449 réponses à ce sujet

[xAmilli0n]

All a good villain needs to be is a well developed character that antagonizes our protagonist, preferably going about it in an intelligent way.  Nothing too complicated there.

[Xandurpein]

To me, a great villain should be developed with enough depth, so that I can understand not just what the villain wants to achieve, but also why. Good villains should also have the sort of dark charisma that makes them thoroughly annoying and almost likeable at the same time.

[CronoDragoon]

To me, a great villain should be developed with enough depth, so that I can understand not just what the villain wants to achieve, but also why.

 

That can depend on the idealogical struggle within the work, though. Do we really understand the Joker? Is there a whole lot of depth there? What about Kefka? We certainly don't understand Anton Chigurh. I totally agree with the dark charisma part, though. I mean, just look at the three names I just mentioned!

 

For me, a great villain needs to represent a legitimate threat (one that makes you question whether the hero can succeed) while occupying whatever the other side of the idea(s) being examined in the work are.

[DarthLaxian]

A great "villain" (and I use the term only because the topic is named thusly) - I would say:

 

Antagonist (!)

 

- is a person who has a cause they believe in, a cause that (from their point of view) is just and right and they are not one dimensional, such an antagonist might do good things for the common people while commiting terrible acts against his/her enemies.

 

Good examples for me would be:

 

- Magneto from X-Men (a man jaded by his own past, who fights for what he believes in and while being hard on his enemies is not a totally heartless bastard)

 

- Francis X. Hummel (the general from the movie "The Rock" - fighting a corrupt government to acknowledge dead soldiers (who died for their country in special ops) who were disavowed after their service!)

 

- Section 31 in star trek (fighting the good fight against other secret (intelligence) organisations not bound by starfleet principals and morals in order to protect the federation!)

 

- in RL: Terrorists (!), because if you look at them with the eyes of someone who is oppressed or believes in their cause, they become freedom fighters (!)...it's like with the Nazis who put resistance fighters up against the wall and shot them, because they were enemies of the nazi-state, while the ones suffering because of that regime cheered them on (or even joined up) or if you go into religion: martyrs...the enemies of said religion don't like them, don't like their cause etc. but the religious people honor their sacrifice and worship them!

 

so there you have it

 

greetings LAX

[Icy Magebane]

For me, a villain has to at least have a good reason for what they're doing.  Characters like the Joker who do things "for lulz" get on my nerves.  Especially in the case of the Joker, who has plot armor stronger than Superman's skin.  "I want to see the world burn" is also something I'd consider a bad reason... those kinds of villains are not thought provoking, and so when it's time to finally confront them, it might as well be any faceless mook.  An overly-complicated reason that is based on flawed logic is just as bad though... Starchild is a good example of this.

[Medhia_Nox]

For myself, I'm not concerned with sympathy.  I absolutely do not care "why" someone is a villain at all.  Understanding someone who's broken doesn't mean they don't need to be stopped.  The journey to becoming a villain can be interesting, but not if it's some grab at empathy for his villainous actions as if it gives those actions some new found gravity.

 

Humanity is important.  What does this person care about?  Family?  Friends?  Reputation?  Villains care about all the things average and good people do (average people are not good people in my world view).  Most of the time, these things are the impetus for this villainy.

 

Patience.  I think this works under Dean's "Poise" category.  While a rage beast can lurk under the skin, I want my villains to be able to pass as normal a good deal of the time. Drinks with friends without always "being villainous" - walks in the park without them being "villainous walks through the park". 

 

Restraint.  Perhaps also part of poise.  But I like my most complex villains to have moral stands on certain topics.  "I don't kill women or children."  As if that makes you any less of a sick bastard.  But I think most people in the real world cushion their morally corrupt actions on those things which they believe that "make a stand."

 

Emotionally crippled.  All people who are morally corrupt, or who have done a morally corrupt thing, are emotionally crippled in some way.  Whether they self-medicate - or act out in violence - or simply shut down.  How does this villain "deal" with his villainy without saying:  "Wow, I'm an *******... maybe I should let those adventurers kill me."

