MULTIPLE ANTAGONISTS

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Scourge
I used to make games. I still do, but I used to too.
1605
I've seen this topic debated on a few other forums, so I thought I'd bring it up here. How do you folks feel about a video game having more than one antagonist? Antagonist in the sense of Big Bad, not in the sense of the Big Bad having more than one major underling.
The way I see it, there's two approaches to this. The "Naruto" (someone else's term, not mine) approach, where one villain stays in hiding but jumps up as soon as the first big bad is down, or the, for lack of a better name, "Golden Sun" approach where there's multiple antagonists and they interact, maybe even work against the player together. FFVII is a pretty good example of this, with Shinra and Sephiroth. I suppose there's a third way as well, where multiple antagonists work both against the player and against each other.
I personally am a big fan of the Golden Sun method. (I even use it in A New World) I think it fleshes out the villains if you see them interacting with/helping out someone else instead of just cropping up to attack the players from time to time. The Naruto method? Hell no. I HATE beating one bad guy just to have a stronger one pop out of the woodwork and tell me he's out to take over the world. The third one is the best, in my opinion. Having villains work against the players AND against other villains would really make a game great. Of course, it could also bog it down or needlessly complicate it. (i.e. too many characters, too many plot twists, etc...)
Anyways, I'm looking forward to hearing some opinions on this.Discuss.
One idea would be to have two rival bad guys and whichever one the player takes out first the remaining enemy becomes stronger and turns into the Big Bad.

Would be fairly simple to work into a game.
Thiamor
I assure you I'm no where NEAR as STUPID as one might think.
63
I like the hidden ones that hide implications around the game that a bigger bad guy actually is behind everything, so they pop out in a part 2, so to speak, in the game.
I've always been a fan of games with multiple antagonists, because they give conflict within conflict. Even different antagonists may have conflicts with one another. The best kind of games that have multiple antagonists are ones whereby the different antagonists make equal impact to the game plots, albeit different roles. Like Scourge said, FF7 is one of them. If you wanna try RPG Maker games, try out Exit Fate and Last Scenario. Those are classic RPG Maker RPG examples of multiple antagonists coming into play.

Ultimately though, while there are multiple antagonists, there has to of course have the ultimate central antagonist to finish it off. There can also be games whereby the secondary major antagonist turns over a new leaf and helps the heroes defeat and main major antagonist and so on. Ideas, ideas :)
Out of the three approaches you mentioned, I definitely prefer when multiple villain work both against the player and each other. FF VII is an example of that, not the Golden Sun approach.

The worst is definitely the Naruto approach. That approach is usually done between different games of a series, you defeat one villain in the first game and in the sequel you're up against a second villain. Even then it's sometimes iffy.

author=elipswitch
Ultimately though, while there are multiple antagonists, there has to of course have the ultimate central antagonist to finish it off. There can also be games whereby the secondary major antagonist turns over a new leaf and helps the heroes defeat and main major antagonist and so on. Ideas, ideas :)

One idea is to not make it known who the central antagonist will be until near the end. For example, we have multiple antagonists competing against each other over who will get the McGuffin of godhood and until one succeeds, they are all more or less equal.
Adon237
if i had an allowance, i would give it to rmn
1743
I always have multiple antagonists in all of my ideas for games. But, I always have a "Master" antagonist. It's fair because there are multiple Protagonists right?
Yellow Magic
Could I BE any more Chandler Bing from Friends (TM)?
3154
Multiple sides is best. If there is more than one antagonist, I'd prefer to see them beat the shit out of each other as well as the heroes.
I used the "Naruto" approach in my game, I thought it was super awesome and cool until I realized it's one of the biggest RPG cliches.

I like both others. Having more than one villain is interesting, whether they even know each other or not.
Max McGee
with sorrow down past the fence
9159
I am strongly for it. Why not have multiple protagonist groups also, each with their own conflicting ideals and goals who DO NOT all band together in the end?

The more different factions there are interacting in complex, morally ambiguous ways ways, the better. I love it when A is fighting B and then C unexpectedly shows up and it's like ohhhhhhhh shit! It gives me a special, good feeling when games do this. I love anything that adds a third side to a conflict.

The further away from boring Good vs. Evil duality we can get, the better.

Important Caveat: This is only good if you don't namedrop 27 damn factions in the opening text crawl and expect the player to actually keep track of and remember them. These things have to be introduced gradually.

