Alduin's plan really can just be boiled down to eat everyone, including the universe itself. He is not called the "Worldeater" for nothing, after all. At any rate, there's no way within Skyrim's main story to have Alduin triumph in his quest, similar to the plot resolution in Oblivion.Mangod said:I haven't played Skyrim, but isn't Alduin the main villain? What's his plan (besides eat everyone)?Tanis said:Hahaha...oi vey.
Anyways...
I'd say the Skyrim kind of had this.
If you 'Stay With Empire', you fuck over some of your people and promote religious intolerance.
If you 'Break With Empire', you fuck over all your people (in the long run), and promote racism (speciesism?).
:/
An example of the Antagonist winning... Ultima 8: Pagan [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8edbJJAEaBI]. The Avatar more or less ends up selling his humanity - killing children, consorting with demonologists and necromancers, aiding murderers, etc - all so he can kill the Titans, become the Titan of Ether, and travel back to Britannia and save it from the Guardian... and in the end you're too late. Britannia has fallen and the Guardian is ruling over it as an evil God.
And then Ultima 9 happened... we try not to think about that...
It is worth noting, though, that there is another villain working behind the scenes that does arguably win in the end - the Aldmeri Dominion. For the uninitiated, they are essentially elf Nazis, and it is they whom Tanis was revering to. Basically, these jerks want to enslave all non-elves into servitude or whip them out, but their greater goal is a bit more complex - to destroy the physical world. Needless to say, they are not nice people, but the Civil War storyline in Skyrim (which arguably gets just as much attention as the main one) has you essentially choosing between two sides when neither will be able to lead an ideal fight against this world-ending threat. The Empire would do a much better job, but there being a civil war at all, rather than both sides getting along, plays right into the Thalmor's plan.
I'm sorry, but that article is just ridiculous. In no conceivable universe could Joel be considered as having done the right thing - the literal, precise, and inevitable result of his actions is mankind losing its only chance for a cure to the infection and thus its only chance to rebuild and survive. I'm frankly alarmed that the author became so convinced of the Fireflies' evil based seemingly on them A) threatening the two strangers that showed up unannounced at their secret base (keeping in mind that this is a world in which murderous bandits outnumbered rational people ten-to-one) and B) being willing to sacrifice one person to save however many millions or billions might remain, when that same character has explicitly said that they would be willingly to do just that. And yet for these frankly paltry "crimes" they apparently become comparable to Stalin and Mao. What the heck?BuildsLegos said:Lord Garnaat said:Well, the main character in The Last of Us is essentially pure evil, and your actions allow him to succeed by the mere act of playing through the game. I was about to throw down the controller at the end of it, when you reach the point that he is slaughtering the last remaining hope for mankind just so that he can selfishly cling to the delusional fantasy that Ellie is his new daughter. Lord but I hated that ending.He probably didn't know it, but Joel saved us all. [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/video-games/columns/experienced-points/12829-The-Moral-Dilemma-of-The-Last-of-Us-Joel-Did-the-Right-Thing]Sheo_Dagana said:Joel last minute decides he doesn't want to have to make a sacrifice and murders all the people wanting to save mankind from the mushroom-zombie apocalypse and violates the will of everyone that helped him get to that point, including the will of the very person he meant to 'save.'
Joel did not save anyone from anything, that is the exact point of the ending. He only did what he did out of short-sighted selfishness, and now there is no way to undo it. The Fireflies were repeatedly said to be the last group in this horrible world that had both the resources and the inclination to cure the infection, and they are now wiped out completely - how does Joel "save us all" when there are literally no other people who are capable of using Ellie to create a cure? Who exactly is going to do it now? The military gave up on finding a cure ages ago and kill infected people on sight, and the bandits and scattered settlements are not exactly experts in biology and medicine. Creating a widespread cure and distributing it takes an infrastructure that only a group like the Fireflies had, and now that singular hope is lost. And for what? So that Joel could cling pathetically onto his emotional surrogate so that he wouldn't have to go through losing someone again. It's revolting.