VILLIANS: HOW DO YOU MAKE THEM UNIQUE?

Ehh I don't think Kefka is that great, either. I find his dialogue to be pretty corny.

Now to contribute to the topic:
You can have multiple villains in the one game, as well - as obvious as that sounds. It can potentially create a lot more dynamism to your story by having villains who not only oppose your protagonist, but also each other. Each villain could be a different manifestation of your game's theme, for example (if your game has an inherent theme). The protag could ally with one villain against the other for some "greater good"(presuming you have only two, but obviously there could be many more).

A further way of fleshing out characters & plot is to have these many conflicting characters star in their own chapters throughout the game, so you get an intimate idea for each of their motives and worldviews. You can employ protagonist-centred morality to great effect this way.

Perhaps another obvious thing to point out is does your protagonist fit the villain? Just as you think of a villain from the protagonist's POV, you can reverse it to see what the most effective type of protagonist could be.

Looking at your game's plot & characters from as many angles as possible can only serve to help your project, I think.

Ugh, I agree with everything you just said, including the attribution of his popularity to nostalgia. I did not play FF VI as a child, either, so his effect was lost on me.

I personally think there are far better FF villains (strictly within the context of the series) such as Seifer (albeit a minor/illusory villain), Seymour, Kuja, uhh Hojo - if only because he is rather creepy.

author=Rya
Cyril is great because he isn't just another side boss, but also goes all like "Now I just have to kill the final boss and then I can destroy everyone all by myself!" and he has very cool battle quotes too like "Well, guess I buy a one-way ticket to hell for your lives.", "What's wrong? Weren't you coming to get me?", "I hope you let me enjoy it some more." and "Try a little harder, before you die."
Not to mention he's the only boss than can render himself completely invincible if he just wants to.

Cyril is great because he has corny anime dialogue?

I don't know if an unique villain should be the goal of a writer. The most compelling villains tend to be the least unique and are almost always reflections of the hero. I'm thinking Moriarty to Holmes, the Master to the Doctor, Khan to Kirk, Sephiroth to Cloud, Big Boss to Solid Snake. The villain, the madman of the story, the monster that infects our minds shows us the worst aspects of the hero. Whenever I write a villain, I don't think of him or her as the bad guy or someone to create conflict for the hero to overcome; I think of the villain as someone who's purpose is to expose the hero's flaws. Joker and Kefka work so well because they're agents of chaos. They don't just reflect the worst aspects of the hero, but they reflect the worst in everyone. One could say that they're cop outs, that the only reason they're even villains in their stories is because it was easier to write an irrational lunatic than to write a character that actually makes us question the morals of the hero. Of course, this is the classic Manichean story-telling method. Good people good: bad people bad. This method of story-telling pervades Western culture.

All that making a character unique does is instigates a game of oneupmanship. One writer's characters have unique aspects, so other writers have to make their characters more unique. The next thing you know, writing isn't about making a compelling story but about doing what other writers haven't done. This is almost universally bad writing. We should be more interested in telling our story than in being different from the other guys. Seriously, we've had written language for 5000 years; you can't honestly believe you're going to come up with something that hasn't been done before. Nor should you try. Trying to be unique robs your other tasks of the creative energy they need. It's one of the most creatively draining things you can do, because while you're busy coming up with brilliant ideas, it's easiest to forget that you have to make your audience care about these brilliant ideas.

The most successful stories are the least unique. Star Wars and the Man With No Name trilogies are both essentially retellings of The Hidden Fortress. Dune is essentially a retelling of the New Testament. Akira and Blade Runner are both retellings of Metropolis. Brigit Jones' Diary is a retelling of Pride and Prejudice. Forbidden Planet is a retelling of Shakespeare's The Tempest. Inglorious Bastards is a retelling of The Dirty Dozen. The Lion King is a retelling of Hamlet. Edward Scissorhands is a retelling of Frankenstein. I can go on and on and on and on ad infinitum. Kipling has this to say about his Jungle Book: "I am afraid that all that code in its outlines has been manufactured to meet 'the necessities of the case': though a little of it is bodily taken from (Southern) Esquimaux rules for the division of spoils." "In fact, it is extremely possible that I have helped myself promiscuously but at present cannot remember from whose stories I have stolen." And almost every hero story can trace their lineage back to the likes of Heracles and Gilgamesh, with Samson and Delilah, Noah's Ark, Heracles, and Odin being essentially retellings of the stories of Gilgamesh.

