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[In Exile]

Sidney wrote...
I'm always curious what people take to be "sane". I think Loghain is, as I just posted, a flat out nutter and doesn't have non-self defeating goals. I'm not sure that guys like Malek or Irenicus have really lofty goals - I guess they make sense but they are just evil for evil's sake.  Sovereign is at least non-self defeating and has a pretty reasonable plan but is basically on the evil for evil's sake plan but tlaking with Sovereign is on eof the high points of any game. Sauron is pretty much just evil for evil's sake and doesn't appear to have much in the way of any "rational" goals. You look at a "charasismatic" villan like Hannibal Lecter. He's evil, a psychopath, who delights in cruelty but he is awfully compelling.  I'm a lot less interested in having a villan who I can care about and think I can redeem than having just a well written of any kind villan and beyond even that you can give me a total non-entity like Sauron or the very similar Arch Demon as long as the overall story is good.

I always thought Master Li from Jade Empire was relatable as a villain - in the sense that you could understand part of what motivated him (saving the Jade Empire from collapse) - but ruthless enough as a person to still be a fun villain. JE's real problem is that they overwrote their own story right when they got to the ending. A shame, too, because the game otherwise had a very interesting moral dillema. 

[Sidney]

In Exile wrote...

Sidney wrote...
I'm always curious what people take to be "sane". I think Loghain is, as I just posted, a flat out nutter and doesn't have non-self defeating goals. I'm not sure that guys like Malek or Irenicus have really lofty goals - I guess they make sense but they are just evil for evil's sake.  Sovereign is at least non-self defeating and has a pretty reasonable plan but is basically on the evil for evil's sake plan but tlaking with Sovereign is on eof the high points of any game. Sauron is pretty much just evil for evil's sake and doesn't appear to have much in the way of any "rational" goals. You look at a "charasismatic" villan like Hannibal Lecter. He's evil, a psychopath, who delights in cruelty but he is awfully compelling.  I'm a lot less interested in having a villan who I can care about and think I can redeem than having just a well written of any kind villan and beyond even that you can give me a total non-entity like Sauron or the very similar Arch Demon as long as the overall story is good.

I always thought Master Li from Jade Empire was relatable as a villain - in the sense that you could understand part of what motivated him (saving the Jade Empire from collapse) - but ruthless enough as a person to still be a fun villain. JE's real problem is that they overwrote their own story right when they got to the ending. A shame, too, because the game otherwise had a very interesting moral dillema. 

Li was a great antagonist plus the whole plot was such a glorious sterotype it is to be applauded.

If I could get JE2 it would be second behind a proper KoTOR3 in terms of video game things I wish for.

[Sidney]

In Exile wrote...

Sidney wrote...
Loghain, OTOH, is a flat out idiot. His whole goal is to not see another Orlesian invasion which is a pipe dream unless you bought the DLC where they had to retrofit some form of Orlesian anything and even that isn't "invasion". He is at the battle of Ostgar. He seees the size of the Darkspawn force and I guess is more interested in parsing the definition of "real" blight than stopping his whole Kingdom from  going down the drain. Real or not they are overrunning the countryside, sacking villages but he is too much of a "nationalist" to worry about that? Sorry, that isn't any more credible than Meredith.

Loghain is always a funny example, because Bioware cut the plot he was being mind-controlled by the archdemon that explained, well, all the stupid decisions. So now we're left with the stupid decisions, but without the explanation for them. So I think him offered as a contrast to Meredith is pretty interesting. 

Is this accurate? I'd never heard/read that he was a victim of indoctrination.

[In Exile]

Sidney wrote...

Is this accurate? I'd never heard/read that he was a victim of indoctrination.

My understanding is that it was a cut plot. So as a matter of cannon, Loghain made his own choices free of any influence (well, except that he was coo-coo for cocopuffs). But it was considered that the archdemon controlled him. It explained things like how he knew you survived after Ostagar. 

I don't know at what stage the plot was cut, though. It's kind of like how before the DR/US choice was implemented the rough draft was to find a GW weapon for killing archdemons. 

[In Exile]

Sidney wrote...
Li was a great antagonist plus the whole plot was such a glorious sterotype it is to be applauded.

If I could get JE2 it would be second behind a proper KoTOR3 in terms of video game things I wish for.

In a sense, I think JE was ahead of its time. When you look atJE, it's very much a similar game to ME. But it just never took off because it couldn't quite get that same cinematic feel going, and I don't think wuxia had the reach of sci-fi (or the novelty of the dialogue wheel). 

Bioware's brand's hurting now, but after ME1, I think a JE could have been an ME2/ME3 like hit. 

[Ieldra]

Sidney wrote...

Ieldra2 wrote...

I want to see a worthy opponent:

(a) an intelligent antagonist, who only loses because of forgivable mistakes that don't make them appear stupid.  
( a sane antagonist with goals that appear rational from their viewpoint, not self-defeating ones.
© a sane antagonist who isn't "evil for evil's sake". One who doesn't hesitate to kill people in their way, but also doesn't delight in cruelty.

Really most antagonists lose becuase they do stupid things because given that they have overwhelming assets at thier disposal it takes some epic level of  stupid to get defeated. Put another way, YOU in the same position as the evil overlord would not lose to the hardy band of plucky but "underpowered at the start" adventurerers.

I'm always curious what people take to be "sane". I think Loghain is, as I just posted, a flat out nutter and doesn't have non-self defeating goals.

Well...if they're insane, let it at least be an insanity I can relate to. Loghain was obsessed with Orlais, and while that wasn't exactly sane I can sometimes relate to obsession, depending on the details. I can't relate to "evil for evil's sake" in an epic antagonist because it's petty, and I can't relate to "generic insanity caused by a magical object/alien tech", nor to "this idiot evil overlord". People who have come into this kind of power aren't that stupid.

Generally, I feel that an antagonist who's too stupid or too evil for evil's sake or too insane demeans my protagonist, because removing them feels like pest extermination rather than an heroic accomplishment. I want the antagonist to have a point which isn't self-defeating, because only then can I make a value-based decision which feels meaningful. The problem is that a video game antagonist must remain opposed to many different reasonable value-based outcomes, since they should appeal to most players as an antagonist without people saying "Yes, I want to agree with them". Being a person with a minority philosophy (somewhat consequentialist, techno-progressivist, anti-traditionalist), I can personally attest to how annoying it is if you are forced to oppose an antagonist whose philosophy you find convincing. Still, there are some standard antagonist types which would work for me. "Godlike power at the expense of X" usually works as a motivation, for instance, if X is big enough and something tangible my protagonist would reasonably care about rather than some abstract sacred principle. You can discuss the sanity of such a motivation, but whether it actually is self-defeatingly insane or just overwhelmingly ambitious with no care for the cost to others, that depends on the setting. 

Modifié par Ieldra2, 27 novembre 2013 - 02:12 .

[Fallstar]

Whatever fits. Just please don't degrade a human struggle again by doing another Orsino-Harvester.

[BlueMagitek]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

Ultima IV, V, and VII were so impossibly good that it's not really fair to compare modern games to them.  We are now so far removed from that level of quality that we can't get that far in one step.

I would love games to head back in that direction, but I think something less ambitious might be a better place to start.

I'm not asking for Ultima V though, just a single aspect of it.  I thought Blackthorne was a good antagonist in that game, and then we don't mention what happened in future games.

DuskWarden wrote...

Whatever fits. Just please don't degrade a human struggle again by doing another Orsino-Harvester.

This is Dragon Age, where we purge the Alienage because of jealous humans bro.
The only happy people inside it are the Ferelden Kents.