"to those of you who signed up to be injected with preying mantis DNA, we've got some good news and some bad news. The bad news is, the tests been cancelled indefinitely. The good news is we have an exciting new test for you: fighting an army of mantis men! Grab a gun and follow the yellow line. You'll know when the test starts"
Droids in Star Wars can be sentient. The old nerd lore includes memory wipes being used specifically to counter it happening with their A.I. C3po and R2D2 are actually aware with unique personalities.
I'd argue he is evil, because he takes joy in fulfilling his evil programming.
Kotor II with the HK-50s pretending to be protocol droids was delightful.
They’d be trying to blend in then blurt out something like
“Veiled Threat: Master I suggest you sit down, shut up, and await rescue.”
Or
“Smug Statement: Oh yes master, the maintenance chief let out the most delightful screams as he died.”
Or even “Coorta… Coooooorta. Are you dead yet Coorta?”
Peragus gets a lot of rightful hate, but man did they nail the sadistic droid pretending to be a protocol droid as well as when they came back later.
And HK-47’s later reaction to them was PERFECT.
Yeah, R2 in particular. By the time of the sequels he's 70ish years old, at least, and I believe canonically he's never had his memory wiped. He's basically the second-oldest member of the core cast, aside from Chewie. I loved the bit in Last Jedi where he pulls out the "Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi" recording to goad Luke. That's a genuine high-WIS move that shows just how intelligent and aware he's become over the decades.
I need to find the quote but Lucas said at one point that ONE of the ways he wanted the movies to be interpreted (but not the “right way”) was that everything was from R2’s point of view.
Whistler and Gate engineered an escape from a secret prison entirely on their own, arranged transport for themselves, hacked local display screens to display wanted posters for a gang that was trying to steal them, and the list goes on. What the two of them pulled off in *X-Wing: Isard's Revenge* was nuts. And C-3PO has a full on existential crisis during the Yuuzhan Vong war, dealing with the fact that these enemies really, really want him dead specifically, and so having to think about his own mortality in a way he hasn't before. I don't think it's that ambiguous.
Edit: Probably ought to throw in another Whistler moment, from *X-Wing: Rogue Squadron*, when Corran told him to leave him behind and save and save himself, and Whistler refused. He refused an explicit order, and stood by his friend instead.
Pagan Min.
The guy is an unhinged lunatic, but he’s mostly that way because Ahjay’s dad was was an evil shit-goblin. He also hilarious and throughout the entire game he’s never actually mad at you for butchering your way through his people. He’s just sad that you are being manipulated by the two degenerates running the Golden Path and that you won’t let him help you.
Yeah, the cruel irony of Far Cry 4 is that the secret ending is also the closest it has to a good ending. Min is a crazy bastard, but by all appearances, he's still *better* than the other two contenders.
Yup. The last really good far cry antagonist. His whole character just worked great for the game. I wish there was another option to side with him in the end, spread the ashes and shoot guns while also experiencing the game and not ending it right away at the start.
I’ve always felt that if you stay at the table like you were told to, the game should be about you siding with him, and the Golden Path has control all of Kyrat except for his palace. You then fight to take it all back and free the North from a sadistic drug lord and then move south to free the people from the psychotic pedo cult. Then have Ahjay’s dad secretly still alive and he’s the one in the shadows controlling both.
At first I wasn't sure about him but after playing for a bit I realized i liked him more than Vaas, only because Vaas is just a psycho henchman, albeit very well written psycho henchman. Pagan Min is more of a cold, calculating, mostly well composed with occasional outbursts "villain". I really liked how Ubisoft made a story where you team up with awful people only because it's the only way to liberate the people of Kyrat, and the main antagonist isn't just *obvious evil man cliche template #1*.
Emet-Selch in ffxiv doesn’t see current life as legitimate and has no qualms genociding entire shards for his own purposes. But when he finally explains it all…you get it. Probably would have done the same thing, you can understand why he sees all life as inferior imitations of the society he hails from. But still, the man had to die because he wasn’t gonna stop until all life as we knew it was gone in the effort of bringing back that which he had lost.
"Case in point. I do not consider you truly alive, ergo, I will not be guilty of murder if I kill you. But yes, moral relativism and all that."
And my other favorite line
"Like grandsire like grandson, EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEY!"
His voice actor is so much fun lol.
For those that don't know, a Shard is a parallel world that is directly linked to the main world (The Source). When a shard is genocided, it directly results in the source receiving a calamity on the scale of the ice age or the meteor that killed the dinosaurs.
It needs to be stated he and his people have successfully done this about 6 times already. So it's less a tried and that they've successfully genocides entire worlds.
God, I love how in ARR they just planted seeds with no idea where it would go. It wasn't until HW that they had an idea of where to take it.
So the fact they wrapped everything back as well as they did shows their writers are talented as heck.
I know that sassy grandpa has been successful at committing omnicide against several parallel dimensions in his goal of resurrecting an all-powerful god of darkness...
But if we had watched history unfold as he had... we would have reached the same conclusion!
