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HELP WITH ANTAGONIST MOTIVE?
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Closealright, for my first game, i wanna take on a cliché, easy route/gameplay. basically, you're on a journey to the world tree to grant your wish of making the world a better place. classic rpg, puzzles/dungeons, adventure, all those neat things. i have the basic of the basics down but i need help with something:
the antagonist's motive. the antagonist wants to destroy the world because he thinks its a horrible place and,,,that's it. the final confrontation has him talking about why he's doing what he is and i don't want to make it 'just because'. any ideas/suggestions for him? he doesn't really have much of a character yet so any and all ideas are welcome.
for context, the world is based on 'tree of life' concept/yggdrasil; theres asgard, at the top of the tree/in the sky where the 'magical dingus that can make or break the world' is, midgard is where humans and elves (who are magic users, of course) live, and helheim, where the deceased go to, essentially the underworld. asgard and midgard are the only ones to be explored by the player, however. i was also thinking about doing a 'three nature spirit' or 'four elemental giants' thing where they protect the aforementioned 'magical dingus' thing.
i really should decide on what this 'magical dingus' thing should be...maybe a crystal or orb or SOMETHING
the antagonist's motive. the antagonist wants to destroy the world because he thinks its a horrible place and,,,that's it. the final confrontation has him talking about why he's doing what he is and i don't want to make it 'just because'. any ideas/suggestions for him? he doesn't really have much of a character yet so any and all ideas are welcome.
for context, the world is based on 'tree of life' concept/yggdrasil; theres asgard, at the top of the tree/in the sky where the 'magical dingus that can make or break the world' is, midgard is where humans and elves (who are magic users, of course) live, and helheim, where the deceased go to, essentially the underworld. asgard and midgard are the only ones to be explored by the player, however. i was also thinking about doing a 'three nature spirit' or 'four elemental giants' thing where they protect the aforementioned 'magical dingus' thing.
Perhaps his motive is that the tree did not grant his wish, you can probably think of what wish he tried to make. Or maybe he thinks the wishes people make are selfish so he wants to wipe them all out?
that second one sounds good. maybe also he grew up with a jaded view of the world for some reason, but it's a start.
Mysticphoenix
411
How about have him want to destroy the midgard (where humans live) so demons from the helheim could not make their way up to asgard because someone is summoning demons from helheim.
Why does he think the world is horrible? What horrible things has he experienced in the past to make him feel this way? Who has he lost, what has he seen, what did he have to do in order to survive?
Focus a bit on his character and his reasons why he believes the world has nothing redeeming in it. Is it the government that runs it? Is it that death comes to innocents for no reason? You can create a very compelling narrative if you think about his reasons why.
Off the top of my head, in a world that isn't suffering from wars and such, perhaps he lost a wife and child to an illness. The unfairness of it all - trying so hard to save them and being good all his life, helping others and then no-one helping him in his time of greatest need - maybe it broke him and made him see only the selfishness, the unfairness of the world. If there's no world, then there's no innocents being hurt by it. The end cleanses and all that jazz.
There's a lot you can do with that kind of character. Look at Fou Lu from Breath of Fire IV, for example - he initially believed the world to be a rotten place but slowly he grew fond of it again through meeting a young woman who cared for him just because he was injured and needed help. Then the government (who was supposed to answer to him) used to her power a machine to destroy him (spoilers, didn't work... just made him angry) and that was his reason for wanting to destroy - because innocents were the only ones who got hurt and if he was ruling at least everyone would be treated equally.
Another example is from one of the Dragon Quest games where a young woman cried gems so people deliberately hurt her in order to make her cry and collect her tears. The evil guy was in love with her and hated seeing how the greed of people was destroying her, so decided to destroy the world in return.
Or you could have villains who just are - their nature is to destroy. It's not their fault, it's just the way they were made. They are beings of death and destruction, hard-coded for it. Like the sinistrals from the Lufia series, as an example.
Maybe the villain doesn't really want to destroy the world itself but change what it is like. Perhaps said villain is in love with a being that cannot exist in the world as it currently exists and thus wants to change it into a state where the being can exist - just so happens that that will make it uninhabitable for human and other life forms.
Focus a bit on his character and his reasons why he believes the world has nothing redeeming in it. Is it the government that runs it? Is it that death comes to innocents for no reason? You can create a very compelling narrative if you think about his reasons why.
Off the top of my head, in a world that isn't suffering from wars and such, perhaps he lost a wife and child to an illness. The unfairness of it all - trying so hard to save them and being good all his life, helping others and then no-one helping him in his time of greatest need - maybe it broke him and made him see only the selfishness, the unfairness of the world. If there's no world, then there's no innocents being hurt by it. The end cleanses and all that jazz.
