84 réponses à ce sujet

[RobRam10]

Sun Li still best villain.

[Fishy]

I would pick NWN if you had put Mephistopheles.

 

I've played Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn for two hours. So I also selected it in the games I've played!

 

Mephistopheles . So true.

[A Crusty Knight Of Colour]

Casey Hudson was a pretty good antagonist.

 

Gaider has staying power, but no one could pull heat like CHud.

[Heimdall]

Mephistopheles . So true.

Sorry, honestly I was sort of guessing based on Wikipedia entries for games I haven't played

[Laamaa]

Sun Li. I played Jade EMpire when I was about 12 and I still remember my mindblow when I found out he was evil. So yeah, always Li the glorious strategist for me. I also really liked TIM, Saren and Loghain though. Nwn is my fav game but meh, Maugrim wasn't that impressive (If any - Aribeth! I did love her)

[Kary Tyrrell]

Sun Li with no doubt. He was more than just a Villain, he was your mentor and father figure to the bitter end. It was even kinda sad defeating him...

[General TSAR]

Man, Sun Li must be a total badass if he beat Saren.

 

Shame I never got to play Jade Empire. 

[Kaiser Arian XVII]

Mr. House voting was a troll act:

Corypheus

 

You've got to be kidding me!

[Heimdall]

Man, Sun Li must be a total badass if he beat Saren.

Shame I never got to play Jade Empire.

Its never too late!

[Bellethiel]

Irenicus. 

 

Why? Spoilers. (Duh)

 

Spoiler

He just puts you through so much. I am not sure if any other villain makes your grudge against him/her as personal as Irenicus does. All the torture and dungeon thing, kidnaping your childhood friend and then whole soul stealing buisness. And best thing is he actually has a reason for doing all that.

 

And I loved that whole being an elf plot twist there.

 

I do not know how well was he voiced in english version, but I absolutely love him in polish one. I still can quote some of his lines from memory and that says a lot. That's how memorable he is.

 

Damn... Now I feel like playing it yet again.

 

Edit: So i checked how he does sound like in english and it's totally different. 

 

If anyone is curious how he does sound like in polish:

Spoiler

http://youtu.be/lmrnC-48SH0?t=2m17s

[omphaloskepsis]

I've played all of the listed games and recently replayed BG 1 & 2.  The funny thing is that if I hadn't just replayed them, I would have voted Irenicus.  I think the BG series still holds up, especially for tactical combat, but the stories weren't as good as I remembered, and neither was Irenicus, though his voice actor was great.

 

If I had the option, I'd probably vote Revan from KOTOR 1, whom I think was a more interesting character than Malak, but I suppose that wouldn't be fair.

 

I loved Jade Empire, but didn't even remember Sun Li as the antaganist, so that's out.

 

Corypheus was a great concept and had a great voice actor, and he had the potential to be the GVOAT, but he was just too underdeveloped to inspire any strong emotion.  No awe, no fear, no dread, he played out more like a punching bag throughout the game that you setup for the final KO at the end.  But the idea of him being one of the legendary Tevinter magisters who tried to enter the Golden City was perfect.  Bioware just didn't execute on a great idea.

 

So I ended up voting the Illusive Man.  Great acting, strong character, and he evoked strong responses from me in both ME2 and 3.  They're not my favorite Bio games, and he's not even the main baddie, but he was mysterious, memorable, had a great voice actor, and was well-written.

[Cyonan]

Every time these thread show up, I get this feeling like I need to go play Jade Empire.

[Heimdall]

Every time these thread show up, I get this feeling like I need to go play Jade Empire.

Gif time!

[KingTony]

Saren, not even a question.

Played DAO, DA2, DAI, ME1, ME2, ME3, KOTOR and Jade Empire.

[Pi2r Epsilon]

Having played all of the games in question with the exception of Mass Effect 3, I'll have to go with Jon Irenicus, because despite all the years since I played Baldur's Gate II, he is still the villain I remember the best.

 

I am hard pressed to say exactly why. He was very well voice acted, but several Bioware villains have been. His plan was vast in scope, but that's hardly something unusual. He was well written, but again, nothing unusual there, and the writing wasn't the best Bioware has shown.