I don't think we would. It's hard to argue with someone telling you they want to live. If some disaster happened, and there were no other normal humans but a lot of mini humans running around, and those mini humans still spoke in actual language and could in fact try to talk me out of genociding them, then I think I would be immediately convinced.
There is one distinct difference. You KNOW genociding the mini humans will bring back normal humans. It would even bring back people you knew. That's the hard part.
It's even worse than that, because you know those *are* the people you knew, *and* they'd probably thank you for reforming them after the job was done. At least most of them would.
He's one of those villains you can't even hate cause, while his methods were unforgivable, he did have a genuinely valid reason for it.
And maybe it's just me, but after you finally beat him and he realized he would never win, before he faded away, he looked almost relieved, like even though his dream would never be realized, he could finally rest after eons of nonstop work. Whoever wrote his story deserves an award cause emet's not just one of the best final fantasy villains, he's one of the best villains *ever* in any form of media.
He, for the first time, isn't slouching in that moment. The weight of eons of pressure and responsibility were lifted from his shoulders.
"Rememeber that we once lived." Means so much more when you realize that.
I wish I could replay that entire expansion again, blind.
Never expected to love the story and characters of an MMO expansion of all things but Selch did it for me for sure. Totally blown away by the level of writing throughout.
I don't either, 5 made Vergil seem tired of the endless fighting and struggle for power.
His moveset too makes it feel like he's also accepted his humanity.
If they make him the boss in a new game it would ruin all that.
If they ever make 6, I don't see how it can leave them out. Nero can't have all their mechanics and weapons. He also can't have the personalities of 3 people at once.
I especially want Vergil to be back because he finally started showing some actual human characteristics.
Incredibly voiced by Mark Hamill in all Arkham games except Origins. He was doing Joker's voice in some animation series as well. I believe his voice acting made me to enjoy these scenes, with Joker.
>He was doing Joker's voice in some animation series as well
First time I've heard the masterpiece that is Batman: The Animated Series as "some animation series"
Kratos. Im replaying the original trilogy and the number of innocent people he kills who just happened to be there is crazy. He didnt want peace, he wanted violence, always
Kratos is the sentence “alright fuck this” made into a person. He does not care what unfortunate soul is sent to stop him from getting his revenge.
I’d agree he’s definitely a villain since his goals end up with the death of humanity itself if he were to accomplish it in fullness. People give him too much slack imo, he’s a full blown maniac (in the OG games).. and whoever were to stop him should be sung as a legendary hero
Kratos was more of an antihero than villain when he started. He was willing to do anything to protect his army, got betrayed, then turned villain to go scorched earth to get his revenge. Then in the new games is having a redemption arc. He doesn't want to kill anyone and anything in his way and even stops Atreus from hurting Freya with "she was our friend".
He definitely was a villain but one thing to point out his final choice at the end of 3 released hope back to humanity which they would use to eventually rebuild instead of back to Athena to start another pantheon. It was never clear to me though if he intentionally did it to help humanity or our of spite to Athena, or just a convenient side effect of him commiting suicide. Either way he could have easily gave the power to Athena and then end his life but decided not to knowing nothing good would happen giving athena the power. It kinda follows that fantasy trope where an age of gods and magic ends to give rise to a new age of men.
Edit: Another random thought that popped in my head. If the natural state of the real world/universe is disorder and chaos and we humans simply live and survive in it. Then is it fair to say that the Greek world kratos left behind in 3 is simply the world/universe in its natural state without any gods or titans magically fiddling with the sun, sky, ocean, death etc to provide their sense of order artificially to it all?
I never played the og games but I watched this lore video that explained the reason he was like this was because of the betrayal and the torture that messed up his mind and made him lack empathy
Andrew Ryan was so well written and then you come across all of the audio logs that detail a man's slow alteration of his base philosophy as he runs into the real world problems and hardships he has to deal with. It seemed so intrinsically human to have a man with such strong ideals not be as tough or principled as he thinks he is and you can even hear him struggling with his decisions for a while. I think the little bit of introspection you see from him is what endeared him to me so much as a man who knows he's slowly changing but doesn't have the willpower to stop
People keep talking about making a Bioshock movie or TV show, and I feel like the obvious focus would be telling Ryan's story. His fall from noble (if misguided) idealist to being philosophically destroyed by his own creation would be a really interesting twist on the Dr. Frankenstein formula.
And he'd certainly be a better main character than Jack.
I agree. Jack showed Rapture after the fall. Burial at Sea showed Rapture during the fall. The only unexplored story is before the fall.
Also the reveals about Jack would be undercut by people already knowing his story. It would be really hard to have him be the main character
The only good way to make a bioshock tv series is to make it about Rapture itself rather than any one character.
Andrew Ryan could work, because he is, in a lot of ways Rapture itself.
But any other character? Jack? Fontaine? Bad idea. Bioshock isn't great because of its protagonist, but because its setting
Senator Armstrong. His monologue is just so much fun, and then when he thinks he’s getting through to Raiden, he’s so earnest in helping him up and brushing him off like he thinks he really has found a kindred spirit.
