've got Plot Armor.  So I am not going to try and claim that the Sith Empire is actually the Good Guys.

But... we see the Empire being evil.  Their actions match our expectations and what it says on the tin.  Though, you do meet quite a number of NPCs who seem to be Light Siders, or at a minimum, neutral.  You meet military officers who care about their troops, even to the risk of death (like the captain of the Black Talon), and who care about the civilian populous as well.  You meet mad scientists who hope their inventions will be used to help people.  You meet trainee Sith who mostly just want to stay alive.  Yes, these good or normal people stand out rather against a background of people who want to blow up civilians, don't care about the people they command, and are generally you're expected raging jackass evil folk.  Overall, the Sith Empire is presented as an Evil Empire that is not filled with Evil (or even evil) people - though it has plenty.  They are the wrong side because the government is dedicated to Evil principles, but one is left with the impression that a regime change might fix quite a lot.

What we don't see is the Republic being good.  It isn't the mirror to the Empire, it's an utter mess filled with mostly rather objectionable people who are very much morally compromised.  There are a few shining examples of Good Republic people - Miel Mwun leaps to mind, but they're few and far between.  The Jedi seem rather focused on their order, most of the senators you meet are corrupt, the military is full of Dark Siders, and the citizens are either left to fend for themselves or trying to fix things through morally questionable means.  Where's the background of Good?  Would it have been that hard to convey a basic goodness even if there are bad people in the Republic?  I mean, I walked away from Alderaan feeling like the Organas were good.  I think Duke Whasisface is the only NPC my Smuggler's met and liked who hasn't turned out to be evil or gotten killed.

The lack of goodness in the Republic bothers me when I play Republic side.  Somehow the game doesn't acknowledge it enough, or doesn't acknowledge it in ways I'd expect it to.  I mean, when my Agent gets chewed out for being a decent person, of course he's just going to take it and then go off and do something else good.  He knows his government is evil and he'll just do the best he can to minimize that, help people, etc.  When, say, my Trooper gets chewed out for being a decent person, why in blazes can she not come back with "WTF is wrong with you people!?  What about our supposed high ethics, you asshole!?  Have you seen the freaking mess everything is!?  To hell with you all, I'm going to find that reporter and tell him that you ordered me to kill civilians!"  *stomps out*  I mean, her government is supposed to be good and a democracy and not some kind of police state where you can't do that.

And that's not even touching Chapter Two of the Agent story which promptly makes the Republic look even worse (at least if you're playing a Light Sider).

But, oddly, quite a lot of people are willing to buy that the Republic is Good, simply because that's what it says on the tin.  I'd kinda like to see that, too, guys, not just take it for granted because I've read the box.

Comments

[doomhamster]

*sighs* Sadly this seems pretty prevalent in games. I've met a lot of people who insist that in WoW, Alliance = Good and Horde = Bad even though they're pretty much even for morally questionable actions - but hey, the Alliance care about public image and presenting themselves as the good guys, the Horde just do what they want in general.

[virtualvoyages]

Heh, this is true. But in WoW, the Alliance makes some in game effort to paint themselves as the good guys. And in WoW you have the various races, some of which (on both sides) come off better than others.

Here, its as if people just took the side of the Republic because of the movies (Which happen thousands of years later and involve a completely different Empire. In fact, siding with game!Republic is siding with movie!Empire, since one becomes the other.) and not anything in the game itself. Sith Empire vs. Galactic Republic is dark gray vs. marginally lighter gray. Except that marginally lighter gray keeps building and losing superweapons which may make them more dangerous out of sheer incompetence.

[virtualvoyages]

I wish I could edit replies. *sigh* There's another factor, too, in this game vs., say, WoW. WoW never gave one options (though after Cata, boy did I want them when it came to the humans...). Here, we've got options, but, in a weird sort of way, the lack of ability to go "WTF!?" Republic side makes it seem like the Republic is as totalitarian as the Empire.

[nebelstreif]

This is a really interesting post, and I want to think long and hard before truly responding, but I did want to say: I don't agree with the idea that "siding with game!Republic is siding with movie!Empire, since one becomes the other." That's like saying that the actions of a great warrior in Sumer eventually come to contribute to Saddam Hussein's regime. Yes, my example doesn't encompass the fact that, in the Star Wars universe, technology seems to be in a (rather advanced) stasis, but I think my point generally holds. Furthermore, even if this Sumerian warrior's activity did in some way contribute to Saddam Hussein, he shouldn't be held culpable for what happens in history, thousands and thousands of years later -- especially if our legendary Sumerian was just and honorable.

[virtualvoyages]

Ah, I should've been more clear. I was arguing from the point of view that causes people to side with the game!Republic because of the movies. If we're going to consider them the same thing, then the people making that choice actually have it wrong.

Your explanation of why that's a terrible way of looking at things is spot on. And also applies to what people are actually doing. Though movie!Republic and game!Republic have a lot of the same things wrong with them. (Actually movie!Republic was worse. So far as I've seen, game!Republic doesn't have slaves.)

[virtualvoyages]

...

People cut the Republic of the movies rather a lot of slack, too... mostly because the first trilogies painted a rosy picture of it.

