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New Year's Evil: The All-New [Villains] Thread
Professor Snugglesworth
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In this thread we talk about villains.
Villains are one of the most important features in a videogame. What better motivation is there to finish a game than to giving some world-conquering, girlfriend-killing asshole his comeuppance? We love to fight them in an epic boss fight, we love to face them again and again in the sequels, and we even love to see them perform delightfully evil deeds.
Love them, hate them, or love to hate them, good bad guys make for great videogame enemies. Here in this thread, we discuss our favorite baddies.
I'll start things off a few of my top choices, in order to avoid repeated posts on some of the more celebrated baddies.
1. Sephiroth (Final Fantasy VII)
To this day, I still consider Sephiroth to be the greatest Final Fantasy villain of all time.
Put the pitchforks down, people, everyone's favorite clown is on my list as well. The reason I put Sephiroth above all other villains is due to the way he torments main protagonist Cloud. For Cloud, Sephiroth isn't just a hated enemy that he swears vengeance toward, he is a cancer....a force of evil that is always lingering in the back of his mind, haunting his dreams, forcing him to question his very existence. Even when he's off-screen, the fear of Sephiroth's presence is always looming, represented by a beating heart or a trail of destruction wherever he walks.
In the end, what makes Sephiroth such a great villain isn't that he's incredibly powerful or has aspirations about enslaving all living things in the universe, it's because he is Cloud's enemy first and foremost. You won't find a more personal conflict than the one between these two, and whatever you may think about their mass-market appearances in sequels and spin-offs, I never get tired of watching Cloud cursing Sephiroth's name in hatred, while Sephiroth smiles in silent satisfaction over the hero's continued suffering.
2. Kefka (Final Fantasy VI)
Kefka was a villain truly ahead of his time. Like many of you, my first exposure to Final Fantasy was with the sixth entry in the series, which was called Final Fantasy III at the time. For someone who grew up with the likes of Mario and Zelda, it was a real shock to see a videogame take itself so seriously, using simple 16 bit visuals, but carrying them with a level of presentation I've never seen before, including the wonderful music and (at the time) deep narrative.
It also introduced the notion that psychotic, bloodthirsty villains were indeed possible on a Nintendo system, as Kefka more than adequately proves. What made Kefka work was how he kept most of his craziness in check, coming off more like comic relief in his first few appearances, but ramping up the crazy and violent with each subsequent encounter. By the time you realize what a dangerous threat Kefka is, he's already amassed a great deal of power, and acts like a kid in a candy store as he delightfully destroys everything and everyone in his path. The fact that he still retains his comedic mannerisms and humor make him a villain that's as entertaining to watch as it is to despise him.
Also, he does deserve props for nearly destroying the entire world.
4. Albedo (Xenosaga)
So what makes this seemingly generic-looking villain so memorable?
Well....
Kind of NSFW
Definitely NSFW
The Xeno series has always had a bit of a mature edge to it, but it was Albedo's scenes alone that gave Xenosaga: Episode I it's M rating (in Japan). Owing much influence to FFVI's Kekfa (and that was likely intentional, as scenario writer Soraya Saga had previously worked on that game), Albedo forgoes much of Kefka's comic relief and decides to just go full-on psycho. Unable to die due to his immortal body, Albedo delights at violently maiming his own body, but he only experiences true pleasure when he's tormenting others.
It doesn't help things when he sets his sights on MOMO, the most innocent and helpless character in the whole game. While his physical assault on the young Realien is toned down in the US release, the sexual implications that he happily eschews are surprisingly kept intact. Whether literally or physically, he delights in raping the young girl, making the above scenes some of the most disturbing ever seen in a videogame.
As an immortal Sado-Masochistic Pedophile, as well as having one of the best english vocal performances ever by anime mainstay Crispin Freeman, Albedo could easily have been the greatest RPG villain of all time, had he not been criminally downplayed by the following sequels (to the point that his former victim actually LAUGHS about him in the finale, as if he was some Scooby Doo knockoff). A serious mis-step out of several for the series.
4. Krelian (Xenogears)
Neither a psychotic madman or a would-be world conqueror, Krelian has no aspirations about becoming a God. Rather, his motivations stem from his desire to meet God in person, convinced that uniting with the All Mighty Himself would relieve him of his inner pain and conflicts. And he's more than happy in taking humankind along for the ride.