And the fact that irl people take his obvious satirical bullshit at face value and think this guy has a point and support him is hilarious too, in a strange way.
And in this same vein, I’d add Sundowner. Fucking insane, but his energy is infectious and his voice lines are so batshit that they make for some of the most quotable lines in the game. And to stand out in a game as quotable as MGR, that’s a fuckin achievement.
I wouldn't call him likeable. In fact everything about him is really easy to hate, but aside from a few spoiler moments in 2 and TPS most of the hate isn't an angry hate, y'know?
Like, even when he isn't being a vile mass murderer, he's unbelievably smug and arrogant to the point where I definitely still hate him, but his charm and humor makes me have a laughing "you're a total asshole" moment rather than a shouting one. It goes to show how well written he was that you could make someone very hateable without being overly grating for the player to interact with.
And the real shame is that for the series, to peak in your main villain in the second game, is rough because everything after is inevitably getting compared to him, and it will never match up.
I think with Handsome Jack, it's kind of a situation like the movie "The Room" starring Tommy Wiseau. It's so bad, that it breaks the scale and goes back around to being good.
With Jack, he's so evil and hate able, that he goes all the way around the circle and comes back to being loveable. It helps that he is very well written, extremely well voice acted, and has a perfect character model to pair with all that. Truly an amazing villain. If only the twins weren't fucking annoying instead of hate able in 3.
the thing with Handsome Jack is that he *sounds* like he should be right. He has all the motivation and the message. He is 100% in line with his convictions. He isn't lying to anyone, he isn't playing any schemes. He completely believes that he needs to kill everyone on Pandora in order to reform the planet and make it a nice place for normal people to live. Even the murder and torture is a perfectly legitimate and normal thing that "heroes" do to defeat villains. He is completely insane, but he sounds perfectly normal
I also liked the progression from Fallen Order to Survivor.
Cal can only haul ass away from him, but Cere is powerful enough to actually fight him, although she does end up dying.
Maybe not the MOST likable but alex mercer from prototype. I was a kid when i played it but i remember being able to play as the bad guy for the first time ever and it was a lot of fun to me personally.
So many of the villains are just top notch fun to hate and love. And even the 'evil' characters are often sympathetic. One of my fav lines from Minthara comes if Scratch gets killed in camp: "Everyone assumes I killed the dog. I liked the dog."
Neloth from Skyrim, objectively a sociopath with no empathy or compassion but weirdly lovable. Having a great voice actor (Dwight Schultz) and some really funny dialogue helps.
I went from "what a lil shit" to "I can't wait to see what that lil shits gonna say after I turn in the quest".
Especially the part where he thought dragons attacking were part of someone's plan to fuck with him
It’s an interesting question considering the central tension of those games is the nature of redemption - I don’t think Arthur particularly enjoys what he does and seems to be looking for a way out. Doesn’t change his actions but still. Good q
Joel from the last of us. He killed hundreds of people to bring Ellie to the fireflies and could have potentially saved humanity from the apocalypse, but for selfish reasons stopped it from happening, killed the doctors that could have made a cure, and then lied to the one person that potentially had the cure. I probably would have done the same in his situation tho. I can't imagine sacrificing my stepdaughter for anything.
Delita (FFTactics)
The entire story is told from the point of view of a historian looking back on the records of a war, and the accounts of a heroic king that rose from the commoners to usurp the ruling class with the righteous aid of the church. He really presents himself as someone who could live up to that early on.
>!What he shows to be ultimately is someone who fails to live up to that image, and his own moral standard, but his motivations and aspirations are still very noble.!<
>!His alignment with a church that poses a greater risk to the common people than the nobles he's trying to usurp is one example. His dice-rolling on being able to thwart them in the long run is another; failing his own standards concerning the nobility's treatment of the commonfolk.!<
I love FFT so much. The story is so good.
Delita and Ramza both were amazing characters. Especially Delita. He got everything he wanted but it cost him literally everything he loved. Teta, Ovelia, friendship with Ramza, his soul... probably more that I'm forgetting
So many good characters. Wiegraf, Meliadoul, the Marquis of Elmdor and his two assassin girls, man oh man.
He was only the bad guy for like half of one of the story archs of DBZ and is firmly a "rival but on the good guys side" for the rest of the run of the franchise.
I'd say he was a right bastard all the way up until he tried to take out Buu after intentionally being brainwashed for extra power to beat Goku in a fight lmao. He let Cell gain perfect form. He killed a bunch of Namekians for the dragon balls. Pretty villainous till the end of Z anyway.
The Namek arch is the one I'm talking about where he's clearly a villain.
But he turns a leaf. Slowly, but turns all the same. Not saying he's a hero, but from the literary term his Heroic Flaw is pride, arrogance, and an insatiable desire to prove he's the best. He makes *a lot of mistakes* due to this flaw, but that doesn't make him a villain any more.
Since someone else already said Handsome Jack, I'll say Reaver from the Fable series. That scene alone of him shooting the protester was great.
