Why Are Good Guys Always So- Good?

[Yoda's LSD Dealer]

This is a weird question, but why are good guys always so good? Like- when You have to do a quest for a random person to have him give you a random item you need? If that was me, I'd say "Gimmie it kid, I'm trying to save the world here, but with you wanting me to do all the quests for you, we ALL might be dead by the time I 'gain your trust'!" Anyone else feel this way?

 

[Caeda]

Well, I'd have to say that most are that way because that's the main stereotype (so to speak). However, that's not always true. For example, in the Golden Sun series, you find out that, technically, the main party from the first game was actually pretty much the bad guys (I can't explain why if you don't want spoilers). However, yeah, in most games you can do a bunch of stuff while the world pretty much is about to be destroyed/conqured/whatever. You'd think that you wouldn't have any time for, say, level-grinding in any RPG or doing a bunch of side-quests or whatever else the game wants you to do.

 

[SinkingBadges]

Uh, I guess this could be put several ways. I can't think of many off the top of my head but:

-Maybe because you might be helping others on the process. The way I see it, you save the world step by step, helping everybody individually and then going to do the greater good building on those little deeds you made at the start. At least this seems to be the case in some of the games I've tried. If you mean something more mundane like giving a kid his playing ball so he gives you an object you need to save the day, then I wouldn't know. Maybe as said above, the stereotypical hero that would help anybody no matter how little the importance of their needs to everyone else? That's actually a pretty good question, I think.

-Three Words: Artificial Game Lenght. Let's remember that certain games where you have to do this kind of things need some lenght to be taken seriously, so the programmers find ways to make them longer by means of fetch-quests. It may be a silly and maybe even cynical reason on my part, but to be honest, this is what I get from some of the games I've played so far that fit the image you described.

Hope that helps.

 

[Vibed]

Obviously from a gameplay standpoint, it's adding to the game length or giving you incentive. From a story standpoint though? Well, you can't exactly be the ruthless anti-hero, but it wouldn't kill them to sometimes say, "Hey, I need to get a move on here. Can you do me a favor and just hand it over?" The hero always needs to help people though, right? Can't be rude.

Ironically enough, Nintendo said when creating the protagonist of Xenoblade (Shulk), they made it so he had no real flaws or did anything unsavory. Heck, half the cast is like that. The friendship between Shulk and Reyn in that game is so strong (they NEVER dislike each other) it's practically unrealistic.

 

[surferguy7]

Because it's a game...

/Topic

 

[Ventus]

The way I see it, good guys are so good because they simply need to build rapport with the NPCs. If you have ever watched the anime series Dragon Ball Z, you would know that one of Goku's best attacks requires the support of pretty much everyone he knows. Without the rapport and clearly good intentions I doubt the good guy could get the drive or force needed to face the bad guy.

 

[Emma]

It depends on the games. For adventure games you have the main character(s) as basically one of three simple types: the hero, the anti-hero, or villain. Wario might qualify as an anti-hero, or maybe even as a villain depending on how you look at him. Nintendo doesn't seem to like making too many games that puts you in the place of the villain. But it happens elsewhere in gaming. Usually in adventure or platformer games you're not given any choice to deviate from the type of person the main character is. In eastern RPGs it's the same thing, you usually have no control over the morality of the characters. This is usually because eastern RPGs tend to stick to a rigid story and you're not given much choice to solve things in other ways than one specific moral route. But in most western RPGs you can make your character as good or evil as you want. An example would be Mass Effect. You could make your character into a very good person, or into a complete jerk. They'd both be heroes though, so in this case you'd have either the run-of-the-mill selfless hero, or the rather shady anti-hero. In a series of games that have good and bad endings, that depend on which moral route you took your character, it's usually the good endings that are canonical.
The reason for all this goodness is the old trope of the good guys always winning in the end. Stories often revolve around good defeating evil, and most people prefer going with the side of good.