This week for Video Game Tuesday I’m here with a quick explanation on a subject I’ve been asked about recently. It’s Alignment!

Alignment?: This tends to be specifically for Characters, but it can be for organizations or religions or even companies in a game. There have been 9 archetypes that these fall under, and it’s determined by how they act and perceive the world as a whole. The above picture has two axes that you can place just about anyone or anything and determine their Alignment.

Starting from Top Left they are Lawful Good, Neutral Good, Chaotic Good, Lawful Neutral, True Neutral, Chaotic Neutral, Lawful Evil, Neutral Evil, Chaotic Evil.

Give me an Example!: Superman would be a Lawful Good character, where as Batman would be Chaotic Good. Both are people who believe in doing things to better the world, but the ways they go about it are completely different. Superman follows the law, as far it can go for him at least, while Batman doesn’t really care as long as he can solve the problem while sticking to his beliefs.

This system of character alignment has been around forever, but was really codified in Dungeons and Dragons. This system has lasted ever since and is used in all sorts of games today. One recent example that you might be playing is Fate/Grand Order on a mobile device. That game actually has an alignment for every character and sometimes during the weekly “Master Missions” you’ll be tasked with defeating certain aligned characters.

That’s it for this week’s Video Game Tuesday. What sort of alignment would you say your favorite game character is? Leave your answer with the character name in the comments below!