 

----

 

That being said, I will NEVER betray "The Villain". 

 

The Emperor (Star Wars), Dracula, The Dark Lord Sauron, Voldemort, The Joker and so many others... who's villainy is never made less by some prissy back story about how they really just need hugs. 

 

I never want to know that The Dark Lord's mom didn't buy him a puppy for his 13th birthday... or that The Emperor's girlfriend totally ditched him for another Sith at the Sith High Prom. 

 

They are villains and that is all.  This villain is absolutely crucial to fiction... because that is how a spectator would see the villain.  Not being able to delve into all his sundry nuances.  There is a falsehood into knowing too much.

[Pierce Miller]

I love it personally when the PC can become an even bigger villain than the antagonist, the gradual ascent towards malevolence is such a great story. 

[AventuroLegendary]

Does the villain mean "antagonist"? Depends on how well the villain serves the story, like any good character. I don't think it matters what type.

 

Some of my favorite villains aren't really villainous at all. My other favorite villains can be complete sociopaths/monsters. 

[Andersfels-one]

For me a great villain ,as to have great charisma !!! i always enjoy the villain in the stories when they are quite striking and hot !!! when they have a deep background story and a wicked personality haha ! 

The kind of villain that put the hero to shame !!! Yet to be a Great villain you have to do some great actions ,so he must be a cold hearted bastard with lot of crimes on his hands !! This so ,he could be separated from the hero who you'll side with despite his lack of charisma since he's the good and rightous one ! 

Speaking of Logain ,well he's was just the standart villain in my eyes ... hated to stare at him too much ,and quite boring ....the archdemon had a better backstory behind him ! But my perfect villain as to be human !! and wicked and goodlooking and strong in many ways .

[Dean_the_Young]

That can depend on the idealogical struggle within the work, though. Do we really understand the Joker? Is there a whole lot of depth there? What about Kefka? We certainly don't understand Anton Chigurh. I totally agree with the dark charisma part, though. I mean, just look at the three names I just mentioned!

 

For me, a great villain needs to represent a legitimate threat (one that makes you question whether the hero can succeed) while occupying whatever the other side of the idea(s) being examined in the work are.

 

To add that, an ideological villain benefits from being a credible (if unacceptable) ideology in its own right, in addition to tactical competence. The Joker... is insane, and (between many different variations) doesn't really present a credible alternative vision for the world, good or bad. At his most coherent, some people make him an anarchist, but most of the time he isn't even that. He's just crazy and unpredictable.

 

Caesar's Legion in Fallout: New Vegas was an improvement, even if it wasn't good enough for me. The Legion's philosophy was abhorrent, flawed, and evil, but it made a certain sort of functional sense. Well, as much as indoctrination, hyper-militarism in a cult of personality, and extreme repression can 'make sense', but then it was never presented as being a long-term viable ideology. But it was a authoritarian conservatism that, at the very least, you could see other people holding and being brought up in. They weren't just capable of weilding guns, but had an ideological basis for fanaticism.

 

 

Mind you, I prefer antagonists in general to villains, and antagonistic ideologies should be more than coherent but should also be credible, plausible, and even (potentially) appealing. There might be reasons why you couldn't and wouldn't join their viewpoint, but it could be a viewpoint you find something respectable in. Codes of honor, principles you agree with, and other things that, were it not the piece that drives the antagonism, you might view as non-antagonistic in general.

[Mistic]

Mind you, I prefer antagonists in general to villains, and antagonistic ideologies should be more than coherent but should also be credible, plausible, and even (potentially) appealing. There might be reasons why you couldn't and wouldn't join their viewpoint, but it could be a viewpoint you find something respectable in. Codes of honor, principles you agree with, and other things that, were it not the piece that drives the antagonism, you might view as non-antagonistic in general.

 

True, but it's difficult to find characters that are more antagonists than villains, unless we're talking about stories with a villain protagonist. It's also difficult to portray ideological villains, since sometimes it looks like a parody than an actual ideology. I suppose that's why many take the "insane", "brainwashed and crazy", "drunk on the dark side", etc. route. Less questions asked.

