Best "Villains in Name Only"?

[CotF1692]

Lord Ashur from Fallout 3's "The Pitt" DLC. He's a tyrant ruling over the Pitt with raiders dominating a multitude of slaves, all the while claiming to be working on a cure for the local mutation plague that also prevents children from being born (which is why they use slave labour in the first place). Thing is... he's the good guy. The "cure" the slaves want to steal is Ashur's baby daughter, who has a miraculous resistance to the disease. The reason the cure is taking so long is that the scientist developing it, Ashur's wife, is trying to keep the baby safe. Furthermore, the slaves are lead by Ashur's former lieutenant, who lead a violent coup and was shut down and enslaved as punishment. So why don't you murder a baby's parents and hand this "cure" over to the self-interested rebel and his army of uneducated slaves who have absolutely no idea how to develop the cure. Because that's the GOOD Karma thing, right?

Thankfully neither side gives or takes karma! I sided with Ashur, and only lost karma when I got bombarded by slaves and killed one to get through. I liked how neither option was really "right" in that, made me have to think more than "which gives me the karma I want?"

 

[Treblaine]

sip

LOL

I'm afraid even if we ignore the prequel trilogy we never see a Jedi Knight show any emotion, I couldn't speak about the books that followed because I never read them, but the first trilogy showed a very stark contrast from the Luke in the Empire Strikes back and the Luke in Return of the Jedi as far as emotions go.

Absolute deceptive nonsense.

Yoda and Obi Wan frequently are seen smiling, joking and demonstrating compassion and empathy.

Don't mistake restraint and control in a tense situation for cold lack of feeling. He is feeling, compassionate and tender. Yeah he's not wailing and screaming like a fool but he clearly shows that cares for his sister and friend's well-being, and can't hide his emotion at the death of his estranged father.

Obi Wan seems so far removed from compassion and empathy I don't think that's a fair statement.

I'll give you that Yoda was quite the jovial little hermit though, now that I think back.

And Luke was still young, you could see the massive change from part 2 to part 3. Granted he showed emotion for his father death, but he also hadn't really been brought up as a Jedi. No master and very few years of actual training.

Obi Wan smiles and jokes.

He's not a prancing fool, but he's not an emotionless robot.

 

[Treblaine]

sip

LOL

I'm afraid even if we ignore the prequel trilogy we never see a Jedi Knight show any emotion, I couldn't speak about the books that followed because I never read them, but the first trilogy showed a very stark contrast from the Luke in the Empire Strikes back and the Luke in Return of the Jedi as far as emotions go.

Absolute deceptive nonsense.

Yoda and Obi Wan frequently are seen smiling, joking and demonstrating compassion and empathy.

Don't mistake restraint and control in a tense situation for cold lack of feeling. He is feeling, compassionate and tender. Yeah he's not wailing and screaming like a fool but he clearly shows that cares for his sister and friend's well-being, and can't hide his emotion at the death of his estranged father.

Obi Wan seems so far removed from compassion and empathy I don't think that's a fair statement.

I'll give you that Yoda was quite the jovial little hermit though, now that I think back.

And Luke was still young, you could see the massive change from part 2 to part 3. Granted he showed emotion for his father death, but he also hadn't really been brought up as a Jedi. No master and very few years of actual training.

Obi Wan smiles and jokes.

He's not a prancing fool, but he's not an emotionless robot.

From what I remember Obi Wan always seemed like he was being played as intentionally hollow on Alec's part. With the only thing he seemed to care about being bringing balance to the force.

That's classic British reserved stoicism. Not to be mistaken for a lack of emotions.

 

[ABLb0y]

L from Death Note.

I mean, sure, he did want to stop Light from making the world a nicer place, but the only reason was because Light killed at least a thousand people to do it.

 

[Leo Meier]

Akainu. the only villain who was able to send luffy into a depression

 

[Treblaine]

sip

LOL

I'm afraid even if we ignore the prequel trilogy we never see a Jedi Knight show any emotion, I couldn't speak about the books that followed because I never read them, but the first trilogy showed a very stark contrast from the Luke in the Empire Strikes back and the Luke in Return of the Jedi as far as emotions go.

Absolute deceptive nonsense.

Yoda and Obi Wan frequently are seen smiling, joking and demonstrating compassion and empathy.

Don't mistake restraint and control in a tense situation for cold lack of feeling. He is feeling, compassionate and tender. Yeah he's not wailing and screaming like a fool but he clearly shows that cares for his sister and friend's well-being, and can't hide his emotion at the death of his estranged father.

Obi Wan seems so far removed from compassion and empathy I don't think that's a fair statement.

I'll give you that Yoda was quite the jovial little hermit though, now that I think back.

And Luke was still young, you could see the massive change from part 2 to part 3. Granted he showed emotion for his father death, but he also hadn't really been brought up as a Jedi. No master and very few years of actual training.

Obi Wan smiles and jokes.

He's not a prancing fool, but he's not an emotionless robot.

From what I remember Obi Wan always seemed like he was being played as intentionally hollow on Alec's part. With the only thing he seemed to care about being bringing balance to the force.

That's classic British reserved stoicism. Not to be mistaken for a lack of emotions.

Seemed more 'dead inside' than 'stiff upper lip'.

I don't know, have you even known an older Brit who practices such Stoicism.

Don't buy into the prejudice that if you don't show emotions you don't have them.

 

[Treblaine]

Guy did the player a favour, legitimised your violent tendencies by turning you from a murderous outlaw to a bounty hunter. Yet Marston pines incessantly about this, saying his wife has been "kidnapped" he seems to not understand the concept of lawful arrest

Fair enough, but what was his son guilty of?