I've found an onion of odd!

[nebelstreif]

Okay, that makes much more sense!

No, you're absolutely right. People are treating them the same way, and I think that's sort of intentional. (For example, Bioware explicitly choosing to make very Clone Trooper-eseque armor for Troopers.) However, it isn't necessarily a bad thing, and I think the rather-similar characterizations get at something -- any pan-galactic organization is going to have major bureaucratic and logistical issues that open it up to corruption and nepotism. (Not that you disagree, far from it.)

[virtualvoyages]

It is a shortcut to getting people to view the Republic as the good guys regardless of what we see. (It just doesn't seem to be working as planned with me.) And, yes, indeed, it would be implausible for the Republic not to have corruption, nepotism, and bureaucratic snafus. It just seems short on anything else.

And I can't wait to see what your thought out response is. :)

[loquat.myid.net]

This is definitely one of the things I appreciate about both Aion and Rift - both games essentially have two equally good player factions fighting a civil war while also fighting off an NPC faction that's out to destroy the playable races. You might see players arguing that, say, Asmodians in Aion are meant to be evil because they've got claws and black wings, but the official game lore doesn't support that at all.

I'm very curious now about Bioware's story-writing process. Like, did they start out wanting to show the good side of the Empire and the seamy side of the Republic, and then the seamy side just got out of hand? Or did they start out saying, "you know what, the Republic as depicted in the movies would actually suck for most people living under it - we should bring that out in the game"?

[virtualvoyages]

Yeah, both sides in Aion seem pretty clearly good, but flawed (one of said flaws being the aforementioned civil war). That was one thing I liked about the game. (And the oh so pretty art. Okay, it was really only the WTFy outfits for female characters that I disliked.)

I'd love to have a window into what went on in Bioware's story division myself. Showing the good side of the Empire - or at least that there are good people in the Empire, which rather leads to the same result - was necessary once they'd decided to make it a player faction. There just aren't enough people who want to play evil to support it, otherwise. (Case in point: City of Villains never got the player numbers City of Heroes did and a lot of people skipped the truly evil quests.)

I don't think it can have been a mirroring idea, unless, as you suggest, it got out of hand somehow. A mirrored version would've worked out much better: you have the basically good Republic, but some people in it are corrupt, bad, lazy, evil, whatever. Maybe Bioware had the same reaction I did to the prequels/Clone War era Republic and figured they'd actually tackle the moral mess - or at least the Old Republic era's equivalents.

It could even be that the constraints of a game (as opposed to a novel, TV show, series, etc) resulted in some of the problem. Because it is a game your Trooper must remain a Trooper. They can't decide that it's worth it to sacrifice their career to bring down some of the evil they answer to. Which means that you're left with the impression that they can't expose it anymore than your Agent can. Which implies just as totalitarian a regime. Even if that isn't intended.

Of course, I can't complain too much that both sides in the game are f-ed up. It was that fact that led to my imagining my good characters saying "Screw you all, we're going to do our own thing." and teaming up, which left me suddenly writing fan fic. (Which I am totally still working on. I'll get the rest of story one finished and posted soon, I promise!)

[loquat.myid.net]

You would be amused by the new Aion expansion if you had a level 55 character - one of the new zones is centered around an NPC city, and the intro cinematic is basically the city leader metaphorically smacking both player factions upside the head and telling them to put their civil war on hold until the Balaur are defeated. Which means you can't PvP in that zone at all, which is good for leveling up to the new cap without getting ganked.

Is there really a lack of people wanting to play the "evil" side? I used to play Warhammer Online, where the Chaos faction was pretty solidly EEEVIL, and they never seemed to have that much trouble coming up with players on my server. Mind you, the Greenskins were EEEVIL in a cartoonish and hilarious way - names like "Boogersnot" are 100% in compliance with Greenskin lore, and it's just plain fun to run around shouting "Waaaaagh!" - so that may have made up for it.

[virtualvoyages]

Ah, cartoonish evil is different. (See also why the only evil character I have is a Sith Sith who thinks Force lightning solves everything. She's too cartoony to really take seriously.)

But, yeah, City of Villains didn't take off like City of Heroes, despite being an expansion of same. And, like I said, people weren't that happy with the truly evil quests.

Also, go Aion. I may question the clothing, but having both player factions be good but misguided - and sticking to that - is really cool.

[loquat.myid.net]

I almost think Aion does a better job in that particular area of lore than Rift does. Both games have the factions blaming each other for starting the civil war, but Aion places the starting incident so far in the past that the truth of who struck the first blow is pretty much unknowable, and over the centuries it's turned into one of those simmering ethnic feuds that's virtually impossible to end.

Meanwhile, Rift's faction split takes place only a few years before the in-game present day, but we're told virtually nothing about it. Somehow the Eldritch Horrors conquered the capital and killed the king, and an agent of theirs manipulated both factions into blaming each other, but that's literally all the detail we have. To be sure, the factions have good reason to be separate - they have very different policies on religion and technology - but I think the rationale for the civil war leans a little too hard on the Guardians' desire to stamp out heresy.