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Black And White Morality / Video Games

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  • In Bravely Default, Edea Lee, due to being a naive teenager who was brought up believing the lies she was told by her home country, initially believes there are only heroes and villains even after defecting to the heroes. Her Character Development is all about making her realize the other shades of morality in between.
  • It has always been the trait of the Command & Conquer: Red Alert series, where the Allies are good and the Soviet Union is evil. They are later joined by a new evil side, Empire of Rising Sun.
    • Despite what the fandom would want you to believe, it's the same for the Tiberium-series games as well - the only morally grey thing GDI ever does in the series involve General Solomon apparently being The Man Behind the Man to a rogue Nod general early in their campaign in Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun; every other bad thing they've supposedly done has always either been Nod blaming their own massacres on GDI or reporters in their pocket just making shit up.
    • ... until Command & Conquer: Tiberium Wars, at which point it is getting clear that GDI have stopped being the good guys, being run mostly by corrupt politicians instead of honourable Generals, are keeping the nice and friendly Blue Zones to themselves and clearly not giving a damn about what happens to the rest of humanity forced to endure living in the Yellow Zones (the Red Zones are completely uninhabitable at this point). Then the last game clearly shows that GDI used a "Liquid Tiberium Bomb" to win in their campaign, which resulted in 25 million dead and worsening earth's state to more terrible than ever before, while also setting precedent for GDI to use Tiberium weaponry en masse, which is the last thing they would want as, due to it, they would have become no different than Nod. Also, much to the joy of Nod fans, Kane was right all along with his ideas of ascension.
    • Subverted for a change in Command & Conquer: Generals: The United States are mostly good, almost to a parodic degree, with lots of Type 1 Eagleland to match. They are also a bit incompetent at times. China is less good but still somewhat good, though a few of their weapons of choice are highly questionable (napalm, landmines, nukes...), and at least one of their Generals went rogue. They do end up saving the day instead of the Americans. The GLA finally are almost exclusively amoral bastards who nuke cities, douse entire populations in biotoxins, steal relief aid intended for war victims and other scummy moves, alongside employing suicide units and the like. But one cell helps the Americans, of all factions, against one of their own Generals (Dr. Thrax) because Even Evil Has Standards.
  • The Human Noble Origin in Dragon Age: Origins is pure Black-and-White Morality. You play as the younger child of Teyrn Bryce Cousland, who is betrayed by Arl Rendon Howe, out of jealously and greed. He is completely ruthless, exacts completely undeserved violence on women and children, and seizes your family lands to become a petty tyrant. Your family, however, is Always Lawful Good and beloved by the Kingdom of Ferelden.
  • Dragon Quest series uses this regularly. The heroes are good. A giant dragon and a badly skinned mage are evil. Many other villains are even beyond that.
    • Psaro the Man Slayer subverts this partly. He hates humans because they harmed his girlfriend. But going into the arena and beating random fighters to death isn't that nice of a thing to do either. None of his underlings are ever good.
      • Though Psaro could be seen as sympathetic in some ways, as the death of his girlfriend drove him beyond insanity, causing him to force himself to evolve into a demonic monster who at that point doesn't even remember who his girlfriend is, and the only thing he knows in life is to destroy all humans for what they did to him, despite he doesn't even remember what that was, all he knows is that is his goal
  • The Elder Scrolls: Though the series in general tends more toward Gray-and-Grey Morality (and even some Black-and-Gray Morality), the main quests of most of the games (and most expansions) are standard "Good vs. Evil" affairs where the Player Character must stop whatever malevolent force is seeking to bring about The End of the World as We Know It. To note:
    • In Arena, the PC must defeat Evil Sorcerer/Evil Chancellor classic, Jagar Tharn, and rescue The Good Emperor Uriel Septim VII from Oblivion. (Later games reveal that Tharn was acting as an agent of the Daedric Prince of Destruction, Mehrunes Dagon.)
    • Daggerfall is the sole main quest Aversion to date in the main series. Daggerfall has Multiple Endings which allow you to side with numerous factions, ranging from lighter gray (the Empire, the Underking) to outright black (Mannimarco).
    • Morrowind:
      • The main quest pits you against deranged Physical God Big Bad Dagoth Ur, who is spreading the Corprus Disease via power channeled from the Heart of Lorkhan and wishes to construct a Humongous Mecha, Akulakhan, using the Heart as a power source. Though he has some Well-Intentioned Extremist-style motivations (freeing the Dunmer people from the Empire and casting down the "false gods" of the Tribunal), his methods are firmly black in morality and, according to developer written supplemental works, seeks to transform all of reality into an extension of his own mind. ("The Mad Dreamer" is imprinting his twisted mind on the "dream" of Anu.)
