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[Draining Dragon]

Well, it might be good if they weren't laughably generic doomsday villains *cough* coryfishstick *cough*.

[xLawGamerx]

There are two types of villains that can be effective, but they both need to be handled correctly or they fall flat:

 

Type 1 is the Loghain model. A villain who is complex, maybe conflicted, and has understandable reasons for acting the way he or she is acting, even if those actions are currently screwing the world over. The primary emotion the player should be feeling when dealing with this type of villain is frustration.

 

This is why Loghain was so effective in DA:O. When you learn a little bit about his character, he has a lot of positive traits; he's a commoner who rose on his own merit. He nearly singlehandedly saved his country during the Orlesian occupation. He wants/tries to be a good father. In other words, you kind of want to like him, which is exactly why it's so frustrating to deal with him. You know this a guy who could be a powerful ally. He's a good leader so **** gets done when he's in charge. If he put down his banner and said "Alright, everyone. Follow me. We're stopping this Blight right now!" you just know the entire country would follow behind him.

 

But rather than focusing his energy and talent on the Blight, he spends it on his paranoia about the Orleasians. Ultimately, all of this makes him kind of tragic - he has a genuine desire to save his country, but his personality keeps getting in the way.

 

Type 2 is the Corypheous model. The cackling, completely evil Saturday morning cartoon villain. They don't necessarily need to have complex goals, but they do need to be a complete heel. The primary emotion the player should be feeling when dealing with this type of villain is hatred. 

 

The trick with this type of villain is that they need to be omnipresent in the story. They should always be turning up, personally, to throw a wrench in the works by attacking you, taunting you, or maybe even killing a party member or two. The player should feel a real personal enmity with this type of villain. If the player doesn't have an irresistible urge to punch the villain in the face every time they show, the writing has failed.

 

Unfortunately, BioWare missed the boat on this one in DA:I. The primary problem is that Corypheous was absent for so much of the story. He shows up during "In Your Hearts Shall Burn" and then basically disappears for the next 50 hours or so. As a consequence, he never really does anything to earn the ire of the player. Instead, he feels entirely like a plot construct - the thing I need to stop so that I can see the ending cutscene.

 

If BioWare were looking for a good example of this kind of villain, I'd suggest Vaas from Far Cry 3. Unfortunately, he was criminally wasted by UbiSoft, but while he was in the game, he was absolutely threatening and hateable. 

 

Ultimately, either type of villain can work. Personally, I prefer the Loghain model because I think they tend to make better characters. Loghain is a character I will remember for years, while I'm pretty sure I'll forget about Corypheous pretty quickly.

[Aren]

Arl Rendon Howe 2.0 i doubt that anyone has felt sorry to have killed him, likeable Villain like Loghain or even Solas, no thanks i'm not strong enough to decide to kill them without feel bad.

[Hair Serious Business]

One that makes it personal something like Spehiroth from FF7 who killed Arieth/Aries.

Now that is the type of villain that DA4 needs,one that makes your hate personal for him not 'neutral'.

[Augustei]

Reading comments like "Loghain slaughtered your mentor and half the army" and "Loghain sacrified the army to kill King Cailan for political reasons" make it pretty clear alot of people in this thread don't understand Loghain.
Heck i'm not saying everyone should glorify or even accept his actions, but these are just gross oversimplifications or outright lies.

[Positronics]

Reading comments like "Loghain slaughtered your mentor and half the army" and "Loghain sacrified the army to kill King Cailan for political reasons" make it pretty clear alot of people in this thread don't understand Loghain.
Heck i'm not saying everyone should glorify or even accept his actions, but these are just gross oversimplifications or outright lies.

Loghain was a bag of crap, I don't know how you can cut it any other way. Sure Cailan had secretly agreed to marry Empress Celene, but that's how peace is made in feudal society, and he would have still attained regency over Ferelden, Ferelden would have remained Ferelden, and their heir would have held both thrones. Loghain had won the war, yes, but it was a Pyrrhic victory, one that left Ferelden in much more pain than Orlais.

 

Disagreeing with your King's decision doesn't give you the right to betray him and your entire country to Darkspawn. "Gee, I don't want Orlais to have sway in Ferelden, so I'll let Darkspawn have it!"

 

He wasn't an interesting, conflicted subject to me. He was just a thorny douche with a stick up his butt about Orlais.

[Icy Magebane]

I prefer simple villains to sympathetic ones, but regardless of their motives, they need to be well-written.  The advantage of simple villains like the Archdemon is that you can use them as the ultimate goal while still populating the tale with lesser villains who play a larger role.  DAI did this to an extent with people like Alexius and Calpernia, but having direct contact with Corypheus several times during the course of the story harmed his credibility, making him feel less threatening and more incompetent with every loss he suffered.  So in short... a competent one who seems like they might actually win if we aren't careful.  Basically, the opposite of Corypheus.

