Evil Is Easy: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

{{quote|'''Luke:''' Is the Dark Side stronger?<br />

 

{{quote|"Evil is easy, and has infinite forms."|''[http://www.dictionaryquotes.com/authorquotations/636/Blaise_Pascal.php Blaise Pascal], French mathematician and [[Trope Namer]]''}}

 

* Negi Springfield of ''[[Mahou Sensei Negima]]'' chose Black Magic because the light path wasn't fast enough. The reward in this case was power. Somewhat subverted in that it's not ''actually'' evil, just much more dangerous--both to himself and others.

 

== Film ==

* Several ''[[Star Wars]]'' mentor figures refer to [[The Dark Side]] as "the easy path."

** This is a gameplay mechanic in the tabletop game, where at lower levels using the Dark Side provides more benefits, but it quickly peters off and is eclipsed by the Light.

 

== Literature ==

== Religion ==

 

{{quote| "''Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.''"}}

** There are similar passages found throughout the Bible which share this sentiment in different ways; Isaiah 35 is one such example.

== Western Animation ==

 

 

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== Tabletop Games ==

 

* In ''[[Exalted]]'', being evil causes [[Heroic BSOD|Limit Break]], and even the Abyssals, a bunch of Solars corrupted by the very forces of the underworld, can bleed off their punishment for being good without acting evil.

** Alchemicals play it straight with Transorganic Desecration Cyst, which gives them brain cancer, Gremlin Syndrome (which turns them into murderous, psychopathic avatars of the Engine of Extinction), and the ability to grow Charms that don't take up Essence to have installed.

** Also, Limit Breaks do not happen if you are evil. They happen if you act against your virtues. Depending of how you make the character, it can means you're likely to do so if you ''don't'' kill everyone in the village because doing so is the most efficient way of completing your objectives.

** Mostly accidental. Paladins are [[Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards|Linear warriors]]

** Similarly, Sponsored Magic comes with several bonuses that will both make your spells stronger, and let you cast them easier. The catch, of course, is the more you take advantage of the bonuses, the more in debt you become to the sponsor, and the more they can exert influence on you. Deals with Demons and Fallen Angels fall squarely into this trope, whereas deals with, say, [[God]] fall right on the "Good is Hard" side.

 

* ''[[Puzzle Quest]]'' has it both ways. For some sidequests, one can take an easy amoral option for a reward, or the long path for another reward. However, the "good" rewards tend to be superior (though often not worth the trouble) for helping you out down the road.

* In ''Might & Magic VI'', reaching the Saintly reputation (required for Master of Light Magic) requires you to trudge through quest after quest, slowly building your reputation. However, becoming Master of Dark Magic (requires the worst "Notorious" reputation) takes less than 30 seconds of killing innocent villagers.

** Played straight outside of the plot: things which give you good points when you kill them, like bandits and undead, are rather difficult to find in large groups and yield only 5 good points. Guards, though slightly harder to kill, spawn infinitely and yield 20 evil points. Also, you can get 600 evil points easy by [[Author On Board|divorcing your spouse]].

** Fable is an inversion in that while evil acts are as simple as punching out a window, becoming evil is a full-time job as the default in the game is Good, and going evil mid-game requires multiple [[Moral Event Horizon]] in order to be recognized as evil.

** In Fable 2, during the part of the story where {{spoiler|you're a Spire guard, disobeying the evil commandant makes you lose experience}}, while taking the evil actions has no negative consequences except, if you don't want them, evil points.

** Played very straight in Fable 3, where {{spoiler|you have to make several evil decisions if you want to save all the people of Albion and you don't have 8.5 million gold.}}

** It also makes the game itself easier, good is precision and nonlethality, evil is destruction of whatever gets in the way of you and your enemy, it's easier to play through hard mode when you can spend less time aiming and more time shooting.

* ''[[Mass Effect]]'' seems to try for it and then doesn't! The manual says the easy option is the evil one. But since the evil choice is almost always going to result in lying, stealing, and fighting difficult battles, it seems harder. The good side ends with you saying something gallant, which then makes the enemy give up without a fight, or kill themselves. Which is really the easy choice?

** Some of the Renegade interrupts in ''[[Mass Effect 2]]'' also make it easier by disposing of enemies "unfairly," such as by setting off an explosion to take out some of the enemy.

