RETHINKING ANTAGONISTS

author=RyaReisender
If you don't make the player hate the antagonist, then the villain simply won't be memorable.

Nah, some of my favourite antagonists are characters that I actually liked or could respect. In fact, I think them being that way makes it harder for them to fade from memory because they accomplish something that a MWUHAHAHA villain doesn't. Somebody earlier mentioned Shadow Hearts 2. I have mad respect for the true final boss of that and never once hated him.

I think it's okay to have a game, even a JRPG, that doesn't end in victory. Tragedies are valuable stories, and the amount of investment the player has only makes the message more meaningful. You have to be very careful how the final battle works, though. You do still want the player to feel like they won the fight and beat the game.

If you do want a game where the real enemy is The System and the game ends without it being fixed but still feeling like victory, Final Fantasy Tactics is probably the best example I can think of. The final boss is the reincarnation of Lucifer, because the game has a very standard enemy of The Evil Empire That Is Also Summoning Demons, but you end the game beating only the demons. The final scene about the empire in the game's ending shows it being taken over by a murderous, manipulative dirtbag who betrayed you and everyone he ever loved after being gripped by an unstoppable lust for power. It's definitely not a happy ending, but it's somehow still a satisfying outcome, because it's a big climactic world-changing event that the whole game was leading up to. Essentially, the ending of FF Tactics is that the game's faceless antagonist is at last given a face - that of your best friend - and then the credits roll.

I don't even remember the villains in Shadow Hearts~

author=Sated

author=LockeZ
If you do want a game where the real enemy is The System and the game ends without it being fixed but still feeling like victory, Final Fantasy Tactics is probably the best example I can think of.

I tried doing this in Sore Losers, but popular opinion suggests that I failed. Sad times.

It's difficult to pull off and have the player still feel fulfilled. I feel like Tactics handled it well as even though history painted you as a heretic, you did indeed save the world and there's hints of the truth coming to light in the future.

Even if nothing good at all comes from the players actions, it's that feeling of fulfillment or purpose (or just a really good end to a story) that makes those kinds of endings work, in my opinion.

author=Feld
The point that I'm trying to make is that are we limiting ourselves with the expectation that games must have 'villains' in the form of dramatic characters such Sephiroth and the like?

Short answer: Yes.

Cop out answer: Sooz's linked post is a goldmine of helpful info, and anyone who hasn't read it yet should do so. Seriously. There's not much I can add here that isn't just a reiteration of what Sooz said.

But hey, I'll try!

What makes an antagonist "better" than others is purely subjective due to what a person wants to see. The divisive responses in this thread alone are already proof enough of that. However, you can write your antagonists better within their own archetype.

In the case of the MUAHAHA villain, chances are you're not going to get too intimate with motivations and psychological complexities beyond a line or two of reasoning. If I see an antagonist like that, I assume that they would be focused more on DOING stuff. One of the reasons why Kefka is loved so much (from what I've seen. I actually haven't finished FFVI), was that he actually destroyed the world. Where most villains at the time were TRYING to destroy the world, Kefka actually does it. That alone makes him memorable. Complex and three-dimensional? Maybe. Like I said, I didn't beat the game, so I can't attest to the depths of Kefka's character, but I see that he was a villain that actually followed through on his MUAHAHAHA personality.

This shows that you can get more depth from a MUAHAHA villain by focusing less on the villain itself and more on the impact the villain's conquest had around the world around you. When traveling the world, you can put more emphasis on the effects the villain had on the people, the environment, and others. Those effects create issues, which in turn can potentially create more antagonists. Perhaps the problems the villain created are so great that they become the primary issue of a story, and "beating the antagonist," is just a wrap-up after the main issue is solved.

Dragon Age: Origins is a good example of this, I feel. The primary threat to the world in that game was the Blight, a horde of monstrous creatures known as Darkspawn. However, you spend about 90% of the game amassing an army and dealing with a man named Loghain, a half-crazed war hero who doesn't see the Blight for the danger it really is. While doing so, you see the effect the Blight has on the world, and see how the different races are dealing with the growing horde of Darkspawn. The Blight itself is as deep and complex as a shot glass: They evil, you kill, roll credits. However, they are still a fearsome threat because you feel their effects on the world itself, even more so once you learn exactly how to stop it.

It's made very clear that defeating the Blight is not a magical, "the world is saved and everyone lives happily ever after" scenario, either. It's made clear that the Archdemon is a old god brought back to life from the corruption of the Darkspawn. An exact number of old gods are even given somewhere in the lore, and this current Blight is far from the last one.


On the side of the central antagonist being more than just a person, Souls games are good examples. The biggest threat the world isn't some mad human or world-ending monster, but rather the inevitable decay of a world on its last legs. Each game takes places right at the end of an Age of Fire. When the Age of Fire ends, humans die, and the sun is forever blotted out. At the end of each game, you have the option to link the fire, a ritual the keeps the sun and humanity from dying out for just a little longer.

