I don't like typical fanatical good or bad guy. I prefer good neutral or evil neutral so you're more manipulative and sneaky psychotic rather than a mass murder with no depth. It depends on the game though and my mood.

Why is Zookie downvoted? Upvoted him back. :/

Anyway, usually I play as the good guy - I can't help it unless I force myself to take the different branch. Part of me even didn't like winning playing as the Zerg in the original SC and SC:BW!

When given a choice I almost always play as a good character, but in large part because the "evil" path is so often superficial and downright juvenile. Games rarely give the player the option to be evil with any kind of purpose beyond either short-term self-enrichment or simply random murder and mayhem. Probably because doing this would require a significant effort be put into writing a believable evil-oriented quest line, and most developers don't want to put in that extra effort when they've already put so much effort into the "good" quest-line. So instead evil actions are typically just relegated to the realm of kicking kittens and scaring children.

I like playing as the villain. Usually my moral choices center around if it will benefit me or not. Killing lots of people for no reason is something I don't usually do unless it's a game like GTA and I'm just screwing around. However if there is money involved, or people tried to hurt someone I care about, I have no problems mowing them all down.

When there is a choice of which side to pick I'll pick the "bad" one 99% of the time.

I don't mind as long as you know you're the villain from the start. There's an indie horror rpg where you think you're the good guy until the very end, when you find out you're actually playing as a twisted horrible character. That made me sad :(

This, pretty much.

Pen-and-paper RPG's give a break from the norm, but even there I can't really play an utter asshole. Even my opportunistic, ruthless and disloyal assassin character isn't a complete dickhead about his business; while he certainly has no problem with killing people, he takes issue with unnecessary cruelty. That's not because I wrote the character's personality that way, it's because that's how I have ended up playing him. I bloody well can't help myself.

Well there really need to be justification beyond "evil gets gratification, the same as good". Evil moral choices are always stupid moral choices. You know in a meta sense that they will gain you something because of the "equality", but in the long run there is hardly any benefit to nuking an orphanage or whatever. It's not even a matter of making it a "grey" choice because the ones that seem more "good" in the usual light are always more sensible. The Witcher is really the only series that does this well, as decisions basically happen in ways that don't affect the interests of the main character.

I want a game that makes me not feel like a total idiot for taking the evil choice. Perhaps the most simple choice would be, rather than having "good" and "mustache twirlingly evil", take a nihilistic attitude with the characters and have "evil" and "eviler". Stab the guy in the eye or just throw him off a roof? Take the drunk asshole in a fair fight or smack him with a beer bottle? Threaten the prisoner with total destruction or just torture? It doesn't have to be gratuitous or silly, it just needs to reflect properly on the actions of the character. Two different paradigms, but still something a player can get into.

No, but depends on what you mean by that. If you mean choosing between good and evil, I always choose good, but if you mean playing as the protagonist in a game that happens to have a villain protagonist, then I not only mind but would enjoy seeing more of. Spec Ops the line was interesting, for example, but I wouldn't mind another game that didn't hide that you were the villain.

What would you suggest to make my playthrough of say Baldur's Gate more easier?

Please don't start with your off-topic help sections. 1) experiment 2) ask on the game specific sub-forum, I've been on the BG one, it's by no means dead.

problem is not many games offer you the option, in games like Baldurs Gate being "evil" usually meant asking for reward or simply killing every second person in game, which after while became very boring

games like Dungeon Keeper on the other side just dont have the true villain feeling, you're just trying to survive like in every other game and you were not given the option to be either good or evil

I havent played lot of today's games and even classics, but really good feeling of being evil have both KOTORs and somehow even NOD and Soviet campaign cinematics in Tiberian Sun + Red Alert 2

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKy4BdOVsZI

Hey at least I did not make a thread in the general forums about man :P

As far as alignment goes, you are almost entirely free to ignore it. As for other matters, see Nirth's post.

I like the idea of playing a nuanced, interesting evil character - but usually the only choice we're given is between being a good guy or a ridiculous cartoon villain who chooses evil for no reason other than it's evil.