* In ''[[Kane and Lynch]]'' the "evil" ending is the easiest, with {{spoiler|Kane betraying his companions and escaping with his daughter}}, while the "good" ending requires to play a last and rather tough level to {{spoiler|save your companions}}. Ironically, {{spoiler|the "good" ending is the bleakest of the two, as it's implied that both your daughter and Lynch die, while in the "evil" ending (established by the sequel as the canonical one) they just hate your guts.}}

* Averted in ''[[Ace Combat]] Zero'': morality is entirely based on the number of yellow targets you either destroy or spare. In missions with a lot of yellow targets, you have to deliberately take time away from the actual mission to go destroy them if you want a level other than "Supreme Knight". In addition, spared targets seem to effect karma a lot more than destroyed targets. However, destroying yellow targets nets you quite a lot of extra money, such that if you're playing as a Mercenary (evil) character, you'll have an easier time buying new planes and weapons, as opposed to the Knight (good) character, who has to make each purchase count that much more.

* The browser based game [[Nexus War]] made it much harder to stay good than to go evil as an intentional design decision. Demons could wander around murdering whoever they damn well please. Neutrals, goods, evils, all were fair game and all gave experience. If you wanted to be an Angel however or even just a Good Transcendant you had to work considerably harder. While you weren't punished for attacking Demons and evil characters, so long as someone maintained a neutral alignment you were unable to attack them without the karma meter frowning upon you, even if they attacked you first! This isn't at all helpful when a large portion of the neutral population counts as [[Stupid Neutral]]. Avoiding the days of sitting around doing good deeds to gain favor with the karma meter again can thankfully be avoided by friends using Sin Eater to take away some of your evil points.

** To sort-of-compensate, good warriors could usually beat neutral or evil ones in a straight fight since they obtained an armor ability (which are massively powerful in this game, completely dwarfing any item-based armor) as soon as they reached level 10, while nobody else gets one until level 20. And it scales with level to remain the best for almost the entire game. They also get the most straight "all attacks do extra damage" skills. Plus demons couldn't be healed even if they ''had'' allies who wanted to (which most non-goods wouldn't). Unfortunately for the angels the game was never ''ever'' about straight fights, and how quickly you gain experience was almost unrelated to how much of a beating you could take except at the highest levels.

** That said, the actual hardest morality to maintain was probably the Nexus Champion's [[True Neutral]]; morality shifts with every attack rather than every kill, so you would literally slip away from the center over the course of a single fight if you couldn't finish it fast enough.

* Very common in [[Epic Mickey]]. While every problem has a paint-based "good" solution and a thinner-based "evil" solution, the paint solutions are almost always much, much more complicated, to the point where many players choose evil not out of preference but out of ''not having any idea or ability to figure out how to solve the problem the good way''.

* [[Command and Conquer]]: Red Alert allowed you to play as either the evil Soviets or the good Allies. The first Soviet mission is unloseable, their tanks are more powerful, and their Tesla coils make their bases nearly invulnerable. The Allies, on the other hand, had much harder missions, separate base defenses for infantry and tanks (the Tesla coil would work fine on either), and small, cheap tanks which were rather slow to build anyway. Reversed in Red Alert 2, however, in that the two sides were rebalanced and made more even, and the Soviet story mode ends up notably more difficult than the Allied story in both the main game and expansion pack.

** Sorta holds up in Red Alert 3, the Soviets are the easiest faction to use and the campaign is designed to be the easiest. The opposite applies in [[Tiberium Wars]], in which GDI's campaign is designed as the easiest since they are the easiest to use.

** Not for ''killing'' less than 10 civilians, mind you. You're going to kill a few hundred or so simply by moving around the map. Prototype is that kind of game.

* This is present in many sandbox games with [[Karma Meter|Karma Meters]]. While its easy to get a boatload of evil points in a city by killing every person you come across, there is no easy way to get good points except when give a good/evil choice during a mission. They certainly couldn't give you good points every time you walk by a NPC without preforming a spontaneous head-ectomy.

** [[Video Game Cruelty Potential|They should, though.]]

* It is this way in "NASCAR 2005 Chase For The Cup" if you are not a good driver. Accidentally bump into other cars while racing and you become "evil" very quick.

** Subverted in the sense that the Cross (or more specifically [[Made of Iron|Divine Armor]]) is a ''massive'' [[Game Breaker]], so any effort spent on buffing your Holy EXP is well worth any amount of tedium the minigames may cause. A ''[[Word of God|very]]'' [[Shown Their Work|deliberate]] bit of [[Fridge Brilliance]] with this.