By the time Xenogears is over, Krelian has amassed a death count far higher than Kefka could ever hope for, annihilating a good 90% of the human race through a series of horrific experiments (there's a reason his factory is called the Soylent System) and good old fashioned genocide. And he does all this with no satisfaction or maniacal rantings whatsoever. To him, humans are just materials for his insane experiments, and even when he actually succeeds in meeting up with the Big G, he feels no satisfaction or happiness. Truly one of the most despicable characters in gaming, although lots of fangirls seem to sympathize with the SOB.
Villains are one of the most important features in a videogame. What better motivation is there to finish a game than to giving some world-conquering, girlfriend-killing asshole his comeuppance? We love to fight them in an epic boss fight, we love to face them again and again in the sequels, and we even love to see them perform delightfully evil deeds.
Love them, hate them, or love to hate them, good bad guys make for great videogame enemies. Here in this thread, we discuss our favorite baddies.
I'll start things off a few of my top choices, in order to avoid repeated posts on some of the more celebrated baddies.
1. Sephiroth (Final Fantasy VII)
To this day, I still consider Sephiroth to be the greatest Final Fantasy villain of all time.
Put the pitchforks down, people, everyone's favorite clown is on my list as well. The reason I put Sephiroth above all other villains is due to the way he torments main protagonist Cloud. For Cloud, Sephiroth isn't just a hated enemy that he swears vengeance toward, he is a cancer....a force of evil that is always lingering in the back of his mind, haunting his dreams, forcing him to question his very existence. Even when he's off-screen, the fear of Sephiroth's presence is always looming, represented by a beating heart or a trail of destruction wherever he walks.
In the end, what makes Sephiroth such a great villain isn't that he's incredibly powerful or has aspirations about enslaving all living things in the universe, it's because he is Cloud's enemy first and foremost. You won't find a more personal conflict than the one between these two, and whatever you may think about their mass-market appearances in sequels and spin-offs, I never get tired of watching Cloud cursing Sephiroth's name in hatred, while Sephiroth smiles in silent satisfaction over the hero's continued suffering.
2. Kefka (Final Fantasy VI)
Kefka was a villain truly ahead of his time. Like many of you, my first exposure to Final Fantasy was with the sixth entry in the series, which was called Final Fantasy III at the time. For someone who grew up with the likes of Mario and Zelda, it was a real shock to see a videogame take itself so seriously, using simple 16 bit visuals, but carrying them with a level of presentation I've never seen before, including the wonderful music and (at the time) deep narrative.
It also introduced the notion that psychotic, bloodthirsty villains were indeed possible on a Nintendo system, as Kefka more than adequately proves. What made Kefka work was how he kept most of his craziness in check, coming off more like comic relief in his first few appearances, but ramping up the crazy and violent with each subsequent encounter. By the time you realize what a dangerous threat Kefka is, he's already amassed a great deal of power, and acts like a kid in a candy store as he delightfully destroys everything and everyone in his path. The fact that he still retains his comedic mannerisms and humor make him a villain that's as entertaining to watch as it is to despise him.
Also, he does deserve props for nearly destroying the entire world.
4. Albedo (Xenosaga)
So what makes this seemingly generic-looking villain so memorable?
Well....
Kind of NSFW
Definitely NSFW
The Xeno series has always had a bit of a mature edge to it, but it was Albedo's scenes alone that gave Xenosaga: Episode I it's M rating (in Japan). Owing much influence to FFVI's Kekfa (and that was likely intentional, as scenario writer Soraya Saga had previously worked on that game), Albedo forgoes much of Kefka's comic relief and decides to just go full-on psycho. Unable to die due to his immortal body, Albedo delights at violently maiming his own body, but he only experiences true pleasure when he's tormenting others.
It doesn't help things when he sets his sights on MOMO, the most innocent and helpless character in the whole game. While his physical assault on the young Realien is toned down in the US release, the sexual implications that he happily eschews are surprisingly kept intact. Whether literally or physically, he delights in raping the young girl, making the above scenes some of the most disturbing ever seen in a videogame.
As an immortal Sado-Masochistic Pedophile, as well as having one of the best english vocal performances ever by anime mainstay Crispin Freeman, Albedo could easily have been the greatest RPG villain of all time, had he not been criminally downplayed by the following sequels (to the point that his former victim actually LAUGHS about him in the finale, as if he was some Scooby Doo knockoff). A serious mis-step out of several for the series.
4. Krelian (Xenogears)
Neither a psychotic madman or a would-be world conqueror, Krelian has no aspirations about becoming a God. Rather, his motivations stem from his desire to meet God in person, convinced that uniting with the All Mighty Himself would relieve him of his inner pain and conflicts. And he's more than happy in taking humankind along for the ride.