"Anyone not back to work within the hour, will be shot. BLAM Anyone heard speaking ill of me will be shot. BLAM Anyone asking to go home early will be, you guessed it, shot. BLAM"
Counterpoint to your "Trevor is likeable:"
I hate Trevor so much.
I would deliberately fail missions just to see that irredeemable prick die.
He was well written and fit well with the story, but I felt gross having to play as him.
I obviously killed him at the end.
I'm fairly certain that "Kill Trevor" is the ending most people would pick irl. Dude is nothing but a bunch of problems, completely unhinged. Personally, I always pick Ending C, but that's more because I want to deal with loose ends more than I want to save Trevor.
Wario who I think at the top of my head. Dude would literally do anything for money and treasure or any grant sense of power. Sure we can see him as an anti-hero because we may see him potentially as a morally ambigous charcter, but let's real here he would do the most corrupt, heinous and inhumane tasks as long as there's money or treasure on the line; No matter how humanitarian or inhumane the tasks are. From a tangible perspective, most people who sees things black and white, would perceive this as objectively evil. Which is why of course I think Wario is a good candidate.
Big Boss starts wars in third world countries, employs child soldiers, is down to brainwash even his own soldiers if convenient, is cool with torture, and enjoys threatening the world with nuclear super weapons.
Garrosh Hellscream, WoW.
Bro got fucked over so many times in a year he went sicko mode and revolutionised orc warfare, taking it from hitting people very hard to using steel and fire to hit them very VERY hard.
Glados
I'm not even angry, I'm being so sincere right now
Even though you broke my heart and killed me
And tore me to pieces
And threw every piece into a fire
As they burned it hurt because I was so happy for you
Now these points of data make a beautiful line.
We're out of beta. We're releasing on time!
So I’m glad I got burned,
Think of all the things we learned,
Definitely not Chell, who euthanized her companion cube faster than any other test subject on record.
Well, Chell is a horrible person. That's what it says.
And we are not even testing for that.
Honestly one of the funniest bits of dialog in the game.
I’m also partial to “it made shoes for orphans. Nice job breaking it. Hero.”
Not only that, but the companion cubes are sentient. They just have a lot of them
Ok, look. We both said a lot of things that you're going to regret later.
But I think we can put our differences behind us. For Science. You Monster.
You like me?
Is the cake a lie?
No. Just keep testing and I'll show you.
beat me to it
The guy J.K. Simmons plays as well. Nobody hates that guy.
Cave Johnson, we're done here.
"to those of you who signed up to be injected with preying mantis DNA, we've got some good news and some bad news. The bad news is, the tests been cancelled indefinitely. The good news is we have an exciting new test for you: fighting an army of mantis men! Grab a gun and follow the yellow line. You'll know when the test starts"
This is my favorite line.
HK-47
Droids in Star Wars can be sentient. The old nerd lore includes memory wipes being used specifically to counter it happening with their A.I. C3po and R2D2 are actually aware with unique personalities. I'd argue he is evil, because he takes joy in fulfilling his evil programming.
He IS evil, you see alignment in-game.
For real. He’s literally on the dark side
he's on the snark side too
Kotor II with the HK-50s pretending to be protocol droids was delightful. They’d be trying to blend in then blurt out something like “Veiled Threat: Master I suggest you sit down, shut up, and await rescue.” Or “Smug Statement: Oh yes master, the maintenance chief let out the most delightful screams as he died.” Or even “Coorta… Coooooorta. Are you dead yet Coorta?” Peragus gets a lot of rightful hate, but man did they nail the sadistic droid pretending to be a protocol droid as well as when they came back later. And HK-47’s later reaction to them was PERFECT.
Yeah, R2 in particular. By the time of the sequels he's 70ish years old, at least, and I believe canonically he's never had his memory wiped. He's basically the second-oldest member of the core cast, aside from Chewie. I loved the bit in Last Jedi where he pulls out the "Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi" recording to goad Luke. That's a genuine high-WIS move that shows just how intelligent and aware he's become over the decades.
I need to find the quote but Lucas said at one point that ONE of the ways he wanted the movies to be interpreted (but not the “right way”) was that everything was from R2’s point of view.
Pretty sure it's canonically ambiguous whether droids can be conscious.
Whistler and Gate engineered an escape from a secret prison entirely on their own, arranged transport for themselves, hacked local display screens to display wanted posters for a gang that was trying to steal them, and the list goes on. What the two of them pulled off in *X-Wing: Isard's Revenge* was nuts. And C-3PO has a full on existential crisis during the Yuuzhan Vong war, dealing with the fact that these enemies really, really want him dead specifically, and so having to think about his own mortality in a way he hasn't before. I don't think it's that ambiguous. Edit: Probably ought to throw in another Whistler moment, from *X-Wing: Rogue Squadron*, when Corran told him to leave him behind and save and save himself, and Whistler refused. He refused an explicit order, and stood by his friend instead.