 

(Mind you, I'm not against that route in general. Tropes are not bad and there are incredible villains out there born from those ideas. I'm just against the overuse of it to avoid more difficult ideas).

[AventuroLegendary]

Mind you, I prefer antagonists in general to villains, and antagonistic ideologies should be more than coherent but should also be credible, plausible, and even (potentially) appealing. There might be reasons why you couldn't and wouldn't join their viewpoint, but it could be a viewpoint you find something respectable in. Codes of honor, principles you agree with, and other things that, were it not the piece that drives the antagonism, you might view as non-antagonistic in general.

 

I completely agree. I think some of the best villains are the ones with different points of view that aren't necessarily evil and are certainly alluring. The trick is that you want a villain who is reasonable but not to the point where you want to join in. 

 

Take the game Alpha Centauri, for instance. The factions represent vastly different ideologies but all have their redeeming qualities. What's more is that they all seem to work.

 

However, I disagree on the Legion in New Vegas. The game makes several hints at how the Legion is doomed to fail and how the Legion's methods aren't only cruel but unnecessary for the long-term. I think the better comparison would be Mr. House's autocracy against the NCR's expansionism.

[CronoDragoon]

I never want to know that The Dark Lord's mom didn't buy him a puppy for his 13th birthday... or that The Emperor's girlfriend totally ditched him for another Sith at the Sith High Prom. 

 

They are villains and that is all.  This villain is absolutely crucial to fiction... because that is how a spectator would see the villain.  Not being able to delve into all his sundry nuances.  There is a falsehood into knowing too much.

 

Well, I think you're pointing to examples of bad writers trying to humanize antagonists. Situations where the writer expects us to believe that one event transformed their entire philosophy and molded them into someone capable of what they now do. Usually this leads to events where the protagonist can change the antagonist's mind about something. This is especially prominent in shounen mangas and such. Like, a loved one was killed and so the antagonist believes all life should end because pain and suffering need to be stopped. Those aren't credible views, but more than that it's barely understandable or relatable.

 

On the other hand you can show an antagonist's past as a comment on some central plot point; an alternate view of why something the protagonist believes to be good is actually bad for other people or demonstrated to be conditional.

 

Not that you need to show the antagonist's past for that. One of the reasons the Arishok works so well is that he does precisely this with the Qun.

[Dean_the_Young]

True, but it's difficult to find characters that are more antagonists than villains, unless we're talking about stories with a villain protagonist. It's also difficult to portray ideological villains, since sometimes it looks like a parody than an actual ideology. I suppose that's why many take the "insane", "brainwashed and crazy", "drunk on the dark side", etc. route. Less questions asked.

 

(Mind you, I'm not against that route in general. Tropes are not bad and there are incredible villains out there born from those ideas. I'm just against the overuse of it to avoid more difficult ideas).

 

Plenty of war stories fit into the antagonist-rather-than-villain spectrum, arbitrary as the distinction (and definition) can be. Not all conflicts need to be between good and evil people or factions: even relatively decent but flawed people can have personal animosities.

 

Personally, Bioware has (inadvertently) convinced me that 'brainwashed' is a weak and uninteresting rational for a villain. It takes away the credibility and ideology, since anything you disagree with becomes illegitimate brainwashing perspective rather than, well, ideological differences. There are so many cases in which you don't need to justify brainwashing for someone to do the things they do, and between the two I almost always find the free willed antagonist better than the brainwashed victim.

 

I think you could get some good conflicts between ambiguous but not evil factions... if you were willing to have a setting or context that is darker than what Bioware cares to indulge in. A resource scarcity scenario, for example, in which two (or more) sides are in direct competition over a resource for which there simply isn't enough for both sides, but both desperately need.

 

It would be depressing as hell, but can you imagine what a RPG taking place in a famine might look like? A 'breakdown of civilization' scenario in which, rather than the hero saving the day, the protagonist is just part of a setting that is going to get a lot worse before it can get better?

