The best RPG villain

[oscar]

Honestly, LaCroix wasn't much of a villain. I think that was the whole point. You've got this guy who's a complete pussy, smug, incapable of making a friend in the whole fucking city, and unable to think about anything but how to make himself more powerful.

LaCroix really interested me and I'm not entirely sure why. He wasn't particularly villainous. Or threatening. Or even cunning. I even continuously sided with him despite

Spoiler

him calling the Blood Hunt.

 

[Zomg]

TTO is actually pretty fucking terrible. Same as Irenicus, million dollar voice on a ten cent character. You would believe a baby can fly if James Earl Jones was the stupid power armor supermutant in Fallout 2

Speaking of F2 I remember actually getting mad when the car got stolen in New Reno. I was like... "M..my fucking car. Hey you faggot standing there, where did my car go? TALK YOU MOTHERF" That was like the most effective piece of villainy in a game ever for me, for no reason except that it was a hum-drum enough injustice to engage me as opposed to killing my entire pretend family and pets as other games do. You can apparently get car upgrades from the car thief people but I wouldn't know because they all died

 

[Sacculina]

I really doubt he's a villain, more like ...an anti-hero. I doubt villains let their raped captives roam free...they'd probably keep her chained in the basement for training sessions and such...

It’s your playthrough, so you would know better. The first rape is such a kick in the guts that he would certainly be the prime antagonist if I were to play the module going blind. But from what Black Cat's intimated, you get to choose whether he's an antagonist at all, and I really should reserve judgement till the LP’s over.

 

[Azrael the cat]

I couldn't help but like Sebastian LaCroix in Bloodlines. He did the smug eurofag executive act so well.

I also like that the true antagonist of the game has very little screen time, but with all the foreshadowing, as well as Beckett's final line, the player pieces together that the Taxi Driver is Caine and the point of the game was to see whether or not you would survive his test.

Wait a minute, what? I've played through Bloodlines twice, 's already long time ago, but I can't remember that this happened in my game. :/

The player, not the player character has to piece it together. Remember all the foreshadowing about Caine? The paintings you desecrated, the loading screens that mention his return to judge vampires, the emergence of the thin bloods being a sign of the end of times, everyone sensing something terrible, Beckett actually running away from town once he finishes his research. Remember what was actually in the coffin was a handful of explosives.

We then see the closing cinematic of Jack on a lawn chair next to the clearly dead body which he took out of the sarcophagus. So all that foreshadowing had nothing to do with its contents at any point. Who is standing next to Jack and the mummy in the end?

The same Taxi Driver who just "recently entered town" during a time of recent signs of the apocalypse. Who says he is only here to ferry people to their destiny (or something to that effect). Who the game just happens to make you go through a long conversation with before you make your final decision on who to side with.

If you are present during the opening of the sarcophagus, and are blasted into oblivion, Jack laments something to the effect of, "Shame about the kid. Oh well, you can't win them all," as if this is not the first, or last time this will happen. The only person present that he could be speaking to is the Taxi Driver. Caine is coming to judge all vampires, remember.

After the tutorial in the beginning, Jack mentions that it is the politics that will kill you. He is about to mention something else, but then says that you will figure it out on your own.

I am sure I am forgetting some important clues as well.

I hope I am right, or else I will feel like a massive moron.

EDITED for numerous errors that I committed in my haste to recall as much as I could from my playthrough all those years ago.

EDIT 2: Just did a brief search. The Taxi Driver's MP3 files are evidently stored in a folder called Caine.

EDIT 3: Evidently in the books, Jack believes he has met Caine, but it is revealed that this was just a Malkavian who believes he is Caine. At least that is not as disappointing as the "official" account of the events of planescape torment.

Adding to this because you missed a couple of the biggest clues:
- the Malkavian on the beach, talking about the PC: 'The Dark Father! Is the Dark Father Behind Him!
- the various characters commenting on how fucking incredulous it is that a fledgling is taking out elders and whole squadrons of both camarilla and Sabbat like they are nothing (it isn't a plot-hole when the characters actually comment on it, and make clear that it is SUPPOSED to be incongruous, leading to the next point):
- the Sabbat leader (the last time you encounter him) making clear that he knows more than he is letting on, and that there is something exceptional about the PC's bloodline, and ultimately ripping on you for not deserving the power running through your veins (hence the theory that cabbie/Caine used the PC's sire as a proxy for creating a low-gen vampire, the PC, for him to use in testing the various vampire political systems).