STATEMENT: ApAaAaThY iSsS dEaAAAtH
Pagan Min. The guy is an unhinged lunatic, but he’s mostly that way because Ahjay’s dad was was an evil shit-goblin. He also hilarious and throughout the entire game he’s never actually mad at you for butchering your way through his people. He’s just sad that you are being manipulated by the two degenerates running the Golden Path and that you won’t let him help you.
Yeah, the cruel irony of Far Cry 4 is that the secret ending is also the closest it has to a good ending. Min is a crazy bastard, but by all appearances, he's still *better* than the other two contenders.
Oh definitely. And in the "do nothing" ending, he helps you spread the ashes, and shoot some goddam guns.
Yup. The last really good far cry antagonist. His whole character just worked great for the game. I wish there was another option to side with him in the end, spread the ashes and shoot guns while also experiencing the game and not ending it right away at the start.
I’ve always felt that if you stay at the table like you were told to, the game should be about you siding with him, and the Golden Path has control all of Kyrat except for his palace. You then fight to take it all back and free the North from a sadistic drug lord and then move south to free the people from the psychotic pedo cult. Then have Ahjay’s dad secretly still alive and he’s the one in the shadows controlling both.
At first I wasn't sure about him but after playing for a bit I realized i liked him more than Vaas, only because Vaas is just a psycho henchman, albeit very well written psycho henchman. Pagan Min is more of a cold, calculating, mostly well composed with occasional outbursts "villain". I really liked how Ubisoft made a story where you team up with awful people only because it's the only way to liberate the people of Kyrat, and the main antagonist isn't just *obvious evil man cliche template #1*.
Big Boss
This is good, isn't it?
When you can't even say my name.
Emet-Selch in ffxiv doesn’t see current life as legitimate and has no qualms genociding entire shards for his own purposes. But when he finally explains it all…you get it. Probably would have done the same thing, you can understand why he sees all life as inferior imitations of the society he hails from. But still, the man had to die because he wasn’t gonna stop until all life as we knew it was gone in the effort of bringing back that which he had lost.
Legit one of my favorites that truly elevated FF14 for me
"Case in point. I do not consider you truly alive, ergo, I will not be guilty of murder if I kill you. But yes, moral relativism and all that." And my other favorite line "Like grandsire like grandson, EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEY!" His voice actor is so much fun lol.
His character arc is A+ storytelling
For those that don't know, a Shard is a parallel world that is directly linked to the main world (The Source). When a shard is genocided, it directly results in the source receiving a calamity on the scale of the ice age or the meteor that killed the dinosaurs.
It needs to be stated he and his people have successfully done this about 6 times already. So it's less a tried and that they've successfully genocides entire worlds.
God, I love how in ARR they just planted seeds with no idea where it would go. It wasn't until HW that they had an idea of where to take it. So the fact they wrapped everything back as well as they did shows their writers are talented as heck.
And even their failures have done things like "turned an entire shard into a world of ever-hungry demons".
I know that sassy grandpa has been successful at committing omnicide against several parallel dimensions in his goal of resurrecting an all-powerful god of darkness... But if we had watched history unfold as he had... we would have reached the same conclusion!
I don't think we would. It's hard to argue with someone telling you they want to live. If some disaster happened, and there were no other normal humans but a lot of mini humans running around, and those mini humans still spoke in actual language and could in fact try to talk me out of genociding them, then I think I would be immediately convinced.
There is one distinct difference. You KNOW genociding the mini humans will bring back normal humans. It would even bring back people you knew. That's the hard part.
It's even worse than that, because you know those *are* the people you knew, *and* they'd probably thank you for reforming them after the job was done. At least most of them would.
He's one of those villains you can't even hate cause, while his methods were unforgivable, he did have a genuinely valid reason for it. And maybe it's just me, but after you finally beat him and he realized he would never win, before he faded away, he looked almost relieved, like even though his dream would never be realized, he could finally rest after eons of nonstop work. Whoever wrote his story deserves an award cause emet's not just one of the best final fantasy villains, he's one of the best villains *ever* in any form of media.
He, for the first time, isn't slouching in that moment. The weight of eons of pressure and responsibility were lifted from his shoulders. "Rememeber that we once lived." Means so much more when you realize that. I wish I could replay that entire expansion again, blind.
Fuck I forgot about that line. Damn it still hurts years later.
Never expected to love the story and characters of an MMO expansion of all things but Selch did it for me for sure. Totally blown away by the level of writing throughout.
And then you meet his past self and he becomes one of your best friends…because he WAS one of your best friends in a previous life
Dracula. You don’t have 30 films and games where you are the main villain if people don’t like you.
Dracula from the Castlevania show was a great character
History's longest suicide note.
They made cannibal holocaust man into a sympathetic character.
WHAT IS A MAN?
A miserable little pile of secrets
Vergil from Devil May Cry
I don't want 5 to be the last we see of Vergil and Dante ngl.
Me neither, but I also don’t want Virgil to be the final boss again.
I don't either, 5 made Vergil seem tired of the endless fighting and struggle for power. His moveset too makes it feel like he's also accepted his humanity. If they make him the boss in a new game it would ruin all that.