And then younger Jack Marston murdering the old retired Ross. Why?

Prairie justice.

You're not very familiar with the spaghetti western genre, are you?

Well then Ross's son kill Jack.

And Jack's friend Kill's Ross's Son.

AND WHEN DOES THIS END!?!?! When everyone by any connection to anyone is dead?

I didn't take revenge on the other people who wronged me when I played through the game RDR, I took Javier alive and ended every duel with a disarming shot when I could.

Red Dead Redemption is not a slave to the genre, it sets a very clear theme of the player being given the choice of being a selfish dick or choosing a more noble path but in the end it tricks the playing into thinking they have a choice then arbitrarily say "nope, you can't forgive, you can't disarm, only kill in petty revenge".

But in the end it denied me that assuming every player is a jerk incapable of forgiveness or understanding.

Repeat; how many spaghetti westerns have you watched? The game was keeping with the style and tropes of that genre.

I've seen enough to know that forgiveness, mercy and reconciliation are central themes that RDR moves towards but abandon at the last minute, denying pathos for shallow murder of retired old men. This ending should have ended up on the cutting room floor.

 

[Treblaine]

sip

LOL

I'm afraid even if we ignore the prequel trilogy we never see a Jedi Knight show any emotion, I couldn't speak about the books that followed because I never read them, but the first trilogy showed a very stark contrast from the Luke in the Empire Strikes back and the Luke in Return of the Jedi as far as emotions go.

Absolute deceptive nonsense.

Yoda and Obi Wan frequently are seen smiling, joking and demonstrating compassion and empathy.

Don't mistake restraint and control in a tense situation for cold lack of feeling. He is feeling, compassionate and tender. Yeah he's not wailing and screaming like a fool but he clearly shows that cares for his sister and friend's well-being, and can't hide his emotion at the death of his estranged father.

Obi Wan seems so far removed from compassion and empathy I don't think that's a fair statement.

I'll give you that Yoda was quite the jovial little hermit though, now that I think back.

And Luke was still young, you could see the massive change from part 2 to part 3. Granted he showed emotion for his father death, but he also hadn't really been brought up as a Jedi. No master and very few years of actual training.

Obi Wan smiles and jokes.

He's not a prancing fool, but he's not an emotionless robot.

From what I remember Obi Wan always seemed like he was being played as intentionally hollow on Alec's part. With the only thing he seemed to care about being bringing balance to the force.

That's classic British reserved stoicism. Not to be mistaken for a lack of emotions.

Seemed more 'dead inside' than 'stiff upper lip'.

I don't know, have you even known an older Brit who practices such Stoicism.

Don't buy into the prejudice that if you don't show emotions you don't have them.

I am British.

My question still stands.

The younger generation is more like the "Dappy from N-dubs" type who haven't seen more than 2 or 3 films made before 1979 and don't care about the older generation. I'm not old, but I actually take an interest in the past.

 

[Treblaine]

Well then Ross's son kill Jack.

And Jack's friend Kill's Ross's Son.

AND WHEN DOES THIS END!?!?! When everyone by any connection to anyone is dead?

Again, trope of the genre.

Seriously. If you think that mercy is a part of spaghetti westerns, you haven't seen enough of them. Hell, misplaced revenge (and yes, I think Jack's revenge was slightly misplaced, and I'll explain why in a sec) is a frequent one. Good lord, man, if you took a look at the filmography of the genre, half of them are about that.

I've seen enough to know that forgiveness, mercy and reconciliation are central themes that RDR moves towards but abandon at the last minute, denying pathos for shallow murder of retired old men. This ending should have ended up on the cutting room floor.

I'll concede that the game would have been improved by having that option. I would be curious myself to see it. Had it been up to me tasked with coming up with such an ending, I would have had Jack spare Ross's life, not so much out of forgiveness, but pity for him; pity that Ross was only doing the bidding of the game's REAL evil mastermind, namely the governor of New Austin. Sort of like what Carl Childers says to his father in Slingblade. "I looked into killing you. I looked into it a great deal. But I figure you're just sit there and die soon anyway". It was the governor who set the whole thing in motion. He didn't want his hands bloody and risk directly killing folk heroes either (the Van Derlende's had a "Jesse James" vibe going, so they had something of a rogue hero image, wrong as it is was near the end), so he arranged the whole plan and got Ross and his fellow G-men to agree to it.

His plan worked too. The Van Derlende gang was gunned down/hanged, betrayed by one of their own, and the governor get's reelected, famed as the man who cleaned up New Austin and took out the last great outlaws. All it cost him was the blood of people he'll never meet and one grouchy retiree. If Red Dead Revenge follows Jack, hopefully it's along those lines.

But that's not what we got. It followed the usual italio-western trope where revenge was it's own reward, even if the bad guys won, and consider the governor's reelection AND the revolutionary you aided in Mexico ended up an even worse despot than Alliende, they emphatically won.

Good The Bad and The Ugly: Blondie lets Tuco live.

The quintessential Spaghetti Western found redemption and forgiveness in the end.

"REAL evil mastermind, namely the governor of New Austin."

Yeah. So "evil" wanting psychopathic-killers to stop their psychopathic-killing.

Rockstar tried and failed with their anti-establishment message, all they ever had was complaining and bitching from the characters about the government but the real harm and injustice was being done by the outlaws. The worst they could do is politically incorrect anthropologists.

"All it cost him was the blood of..."

the blood of totally out of control killers. They got a trial and if you have an issue with hanging then you have an issue with the legislature that decided hanging was the sentence for such crimes that they were fairly found guilty of. I remind you even today many American States still give the punishment of death sentence for the crime of first degree murder.