By the time Xenogears is over, Krelian has amassed a death count far higher than Kefka could ever hope for, annihilating a good 90% of the human race through a series of horrific experiments (there's a reason his factory is called the Soylent System) and good old fashioned genocide. And he does all this with no satisfaction or maniacal rantings whatsoever. To him, humans are just materials for his insane experiments, and even when he actually succeeds in meeting up with the Big G, he feels no satisfaction or happiness. Truly one of the most despicable characters in gaming, although lots of fangirls seem to sympathize with the SOB.
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He is there to taunt you after your failures. But he is not actually your enemy, he is a reflection of your greatest enemy: yourself.
I know I didn't imagine that, really.
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Because everybody loves a magnificent bastard.
A little history on the last bosses of Kirby games. The last bosses in the main Kirby games have always been a little out there. Dedede was only the last boss in the first game, Dream Land. In Adventure the last boss was Nightmare, a cartoony looking villain that didn't creep you out too much. In Dream Land 2 it was Dark Matter, which started out as a guy with a sword but then became a black eyeball. Not too scary. Super Star had Milky Way Wishes as its main game, and that had Marx who someone else can mention as being badass for a villain. In Dream Land 3 Dark Matter became 0, which was a big white blob with a red eye. Pretty cool actually. Then came Kirby 64. Miracle matter is the fake last boss, and that's basically a cube that spins around. If you get 100% though you fight 02, which is a bleeding eyeball with angel wings and a halo. How the fuck do you jump from a white blob or a jester to a goddamn bleeding eye? Nintendo was just being really freaky there, and that boss stands out to me as being probably the strangest boss in any Kirby game.
Without a doubt my favorite villainess. Terri Brosius has the most orgasmic voice.
""The Many has grown to a massive size. It has wrapped itself around these two ships, preventing their separation, their separation. Their creation was my err- erro- error... my error. Their destruction shall be my DELIGHT."
Also, one of the best scenes in any game ever: (midway spoiler for System Shock 2)
Edit: God, the sound design in that game is so fucking g- SO FUCKING GOOD. Still sends chills up my spine despite being so low tech.
Tried it so many times with every way everyone has suggested, but nothing doing.
I will always admire Majora for her sheer batshit lunacy and ability to make every individual inhabitant of Termina miserable. It was shocking to see in a Nintendo game Mikau dying on the beach. Majora killed that guy. She's relentless, and ends three days of misery by possessing the moon and crashing it into the world. At first she just seems like a spirit of destruction without any personality. Then you reach the startling endgame and find out she's intelligent and has a softer side. Termina was a faithless mess that brought about its own destruction, and she believes she's the "good guy" for ending it. But all your work bringing people together has made her wonder if it can be saved. Majora's presence is everywhere in the game, manipulating people's own doubts and mistrust - even your own, sometimes - to corrupt the world to the point where it needs to be destroyed.
The worst thing is that you can't always save Termina. Majora's power is so overwhelming that you have to leave it behind and go back in time several times, and see everybody messed up on that first day over and over again.
One of my favourite villains in years. One of the few video game villains I find genuinely intimidating. He just radiates power, and uses it so ruthlessly. It's such a great battle of wits to take him down and it was one of the most satisfying victories in a game ever.
But seriously, that stare. He could shut you down just with that goddamn stare.
"Dive! Dive! Dive! Hit your burners pilot!"
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Shodan for me is the ultimate 'bad guy'. The voice, the scripting, the twist, that voice. Everything. And that Voice!
Look at you, hacker. A pathetic creature of meat and bone, panting and sweating as you run through my corridors...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:SHODAN.ogg
Good choice on Shodan, though, that man.
Yeah the Shivans were great villains.
Mostly because they were fucking unstoppable. Honestly, the plot of freespace 2 boils down into
Best boss fight ever or best boss fight ever?
Dr. [strike]Eggman[/strike] Robotnik.
Say what you want about the current trend of Sonic games, but if there's one reason I keep going back to the franchise it's for this fat, magnificent bastard. Ignoring his incarnation in Sonic X, Robotnik has always been an opportunist, something I think is a hallmark of a damn good villain. He plots when he needs to. He uses brute force when he needs to. He uses deception when he needs to. Sure, he has this terrible habit of abusing powers far beyond his reach and letting it inevitably bite him in his fat arse (I predict the reason this keeps happening is that there is just so much arse to bite it's going to keep happening), but Robotnik is still a great villian. He comes prepared too, packing an army of killer death robots and bewilderingly destructive machines.