Note the choice of words there: Keeps them from dying for just a little longer. You never save the world in Souls games. You just add more kindle to the fire to delay it's inevitable death. It's a bittersweet ending, and one that fits into the idea of the primary antagonist being something more than just an overarching evil that must be destroyed.


In these examples, there are major villains that are defeated in a "final" battle, but the primary threat is never completely solved. You still feel like you accomplished a great goal and wrapped up the story nicely, but your achievement carries a kind of depressing weight that you haven't achievement a fairytale ending of solving all the world's problems. If you can somehow work in that kind of overarching threat into your stories, you'll have a lot of material to add an extra dimension to your world and it's inhabitants.

I always liked the Emperor as a villain better than Kefka. Kefka's goal was complete destruction, which is kind of a stupid goal to have. It makes it easy to root again, and he was a good villain from a colourful character standpoint, but I really felt like the Emperor was a better rounded villain. Maybe not personally, but there was substance to his legacy; the cities of the Empire, its soldiers and citizens. His aim was clear: control by whatever means necessary. Every member of the Empire's armed forces were an extension of his character; Leo was his belief that he was making the world a better place, Kekfa his ruthlessness personified. Every sword-wielding sergeant and Magitek-piloting officer was a reminder of his personal reach. Their thoughts and worries, their hopes and dreams, all his. In the end, his hubris blinded him, but he was a man. He sought not destruction but domination. Was this because he felt he was the best man for the job? No doubt. Was he wrong? Probably. But he was human, and mostly sane, and had weaknesses and strengths; he was cunning, thinking steps ahead of his enemies, and by the time the story picks up he's established himself as an immeasurable dictator. Hell, the Empire is named after him. Even the Caesars couldn't claim that.

His final act, as he tries uselessly to stop Kefka from destroying the world, is brilliant. It marks his end, but not the end of his character. His ruthlessness has won out, his madness has defeated his sanity, but through it all his character continues on to the end. It's his legacy you fight; he made Kefka, gave him power, meaning, a will of his own, and every action carried out by Kefka is an action carried out by the Emperor himself, even after he is dead. Kefka is spoken about only in hurried whisper, and we never see his psyche past its insane exterior. But Gestahl? We hear his thoughts, his worries, dripping from the lips of his loyal soldiers. We hear his aims, his dreams, shouted as curses from the frothing mouths of the Returners, who it turns out are also a part of his legacy. His foils, it would seem, but more often his puppets. Defeated completely at a time of his choosing, and dooming the world with their failure to protect the Espers.

He's a pretty good fucking antagonist, especially considering you never come close to fighting him. He's the will of the entire world.

author=Michael Caine
“...some men aren't looking for anything logical, like money. They can't be bought, bullied, reasoned, or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn.”

Absolutely, but it's hard to craft a 60 hour story around that guy's motivations when they're literally just:



like literally just that. I'm not saying he's not a great character, but I prefer Gestahl.

Well, of course it's limiting to expect a certain type of character in every RPG. I have NEVER found Kefka to be interesting, ever, and I am pretty indifferent about Sephiroth. The games, from the limited number I've played, that I've always felt to have much more interesting antagonists (and characters and plots overall) have been GTA IV & V, the Dragon Age series, FF IX and X, Fallout: New Vegas. And I am greatly interested in the atypical characters and plots (always speaking in terms of within video games) of games I haven't had the fortune of playing such as Drakengard and Vagrant Story (latter isn't so atypical in the sense that it's about the hero's journey, but whatever).

I for one definitely want more complexity, depth and variety in plot and characters.

GTA V, for a character-based example: I would say that Trevor is an antagonist to Michael's protagonist, at least while you're playing from Michael's perspective. And while Trevor is rather a "mwahahahaha!!" villain, he's also a playable character whom you discover to be a complex, and no less disturbing, anti-villain. Much of the conflict in the plot is between Michael & Trevor as they begrudgingly reconcile despite their considerable grievances with each other.

I agree that in DA Origins the blight, as a means of conflict, was effective. In fact, story & character wise, that game does many deceptively simple things very well (though it's not without its daggy moments). The human drama (such as the summit in Denerim) is dwarfed by the inhuman blight & its darkspawn, which is the point - people will busy themselves with petty conflict out of denial or pride while real destruction and terror happens underneath their nose.

So there are certainly more interesting ways to have conflict in a game's story than by relying on an evil, over-the-top villain that the player is detached from but still expected to hate... how can you hate someone who is one-dimensional and corny? (in a genuine "this is a convincing character and I loathe them" way, not a "this character is shite and that's why I hate them" way)