There's a lot you can do with that kind of character. Look at Fou Lu from Breath of Fire IV, for example - he initially believed the world to be a rotten place but slowly he grew fond of it again through meeting a young woman who cared for him just because he was injured and needed help. Then the government (who was supposed to answer to him) used to her power a machine to destroy him (spoilers, didn't work... just made him angry) and that was his reason for wanting to destroy - because innocents were the only ones who got hurt and if he was ruling at least everyone would be treated equally.
Another example is from one of the Dragon Quest games where a young woman cried gems so people deliberately hurt her in order to make her cry and collect her tears. The evil guy was in love with her and hated seeing how the greed of people was destroying her, so decided to destroy the world in return.
Or you could have villains who just are - their nature is to destroy. It's not their fault, it's just the way they were made. They are beings of death and destruction, hard-coded for it. Like the sinistrals from the Lufia series, as an example.
Maybe the villain doesn't really want to destroy the world itself but change what it is like. Perhaps said villain is in love with a being that cannot exist in the world as it currently exists and thus wants to change it into a state where the being can exist - just so happens that that will make it uninhabitable for human and other life forms.
author=Mysticphoenix
How about have him want to destroy the midgard (where humans live) so demons from the helheim could not make their way up to asgard because someone is summoning demons from helheim.
hmm..that would give helheim more of a role in the game, yes. i'm kind of so-so on demons however.
author=Liberty
snip
i find it easier to shape a character around their goal/s rather than vice versa. pretty much all i have for the antagonist is that he was raised by his grandparents and they died when he was maybe mid-late teens (since they are elderly. the antagonist would only be about 25 during the course of the game.
humans and elves could be constantly be clashing maybe, waging unnecessary wars/invasions against each other. humans want to advance in technology/create new things like machines while elves want to preserve the world as it is. the unnecessary casualties and ruin could anger the antagonist and make him disgusted by both humans and elves.
turkeyDawg
195
Well, you could always make the world actually super-horrible. I mean, you are on a journey to try and wish the world a better place.
For extra dramatic irony, you could always have it where the world is a horrible place because of the antagonist's previous wish to make the world better that he didn't really think through, and thus comes to the conclusion that the world is utterly irredeemable and unfixable.
For extra dramatic irony, you could always have it where the world is a horrible place because of the antagonist's previous wish to make the world better that he didn't really think through, and thus comes to the conclusion that the world is utterly irredeemable and unfixable.
"I wish there was no such thing as money!"
Oh dear...
Or maybe, based on his grandparents' death - "I wish people lived forever!" Cue everyone decaying and growing older but not dying. Horrible accident victims in agony but unable to die or heal because it's past the bodies natural ability, population going out of control, etc
Maybe "I wish sadness disappeared forever" and cue lots of broken minds and psychotic natures.
Oh dear...
Or maybe, based on his grandparents' death - "I wish people lived forever!" Cue everyone decaying and growing older but not dying. Horrible accident victims in agony but unable to die or heal because it's past the bodies natural ability, population going out of control, etc
Maybe "I wish sadness disappeared forever" and cue lots of broken minds and psychotic natures.
author=turkeyDawg
Well, you could always make the world actually super-horrible. I mean, you are on a journey to try and wish the world a better place.
For extra dramatic irony, you could always have it where the world is a horrible place because of the antagonist's previous wish to make the world better that he didn't really think through, and thus comes to the conclusion that the world is utterly irredeemable and unfixable.
author=Liberty
"I wish there was no such thing as money!"
Oh dear...
Or maybe, based on his grandparents' death - "I wish people lived forever!" Cue everyone decaying and growing older but not dying. Horrible accident victims in agony but unable to die or heal because it's past the bodies natural ability, population going out of control, etc
Maybe "I wish sadness disappeared forever" and cue lots of broken minds and psychotic natures.
wow, those are.. pretty heavy for a first game.
i'm thinking maybe actually getting to the top of yggdrasil/granting your wish is a once-in-a-lifetime kind of thing, so antagonist trying to correct a previous wish is unlikely.
he's a pretty smart guy so he would realise the terrifying parts of never dying and no sadness.
there will be two endings where he successfully ends the world and doesn't, btw.
We don't know your character, what he's like, what he's done/not done, what he's capable of. You've only told us that he was raised by grandparents who died when he was in his teens and that he wants to destroy the world. For all we know, that's all there is to his character, so we're just throwing ideas because you haven't really told us much at all.
Not much we can do to help if we don't know anything.
