Really depends upon the game. In most games, the “evil” routes are so cartoonishly evil, that I have a hard time justifying those actions as anything but pure stupidity. OTOH, there’s the occasional game that recognizes that villians believe that they are the hero, and their actions are justified by the world around them.
How I play my main character in Elite Dangerous is a good example. She’s normally a kind and generous person… except when it comes to the Federation in general, and Federal Corporate States in particular. In her personal war against the “Evil Galactic Federation,” she’s smuggled in biological and chemical weapons, kidnapped Federal Corpo Execs to face “justice” at the hands of “Brave Freedom Fighters”, assassinated key executives, and has committed the occasional mass murder. All this stems from a rather horrific experience in her youth, and she doesn’t realize that her experience was outside the norm. She honestly believes that those she faces are monsters, and her actions are justified to free the oppressed from tyranny.