And the Death Egg... Wow. I wasn't too impressed with it in Sonic 2, but damn... Sonic & Knuckles Death Egg was amazing. It wasn't just another zone that was shaped by nature, or the partial influence of Robotnik. No, this was entirely his work, and you could feel it. It was dark, gloomy, industrial, and deadly. Every bit of architecture sung mechanical malice. It's like an extension of the Doctor himself.
I've probably over-romanticised it at this point, so I'll just leave it there and say "Robotnik fucking rocks".
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Probably not the best villain ever, but definitely a memorable one.
- The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (2017, colorized)
Made me betray my best friend ... all for a weapon. When will the fighting end. I don't want to fight anymore.
No! I'm not a failure! Why does she taunt me so?! Make it stopMake it stopMakeitStop
Irenicus at first appears to be a simple villain with a keen interest in torture. He is seen torturing the protagonist with powerful magic at the very beginning of Shadows of Amn. However, minutes into the game he reveals that his apparent motive for said torture is to unlock his victim's latent power, thereby benefitting them in the long run. His lair seems to confirm the view of him being a strange character, on one hand, grossly harmed creatures that lie deformed in containers emphasize the evil in him. On the other, his obsession with a woman he'd previously maintained a relationship with reveals a much more human (or elven) side to him. It becomes apparent later in the game that Irenicus's embarking on his dark path came about partly from love. His overly possessive nature eventually became too much for his partner to bear, and unable to let go, Irenicus turned to pursuit of power and revenge, which in turn led to him becoming utterly evil. However, not only love was responsible for his downfall. Irenicus was already a powerful spellcaster, and the power he sought was the power of the gods themselves, trying to enter the elven pantheon. So he was punished for his lust for power by being stripped of what made him an elf. No longer being able to feel with the same intensity as before, he became bitter, obsessed about his downfall, and embarked on a mission where it was hard to tell if his objective was that of gaining power or satisfying his revenge.
At the start of the game, Irenicus appears to be a human, although later dialog reveals that both he and his sister, Bodhi, are exiled elves. The elves of Suldanessellar refer to him as 'the Exile', and it turns out his lost love is the elven Queen Ellesime. He is a highly arrogant, and an incredibly powerful wizard. Capable of causing a huge explosion within the city of Athkatla that reduces part of Waukeen's Promenade to rubble, and eliminate several Cowled Wizards that were sent to arrest him thereafter, before eventually surrendering by choice rather than continue his violent actions.
You will not stand in the way of destiny!!!
Love that whole tiny cut-scene.
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If anyone else played Bowser's Inside Story, it proved that he was the best villian around. He may fail, but he tried his hardest. On top of that, the dude is a pimp, if all of his kids are an indication.
Bowser is to date one of the best villians ever created.
Not as great as Bowser, but still awesome is:
Ganondorf, king of evil.
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His father, Professor Hojo. First, he shot Vincent after he objected to the experiments Hojo and Lucrecia were conducting. This would ultimately lead to Vincent sleeping in a coffin for 30 years after Lucrecia experimented on him (although, to her defence, she was trying to stop him from dying from a fatal gunshot wound).
Second, he prevented Sephiroth's real mother (that would be Lucrecia, for those who didn't know) from ever seeing him, resulting in her trying to die, only for the Jenova cells to prevent her being able to, eventually leading to her being encased in a crystal. So that's two lives fucked up so far.
About a decade later, after Professor Gast ran away from ShinRa with Ifalna (the last Cetra), Hojo finds out they're at Icicle Inn, and have had a child (Aerith). Hojo being Hojo, he takes a few soldiers with him, kills Gast, kidnaps Ifalna and Aerith, takes all the research regarding the WEAPONs, and probably kicks a puppy on the way out. 3 lives fu- wait, make that 4, because Ifalna eventually tries to escape from ShinRa with Aerith, only to be mortally wounded protecting her, leaving her in the care of Elmyra.
Then, of course, comes Nibelheim. Given that reactors all over the world were having problems, not just Nibelheim, why is it that Sephiroth was sent there as part of the investigating group? Sent to the exact location where Jenova - the name Sephiroth was told to be his mother's - was kept? Regardless, Sephiroth finds research notes (possibly planted by Hojo), goes batshit insane, sets fire to everything, with the only known survivors being Cloud, Zack, Tifa, Zangan, and some kid and his mother. Not to mention the fact that Hojo turned up shortly after Sephiroth's exit, found Cloud and Zack, and then proceeded to experiment on them, resulting in Cloud's mako poisoning. Fucked up lives count = at least 3 figures by now.
So, 4 years later, Zack escapes with Cloud. What does Hojo do? Calls in the troops to shoot them dead. Zack dies taking on an entire army, fangirls (and Aerith and Cissnei) weep, Hojo probably has a cocktail or something, and moves on to conducting more experiments on Nanaki (Red XIII).
