I do not want to dig deep into my psyche and examine the decision I am making; but, I do want to explain something that will be changing with all future (written after 1st May 2007) guides (both free FAQs and Premium Guides):

I will no longer cover the evil path through a game.

A lot of thought has gone into this. It started when I was working on Oblivion last year and went through the Dark Brotherhood quests. Those quests are truly disgusting. There are jokes about the murder of a six-year-old girl. You're tasked with killing innocent people for money. Death and bloodshed are celebrated at every turn. In short, the entire quest line is nasty and made me feel bad. Thinking back, I had similar problems playing through as a Dark Jedi in Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. When I got around to SW:KotOR2, I quit early in the process of working on the Darkside path through the game--I just didn't like playing it. Now I'm working on Jade Empire; and, about halfway through the game as a "Closed Fist" (JE's euphemism for arrogant ***) player, and I don't want to finish the game this way. So, I've decided to quit playing the bad guy.

There are higher-level reasons for this. We are what we think. Even though it's "just a game", I don't want to spend my time immersing myself in my "evil" nature. I really don't think that's a healthy activity for anyone; but, everyone plays what they want to play--the runaway success of games like GTA: San Andreas prove that.

This may limit my audience--it will obviously cause my guides to be somewhat incomplete. On the other hand, it's something I've got to do or else give up the writing entirely. I'm just not going to force myself to play through a game as the bully because I would much rather be the hero. I am not going to go back and remove the evil paths from completed guides (so the DB quest line stays in the Oblivion guide), but I'm not going to make the extra effort to add that material to future guides--including Shivering Isles when I begin work on that later this month.

That's all I really need to say about the subject. You can, of course, vote with your wallet over whether this is a "good" move on my part or not; but, I'm not going to change my mind, even if sales dry up.

Thanks for listening.