I mentioned previously that I was playing Star Wars: Knights Of The Old Republic, this time as a dark Jedi. I find that RPGs are the games with most replayability, and of late the choice to play as a good/bad/neutral character have made them even more replayable, and hence enjoyable.

Anyway, while playing as this totally evil Jedi who mocks everyone and does nothing unless it benefits him, I started to reflect a little on the darkness in man's heart. (Perhaps your initial reaction is to question whether I cannot tell fantasy from reality?) The game lets you be as bad as you want, and in my case, evil beyond my naive expectations. (SPOILER) One example that comes to mind is on the wookie world of Kashhyk, where you are sent to kill a "mad chief", who just so happens to be the father of one of your companions. There is an unavoidable duel with him, after which he surrenders and asks that you strike him down so that he may die with honor. The light side option is of course to convince him that you mean no harm, and that you seek his help. The dark side option, perhaps predictably, is to go "Chundar sends his regards. Now die!", after which you proceed to kill this invalid wookie. Not without protest from party members, of course - but the evil response to this is something along the lines of "I'm in charge here, so just fall in line, or else!".

It may not seem like much, but for some reason once I did this I felt like I shouldn't have, as though it was wrong even if it was just in a game. It gets worse though, because when your companion asks what happened to his father, the dark side response is "I slaughtered him. Got a problem with that?". At this point I really felt like I did something wrong.

I suppose it is a bit silly to feel bad about your actions in a game. Or is it? Games are fundamentally a means of escapism, and allow you to do things you wouldn't normally do. That's understandable enough I suppose, in real life I obviously wouldn't go around slaughtering civilians for no reason. But what's murkier is that at times I laughed at some of the responses; I'm not sure whether this was just at how heartless a character I was creating, or whether I actually enjoyed what I was doing. I think there is a darkness in man's heart, a dark side to everyone that most of us keep tamed. By finding pleasure in some of the evil responses, I think I was appealing to this dark side that was not unlike the character I was creating.

This was probably the biggest reason for my feelings of guilt, because in split-seconds I felt that by laughing I was mocking my own darkness, as though believing I was in firm control of it. I don't know that we always are, for certainly I've had times when this alter-ego took over.

I feel as though I had an important point to convey, but I've lost it in the mess I've created here. I'll try to think about it a bit more and see if I can wrap things up here.