Nice Guys Finish Last and First Place is a Jerk.

This weekend I completed Fable 3 in its glorious entirety. Unfortunately, in order to do so, I had to do a second playthrough. In an effort to test my own limits, I played as an evil character. After all that, I need a hug.

First my decisions were really small. Do I want to whistle and dance or fart and be sexually inappropriate ? Well who doesn't want to be sexually inappropriate ? Some of the bigger decisions were still fun. Do I want to create an orphanage or a brothel ? Of course I picked brothel, prostitutes are always a good time.

Then the decisions started to get harder. I had to do things like break promises to help cities. I sold out a whole village to balverines so I didn't have to work as hard for a collectible item. I even began enforcing child slave labor. Then my final act of madness came. I yelled at my little dog sidekick. As I yelled and degraded him, he began to whimper and drop his tail. I couldn't handle watching it any longer and the experiment was over.

Never has a game made me feel so terrible. Exciting story, captivating characters, and realistic graphics all made the experience so real. I legitimately felt like a jerk. Looking back, it was amazing how something like a video game can cause such an emotional response. When first thinking about this experiment, I envisioned myself hunched over in the dark cackling while I slaughtered innocent villagers. Instead, my soul was completely crushed.

I learned a couple things. First, I might not be the massive jerk I always thought that I was. Being a cruel ruler was infinitely harder than I imagined. And for me, playing as a bad guy wasn't worth the second playthrough just to see how the story had changed. Second, those game designers and writers do an amazing job. As much as I hated being a tool, its fun to think about where game design and execution is going. I'm guessing its all up from here.