      • The Tribunal expansion offers an aversion with the (dark) gray vs. black situation in its main quest. King Helseth vs. Almalexia, who is facing immense Sanity Slippage after losing her godhood. Helseth is not a pleasant person, but Almalexia manages to be worse...
      • The Bloodmoon expansion pits you against Hircine, the Daedric Prince of the Hunt, who is kidnapping the greatest warriors on Solstheim for his recurring hunt. Naturally, you must participate and defeat him.
    • Oblivion
      • The main quest pits you (and your allies, Martin Septim and the Blades) against the Mythic Dawn, led by Mankar Camoran in service to MehrunesDagon, who start things off by assassinating the Emperor and his legitimate heirs. The main quest is all about stopping Dagon from destroying the world.
      • The Knights of the Nine expansion pits you against Umaril the Unfeathered, an ancient Ayleid Sorcerer-King who has returned to get revenge on those responsible for his fall (namely, the Nine Divines). For bonus points, you actually have to purify yourself in order to wear the blessed armor required to defeat Umaril.
      • The Shivering Isles expansion pits you (and your Big Good supporter, Sheogorath), against Jyggalag, the Daedric Prince of Order, who returns once per Era to destroy the titular Shivering Isles, the Daedric Plane of Sheogorath. Remember that line about villains with Hidden Depths? Yeah, it very much comes into play here, but actually stopping the destruction of the realm is still pretty black and white.
    • Skyrim
      • The main quest pits you, The Chosen One "Dragonborn" with the immortal Aedric soul of a dragon, against Big Bad Alduin the World-Eater, the Beast of the Apocalypse. While there is an epic amount of "gray" morality surrounding you and your supporters, the actual act of defeating Alduin and saving the world is once again very black and white.
      • The Dawnguard DLC main quest pits you up against a group of ancient Vampire Lords who seek to create The Night That Never Ends. In a twist, you can become a Vampire Lord yourself and join their side if you so choose.
      • The Dragonborn DLC pits you against your Evil Counterpart, the First Dragonborn, Miraak. Defeating him and once again saving the world as we know it is fairly black and white (though you're forced to work with some pretty dark shades of gray to accomplish this).
  • Fire Emblem tends to play with this a lot, even with its many morally pure Lords as its protagonists.
    • In Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance, while Elincia is good, and Mad King Ashnard is evil, his steed isn't evil, just Brainwashed. But then there's Naesala, who's more morally ambiguous, as well as several Daein commanders who fight for Ashnard more out of a sense of duty for their nation than being outright evil. Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn muddies this even further: Begnion, who helped Crimea fight Daein in the first game, turns out to be just as corrupt, and the initial protagonists are heroic Daeins. And while half the Begnion Senate are evil assholes, Hetzel is just a terrified old man (who saved Rafiel's life in the past) and Oliver has Blue-and-Orange Morality. Meanwhile, Crimea isn't as pure as it seemed in the first game either, with many nobles not happy at Elincia becoming queen. The endgame does settle into this territory, though, as with the exceptions of Oliver and Levail, your united team is composed of heroes out to save the world and battles cackling villains out to enslave it.
    • Fire Emblem: Awakening plays this straight more than any other game in the franchise; the Halidom of Ylisse worships Naga, a beautiful female dragon from an Always Lawful Good race, and is presented as pure and good; while the desert theocracy Plegia is led by the Grimleal, who worships Grima, an ugly male dragon from an Always Chaotic Evil Race and is portrayed as utterly evil. An attempt is made early on to add some grey by saying Emmeryn's predecessor had made war on the Grimleal, but this is dropped, all Grimleal in the game never mention this and are simply portrayed as bad guys who like being bad with no real motive.
    • Fire Emblem Fates at a first glance seems to plays this straight for the most part, but as it turns out, it's a deliberate subversion if not Reconstruction of The Empire and Dark Is Not Evil, making it far more like White-and-Grey Morality. The Kingdom of Hoshido is a Japanese-like prosperous nation that only wants to live in peace, and the Kingdom of Nohr by contrast is a Mordor-esque country with a tyrannical king who comes off as pure evil and seems trying to invade Hoshido to no provocation, and the conflict seems with a clear moral victor no matter the route. That means Hoshido is objectively in the right and Nohr needs to be stopped, right? Well, Nohr is starving and has survived a Succession Crisis that, as it turns out, killed the previous king — who by all accounts was a genuinely reasonable person before he died — and was as a result directly possessed by Anankos, the Greater-Scope Villain who's a misanthropic dragon-god with no understanding of humans. This caused a Cycle of Vengeance between Hoshido and Nohr due to the possessed Garon acting in the interest of destroying both kingdoms, hiring equally-psychotic retainers to act on his behalf in Iago and Hans. Meanwhile, every playable character in Conquest is Creepy Good and sympathetic at best in spite of their awful leader, and an Anti-Villain at worst, trying to survive while Hoshido shows genuine ignorance to Nohr's plight (with Ryoma acting shocked to learn that most of Nohr is starving) and wanting Garon overthrown. And as you have loved ones on both sides, the game doesn't frame Nohr as irredeemable but makes it clear that both sides are the victims of the greater machinations in this war, with Hoshido trying to defend itself and Nohr forced to invade a country due to a king who was Dead All Along, and part of the Golden Ending involves breaking the cycle by unifying both kingdoms to fight against Anankos. Part of the moral conflict as such is either "do the logical thing and side with Hoshido to protect it from Nohr," or "do the emotional thing and side with your raised family in an attempt to break the cycle from within", and both sides are framed as very sympathetic as such.