 

I think that what it comes down to in the end is a combination of many factors. (Warning: Spoilers abound)

• He made it personal.
  Spoiler

  This wasn't about stopping the biggest baddest eeeevil ever or saving the world from destruction, it was about getting revenge on him for torture and terrible experiments performed on yourself and your childhood friend and the death of a party member (whom you might already have an emotional attachment to as a player if you'd used them in the party in Baldur's Gate I), then later on rescuing your childhood friend when she was imprisoned, and then later again on regaining possession of your own soul once Irenicus stripped you of it, and finally, once you managed to kill him, being dragged down to hell with him to duke it out for your soul, the loser to suffer the mercies of hell, the winner to return to life.
• He was a clear and present danger.
  Spoiler

  You had NO idea what his ultimate goal was for most of the game, but you knew that he'd imprisoned yourself and the other successful adventurers from Baldur's Gate I to experiment on, and this was followed up after the escape from his prison within the first hour of gameplay or so by a scene were he slew a dozen powerful opponents right in front of you. The same also happened later, and these were all shown as battles using the normal combat engine rather than some cut scene video, including spell details in the log. You KNEW that he had access to really, really, powerful magic to dwarf your own right from the start.
• He wasn't a villainous mastermind but had a simple plan.
  Spoiler

  It is hard to write villainous masterminds that are behind everything really bad happening in a way that doesn't make it seem like a joke in gameplay; It is much easier to do so in literature. Jon Irenicus had no such problems. He had one plan, and it was a simple one: 1) Acquire a divine soul to replace the immortality that he lost when he sought to join the elven pantheon by force (he was never an underachiever), 2) once he'd gotten that divine soul, attempt to join the elven pantheon by usurping the power of a specific elven god using a specific method that that god was vulnerable to and he had researched, and 3) get vengeance on everybody who ever wronged him.
• His simple plan was gradually revealed and worked well until the end despite minor setbacks.
  Spoiler

  Even if the player was unaware of it for most of the game, the writers knew the plan all along and were able to to make the reveal work through Irenicus' actions and his occasion scenery chewing dialogue. By having a simple plan, it was damn hard for the player to foil him and the player wasn't fed a constant stream of "well done, you easily foiled part of his plan, but we triple-reassure you that he's really dangerous, just wait and see", as is common with villainous masterminds, and instead received "you tried hard, but you didn't manage to foil his plans; on the positive side, you are still alive despite him upping the stakes by doing something even worse to you personally than he did last time, and you now know more about him, and you did achieve something, so treasure small victories where you can and hopefully next time you'll do better". Corypheus in DA:I is a good example of how villainous masterminds can fail, presented as an incredibly good schemer, whose plans are undone one by one by the player, while he is unable to do anything but curse and swear. Corypheus is thus reactive more than active in actual gameplay: "Yeah, you beat him at Haven, you undid his work with the warden, the templars, the Orlais' court, and bla bla bla, but trust us, he's ahead of you all the time and very, very, dangerous. Make haste!"
• Few appearances but memorable ones.
  Spoiler

  In combination with the above, not only could you go dozens of hours doing quests without having anybody reference Irenicus, when he did appear or was referenced, it was memorable or enlightening and you should pay attention that what was shown/told. If the "you've failed to stop him... again.. and your situation sucks even more" described above was frequent, it would have become boring quickly, but with only occurring a few times during the game due to you only managing to catch up with him/his plan a few times in the game, it worked well.
• Saving others was optional.
  Spoiler

  You had a lot of opportunities to do good and a lot of opportunities to do evil and, mostly, people didn't care if they weren't directly affected, and they certainly didn't care about your mission to stop Jon Irenicus. Few people knew of him in the first place, so you weren't continually being told that he was big, bad, and dangerous, because, to most people, he wasn't. You did end up saving an elven city and prevented one of the elven gods from being usurped by Jon Irencus, but that was a side effect rather than the goal: reclaiming your own soul.
• Irenicus' use of the protagonist's birthright might be very familiar.
  Spoiler

  There you were, an adventurer who was one of the spawn of the god of murder. Depending on the player's motivation, it was quite possible that your short-term goal in life was gaining immortality by claiming the portfolio of your dead parent by killing your competitors and seizing their divine power, or, perhaps, doing the same to enter the pantheon in some other way than following your father's footsteps. You had already killed one of your Bhaalspawn half-brothers, Sarevok, over that very issue, revenge for the death of your foster father, goodness of your heart and rule of law, or self defense (make your pick). So please don't feel all that morally justified about stopping Irenicus from seizing immortality and the divine spark to gain a place in the elven Pantheon at the cost of others unless you truly had selfless motives for your other actions.

