Neutral Tim is terrifying

Tim being a Fallout 1 Talking Head in the annoyed state for the first 10 seconds

"I have no strong feelings one way or the other"

If I don't survive, tell my wife: "Hello."

1:46 the way i audibly gasped like i just heard my kid say it for the first time.

“I hate these filthy Neutrals, Kif. With enemies you know where they stand but with Neutrals, who knows? It sickens me.” - Zapp Brannigan

"This guy is super evil."
"Oh damn, what does he do?"
"He talks a lot, especially about how great he is and how he wants to be in charge of some soot covered wasteland."
"So a standard politician. Well the burnt out wasteland does need some real leadership to fix it up."

Sid Meyer's Alpha Centauri was interesting for having ideology based sci fi factions, they were all neutral about things they don't care about, opposed to things they dislike, and all of them had agendas where they could oppose not only you but each other.

Tim swearing was not on my 2025 bingo card

Neutral Tim really caved at the first Good Aligned option with that laugh.

For type 4: It was before your time there but Obsidian argueably did a game like that.  The ultimate "villian" of Knights of the Old Republic 2: The Sith Lords is Kreia who seeks to put an end to both the Light Side and Dark Side  of the Force as she sees it as the cause of all of the turmoil and misery of the Universe and she despises the way it meddles in the lives of people.

I'm so grateful that Tim has chosen to share all of his stories and insight on this fantastic channel. Thanks for everything, Mr. Cain.

I remember Planescape Torment having the two warring gangs and this lone NPC who is tired of both groups. Normally you could fight with a huge group but if you team up with him he quickly proves to be a one man army who only needed a bit of support.

Game of Thrones had “good” and “bad” camps, but even in the “good” camps you have the Boltons, Freys and Karstarks. In the “bad” camps you have characters like Pod, Tommen and the Tyrells who range from innocent and good, to scheming but chivalrous. Having that kind of faction makeup can really freshen up basic good and evil factions

i love Tim's ideas. he's got a great voice and they make for excellent inspiration for stories and characters.

I love this topic and wish more games would do this sort of thing! It helps with player agency and making the world feel more alive.

A great example of a game that leaned on neutral factions was Freelancer. Most factions were nuanced, and many of them could be interpreted differently depending on the player's perspective. All of them could be influenced based on the player's reputation and actions.

Even the "good" and "evil" factions it does have, like police and pirates, often have complex relations with other factions. There are the Gaians, pirates who specifically target terraforming corporations to protect 'virgin planets', and the Junkers, who operate in a grey area, only sometimes crossing the law. Especially among the pirate factions, there's a wide variety with their own unique set of relations and motivations.

Although it wasn't very well represented in the open world, there's a lot of background lore and story content dealing with corrupt government factions as well, and I've seen (and made) some good mods to expand on that.

I was thinking about Supernatural as you were talking about this. And Gabriel when he was all "i'm not on your side,  I'm on THEIR side"

Oh my goodness, Neutral Tim is not something I was expecting!

I always enjoy lunch while starting your videos because I love your energy, so that was an interesting surprise!

5:32 on farmers, who just want to be left alone. Two historical examples come to mind: "greens" in Russian civil war (1917), and South Africa. Both were quite terrifying, definitely not cliche-good factions.

Thank you for making these videos

2:10 Absolutely 100% why Diablo in Diablo II was so terrifying. He didn't say ANYTHING through the whole game, only before engaging him  ''Not even death can save you from me!''