kris
Arcane
Skittles said:RPGs aren't about the villains. Maybe they matter in crossover games, like System Shock and Deus Ex, but that's because they get their storytelling cues from Hollywood-esque FPS games.
RPGs are about the character(s) you play. For a really effective villain, you need an antagonist who has conflicting values and goals, who meets the protagonist at the right times and does the right things. That means you need to take away some control of the character's personality and, more importantly, the playstyle in a game.
Main villian. You are talking about the main villian which you meet in the end.
Villians in RPG is the most important part since they are mostly about conflict and everyone you are in conflict with will be the villian. Well, okay, antagonists if you don't want to be the good guy all of the time.
So this talk about antagonist revolves around every conflict in the game. How it is constructed and why there is a conflict. A main villian(s) is about how much the game revolves around the story. There is not much to a story about conflict without an interesting antagonist.