Not long after, FFVII takes place, Aerith gets kidnapped, Hojo tries to force her and Nanaki to mate, manipulates Cloud into following Sephiroth, sunbathes while wearing a lab coat, and tries to blow up Midgar by overloading the Sister Ray, at the same time sending as much mako energy as possible to Sephiroth. It's at this point he dies...
...Except, he downloads his brainwaves onto some network connected to Deepground, another group of super soldiers Hojo worked on. His brainwaves take over Weiss, and he leads them to attack every major location on the planet, kidnapping those who haven't had Geostigma and/or Jenova cells, and killing those who have. The ones who died were the lucky ones, as the 'pure' ones were used in an attempt to summon Omega, with Weiss as the vessel housing it. Weiss' brother, Nero, would eventually remove Hojo's control over Weiss, and Vincent went on to defeat him, all of which seems to finally remove Hojo from the world...
...But, given all the above, I wouldn't be surprised if he had another back-up plan. Final lives fucked up count = probably 99% of the planet's population, given that he set Meteorfall into motion, as well as Geostigma and Deepground, and only a few people would have been left untouched by those 3 events. Like the Chocobo Sage, for example.
Dammit! I was just looking at this list, thinking to myself: why, there's still one big name missing. And just when I decided to add that name myself... Ninja'd. :P
But seriously, does Bowser even count as a villain anymore? The Paper Mario and Mario & Luigi series has elevated this guy far above mere villainy. As far as I'm concerned, Bowser qualifies as a living, walking commentary on the ridiculousness of villains, and beyond that, he's a quite sympathetic character. Also, he always gets the best lines.
And you gotta respect someone who's beaten up his own fortress. :P
I present the Transcendent One from Planescape: Torment. The very concept behind this villain enthralled me which I'll leave out of this in case their are still some lost souls out there who haven't made it through the game yet. I remember the mind games you could play with him were some top notch writing - not to mention t having the late Tony Jay as a voice actor infused a lot of power behind his dialogues.
The best part is that you can "defeat" him just by talking. I love it when games let you do that. IIRC, the same thing was possible with The Master.
Oh, and Saren in Mass Effect was a rather great villain as well.
Suppose you throw a coin enough times, suppose one day- it lands on its edge.
One hell of a Magnificant Bastard.
I haven't played the games in years and I only wish I could find the time to sit down and do so. Kain is one of many awesome things about this series, the twisting plot, the sublime dialogue, the comprehensible and yet unique take on the rules of time travel. All the more impressive when you consider the first game (Blood Omen) was created by Silicon Knights and all subsequent games were developed by Crystal Dynamics without their involvement. And yet the way they tie trivial details from the first game into the later ones and make them crucial parts of the lore (The Heat of Darkness was pretty much a 1up in the original game) like that was the plan all along amazes me.
Hrm, I don't suppose a gigantic LoK machinima/film project exists? Like they did with Anachronox?
Hey, hey, vampires are still awesome! Don't let the Twilight craze get you down, man. Check out Let the Right One In or 30 Days of Night.
BTW, I totally found a "movie" compilation of all the LoK games on Youtube. This guy has them. I know what I'm going to be doing in the foreseeable future.
Erh, what? No. Mario is Charles Martinet. Raziel is Michael Bell.
Or Thirst, if you can find it.
At one point in the game the guy nukes you with pi. Says it all, really.
My favourite jRPG villain, however, remains this guy.
If only for the voice. Man. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z50feD9SPi0
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Magic Emperor
John Truitt has evil down to a science.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVOGdkYjBv0
And of course, from Digital Devil Saga:
Jenna Angel
Once you hear her voice, this is one villain you'll know you want to kill repeatedly.
This thing is evil.
So sarcastic and uncaring and violent.
Really creepy, due to the possibility that it could happen one day. (I think)
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One of the best live action enemies of all time.
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He's a sneaky, snivelling, social-climbing bastard who cares for no-one but himself and is completely unrepentent for all the ways he's screwed you over when you finally confront him. My only regret was that I had no dialog options beginning with, "My name is Inigo Montoya..."
Oh, also, voiced by Tim Curry.
Luca Blight from Suikoden II.
The dude was messed up due to the rape and murder of his mother while he watched as a kid. He murdered children, destroyed whole cities, and in the end took on the main heroes army by himself.
It took three parties of six characters just to put Luca down for good.
Hear that, he fought by himself, and it still took eighteen soldiers just to put down one man.
Awesome villian.
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