How Evil is your Hero?

In this thread: a half-joking list of the terrible things that heroes are asked to do. Setting aside, of course, the grossly disproportionate retribution to various criminal offenses (setting a man on fire for loitering?), there are some missions whose explicit text asks our would-be heroes to engage in some highly questionable practices.

For starters, there's anything involving the Hydra Man Dimension. Apparently the Hydra Men are simple, peaceful creatures that really want to just be left alone. So of course we're sent to try to communicate with them by... punching them in the face. And then, once our brilliant scientific allies discern their means of communication, we're sent to test the translation machine by... punching them in the face. And then, when the Rikti engineer a Hydra Man based disease, we're sent to get Hydra Man protoplasm samples by... punching every last Hydra Man, Woman, and Spawn in the face. Until they collapse into goo.

HEROES!

Or there's that time that Daedalus needs some parts for his Time Shield Thingy. So he tells you to straight up steal them from a Crey warehouse. Now, Crey is by no means an innocent party, but theoretically they are entitled to protection under the rule of law from things like random breaking and entering. Also, they like money. You could, theoretically, buy things from them. But no! Off you go to beat up their security guards and steal their property.

HEROES!

Any other examples of egregious heroic wrongdoing you can think of?

Well, a couple of my heroes have assaulted Sally, a peaceful one of the kind animal that is loved by all.

I actually have an evil Hero. He's a Nemesis Automaton playing the role of Hero to take out possible threats to Lord Nemesis, spy on Hero activities, and possibly "defeat" Nemesis to make the world believe he's dead.

That bit with Joe the Titan, would that count?

Joe the Titan is sort of a mercy killing ... kind of like putting down Old Yeller.

Still made me sad to do it.

But, yeah. The whole Hydra thing was kind of offputting.

Good job breaking it, hero!

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Originally Posted by SpittingTrashcan Or there's that time that Daedalus needs some parts for his Time Shield Thingy. So he tells you to straight up steal them from a Crey warehouse. Now, Crey is by no means an innocent party, but theoretically they are entitled to protection under the rule of law from things like random breaking and entering. Also, they like money. You could, theoretically, buy things from them. But no! Off you go to beat up their security guards and steal their property.

This is one of those lapses in canon that straight up boggles my mind. Just like Malta would never give a newspaper interview challenging a villain to a fight, so heroes would never be allowed to casually raid Crey property. What many writers forget (and this is something I brought up with an Architect author once), is that up until Countess Crey is arrested, Crey is still a legitimate business, and even AFTER she is arrested, her corporation still exist and continues to exist as a legitimate business, presumably run by a board of directors.

Heroes very much CAN raid Crey property just in the same way as police can raid private property... If they are given a warrant to do so and official clearance from authorities permitted to do that. This used to be true in the old content, as most of the time when you enter Crey facilities it's either to protect them from other villains or to investigate, not to fight. And even when you go after arrests or seizures, that's usually done because there's a warrant issued to that effect.

Crey ARE NOT a criminal organisation. Not in the same way as, say, the Council are. If they were, they'd have been shut down by the military and taken apart, not allowed to continue marketing products. Unless you have clear evidence of their wrongdoing, you can't just raid their facilities any more so than you can raid a Portal Corp facility because you needed to travel to Upsilon Beta 5 on the cheap.

It seems some writers just treat all enemy groups like interchangeable "critters" that the narrative expects you to fight on sight, ignoring the fact that many of them just don't work that way.

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Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

My main is not evil, but he does harbor Perverse Sexual Lust, from which comes his might.

There's a mini-arc from Indigo that has you set up a Malta operative to make him look like a traitor, essentially marking him for death.

My namesake Hero joined Hero Corps for the express purpose of beating people up, productively. She has anger issues, loves a good scrap, and is more than a little sadistic, it's why she got into martial arts in the first place. Rather than potentially harm innocent people, she decided that there were enough bad people around who might be foolish enough to not give themselves up without a fight. She's who you call when negotiations fail.

Several of my Heroes are of the covert-ops, outside-the-law school. When the law gets in the way, they're the way around it. My AR/Elec and Archery/Energy are of the more "official" style, for when the public supports military action, whereas my Ice/Devices is of the more plausibly-deniable variety, aware that she's expendable,for the times when the public is either against something or doesn't need to be clued in at all. Of course they'll work within the law as well, obviously neither is Evil, but they're quite anti-.

I have a few regular ol' Heroes, of course.

"A Titan Called Joe" is a very sad arc - along with the Terra arc, and the new Jenni Adair arc.

As for being evil, I can't think of anythign in the game that I've had a major problem with doing

Yeah but The Hydra men where being control by the Rikti and have you ever done the Sewer trial with the Giant Hydra Head. So pretty much they evil right there at this time, they are like wild Animal, they will Attack first and for Crey, well they are evil and you are helping a Hero in another time line to save the world for crying out loud. Even Angels the ultimate good sometime have to do bad things in order to fight the Ultimate evil, what i am trying to say is good and evil, there some time a thin line between them and sometimes things run as Grey and not White or Black.

I'm kind of curious how Daedalus became tech-savvy.

Also: this one isn't as bad as breaking and entering, and I'm not familiar with the legal system enough to know, but is dressing up as though one were a member of a gang a punishable offense? 'Cause, throughout the lowbie zones, you can beat the snot out of various and sundry people for the crime of dressing up before Halloween.

My main used to work for Crey before she ran off with a potentially lethal new product, so you decide.

My hero is so evil that if a purse snatcher cons gray he will run by without a second thought.