Consider two extremes: A bitter, hateful being who has seen their people decimated over decades, and who has developed an iron resolve to destroy those responsible... ... A happy, optimistic person who has rarely seen anyone suffer, and aspires to be a civic minded and productive member of society... What sort of symbolic metaphor do you think might best represent these different "souls?"

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I've been thinking of life events that shape you as a person. One element, which MIGHT be interesting, is a morphing kind of disc glyph that is integrated into the UI for managing your self in the game. The border shows what you've become, or what your inner self is made of. During idle moments or special transitions, the interior of it, which normally displays status data, occassionally films over with a symbolic image that hints at your future. At start, the glyph would be optimistic but neutral. As you make choices in life, the border morphs, becoming something that represents what you are: If you're a brash risk-taker, you'll get vibrant colors as your border, with sparks and electricity. If you're meek and safe, the border will become muted and grey. Romantic and idealistic? The border becomes braded with flowers and occassionally animates cherry blossoms falling. Hateful and psychotic? you'll see barbed wire begin to creep around a border made increasingly of jagged blades. For the "becoming" glimpses, the center of the disc would film over only during transitions or idle time. The romantic might get falling autumn leaves or flowers blooming. The madman would get screaming faces twisting up out of ice or stone, like in this image. It's important to note that these would be brief scenes, almost like flashes of insight.

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Obviously, this has to be relevant to gameplay. I'm sketching out a "personality tech tree" idea for choosing what kind of person you evolve into. The disc's border could act both as a progress bar and a barrier to some of the choices. Perhaps you can only choose personality traits that are most like your border? The images could be activated through various gameplay mechanisms, like simply standing still, witnessing something important, or meeting some of the powerful mystics in the game world.

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Of course, ideally, it would be better to twist and shape the character itself, just as in Fable. But seeing as nobody here has $10 million they can loan me (and Molyneaux isn't returning my calls), we indies have got to be creative. [wink]

I've been considering a similar idea for a while, although not so much the graphical aspect but the effect on game play. And I've come with a system I think should achieve the desired effect. It uses two connected processes AER(Accumulation of Event Resolutions) and IOC(Irrevocability of Choice).

The idea behind IOC is that the choices the player makes start them down a particular path. The longer they follow that path the harder it is to get off. Until they reach a point when they can no longer continue in any other way. A tally system is used to assign points to the various "life paths" based on the available choices and in turn the choices available are determined by the characters rating in those "life paths".

To use your example the “life paths” would be:
RISK
MEEK
LOVE
HATE

For any given Event E you may have 4 choices that correspond to the 4 paths. Those choices have both an immediate and linger effect, which alters the values for the available paths.

So you may have something along these lines:

E – Choice RISK -> Result1, RISK++, MEEK--, LOVE -, HATE-
- Choice MEEK -> Result2, RISK--, MEEK++, LOVE -, HATE-
- Choice LOVE -> Result3, RISK-, MEEK-, LOVE ++, HATE--
- Choice HATE-> Result4, RISK--, MEEK-, LOVE --, HATE++

This a rather simplified example as the nature of the choices could have a very different effect, such as the running into a burning building to save the woman you love would increase both RISK and LOVE.

The actual mechanics of how the values are used depends on the complexity of the implementation. In its simplest incarnation all paths start at a value of 100 and this value is used to determine the odds that those choices are available to the player. In more elaborate system threshold levels could be used instead of a percentage system.

If done well the ICO should cause a gradual enough change to how the player plays, that by the time they discovered they are locked upon a particular path it is too late to go back. For instance, if the player played it safe on the MEEK path for the most of the game then when the person their character loves is trapped in the burning building they may no longer have the option to risk their life to save them, since it is no longer in fitting with the character they have become.

Hmmm..., IMO one important thing for whatever representation system you use is that it should be able to morph easily from one form to the other.
E.g. in Black and White. If you were a good or evil God, your hand and castle change so slowly that by the time you realise you have changed, every one else can see it very clearly (sort of like in reality).

Using your garden rings example for instance. You could start out with a ring made of brown wooden braid with a few short stalks branching of it. As the game continues the branches grow more numerous and more etangled. If you approach good (or love or purity etc) it begins to tint green -> then the stalks turn into buds -> then you get leaves -> flowers. Until you have a rich circular hedge speckled with blossoms (complete with falling cherry blossoms). If you approach evil instead the branches instead start to turn sickly gray, the stalks become long thorns, from gray it moves to a dull metallic silver, traces of blood begin to appear on the edges and the thorns begin to contain a few full fledged blades.
The picture in my mind will also allow you to go from one end of the spectrum to another. E.g. the blossoms start to shrivel and fall off, the leaves begin going that sickly gray, the thorns start growing, the leaves shrink and fall away etc.

This will prolly work best for a bi-polar system but it can be made to work for a more complex system as well. As long all the metaphors have a common root. (Although it may require some fancy artwork for non-jarring transitions).

Slightly O.T., I don't see why an accomplished evil villain should not be able to perform the odd good deed. I mean perhaps he's a megalomanic psychopath with a soft spot for the dads of twelve year old boys (becuase that is how old he was when his dad died). I think it should be sufficient to have a representation system and to have events in-game react to his reputation.

I like the flowers & barbed wire, but do they match the flavor of your setting? If they're constantly there, while you're going about your (character's) futuristic business, it seems like it could be a strange juxtaposition.

Personally, I think I'd go with the "becoming" glimpses and leave the border out.

Personally I like to use animals for this sort of thing. Totems, you know? It's very intuitive, because people are used to associating animals with archetypal traits (e.g. slow turtles, insane hayenas, sneaky black panthers, angry bulls...) and gamers in particular are used to seeing bizarre recombinant, mythological, and elemental animals. So if you want you can have your totem (or pet) evolve with the player - start out with a gray blob with eyes, then throughout the game add colors, limbs, a tail, teeth/horns, elemental attributes like fire or venom...

If we manage to actually finish and publish Xenallure, it's sequel will involve evolving animals somehow. ;)