FFT I think does a pretty good job of this...I don't know because I've never actually played a decent translation and the ~1997 localization is a fucking piece of crap so I can't really tell what's going on.
chana
(Socrates would certainly not contadict me!)
1584
The best games, I think, are where villains are credible, like a fascist order, who can eventually defend their point of view (which is more and more done), A blurred line is really interesting in that way, and a few others, in any case, I think its time we got over "the bad guys" and "the good guys", worse The Bad guy (2 or 3, same thing), like in stories for, i wouldn't even say, children, but moron's (like Bush!). Of course it makes the story much harder to write, but so much more interesting! Then comes the question : are rpgmakers really capable of doing that, seen how they're structured?
Max McGee
with sorrow down past the fence
9159
Well said, Chana.

Of course, it's not like there aren't bad guys.
Like Bush!
Scourge
I used to make games. I still do, but I used to too.
1605
author=Max McGee
I am strongly for it. Why not have multiple protagonist groups also, each with their own conflicting ideals and goals who DO NOT all band together in the end?

This is a really good idea and I don't know why I didn't mention it in the first post. I think this is pretty cool because it can lead to the player being in doubt about whether their band of protagonists is the right group to be working with if they see other groups, albeit with different ideals, working towards the same goal.
author=Max McGee
I love it when A is fighting B and then C unexpectedly shows up and it's like ohhhhhhhh shit! It gives me a special, good feeling when games do this. I love anything that adds a third side to a conflict.

This is my favorite thing to read/do. A Song of Ice and Fire does a damn good job of this, in my opinion.
author=eplipswich
There can also be games whereby the secondary major antagonist turns over a new leaf and helps the heroes defeat and main major antagonist and so on. Ideas, ideas :)
I'm not a huge fan of this unless there's a darn good reason for the secondary antagonist to do so. I dislike games where an antagonist joins the players because they had no idea just how evil the main villain was. (I mean, really?) If a game did this, I'd like to see that secondary antagonist join the players and then turn right around and stab them in the back after the players take down his former boss. This is a little overused as well, though.
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
In Vindication, there are three primary villains - the Evil Empire, the Demonic Invasion, and the main character.
While it can work, the approach "one established well-rounded villian gets upstaged by a random world-destroyer thing once he's beaten" is very bad, since he's basically just a random throw-in. Fable III did this, and I was just bothered by the Creeper since he's just an attention-whore with the voice of a 12 year old.
I've never been a big fan of "villains" per se. I like the idea of characters with goals opposite those of the main characters and who are, as a result, antagonistic - but only in some respects. If you give me characters who occasionally/mostly/almost always opposite the hero while pursuing meaningful goals, I am all about it. You can have as many of those as the plot will meaningfully support.

On the other hand, one entity bent on world destruction is already too many for me. I don't find those types of villains at all interesting. Neither are serial killers, super duper crazy evil clowns, etc. I prefer a nuanced antagonist to an overtly evil villain any day.

You can never have too many fleshed out antagonists/antagonizing entities, but you can easily have way too many crazy unnecessarily evil villains.


As for the "ordering" so to speak, I think it makes sense that not everybody oppose the heroes at the same time, but it needs a meaningful shift from one main antagonist to another. Not just a "Hehe, the real villain is in another castle" or a "You thought that guy was bad? Get a load of me!" type of midgame ending fake-out.
Dudesoft
always a dudesoft, never a soft dude.
6309
I like the One Piece approach. It's like all the villains co-exist in the same world, and have the common enemy of the World Government. Though they'll help each other in situations against the Man, they will fight each other as enemies in the race for the One Piece. There's so many villains stronger than Luffy, the protagonist, but it doesn't matter because other villains are fighting them; so basically there isn't one villain. Or any villain... They're all after the same thing as the protagonist! Some just go about it the wrong way and seem "evil", but really all the characters are on a mission sort of thing. If that makes any sense...?
I think we can all agree on one thing : Single antagonist is little more than The Dark King, no matter how much window dressing you add.
LouisCyphre
can't make a bad game if you don't finish any games
4523
Single antagonist can be... a lot more than that. You're underselling the versatility of the term "antagonist".
Thiamor
I assure you I'm no where NEAR as STUPID as one might think.
63
It depends on the story (the story of the game as a whole, and the story for the antagonist(s))

You could have 1 and it be the best just as long as the story is up to par with what you're wanting to add, if that makes sense. Quality over quantity, firstly.
I think that antagonists are under worked most of the time when there is only one, let alone adding more...

An antagonist's journey through a game should be as equally plotted and explained as the protagonists, because at its heart, I believe that a good RPG is one where the story has explained conflict... And to try and do this with more than one antagonist would at best mean the creation of FAR to many cutscenes for one game and at worst would lead to one of the antagonists being underdeveloped...

Its hard to get it right with one antagonist let alone multiple ones...

That being said, I do have a deep appreciation for the way Multiple antagonists were used in Vandal Hearts II... But what I liked there was that they let the antagonist(s) NOT currently relevant have machinations in the background that were expressed by the conversations of the currently relevant antagonists and how those machinations altered there plans...
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