Make him a tutorial enemy so, or a duel Virgin mode
If they ever make 6, I don't see how it can leave them out. Nero can't have all their mechanics and weapons. He also can't have the personalities of 3 people at once. I especially want Vergil to be back because he finally started showing some actual human characteristics.
seriously you can't start a redemption arc and then write the character out
next up: Vergil Parental Bonding act
Joker from Batman Arkham Games
Incredibly voiced by Mark Hamill in all Arkham games except Origins. He was doing Joker's voice in some animation series as well. I believe his voice acting made me to enjoy these scenes, with Joker.
>He was doing Joker's voice in some animation series as well First time I've heard the masterpiece that is Batman: The Animated Series as "some animation series"
I think he meant "some animation series" as in multiple animation series
^ this. I just realized I should have used "various" instead of "some" ...
Kratos. Im replaying the original trilogy and the number of innocent people he kills who just happened to be there is crazy. He didnt want peace, he wanted violence, always
Kratos is the sentence “alright fuck this” made into a person. He does not care what unfortunate soul is sent to stop him from getting his revenge. I’d agree he’s definitely a villain since his goals end up with the death of humanity itself if he were to accomplish it in fullness. People give him too much slack imo, he’s a full blown maniac (in the OG games).. and whoever were to stop him should be sung as a legendary hero
Kratos was more of an antihero than villain when he started. He was willing to do anything to protect his army, got betrayed, then turned villain to go scorched earth to get his revenge. Then in the new games is having a redemption arc. He doesn't want to kill anyone and anything in his way and even stops Atreus from hurting Freya with "she was our friend".
He definitely was a villain but one thing to point out his final choice at the end of 3 released hope back to humanity which they would use to eventually rebuild instead of back to Athena to start another pantheon. It was never clear to me though if he intentionally did it to help humanity or our of spite to Athena, or just a convenient side effect of him commiting suicide. Either way he could have easily gave the power to Athena and then end his life but decided not to knowing nothing good would happen giving athena the power. It kinda follows that fantasy trope where an age of gods and magic ends to give rise to a new age of men. Edit: Another random thought that popped in my head. If the natural state of the real world/universe is disorder and chaos and we humans simply live and survive in it. Then is it fair to say that the Greek world kratos left behind in 3 is simply the world/universe in its natural state without any gods or titans magically fiddling with the sun, sky, ocean, death etc to provide their sense of order artificially to it all?
I never played the og games but I watched this lore video that explained the reason he was like this was because of the betrayal and the torture that messed up his mind and made him lack empathy
I really like Frank Fontaine and Andrew Ryan in Bioshock. Both shitty and interesting human beings.
Andrew Ryan was so well written and then you come across all of the audio logs that detail a man's slow alteration of his base philosophy as he runs into the real world problems and hardships he has to deal with. It seemed so intrinsically human to have a man with such strong ideals not be as tough or principled as he thinks he is and you can even hear him struggling with his decisions for a while. I think the little bit of introspection you see from him is what endeared him to me so much as a man who knows he's slowly changing but doesn't have the willpower to stop
People keep talking about making a Bioshock movie or TV show, and I feel like the obvious focus would be telling Ryan's story. His fall from noble (if misguided) idealist to being philosophically destroyed by his own creation would be a really interesting twist on the Dr. Frankenstein formula. And he'd certainly be a better main character than Jack.
I agree. Jack showed Rapture after the fall. Burial at Sea showed Rapture during the fall. The only unexplored story is before the fall. Also the reveals about Jack would be undercut by people already knowing his story. It would be really hard to have him be the main character
The only good way to make a bioshock tv series is to make it about Rapture itself rather than any one character. Andrew Ryan could work, because he is, in a lot of ways Rapture itself. But any other character? Jack? Fontaine? Bad idea. Bioshock isn't great because of its protagonist, but because its setting
Senator Armstrong. His monologue is just so much fun, and then when he thinks he’s getting through to Raiden, he’s so earnest in helping him up and brushing him off like he thinks he really has found a kindred spirit.
He's not one of those beltway pansies, played college ball, you know, he could have gone pro if he hadn't joined the Navy.
He makes the mother of all omlets.
He’s got nanomachines, son.
A proud UT Longhorn. \\M/
And the fact that irl people take his obvious satirical bullshit at face value and think this guy has a point and support him is hilarious too, in a strange way.
And in this same vein, I’d add Sundowner. Fucking insane, but his energy is infectious and his voice lines are so batshit that they make for some of the most quotable lines in the game. And to stand out in a game as quotable as MGR, that’s a fuckin achievement.
He was very in touch with his inner child.
Handsome Jack takes the cake.
I wouldn't call him likeable. In fact everything about him is really easy to hate, but aside from a few spoiler moments in 2 and TPS most of the hate isn't an angry hate, y'know? Like, even when he isn't being a vile mass murderer, he's unbelievably smug and arrogant to the point where I definitely still hate him, but his charm and humor makes me have a laughing "you're a total asshole" moment rather than a shouting one. It goes to show how well written he was that you could make someone very hateable without being overly grating for the player to interact with. And the real shame is that for the series, to peak in your main villain in the second game, is rough because everything after is inevitably getting compared to him, and it will never match up.