For me, the comments about the PC's bloodline and the comments about him being too powerful for a fledgling, scream of cut content - I wouldn't be surprised if there was a full questline or sidequest dedicated to explaining that stuff, and that the comments that are still in-game were all that was implemented. Having said that, it is also typical of Troika's game design - they seem to really like putting in half-quests, or mysteries with no in-game solution. C/f the half-ogre conspiracy in Arcanum.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

One thing that makes Kreia special is that all along the way there's one special key element to her motivation: That she loves you like only a teacher or a mother could.

Speaking of F2 I remember actually getting mad when the car got stolen in New Reno. I was like... "M..my fucking car. Hey you faggot standing there, where did my car go? TALK YOU MOTHERF" That was like the most effective piece of villainy in a game ever for me, for no reason except that it was a hum-drum enough injustice to engage me as opposed to killing my entire pretend family and pets as other games do. You can apparently get car upgrades from the car thief people but I wouldn't know because they all died

 

[Darth Roxor]

Shodan and Sheltem. Because rogue AIs are fucking awesome.

 

[DwarvenFood]

Very difficult, still have not made up my mind.

 

[Azrael the cat]

I guess you could separate 'best villain' from 'best USE of a villain'. Irenicus is a cliched panto-villain, but he is used terrifically: as I've said before, plot-wise it's like you've got the usual Bioware 'chosen one' plotline, and then Irenicus is a wrench thrown into the middle of it in order to screw both the chosen one AND the 'big bad'. Most importantly, he isn't sitting at the end of the last dungeon waiting for you to come level up and beat him the whole game - you fight him and Boddhi a total of 7 times over the game, he gets stronger as the plot progresses, and you interact with him repeatedly over the course of the game. That should be standard - only the shittiest of action films would have the main villain as a character who you never even fucking meet until the end fight scene - he/she should be a central character, with a fuckload of the screen time, his own character arc and an interesting relationship with the hero.

Same reason why Deus Ex (original) is a 'how to' guide for making great 'boss fights' - bosses are never random end-of-level characters: they're deeply developed characters who have a complex relationship to JCD and human motivations for being opposed to him. Even with the eventual straight-up good-guy v bad-guy JC v Walter Simons fight, Simons isn't some random uber-mook, but a guy who has been in your face since about a 1/3 of the way into the game. A guy who you've had a respectable amount of interaction with back when he was your boss's boss, and who you've continued to interact with periodically since then, so that the absurdly over-the-top-badass pre-fight dialogue sounds just, well, badass.

Same for VtM:B's LaCroix. He works because he isn't your typical 'badass villain', but also because by having the main villain also act as the main questgiver, you get to (a) really get pissed off at him screwing you, plus (b) actually get enough characterisation for the player to understand his motivations and viewpoint - even though he's a sleazy eurotrash powermongering asshole, his motivations are a lot more interesting than just 'he's a powerhungry asshole' (allowing the player to see that the guy is only middle-management, and that he's flying by the seat of his pants to keep control of the situation so that he doesn't get 'removed' by his bosses, or shafted by his underlings). Actually that middle-management point is probably why I like him so much - it's a lot more interesting than going up against yet another 'all-powerful-bad-guy'.

On the other side of the fence, TTO and the Arcanum villain were interesting characters used poorly (despite my loving PS:T and liking Arcanum). Well developed, but ultimately they're just guys you see in a cutscene or two, who you ultimately run into. In PS:T that didn't matter so much, because the 'dog you over the course of the game' villain roles were played really well by TNO himself (the past incarnations fucking with you) and Ravel.

Overall, I'll probably go with Kreia - again, one of the few games where the main villain gets the same kind of characterisation that would be standard in any other art form, and SHOULD be standard in games (I never understood how Bioware could go from Irenicus/Bodhi in BG2, and then decide to go back to the generic 2-cutscenes+end-fight boss. That stuff is fine if you're making a Mondblutian crpg, but if you're the self-declared 'cinematic story-game' company, you should know better than that shit. By making her part of the party, Kreia gets all the characterisation opportunities the writers could possibly want, and they use it to full effect.