[Merlik]

I would like the inquisitor to be the villain .... it's doable.

[Steppenwolf]

Loghain was a bag of crap, I don't know how you can cut it any other way. Sure Cailan had secretly agreed to marry Empress Celene, but that's how peace is made in feudal society, and he would have still attained regency over Ferelden, Ferelden would have remained Ferelden, and their heir would have held both thrones. Loghain had won the war, yes, but it was a Pyrrhic victory, one that left Ferelden in much more pain than Orlais.
Disagreeing with your King's decision doesn't give you the right to betray him and your entire country to Darkspawn. "Gee, I don't want Orlais to have sway in Ferelden, so I'll let Darkspawn have it!"
He wasn't an interesting, conflicted subject to me. He was just a thorny douche with a stick up his butt about Orlais.

He had no confidence in Cailan ruling Ferelden, let alone brokering deals that would lead to his rule over 2 nations. Loghain was right to fear Orlais. Look at what the Inquisitor goes through because of "The Game" in Orlais. And he never believed it was a Blight so he thought he was sacrificing his king to ensure the prosperity of the nation he fought with such determination to save. And if it hadn't been a Blight he probably would have been right. Cailan was a moron who would have been wrapped around Celene's little finger in no time.

[Ashagar]

I'd have to refuse to play the next dragon age if the inquisitor was the next villain. Any villain we get should be related to the new area which will be northern Thadas or less likely but interesting perhaps the far west where people keeps disappearing to.

[Merlik]

I'd have to refuse to play the next dragon age if the inquisitor was the next villain. Any villain we get should be related to the new area which will be northern Thadas or less likely but interesting perhaps the far west where people keeps disappearing to.

You say that, but you know you would end up playing it.

[Hiemoth]

Reading comments like "Loghain slaughtered your mentor and half the army" and "Loghain sacrified the army to kill King Cailan for political reasons" make it pretty clear alot of people in this thread don't understand Loghain.
Heck i'm not saying everyone should glorify or even accept his actions, but these are just gross oversimplifications or outright lies.

 

For me a huge difficulty with Loghain and his supposed role as a masterful antagonist is that he is simply not consistent in his actions. Almost always when I see him raised to the being the conflicted anti-hero, the arguments skip over a number of really drastic things he did that conflicted on his supposed ultimate loyalty to Ferelden. I mean, he sold citizens of the capital city as slaves to Tevinter. He allowed Howe pre-emptively butcher one of the leading families of the land. He send a poisoner to take care of another, because you know, why make things easy for this imagined Orlais invasion by almost forcing a civil war on Ferelden. And even then, he didn't know about the king's plan with the Empress until he found the correspondence in the game. His whole driving fear was allowing Orleasin troops in to Ferelden to fight the Blight, which causes him to actively sabotage the actual battle where the Blight is supposed to be stopped without any Orleasian troops present.

 

That lack of consistency in the presentation is what always makes it difficult for me to consider Loghain a great villain.

[Seraphim24]

That lack of consistency in the presentation is what always makes it difficult for me to consider Loghain a great villain.

 

That is precisely why I find him interesting. I think he is completely consistent, but not necessarily to easily identifiable themes or as such, leading people to find him to be inconsistent. Heck, people can be consistently inconsistent. Corpyheus is very easily identifiable, and as such, I find him boring.

 

Most people do not live and die like, I'm a soldier, I did with I did for my country, and then I expired. Most people do things at times randomly and chaotically.

 

 

Reading comments like "Loghain slaughtered your mentor and half the army" and "Loghain sacrified the army to kill King Cailan for political reasons" make it pretty clear alot of people in this thread don't understand Loghain.
Heck i'm not saying everyone should glorify or even accept his actions, but these are just gross oversimplifications or outright lies.

 

He did not directly kill Duncan, etc, no but by abandoning the field and ignoring a pre-arranged attack plan he was very likely a proximate cause of his death.

[Hiemoth]

That is precisely why I find him interesting. I think he is completely consistent, but not necessarily to easily identifiable themes or as such, leading people to find him to be inconsistent. Heck, people can be consistently inconsistent. Corpyheus is very easily identifiable, and as such, I find him boring.

 

Most people do not live and die like, I'm a soldier, I did with I did for my country, and then I expired. Most people do things at times randomly and chaotically.

 

 

I am not completely certain I understand, but then again I really don't need. How different characters work for different people is such a subjective thing and I always find it great that people enjoy the experience with the game. For me with Loghain, while I agree that at times people do random and chaotic things, I never felt that that was supposed to be driving force for Loghain's actions, thus I could not get the same experience that you did. In addition, I often feel when Loghain and his awesomeness comes up, a lot of contradictory actions are neglected or ignored, making it even more difficult for me to grasp why he is supposed to be such a classic villain.

