Mistreatment of Villain’s
I call on all of you reading this post to think back to your favorite villain in a video game. It can be the main boss in series or just a bad guy you really liked. What do you remember? More specifically what is the first thing about them that pops into your mind? If your like me you had trouble with this question as well. For some reason beyond my comprehension I thought of G-Man from Half Life. It’s an odd choice as you nether fight him and he never really proves that he is a bad guy (apart from forcing you to work for him). This all got me thinking about what makes a great super villain. In comics the bad guys tend to be way more interesting than the good guys. So what gives, surely video games have just as good villains as comic books or movies right? Well Firstly I think I should clarify what makes a good villain.
Powerful social characters. In order to fight the hero a villain needs to be driven or they risk becoming stagnant and unmoving. Often the villain will be someone with flawed moral ideals. In many classic stories the villain is someone who seeks to solve problems. Lex Luther (my favorite villain) only seeks to return the balance of power from Superman. His flaw is his ego that requires him to defeat the only person he is unwilling to admit is better than him. But as a character he battles a god and that makes him a powerfully driven character. Anyone can just quit but Luther will always try to best Superman even tho the odds are stalked so great against him. Often this means that the villain will be unwilling to comprimiese seeing their solution as the only viable response. This can be great since everyone hates an inflexible response like ‘for the good of the many we must sacrifice a few.’ These characters demand respect and in video games their underlings should represent that by the way they act in their world.
Mystirious motivations. If a villains answer to ‘why are you attacking new york’ is ‘I don’t like new york’ than said villain is lacking in depth. A two demensial villain is easy to figure out the modivations of and this means that a great deal of discovery is thrown away from the player. If the villain never reveils his true intentions than people remain guessing. However Villains should be more than ‘evil.’ For something like Lord of the Rings, Mordor wasent the real Villain. It was the hearts of man that could undo the world. This was depicted by Boromir and Denethor because these men gave into their temtations of fear. Of course Mordors motivations were transparent but man’s motivations (namely Boromir) were in question. This was a great way to use characters with flaws to be villains as Boromirs want for his fathers pride was used to try and take the ring from Frodo. These complex characters can also be admirable to some degree but thought about with suspicion since their true motivation remains a secret.
Character context inside his/her/it’s world. A villain can be just another person without the tools they possess that give them strength. These tools are specific to the setting of the world. If the ultamite villain in a skate boarding game can’t skate than they are lacking characters context inside they’re world. A villain’s tools define them and they should be well equip for the world(s) they reside in. If the focus is about shooting than a villain should know how to shoot. Power is granted to those who control their surroundings and a villain who doesn’t is just not that scary.
Villain intelligence. Hopefully the main bad guy your trying to defeat isn’t as slow as his hired goons. The villain should hold some command over the people in their world. They must have influence and the ability to bring about change. Villains who don’t remain uninteresting since they have nothing to lose. For example if a hero must kill an evil tyrant that tyrant should have some element that could affect the heros life. For a boring villain that element would be an army that could crush said heroes village but to spice it up maybe they have done this to hundreds of villages in an attempt to stop a plague from killing more. The villain uses his intelligence to solve a problem inside the world and the story follows by reveling that solutions effects to the hero.
Finnially a faital flaw. This one is important because villains don’t get points for being perfect. If they were heroes would just lose and that’s no fun. Good guys should be the rock to their scissors. That shouldn’t be confused with a simple game of rock paper scissors though as the hero shouldn’t find it that easy to defeat the villain. Great villains are so powerful they can stand beaten but still in charge meaning that the villain should be all to aware of his fatil flaw. Its no fun when you win with those nanites the good doctor gave you three seconds ago but if a hero wins by removing a villains true power you’ve accomplished something. At the end a great villain leaves heroes with a hard choice. A moral dilemma that reveals as much about the hero as it does about the moral of the story.
So that was a sort of wish list for villains these days. Generally those principles can be applied to anything villains are involved in but specific to video games the list changes a little. Since video games are user dependent they offer different challenges and opportunities for the developer. When you think of a villain in a game a lot of these motivations for good villains ring true but how does that translate to a gameplay standpoint on villains?
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