 

You wouldn't need evil people, though evil people would certainly come from desperation. Just the breakdown of a society of generally good and reasonable people forced into desperate circumstances would be fertile soil.

[Mistic]

Plenty of war stories fit into the antagonist-rather-than-villain spectrum, arbitrary as the distinction (and definition) can be. Not all conflicts need to be between good and evil people or factions: even relatively decent but flawed people can have personal animosities.

 

Well, yeah, but in videogames it becomes a dehumanizing tale of mooks you have to shoot before they shoot you or large armies full of anonimous cannon-fodder you have to lead so you, the player, win. Well, maybe not so much in Fire Emblem, but that's such an exception that even death is meaningful in that game.

 

Personally, Bioware has (inadvertently) convinced me that 'brainwashed' is a weak and uninteresting rational for a villain. It takes away the credibility and ideology, since anything you disagree with becomes illegitimate brainwashing perspective rather than, well, ideological differences. There are so many cases in which you don't need to justify brainwashing for someone to do the things they do, and between the two I almost always find the free willed antagonist better than the brainwashed victim.

 

Brainwahing can be a legitimate plot if done well, IMHO. I like stories about that trope that focus on the disturbing elements of it: a victim robbed of his or her free will, who should inspire compassion instead of "well, since they can't think by themselves, let's kill them". I mean, the impossibility to think by oneself is one of those instances where your ultimate privacy, your mind's, is shattered. Not to talk about the threat that a villain can pose when the fall of their enemies becomes their strength (capture > brainwash > have a new mook).

 

However, that touches other, more personal themes, not ideology. Because for ideology, you have to ask about the brainwashing villain's motivation, not the brainwashed victim's.

 

It would be depressing as hell, but can you imagine what a RPG taking place in a famine might look like? A 'breakdown of civilization' scenario in which, rather than the hero saving the day, the protagonist is just part of a setting that is going to get a lot worse before it can get better?

 

You wouldn't need evil people, though evil people would certainly come from desperation. Just the breakdown of a society of generally good and reasonable people forced into desperate circumstances would be fertile soil.

 

Well, some stories about zombie apocalypse try to do that, for better or worse.

[Grand Admiral Cheesecake]

But not at selling people into slavery to Tevinter.

 

Elves, selling people into slavery would have been evil.

[atheelogos]

The best villains.... aren't villains.

this.

 

I love villains who are doing the right thing from their point of view and their goals and objectives just so happen to conflict with yours. This is what made Loghain so interesting.

 

“It’s tempting to see your enemies as evil, but there’s good and evil on both sides of every war ever fought.” — Jorah Mormont

[Pierce Miller]

atheelogos, on 09 Aug 2014 - 06:20 AM, said:

this.

 

I love villains who are doing the right thing from their point of view and their goals and objectives just so happen to conflict with yours. This is what made Loghain so interesting.

 

“It’s tempting to see your enemies as evil, but there’s good and evil on both sides of every war ever fought.” — Jorah Mormont

it's why I always prefer the sapient enemy over the "ultimate evil monster" trope

[Dean_the_Young]

Well, yeah, but in videogames it becomes a dehumanizing tale of mooks you have to shoot before they shoot you or large armies full of anonimous cannon-fodder you have to lead so you, the player, win. Well, maybe not so much in Fire Emblem, but that's such an exception that even death is meaningful in that game.

 

 

Fire Emblem, or the one's I've played, aren't the best examples- they tend to have the good/well-intentioned faction against the utter scumbag warmongering faction.

 

It's also important to realize that 'two bad factions' doesn't capture what I'm speaking of either. Some of the Gundam series, like the Seed/Destiny series, basically made  both sides out as genocidal/totalitarian racist assholes for 'balance.'