 

Although I will also freely admit liking villains many may not. For example, for me Meredith has become one of the great villains of DA, on par with the Arishok. I really didn't care much for her during my first playthrough, but  when I played DA2 again and suddenly realized how much they built her even before even introducing her in the game I saw that much more depth in her. And at that moment I suddenly felt like I understood the character and what drove her, and most importantly all what made her the hero of her story. I honestly feel that if there weren't the general attitudes about DA2 and Act 3 wasn't so rushed, Meredith would without a doubt rank as one of the great Bioware antagonists right there with Irenicus, Sun Li, Arishok and, sigh, Loghain.

[Seraphim24]

I am not completely certain I understand, but then again I really don't need. How different characters work for different people is such a subjective thing and I always find it great that people enjoy the experience with the game. For me with Loghain, while I agree that at times people do random and chaotic things, I never felt that that was supposed to be driving force for Loghain's actions, thus I could not get the same experience that you did. In addition, I often feel when Loghain and his awesomeness comes up, a lot of contradictory actions are neglected or ignored, making it even more difficult for me to grasp why he is supposed to be such a classic villain.

 

Although I will also freely admit liking villains many may not. For example, for me Meredith has become one of the great villains of DA, on par with the Arishok. I really didn't care much for her during my first playthrough, but  when I played DA2 again and suddenly realized how much they built her even before even introducing her in the game I saw that much more depth in her. And at that moment I suddenly felt like I understood the character and what drove her, and most importantly all what made her the hero of her story. I honestly feel that if there weren't the general attitudes about DA2 and Act 3 wasn't so rushed, Meredith would without a doubt rank as one of the great Bioware antagonists right there with Irenicus, Sun Li, Arishok and, sigh, Loghain.

That's interesting you put Irenicus in there, I would have him more in the mixed camp based on his relationship with Ellesime and all that. Maybe if you would explain what you like or dislike about him it could provide some way of understanding this all better. I'm just copying this from the wiki

 

"At first, Irenicus appears to be a simple, if surreal, villain with a keen interest in torturing the protagonist with unusual magic at the very beginning of Shadows of Amn. However, minutes into the game, he reveals that his apparent motive for said torture is to unlock his victim's latent 'power', thereby benefiting from them in the long run. His obsession with a woman he'd previously maintained a relationship with reveals a much more human (or elven) side to him. It becomes apparent later in the game that Irenicus's embarking on his dark path came about partly from love. His possessive nature eventually became too much for his partner to bear, and unable to let go, Irenicus turned to pursuit of power and revenge, which in turn led to him becoming utterly twisted. However, not only love was responsible for his downfall."

 

If Irenicus had remained that simple guy fascinated with torture I would of lost interest quickly.

 

To be honest I find it a little bizzare people are really fascinated by the one-note types like Arishok since this is presumably a company about gray area and complication... perhaps I'm just chasing after something that was lost a long time ago though and just haven't realized it...

[Hiemoth]

That's interesting you put Irenicus in there, I would have him more in the mixed camp based on his relationship with Ellesime and all that. Maybe if you would explain what you like or dislike about him it could provide some way of understanding this all better. I'm just copying this from the wiki

 

"At first, Irenicus appears to be a simple, if surreal, villain with a keen interest in torturing the protagonist with unusual magic at the very beginning of Shadows of Amn. However, minutes into the game, he reveals that his apparent motive for said torture is to unlock his victim's latent 'power', thereby benefiting from them in the long run. His obsession with a woman he'd previously maintained a relationship with reveals a much more human (or elven) side to him. It becomes apparent later in the game that Irenicus's embarking on his dark path came about partly from love. His possessive nature eventually became too much for his partner to bear, and unable to let go, Irenicus turned to pursuit of power and revenge, which in turn led to him becoming utterly twisted. However, not only love was responsible for his downfall."

 

If Irenicus had remained that simple guy fascinated with torture I would of lost interest quickly.

 

To be honest I find it a little bizzare people are really fascinated by the one-note types like Arishok since this is presumably a company about gray area and complication... perhaps I'm just chasing after something that was lost a long time ago though and just haven't realized it...

 

Oh no, I wasn't actually indicating my personal tastes in that list of four. Those are just the characters usually listed as Bioware's greatest antagonists, in my personal list Loghain not there due to his inconsistency. And I just realized I forgot Saren and the Illusive Man from the list, while Saren never truly worked for me on that level due to his lack of presence from ME1.