    • Played straight overall for the main story in Fire Emblem Engage: those allied with the Divine Dragon are unambiguously heroes while those who work for the Fell Dragon are the bad guys. While some characters end up switching sides during the story and the motivations and backstories of those opposing Alear are expanded upon later, the main core of the story's conflict remains one of Good vs Evil.
    • Fire Emblem Warriors also has this; your team is composed of an all-star lineup of noble heroes from other worlds, and the enemy is composed of cackling bad guys motivated either by power (Oskar) or For the Evulz (the returning villains, Velezark). The only legitimately sympathetic antagonist is Darios, who ends up on the wrong end of Demonic Possession and isn't even in control of himself.
  • Galaxy Angel: The Transbaal Empire is good; The Val-Fasq are evil.
  • Subverted in Golden Sun: seemingly present during the first game, but the second game subverts it by having you play the antagonists of the first game and having the final boss be the mentor from the first game. Despite this, the sympathetic characters from the first game have no problem switching sides immediately.
  • Gradius: Planet Gradius is good; Bacterion, Venom, and Salamander are evil.
  • Hitman has one between Providence and a private militia led by the Shadow Client.
  • For most Kirby games, the world runs on this, with Kirby, a nice and helpful hero, trying to solve the problems by beating the (usually obvious) bad guys behind them. A few times, however, Kirby becomes a victim of circumstances for his deeds (either because he's manipulated to do the bad guy's whims or Poor Communication Kills), and aside from clear-cut villains, there are those who have good intentions behind their actions, those that pose as good guys that need the hero's help, and those otherwise innocent bosses that get possessed/brainwashed into fighting the heroes.
  • In the The Legend of Zelda, which follows conventional High Fantasy tropes, Link, Zelda, and their allies are good; Ganon and his followers are evil.
  • Mega Man and his friends and family are good, Dr. Wily and his robots are evil. Unless those robots were originally built by Dr. Light and/or someone else, in which case they're normally good and were reprogrammed into being evil by Wily. And Dr. Cossack initially seems villainous, except he's actually a good guy who was only being blackmailed into it by, you guessed it, Dr. Wily.
  • Metroid: Samus is a clear-cut protagonist, while the Space Pirates and their goal to exploit the Metroids are unquestionably evil.
  • New Worlds Ateraan has a God of Shadows and a Goddess of Light, niftily color-coded. However, those devoted to the former would likely call Light blinding and evil, so 'good' and 'bad' are not so easily determined.
  • Pick any Onimusha game. In any of these games, you can always bet that the Genma race are always full of cackling Card-Carrying Villain with absolutely no understanding on the concept of decency. And if there are humans that sided with the Genma, they will be portrayed in a similar manner, being more portrayed as people Drunk with Power to the point of evil. Meanwhile, defenders of mankind, be it the Oni or other exemplary men that opposed the Genma, will be portrayed as paragons of goodness, even if some of them wield dark powers.
  • In the Plants vs. Zombies series, the plants are good and the zombies are evil. Due to the humorous nature of the franchise, many Zombies are Affably Evil, there's the rare sympathetic zombie and a couple Go-Karting with Bowser moments are sprinkled here and there. The Plants are universally good, with the closest things to evil plants being examples of Dark Is Not Evil.
  • Pokémon:
    • In Pokémon Red and Blue and Pokémon Gold and Silver, the main character is good, Team Rocket is evil.
    • The later core games avert this though, with the evil teams having more reasonable and sympathetic motivations. The exception is Ghetsis of Team Plasma, whose villainy neighbors Cipher proportions. Cipher from Pokémon Colosseum is far more evil than anything before them and a sight more evil than anything since, up until Pokémon X and Y gave us Lysandre. Another straight example is Cyrus from Team Galactic, who seeks to destroy the current universe and build a new one in his image.
    • As its name suggests, Pokémon Black and White deconstructs it, with the main antagonist adhering to it then realizing in the end that no side can be truly right. It does ultimately end up as this, however: Ghetsis and some of Team Plasma are evil and had their sympathetic motives be a ruse for their evil plans. This carries over to the sequel, where they don't even try to include some grey morality.