 

 

 

Brainwahing can be a legitimate plot if done well, IMHO. I like stories about that trope that focus on the disturbing elements of it: a victim robbed of his or her free will, who should inspire compassion instead of "well, since they can't think by themselves, let's kill them". I mean, the impossibility to think by oneself is one of those instances where your ultimate privacy, your mind's, is shattered. Not to talk about the threat that a villain can pose when the fall of their enemies becomes their strength (capture > brainwash > have a new mook).

 

However, that touches other, more personal themes, not ideology. Because for ideology, you have to ask about the brainwashing villain's motivation, not the brainwashed victim's.

 

 

The key phrase in that argument is 'if done well.' Which I completely agree with... but then, that would apply to any topic. Bioware, who I broadly respect as capable writers, has just convinced me that the bar for brainwashed villainous factions is really, really high. Among the other flaws of their strategy and depiction, the reliance on indoctrination for everyone who wasn't named General Petrovsky in Cerberus during ME3 has always struck me as an error. A well-developed ideology, which they had in ME2, could have justified quite a bit of Cerberus's actions as it was.

 

 

Well, some stories about zombie apocalypse try to do that, for better or worse.

 

I agree- in fact, I think that's one of the subtle strengths of the zombie genre. It uses a rather silly conceit as a context to explore other topics and stories. The recent critically acclaimed zombie stories were often the character-focused stories in which the zombie apocalypse was the set dressing, rather than the focus.

 

I believe you get better mileage out of good-vs-good scenarios when there's a zero-sum crisis that can't simply be resolved... so long as the viewer can appreciate and understand it. Zombies do that for cultural reasons- we get that zombies don't discriminate and (for silly reasons) are viable, real threats. Famine and foot shortages are even easier to understand- no one wants to be hungry.

[Dean_the_Young]

I'm getting a Children of Men vibe from Dean's last post. 

 

Kinda? I've never seen it, but what I read on wiki is... well, it's not the plot I'd use. Global infertility isn't particularly persuasive to me.

 

I'd frame it more along the lines of a Fallout game that starts on the day of the Great War. You start with a quiet, peaceful day in a small city. You go to the store with money to buy supplies. And then the nuclear exchange happens: your town is small enough that it 'only' gets a single nuke, which you survive and which won't irradiate you to death immediately, but it marks the deathnell of the region regardless as the greater nuclear exchange leads to things getting worse and worse, rather than better.

 

In the immediate term, people band together under the vestiges of the surviving authority. Communities help eachother, selflessness continues even as emergency measures are put in place by the surviving government/soldiers. But soon supply limitations become apparent, even before the first refugees start trickling in. First it's one or two, who may be kindly accepted- but then it becomes more, and unsustainable. More refugees, more desperate people, more people who need food and shelter and won't take 'no' for an answer. 'Outsider' becomes so synonymous with 'threat' and 'thief' that when women and children are seen with guns, they are considered 'raiders' by default.

 

As the emergency grows, the emergency measures become harsher and more extreme in the name of preserving a rapidly crumbling semblence of order. 'Subversives' become people who give a bit of food to a starving child. 'Hoarding' is not sharing your own food with 'the community'- even though the acting mayor and government is the first to get a share while the community is expected to starve to death. Dissent and grievances rise: revolt occurs, and the last oppressive state leads to anarchy as everyone fights for the dwindling necessities for survival.

 

The player's story is one of survival, in many different contexts as the situation declines. Are you the last voice of morality as the world falls? Are you quick to adopt the us-vs-them mentality? Who do you agree with, and who do you oppose? When things get worse... are you opposed, or is your own stance complicit or accelerating the breakdown? Is there even a 'right' answer at all?

 

Ultimately the player survives, by different ways that might be developed during the plot. The surviving military group may know of a retreat, an enclave if you will, that the player can reach by supporting the military's efforts to abandon the community and leaving it to fall. The player could refuse to leave and instead stay and fight- perhaps supporting a totalitarian regime that pledges itself to provide a basic stability and organized community in the anarhistic wasteland. Or the player sides with outsiders and the moral (if tragic) logic of accepting that people have a right to try and survive by taking what they need, even if it comes at a cost to others. Maybe the player goes with others who seek to leave the conflict and community behind them, a journey of faith that, somewhere out there, there's some place better that could support a new community.