 

I did like Irenicus, though, because I felt he was consistent in his actions, constantly had a threatening presence in the games and had a well-written background that was supported by references during the game itself. Although, to be honest, there were still a lot of clumsy elements in him, for instance the vampire sister felt really tacked on, but it was Bioware's really first attempt at writing something like that, thus I felt it was understandable.

 

As for Arishok, you don't really understand it, similarly I don't need to understand why you like Loghain. For me, he just works, his presence in the game is insane considering how few scenes he actually has and he is consistent in who he is. I would argue that he was not really one-note, because the character was so committed to being something that there were a lot of nuances in what that something was.

[Shaftell]

How about a villain with some personality and humor? Villains are becoming so cliche. Big bad evil dude who wants the world. I'm getting tired of it.

[Ashagar]

These days many of the villains far seem less take over the world and more I will destroy the world or kill all life, Bawahaha because of reasons or no reason at all. It was refreshing to see a villain with a god complex in comparison.

[Augustei]

Loghain was a bag of crap, I don't know how you can cut it any other way. Sure Cailan had secretly agreed to marry Empress Celene, but that's how peace is made in feudal society, and he would have still attained regency over Ferelden, Ferelden would have remained Ferelden, and their heir would have held both thrones. Loghain had won the war, yes, but it was a Pyrrhic victory, one that left Ferelden in much more pain than Orlais.

 

Disagreeing with your King's decision doesn't give you the right to betray him and your entire country to Darkspawn. "Gee, I don't want Orlais to have sway in Ferelden, so I'll let Darkspawn have it!"

 

He wasn't an interesting, conflicted subject to me. He was just a thorny douche with a stick up his butt about Orlais.

Loghain didn't quit the field at Ostagar to kill Cailan, he quit the field because he felt the battle was lost. He didn't even know about Cailan's plans at the time, the devs confirmed it.

Believing Ferelden would remain indepedent after Cailan married Celene and merged the crowns is nothing more than wishful thinking, the likelihood of Orlais the superpower absorbing backwater Ferelden would be so high its not funny. Thats not how peace is made, thats how you sell a country.

[Augustei]

 

He did not directly kill Duncan, etc, no but by abandoning the field and ignoring a pre-arranged attack plan he was very likely a proximate cause of his death.

Duncan, The King and the Grey Wardens were on the front lines of the battlefield, and the Ferelden armys ranks were completely broken through before you even crossed the bridge to Ishal if you look down below you. It would have taken you a fair while to fight through the darkspawn and get to the top of that tower. I doubt Loghain charging would have made a difference other than getting the rest of the army destroyed considering the darkspawns overwhelming numbers.

[Steppenwolf]

For me a huge difficulty with Loghain and his supposed role as a masterful antagonist is that he is simply not consistent in his actions. Almost always when I see him raised to the being the conflicted anti-hero, the arguments skip over a number of really drastic things he did that conflicted on his supposed ultimate loyalty to Ferelden. I mean, he sold citizens of the capital city as slaves to Tevinter. He allowed Howe pre-emptively butcher one of the leading families of the land. He send a poisoner to take care of another, because you know, why make things easy for this imagined Orlais invasion by almost forcing a civil war on Ferelden. And even then, he didn't know about the king's plan with the Empress until he found the correspondence in the game. His whole driving fear was allowing Orleasin troops in to Ferelden to fight the Blight, which causes him to actively sabotage the actual battle where the Blight is supposed to be stopped without any Orleasian troops present.
That lack of consistency in the presentation is what always makes it difficult for me to consider Loghain a great villain.

Loghain didn't even believe it was a Blight, let alone treat the threat as grave as the one posed by Orlais. He had no reason to think Orlais was interested in peace. His fear and hatred of Orlais drove him to compromise his morals and do horrible things.

[xJLxKing]

Loghain didn't even believe it was a Blight, let alone treat the threat as grave as the one posed by Orlais. He had no reason to think Orlais was interested in peace. His fear and hatred of Orlais drove him to compromise his morals and do horrible things.

Considering most of Thedas thought it wasn't, I don't understand why he would ?

[Augustei]

Loghain didn't even believe it was a Blight, let alone treat the threat as grave as the one posed by Orlais. He had no reason to think Orlais was interested in peace. His fear and hatred of Orlais drove him to compromise his morals and do horrible things.

Considering Orlais actually wasn't interested in peace and TME makes it clear Celene wanted to control Ferelden and drag them into a war with Nevarra, I don't blame him.

[Steppenwolf]

Considering most of Thedas thought it wasn't, I don't understand why he would ?

Exactly.

Considering Orlais actually wasn't interested in peace and TME makes it clear Celene wanted to control Ferelden and drag them into a war with Nevarra, I don't blame him.

You're not paranoid if they really are out to get you. Loghain knew how stupid and manipulable Cailan was.