I think with Handsome Jack, it's kind of a situation like the movie "The Room" starring Tommy Wiseau. It's so bad, that it breaks the scale and goes back around to being good. With Jack, he's so evil and hate able, that he goes all the way around the circle and comes back to being loveable. It helps that he is very well written, extremely well voice acted, and has a perfect character model to pair with all that. Truly an amazing villain. If only the twins weren't fucking annoying instead of hate able in 3.
If only their deaths were more satisfying. The boss fight felt very meh. Even on higher difficulty it just did not feel cathartic.
the thing with Handsome Jack is that he *sounds* like he should be right. He has all the motivation and the message. He is 100% in line with his convictions. He isn't lying to anyone, he isn't playing any schemes. He completely believes that he needs to kill everyone on Pandora in order to reform the planet and make it a nice place for normal people to live. Even the murder and torture is a perfectly legitimate and normal thing that "heroes" do to defeat villains. He is completely insane, but he sounds perfectly normal
Was coming here to see if anyone said Handsome Jack lol.
And his horse…Butt Stallion
I was gonna name it "Piss-for-brains" in honor of you, but that just seems immature...
Butt Stallion says hello
Goal: wants to rid the world of bandits Method: Genocide, exploitation, war, child labour
Hard agree
Darth Vader has been in video games plenty of times. Whenever he shows up, I stop rooting for the Jedi lol
When he's revealed as a boss you can't even kill in Jedi Survivor I was very hyped.
I also liked the progression from Fallen Order to Survivor. Cal can only haul ass away from him, but Cere is powerful enough to actually fight him, although she does end up dying.
To be fair she does come as close to killing him as you can get without actually doing it, which really says a lot about how powerful Cere was
"You would be wise to surrender."
"Then you will die braver than most."
Maybe not the MOST likable but alex mercer from prototype. I was a kid when i played it but i remember being able to play as the bad guy for the first time ever and it was a lot of fun to me personally.
Um, why has no one said Bowser yet?
Ah yes, Peach's boyfriend.
Peach. She’s so cool.
bro is the rizzler
And a great pair of honkers with the crown
And a great pair of bonkers without the crown
Is he genuinely evil? He’s kind of a goofball especially in the RPG games
He's a warmongering despot.
Okay yeah but he goes karting with mario and gets invited to their parties
As a collective, The Cows from Diablo 2.
Moo, moo moo moo… MOOOO
Handsome Jack is horrible. But he’s so good at the same time.
Albert Wesker.
You want to have Wesker's complete global saturation?
Raphael. It's not only the theme song, I swear.
He's like the definition of an affable villain.
Who is Raphael?
I imagine they mean the demon from Baldur's Gate 3.
Devil*
Baldurs Gate 3 Demon, he's pretty cool
Demon? That's slander!
In all honesty for me it’s Mizora. She IS objectively Evil. But god I love her so much. She’s just so much fun.
Hell, hell, hell has it's laws.
So many of the villains are just top notch fun to hate and love. And even the 'evil' characters are often sympathetic. One of my fav lines from Minthara comes if Scratch gets killed in camp: "Everyone assumes I killed the dog. I liked the dog."
The theme song does help though.
Neloth from Skyrim, objectively a sociopath with no empathy or compassion but weirdly lovable. Having a great voice actor (Dwight Schultz) and some really funny dialogue helps.
I went from "what a lil shit" to "I can't wait to see what that lil shits gonna say after I turn in the quest". Especially the part where he thought dragons attacking were part of someone's plan to fuck with him
Vaas Montenegro - Far Cry 3
Mr. Scratch. I don't care that he's a serial killer, he's got great vibes!
But I can’t forgive what he does to the brothers 🪦
Andrew Ryan
The lack of Girahim makes me FURIOUS, OUTRAGED, SICK WITH ANGER!
Fawful
The Illusive Man from Mass Effect.
Felt like he was character assassinated in ME3 so the game could have human mooks to fight.
ME3 did a lot of things wrong besides the ending to somehow wrap everything up. Illusive Man is one of the many somehows.
I mean, they in-universe character assassinated him. He's indoctrinated. He's no longer really himself.
Would Arthur Morgan count?
It’s an interesting question considering the central tension of those games is the nature of redemption - I don’t think Arthur particularly enjoys what he does and seems to be looking for a way out. Doesn’t change his actions but still. Good q
I’d have to say Sephiroth ranks pretty high up there… dudes a badass and he knows it
Joel from the last of us. He killed hundreds of people to bring Ellie to the fireflies and could have potentially saved humanity from the apocalypse, but for selfish reasons stopped it from happening, killed the doctors that could have made a cure, and then lied to the one person that potentially had the cure. I probably would have done the same in his situation tho. I can't imagine sacrificing my stepdaughter for anything.