 

The world dies, and the player doesn't have the power to save it. But that doesn't mean the player can't have quite a bit of choice in how they live.

[Wulfram]

I think the main difficulty for making villains in Bioware games is the undefined protagonist.  Without knowledge of who the protagonist is, the antagonist has to be "universal".  Which almost has to mean either mindless, insane, evil in a distinctly grandiose way or forced into opposition to the player personally by some contrivance.

[Helios969]

Kinda? I've never seen it, but what I read on wiki is... well, it's not the plot I'd use. Global infertility isn't particularly persuasive to me.
 
I'd frame it more along the lines of a Fallout game that starts on the day of the Great War. You start with a quiet, peaceful day in a small city. You go to the store with money to buy supplies. And then the nuclear exchange happens: your town is small enough that it 'only' gets a single nuke, which you survive and which won't irradiate you to death immediately, but it marks the deathnell of the region regardless as the greater nuclear exchange leads to things getting worse and worse, rather than better.
 
In the immediate term, people band together under the vestiges of the surviving authority. Communities help eachother, selflessness continues even as emergency measures are put in place by the surviving government/soldiers. But soon supply limitations become apparent, even before the first refugees start trickling in. First it's one or two, who may be kindly accepted- but then it becomes more, and unsustainable. More refugees, more desperate people, more people who need food and shelter and won't take 'no' for an answer. 'Outsider' becomes so synonymous with 'threat' and 'thief' that when women and children are seen with guns, they are considered 'raiders' by default.
 
As the emergency grows, the emergency measures become harsher and more extreme in the name of preserving a rapidly crumbling semblence of order. 'Subversives' become people who give a bit of food to a starving child. 'Hoarding' is not sharing your own food with 'the community'- even though the acting mayor and government is the first to get a share while the community is expected to starve to death. Dissent and grievances rise: revolt occurs, and the last oppressive state leads to anarchy as everyone fights for the dwindling necessities for survival.
 
The player's story is one of survival, in many different contexts as the situation declines. Are you the last voice of morality as the world falls? Are you quick to adopt the us-vs-them mentality? Who do you agree with, and who do you oppose? When things get worse... are you opposed, or is your own stance complicit or accelerating the breakdown? Is there even a 'right' answer at all?
 
Ultimately the player survives, by different ways that might be developed during the plot. The surviving military group may know of a retreat, an enclave if you will, that the player can reach by supporting the military's efforts to abandon the community and leaving it to fall. The player could refuse to leave and instead stay and fight- perhaps supporting a totalitarian regime that pledges itself to provide a basic stability and organized community in the anarhistic wasteland. Or the player sides with outsiders and the moral (if tragic) logic of accepting that people have a right to try and survive by taking what they need, even if it comes at a cost to others. Maybe the player goes with others who seek to leave the conflict and community behind them, a journey of faith that, somewhere out there, there's some place better that could support a new community.
 
The world dies, and the player doesn't have the power to save it. But that doesn't mean the player can't have quite a bit of choice in how they live.

Fantastic Dean, simply fantastic. Sounds like one of those hypothetical mental exercises from sociology or psychology class. That could make a tremendous story...the internal struggle of the person trying to maintain their humanity and the inevitable change as that character more and more has to compromise their values from before the holocaust. At what point dones one abandon all civility and morality and revert to pure survival instincts?

[atheelogos]

it's why I always prefer the sapient enemy over the "ultimate evil monster" trope

Indeed. Game of thrones has made me love realistic "bad guys" even more.

 

I also agree with George R.R Martin when he speaks on bloodless wars. Fighting Orcs in Lord of the rings, or even Darkspawn in DA just isn't the same as fighting real people. No one feels bad about killing monsters. Killing people is much harder and carries a certain kind of weight. 

 

My point is killing Loghain is something I had to think about. Killing the Arch Demon was a simple choice to make. No real complexity to killing things that evil by their very nature.