[Tamyn]

From Neverwinter Nights: Hordes of the Underdark: Mephistopheles, Archduke of Cania, the eighth level of Hell. He was fun, had a great voice, and in a cut ending I could make him into a chambermaid at my inn! I could also defeat him with words. I wish more villains were like that.

 

I defeated Darth Jadus with words in SWTOR and I defeated the Master with words in Fallout. That is immensely satisfying, moreso than beating them into a bloody pulp. Being intelligent, informed, and mentally prepared is a relished option rarely seen in rpgs anymore. I loved studying dwarven history and culture in Arcanum and convincing an old dwarf king in self-imposed exile to return to his people because I used his own philosophy to prove his actions wrong.

 

I think DA:I tried to get close to that with the knowledge perks but most of the time I didn't know what my character was talking about, I just used the knowledge option as the win button in conversations.

[KingTony]

Ooh, Saren's edging out Sun Li!

[Ashagar]

Jon Irenicus hands down followed by Sun Li. Irenicus made it personal right at the beginning then managed to top the horrible things he did to you over the course of the game, a villain so bad they had to have a cut scene after the very final battle just to show yes he really was dead not coming back. Sun Li meanwhile made you dance like a puppet and had the best final line of any villain.

[Heimdall]

Ooh, Saren's edging out Sun Li!

Yeah, but there's a reason why I included the "games played" question.

Right now, about 50% of the voters who played Jade Empire chose Sun Li

Only thereabouts 20% of the voters who played Mass Effect chose Saren

[Pi2r Epsilon]

Now that you are spilling some statistics - how many people are there who, like me, have played all the games save one, or all the games - and is there any pattern to their voting?

 

I mean, I can see that the maximum number of people who've played all the games are 51, because that's the number of people who have played the game that has been played the least as of the time of writing (BGII:ToB), and that the minimum number of players who have voted is 121 (Mass Effect), but there's no way (for me) to know how many of those who vote have played a substantial number of other games than the one they voted for or how spread the votes are by subgroups.

 

Hopefully you'll do a write up on that someday when more votes are in.

 

 

For myself, I tend to group Bioware's CRPG development in three chronological periods:

1. Baldur's Gate - Neverwinter Nights - Knights of the Old Republic [doing good work with licensed IPs]
2. Jade Empire - Mass Effect - Dragon Age [experimenting with own IPs]
3. ME and DA sequelitis [cashing in on own IPs and a flirt with the MMO market at the time when that was the thing to do; SWTOR is separate studio]

It is pretty interesting to me that the two current front runners both come from the middle period of Bioware game development (Jade Empire launch 2006, Mass Effect launch 2007), but one really needs to know more about the voting patterns to reach any conclusions beyond both antagonists being memorable.

[Kaiser Arian XVII]

^ Hey, don't whine. Heimdall's conclusion is right.

[Heimdall]

Well, I can see the names of who voted, I don't know if you can.

So by doing a one by one comparison of all the lists I could probably get that data... Well, maybe another day when there are more votes in and I have a lot of time on my hands.

[Pi2r Epsilon]

^ Hey, don't whine. Heimdall's conclusion is right.

What whine?

 

I didn't challenge any of Heimdall's conclusions. In fact, it would have been impossible to do so, because he didn't draw any conclusions, leaving that to the reader. What he did was something infinitely preferable - he presented interesting numbers.

 

And I like numbers.

 

Which is why I asked for more of them that would satisfy some of the questions I have. In my experience, you can never go wrong with asking anybody who is enough of a numbers person to make some statistical poll in the first place for more numbers. He might not have time/inclination to share, but few people are offended when you show an interest in their work.

 

-------

 

EDIT: Heimdall, I missed your reply at first.

 

Your reply gave me the clue that I needed with respects to see who voted - I had overlooked that the "view" text to the right of each option in the overview would present a list of voters.

 

Having looked, I can well understand why you might be reluctant to do so. With that format of having to check each option individually and then crossreference, it would be a considerable amount of work to tally up the different categories.

 

And while I am interested in the answer to my questions, I don't think I am that interested. So I'd be a right bastard if I urged you to spend time on something that I am too lazy to do. So I won't. Carry on the good work.