 

[Erebus]

Most importantly, he isn't sitting at the end of the last dungeon waiting for you to come level up and beat him the whole game - you fight him and Boddhi a total of 7 times over the game, he gets stronger as the plot progresses, and you interact with him repeatedly over the course of the game. That should be standard - only the shittiest of action films would have the main villain as a character who you never even fucking meet until the end fight scene - he/she should be a central character, with a fuckload of the screen time, his own character arc and an interesting relationship with the hero.

I mostly agree : a good villain should often interact with the hero, directly or not ; he should also act and evolve throughout the game.

However, getting too many early occasions to fight the villain can be frustrating (since we're obviously not going to kill him so early) and make the real ending fight less impressive than it should be.

 

[sgc_meltdown]

Tangent:

You bros know Amelyssan from ToB, yeah

well very early on in the city that was besieged by the giants I got really suspicious by her convenient showing up and stuffies so I cast that reveal alignment spell thingie and AHA THE BITCH IS EVIL BOSS MASTERMIND ALERT aw shit I can't kill her now

kinda bummed me out the rest of the game

also goes to show why so many pnp DMs have people wearing magical items that hide alignments

 

[Erebus]

Yeah, it's a real problem when a NPC is obviously a hidden villain, yet you can't do anything about it. I started being suspicious about Melissan after hearing she had "cured" the teleporting bhaalspawn, I became extremely suspicious when she turned up just after the fight with Gromnir and it became completely obvious that she was the main villain when she again turned up just after the fight with Yaga-Shura.

The whole thing was lampshaded in the Ascension ending, in which the PC can tell her "Please, I saw you coming a mile away. I just did what you asked because I had no other choices."

 

[sgc_meltdown]

in a slight aversion you COULD kill the 'shade' of Arronax that arrives, taunts and knocks out your party before teleporting away by using disintegrate just before the script to make him disappear kicks in

IIRC it even dropped some generic loot as well

quite amusing and it doesn't affect your game at all

 

[Sceptic]

well very early on in the city that was besieged by the giants I got really suspicious by her convenient showing up and stuffies so I cast that reveal alignment spell thingie and AHA THE BITCH IS EVIL BOSS MASTERMIND ALERT aw shit I can't kill her now

Really? they must've patched this, in my version she registered as Good, which was even more frustrating because the fact she was the villain in disguise was telegraphed all the way to Mars. And I was not impressed with the game's attempt at trying to hide this from my characters.

 

[TripJack]

kekeke

but seriously i don't know, shodan i guess if SS is an rpg

great villains are almost non existent in video games, they are generally even more shallow and pointless than movie villains

 

[sgc_meltdown]

And I was not impressed with the game's attempt at trying to hide this from my characters.

in the interest of full disclosure bro I think I might have had
http://www.gibberlings3.net/oversight/index.php

installed at the time

bullshit either way though and yet another brick in the wall of rpg videogame limitations

 

[Klaz]

 

[Serious_Business]

Bob Page, Shodan, Kreia

Also Ireniderp

yeah no

 

[Unkillable Cat]

SHODAN wins, hands down, but that depends upon whether either System Shock game can be considered an RPG.

Next up is the Guardian. Except for Ultima 9 derping him to kingdom come, he is an excellent villain... especially once you realize you don't really have a chance in hell of beating him. At best you can stop his plans.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

The Master.

 

[Excidium]

The Master.

 

[Zomg]

Fuck the master

He could just have a bunch of uncontaminated humans have children, then turn them into mutants at like 40, it's not like they don't have an indeterminate lifespan afterwards

Shit son did I just fix your world domination plans that you killed yourself for fucking up you big pool of retard

Why didn't I think of this until like 2010

 

[Phage]

If you count SS2, then it's definitely SHODAN.

 

[catfood]

All the gnomes in Arcanum. Those who did the siamese twins skull quest know what I'm talking about. That's some fucked up shit right there.

And if that doesn't count, then SHODAN is my next best pick. And if that doesn't count either you can go fuck yourself.

 

[Sordid Jester]

The Practical One. Fuck that guy. In fact, TNO's three other incarnations in general, even that stupid bastard crazy guy. The good guy was nice but damnit you arsehole, this is all your faaaaault.

 

[Erebus]

All the gnomes in Arcanum. Those who did the siamese twins skull quest know what I'm talking about. That's some fucked up shit right there.

It was an interesting subplot, but the X-files ending kinda ruined it.