Not much we can do to help if we don't know anything.
emmych
817
Sounds to me, based on the little you've given us, that the guy is less Evil and more "well I give up on this trash world."
An important part of the antagonist is to have them actually come into conflict with your protagonists! Why are they in conflict? What do your heroes see that the antagonist doesn't wrt to the state of the world? What's worth saving that the antagonist doesn't want to save?
Figure out who your heroes are and what they want, THEN come up with the antagonist, I say, since you're right: a guy destroying the world just because is pretty boring! If you're gonna use cliches, they gotta be there for a reason, and you gotta get creative. I mean... you don't ACTUALLY have to get creative, but if you don't, your game is gonna be pretty boring, and people will call you on it.
Good luck!
An important part of the antagonist is to have them actually come into conflict with your protagonists! Why are they in conflict? What do your heroes see that the antagonist doesn't wrt to the state of the world? What's worth saving that the antagonist doesn't want to save?
Figure out who your heroes are and what they want, THEN come up with the antagonist, I say, since you're right: a guy destroying the world just because is pretty boring! If you're gonna use cliches, they gotta be there for a reason, and you gotta get creative. I mean... you don't ACTUALLY have to get creative, but if you don't, your game is gonna be pretty boring, and people will call you on it.
Good luck!
Sooz
They told me I was mad when I said I was going to create a spidertable. Who’s laughing now!!!
5354
author=PCTRASH
he's a pretty smart guy so he would realise the terrifying parts of never dying and no sadness.
You'd be amazed how easily smart people can fool themselves.
As for motivation, a good deal of that kind of psychology comes from an impression that there is no way to improve things or stem the tide of bad stuff. It doesn't have to be correct- it's usually a symptom of a mental illness, so the person's brain is giving them a really skewed impression of the world. Just pick some basic, unsolved problems-- good people suffer, bad people go unpunished, the march of time will render all our deeds ultimately futile, loss of loved ones is unavoidable and suffering is a given in life-- and have your antag fixate on one or more. For some reason, s/he can't think of any way to cope with the fixation (not uncommon!), so eventually, desperate measures seem to be the only solution.
thing is... the antagonist is the protagonist at the beginning/most of the game. he's who the player is controlling, like The Batter in OFF. he should be a likable character who the player roots for and then stabs them in the heart at the end. i'm trying to make it so it seems like he's doing a good thing but then it takes a turn, again, like in OFF. (The Batter is out to purify the world of spectres but he ultimately kills the world instead.)
'trying to make the world a better place' makes the player think he's going to end the wars or whatever the conflict is in the world, when in actuality, he's going to end the world.
i'm really sorry that i didn't have much on him when i made this thread @Liberty, but i've been thinking about the game during class and i got a pretty good idea on what to do, story- and character-wise. i think i'll save it until i start writing devlogs (is that a thing? i don't know)/release the game so i think it's best to close this thread. i guess throwing ideas onto the internet helps me think.
'trying to make the world a better place' makes the player think he's going to end the wars or whatever the conflict is in the world, when in actuality, he's going to end the world.
i'm really sorry that i didn't have much on him when i made this thread @Liberty, but i've been thinking about the game during class and i got a pretty good idea on what to do, story- and character-wise. i think i'll save it until i start writing devlogs (is that a thing? i don't know)/release the game so i think it's best to close this thread. i guess throwing ideas onto the internet helps me think.
Sooz
They told me I was mad when I said I was going to create a spidertable. Who’s laughing now!!!
5354
Looking forward to seeing what you cook up!
Antagonist motive is quite important in games.
The formula is: No one thinks themselves as the bad guy, you are always the hero in your story. "The good guy". But the "Antagonist" has at least one "flaw", which ultimately makes him the "bad guy".
Examples: @porkate42's Avatar: Van Grant from "Tales of Abyss" is a great example. Van wanted to replace all of the people of the world with "clones" of everyone to purge the world of the blindly religion following people, the dead will also be alive again (in a sense). In Van's mind, it was a good idea. In the protagonist's, not so much. Who's right? Who ever swings the mightier sword. That's who!
The formula is: No one thinks themselves as the bad guy, you are always the hero in your story. "The good guy". But the "Antagonist" has at least one "flaw", which ultimately makes him the "bad guy".
Examples: @porkate42's Avatar: Van Grant from "Tales of Abyss" is a great example. Van wanted to replace all of the people of the world with "clones" of everyone to purge the world of the blindly religion following people, the dead will also be alive again (in a sense). In Van's mind, it was a good idea. In the protagonist's, not so much. Who's right? Who ever swings the mightier sword. That's who!
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