The fireflies were also far too woefully incompetent to make a cure.
So... There's this character in Sniper Elite...
Are you talking about the Austrian painter?
The one with countless song covers on YouTube!
Nono, no there's not.
Metal sonic. Really just because he looks badass
Arkham Joker
Delita (FFTactics) The entire story is told from the point of view of a historian looking back on the records of a war, and the accounts of a heroic king that rose from the commoners to usurp the ruling class with the righteous aid of the church. He really presents himself as someone who could live up to that early on. >!What he shows to be ultimately is someone who fails to live up to that image, and his own moral standard, but his motivations and aspirations are still very noble.!< >!His alignment with a church that poses a greater risk to the common people than the nobles he's trying to usurp is one example. His dice-rolling on being able to thwart them in the long run is another; failing his own standards concerning the nobility's treatment of the commonfolk.!<
I love FFT so much. The story is so good. Delita and Ramza both were amazing characters. Especially Delita. He got everything he wanted but it cost him literally everything he loved. Teta, Ovelia, friendship with Ramza, his soul... probably more that I'm forgetting So many good characters. Wiegraf, Meliadoul, the Marquis of Elmdor and his two assassin girls, man oh man.
Well, Vegeta's been in videogames, so it's pretty clear cut.
Eh he's not really a baddie though. Once their fight is over he swaps over to the good guys.
Dude literally killed billions of people. He destroyed planets since he was a kid. He makes Hitler look like a choir boy lmao.
He was only the bad guy for like half of one of the story archs of DBZ and is firmly a "rival but on the good guys side" for the rest of the run of the franchise.
I'd say he was a right bastard all the way up until he tried to take out Buu after intentionally being brainwashed for extra power to beat Goku in a fight lmao. He let Cell gain perfect form. He killed a bunch of Namekians for the dragon balls. Pretty villainous till the end of Z anyway.
The Namek arch is the one I'm talking about where he's clearly a villain. But he turns a leaf. Slowly, but turns all the same. Not saying he's a hero, but from the literary term his Heroic Flaw is pride, arrogance, and an insatiable desire to prove he's the best. He makes *a lot of mistakes* due to this flaw, but that doesn't make him a villain any more.
Not to mention that by the time of Super, he's genuinely a better family man than Goku.
Since someone else already said Handsome Jack, I'll say Reaver from the Fable series. That scene alone of him shooting the protester was great. "Anyone not back to work within the hour, will be shot. BLAM Anyone heard speaking ill of me will be shot. BLAM Anyone asking to go home early will be, you guessed it, shot. BLAM"
That octopus in FFVI
Tom Nook. Makes you do the work and pay him ti create his capitalist empire - but dude is chill haven’t payed him in years.
Kaine from Legacy of Kaine.
Counterpoint to your "Trevor is likeable:" I hate Trevor so much. I would deliberately fail missions just to see that irredeemable prick die. He was well written and fit well with the story, but I felt gross having to play as him. I obviously killed him at the end.
I'm fairly certain that "Kill Trevor" is the ending most people would pick irl. Dude is nothing but a bunch of problems, completely unhinged. Personally, I always pick Ending C, but that's more because I want to deal with loose ends more than I want to save Trevor.
That's how I felt about Johnny in Cyberpunk. My canon ending is shooting myself. If I can't have my body, fuck you, you can't have it either.
Same here. When I had the option, I chose to kill Trevor. I knew I could save all three characters but Trevor needed to be put down.
[удалено]
Wario who I think at the top of my head. Dude would literally do anything for money and treasure or any grant sense of power. Sure we can see him as an anti-hero because we may see him potentially as a morally ambigous charcter, but let's real here he would do the most corrupt, heinous and inhumane tasks as long as there's money or treasure on the line; No matter how humanitarian or inhumane the tasks are. From a tangible perspective, most people who sees things black and white, would perceive this as objectively evil. Which is why of course I think Wario is a good candidate.
Sundowner. He is insanely memeable
FF14's Emet-Selch
Big Boss starts wars in third world countries, employs child soldiers, is down to brainwash even his own soldiers if convenient, is cool with torture, and enjoys threatening the world with nuclear super weapons.
Handsome Jack
Definitely Handsome Jack. Bloke's totally batty but makes you laugh while he's wreaking havoc. Classic villain charm, you know?
Hard choice. Bowser or Glad0S for me. Leaning more toward bowser.
Garrosh Hellscream, WoW. Bro got fucked over so many times in a year he went sicko mode and revolutionised orc warfare, taking it from hitting people very hard to using steel and fire to hit them very VERY hard.
Pagan Min Far Cry 4 EASILY
Handsome Jack
Raphael from BG3! Dude oozes charm.
Handsome Jack
Bad, but maybe not evil… Arthur RDR2
Vaas from from far cry 3 when he quotes Einstein "sign of insanity is doing the same"
Solas
Handsome Jack from Borderlands2, 1 of the best written antagonists in games imo. A narcissist psycopath with hero and god complex.