Might I suggest that instead of trying to make characters unique, which takes a tremendous amount of creative energy that is wholly unnecessary to spend, do a bit of research and try and do something that hasn't been done in awhile. My best suggestion would be to not worry about the uniqueness of your villain and simply write your hero first, and then write the villain as a foil for the hero. They could be brothers, sisters, or friends who have fallen out or maybe the hero doesn't even realize that x/er friend/sibling even is the villain. Maybe your hero is actually the bad guy and doesn't realize it, and the villain is the one that's right.

Well, I wasn't saying to make them simple. I was saying to not try to be different or unique. Concern yourself more with meeting the needs of the story than with trying to be unique.

author=CAVE_DOG_IS_BACK
people who praise kefka do so because he's sort of one-dimensional, not in spite of it. in a genre littered with badguys with really complex motivations and tragic backstories, it was kind of refreshing to see this one game where the villain was just a dog (magitek dog) chasing his tail, caught his tail, and couldn't figure out what to do with it.

I'm not sure that was such an issue at the time the game came out. IDK, maybe there were a bunch of examples on SNES I missed, but my recollection of the time is mostly pretty simplistic Bad Guys Who Are Just Bad.

Yeah, he doesn't deserve power. that's probably what I like most about him. Almost nothing he gained (or lost) was due to his own power, and he essentially becomes a god almost by accident. people become fall into positions of power using nothing but luck all the time, but I can't think of many times that this has been portrayed to such a grand extent in video game writing.

I don't think it was portrayed all that well, it was just kind of there. Of course, that could be said for p. much all of the game; the writing was tremendously scattershot.

so...true to life?

True-to-life and factual details aren't always good for stories. I mean, if we were going to portray actual real-life fighting, everything would either be a few moments of posturing and then someone leaving, or a couple of seconds and then someone's down.

If you're going to include an element like that, you NEED to focus on melding that element into the story in a way that works for the story. You can't just throw shit together and assume that it'll work, any more than you can just put in a bunch of random powers for a battle and then just assume it'll be a good battle.

ETA: Forgot to include a thank you for explaining the twist aspect, which makes the whole thing make a lot more sense. I still think it's bad, but then I tend to think most of Square's writing is fairly toss.

author=pianotm
Well, I wasn't saying to make them simple. I was saying to not try to be different or unique. Concern yourself more with meeting the needs of the story than with trying to be unique.

Then I think... I meant the same thing as you?

I used unique as in remarkable/unusual, not one-of-a-kind. But I'm going to concede I missed your point and leave it at that ^_^;

author=Feldschlacht IV

author=Liberty

author=Feldschlacht IV
snip

Yeah, but see - that's their reason. To them everything is practically nothing, so that's their reason for not caring and for shit going on. It's a reason. ;p

author=LockeZ
If you think that's enough of a reason to qualify as "a reason" then I wonder what is even the point of telling people to make sure their villains have a reason for their actions. I can't think of a single example, or even imagine a theoretical one, where the villain's actions have any less purpose than that.

Edit: Other than, like, comedy games where the villain refers to himself as a villain.

I think both of these thoughts are missing the point of H.P. Lovecraft inspired themes; it's not that their reason is 'nothing', their reason is utterly incomprehensible to mortal thought, and any 'reason' we assign is just us trying to make sense of the unknowable and projecting that onto forces we can't possibly understand.

Even copping out and saying "lol their reason is nothing/they don't have one" isn't true either, nobody said they don't have a reason or that their reason is nothing, it's just that their actions are totally unknowable to us. Maybe they do, maybe they don't, whatever, the result is the same, and that's what's important. There's no way to know either way, to the point of it almost not mattering, because we don't matter, and that's terrifying.

I'm not sure what you're telling me to do. Liberty was getting on here first saying that your villain needs a reason for their actions, and then started expounding that having no discernable reason was still a reason. What part of this is actionable advice? It just sounds like you guys are saying that anything and everything is okay to do. Good reason, bad reason, no reason, doesn't matter.

Well, you could make it a pink-haired girl named Kloe, that's certainly "unique"

Well hey, do you, boo boo. This isn't the first or won't be the last time you've said some weird ass shit, LockeZ!