  • Present in Riviera: The Promised Land. Which is very surprising, considering the rest of the series.
  • Shin Megami Tensei IV: Apocalypse dispenses with its parent series' Grey-and-Gray Morality by the addition of an actually noble faction of demons who seek coexistence with humans, Danu, and her fairies. Notably, the normal Law and Chaos sides, plus the Divine Powers, are portrayed completely normally for an SMT game, but nobody even considers joining up with them on the basis that the worst person on Danu's side is Dagda, who's more of a cynical Jerkass than actually evil. Admittedly, Dagda is planning on killing most sentient life to remove the spectre of divine oppression, but in the good ending you dispose of him after he turns on you.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog:
    • Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles are good; Doctor Eggman is evil. Shadow and Rouge border on the Grey morality, though.
    • Usually averted from Sonic Adventure onward. Chaos is a legendary beast who caused the destruction of a whole ancient civilization, and almost that of the modern world as well, but he's actually the protector of the Chao and guardian of the Chaos Emeralds and has no evil in his heart, he just got consumed by rage when an ancient tribe hurt the creatures he was defending in its lust for power. Gerald Robotnik programmed the ARK to destroy the Earth and struck a deal with Black Doom that would result in humanity being attacked and conquered by an alien race, but it's revealed that he wanted to help everyone by creating the Ultimate Life Form, and was also desperate to cure his beloved granddaughter of her illness, which forced him to accept Black Doom's help; he actually created the Eclipse Cannon to warrant that humanity had a way of stopping the Black Arms when they arrived and attacked. It's just that he went insane when said granddaughter was killed by the government's army. Emerl is a robot designed as a weapon of mass destruction, but gains a kind and heroic personality through the game as a result of hanging out with Sonic and his friends and copying their traits, and keeps this one until the end, even after his programming makes him go berserk. Merlina, who is Sonic's guide and ally in Sonic and the Black Knight, is revealed to be the Big Bad at the end, but her intentions and motivations aren't evil.
    • Played straight in more recent mainstream titles. In Sonic Unleashed, Sonic Colors, and Sonic Generations, Eggman's silliness masks an ever-growing competence culminating in Generations with him actually maintaining full control of the Eldritch Abomination he unleashes.
  • The titular mercenary team in Star Fox and the Cornerian army are good. Andross, Anglar Emperor, and their armies are bad. The Aparoids were created solely to be The Virus, and were nothing but evil and trouble.
  • The trope is Invoked in Star Trek Judgment Rites by the Brassica when constructing one of their tests. On some barren planet they place a structure containing two machines; each containing a colony of single-celled creatures represented by a pre-programmed interactive hologram. The "Omegan" species is represented by an angelic-looking hologram, while the "Alphan" species is represented by a demonic-looking hologram. Both hologram implore Kirk to help them eradicate the other species. The test is meant to determine whether Kirk and his team will believe the good-and-evil dichotomy and help either of the species. Kirk realizes that the single-celled species have no morality whatsoever, and that the actual solution is to join them together into a single species instead. Guest-Star Party Member Ensign Jons, however, falls for the ruse and has to be talked out of it.
  • Super Mario Bros.: Mario and Luigi are good, Bowser is evil.
  • Played with in Touhou Project. On one hand, the series as a whole follows White-and-Grey Morality at worst, with copious amounts of Dark Is Not Evil and Not Always Evil, preventing the series from having any true villains. On the other hand, the interactions between youkai and humans in the games are laced with Blue-and-Orange Morality, with the youkai attacking and sometimes even eating humans because, well, that's what monsters do... and the humans in turn exorcising youkai, even harmless ones, because, well, they are monsters. note  On the third hand, the character Eiki Shiki possesses the ability to "distinctly judge anything to be Good or Evil", meaning that she sees the world in Black And White Morality. As she is the resident Judge of the Dead whom decides the ultimate fate of every deceased soul in Gensokyo, she gets a lot of mileage out of this.
  • Valkyria Chronicles tries to avert this trope but ends up shooting itself in the foot because everyone on the Gallian side who isn't morally upstanding gets murdered and the only Imperials who might have been decent people also die. By the end of the game, Darcsens and non-aristocrat Gallians are good... and everyone else is dead.
  • In the first two Warcraft games, the Orcs are evil and the humans are good. There is some attempt to muddy the water in Warcraft II with the trolls allying with the orcs to end their persecution at the hands of humans and elves, but it's still clear who is in the right. By Warcraft III and World of Warcraft, while there are still undeniably evil forces like the Burning Legion and Scourge, it becomes less clear whether the Alliance or the Horde has the moral high ground.
  • Yggdra Union starts off with a princess fleeing from The Empire and raising an army to fight back against them. This later gets subverted, as the Empire isn't actually evil and is fighting for what they believe is true justice as well.

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