Games where you are the bad guy (but don't know it)

[Phisi]

Tomb Raider/Uncharted.

Lara Croft and Nathan Drake are the worst things to happen to archaeology since dynamite.

I dunno, they both have fantastic bodies which is probably the best thing one could donate to archaeology. I think the worst thing to happen to archaeology is the idea that these people are being archaeologists

I would go for Rage. You seen to wipe out tons of other groups who were just living happily so you can overthrow the (evil) government.

 

[darkcalling]

Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning would definitely qualify. The Fateless One may in fact be one of the most potentially dangerous people I've ever played. Aside from the basic badassery that comes with the combat abilities and crazy weaponry there's the fact that

Spoiler

because he is no longer a part of fate's plan, he can alter that plan simply by existing. The look on Agarth's face when you kill the Ettin War Priest that was supposed to kill him swings back and forth between confusion, amazement, and abject terror. If unraveling the plans of the gods can't be used for evil I don't know what can.

 

[DaHero]

Wow, how has nobody mentioned S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Shadow of Chernobyl yet? Strelok!

 

[Rheinmetall]

I have thought of this for Uncharted: Drake's Fortune. If you come to think of it, Nate massacres so many people during his adventure that equals the male population of a small nation.

 

[Kermi]

*looks around*

Can't believe I'm first to say this.

KOTOR! You're REVAN!

That was my first thought but this thread seems to be more about flipping the game around to view the protagonist as a villain from the point of view of the other guys. Revan IS the villain and you're secretly Revan. That's the twist.

 

[lacktheknack]

Braid. Turns out you're a creepy stalker who can't move on.

I thought you had invented the atomic bomb and regretted it. Freaking Braid, how does it work...

On that note, Mirror's Edge. I can't shake the feeling that the Runners are probably drug traffickers at best and terrorists at worst, and there seem to be subtle hints that at the very least Faith and company aren't as noble as they make themselves out to be. In the first level Faith complains that the police "just opened fire," leaving out the bit where they warned her to drop the bag and put her hands in the air and only shot after she refused and ran away. Not that that's going to matter much in the face of the many murders you'll have committed before the game is over (murders of high-ranking law officers, no less.)

I took that as a challenge and can complete it having killed no one and punched out six people. Certainly not killing me over. And given the nature of the game (and the fact that killing the officers would be idiotic), the no-fatality low-beatdown approach is most likely to be canonical.

Also, there's a revealing line at the end:

Faith: "Why us? We're no threat!"

Big Bad: "Classic warfare. Cut the lines of communication. Blah blah blah..."

So even the big bad behind the project admits that the runners are shipping information, nothing more. And that Faith is being attacked with license to kill for exactly the same reasons someone would cut a phone line.

It's a fun idea, though.

OT: Dwarf Fortress. I'd like to remind you that YOU dragged seven dwarfs to their certain deaths, despite the fact that there's a perfectly serviceable Dwarf Metropolis for them to be in safely.

 

[DioWallachia]

Not to mention, he likes his hands covered in blood

And hates mimes.

By the way, i always wanted to play that game with this song:
Feel appropriate for anyone who saw the movie

 

[DioWallachia]

I have thought of this for Uncharted: Drake's Fortune. If you come to think of it, Nate massacres so many people during his adventure that equals the male population of a small nation.

Well of course he has to kill people, otherwise no woman would ever sleep with him unless the excuse of "we need to repopulate the species" card is pulled right up his ass

 

[Solstrana91]

The Elder Scrolls franchise? In Morrowind, Oblivion, and Skyrim (you didn't in Daggerfall, as I recall, and I haven't played the others) you start off as a prisoner. The guards don't strike me as jerks who'll stick anybody in prison just for kicks.

Also, Prototype.

Spoiler

Of course you sort of play the bad guy. Depending on your point of view. But at the very least, you play the exact image of the guy who decided to unleash a super deadly virus on the world just because he was a bit pissed at the time.

I mean, Alex eats people. And by eats I mean he completely murderizes them. That's in addition to him flailing his Lovecraftian limbs around.

You start out as a prisoner in Arena as well. Your character in Daggerfall is ostensibly the same one as in Arena, sent by request of the Emperor, if I recall correctly. Anyway, I choose to believe that all of my characters were brought in on unusually aggressive jaywalking charges.

And I don't think it's really a secret that Alex Mercer is the villain. It's just that he happens to be marginally less omnicidal than the people he fights.

OT: I have yet to play an action game of any kind that has failed to convince me that the protagonist isn't at least within the city limits of Crazyville.

Jaywalking Charges. I love you for that quote.

 

[artanis_neravar]

Yes. The Gears of War series.

Okay, stick with me for a moment.

Gears of War.

The Locust are attempting to flee their War Torn home, beseiged by new and terrifying creatures from the deep. They develop a plan to escape to the peace of the surface world to re-group and save their people. Unfortunately, they've never set foot "topside" before.

In order to ensure that they're able to evacuate as many civilians as possible as fast they can, they send their largest animals to the surface first, to literally carve tunnels through the earth big enough to move them all at once. Humans, unfortunately, live up top. They see the presumed intentional destruction caused by their emmergence as an act of war.
Meanwhile, the Locust Governmental Sub-comittee responsible for the evacuation is lombasted by the Locust government for not doing their job - they literally dug into the middle of a densely populated city that they didn't even know was there. Attempts to communicate with the Humans are rejected by a never ending stream of bullets and blood.

The Humans further retaliate, slaughtering millions of Locust civillians without hesitation at the hands of American Super Soliders - claiming to be defeating the Locust Horde of monsters from the deep.
Unintentional or not, the Locust are forced to fight an un-winnable war on two fronts. With their civilisation in ruins, their families dead and rotting and no chance at survival, they abandon hope.
They throw themselves endlessly and mindlessly upon the waves Human soldiers, begging for the sweet release of death to free them from the horrors of their shattered lives, and hoping to be reunited with their families in the afterlife.

Wrong, the locust queen specifically says "we thought about making peace with you before we emerged but didn't believe that this was possible, so we choose war" not to mention that the locust killed off something like a quarter of the population of the planet before the humans could even mount a defense, and they chose to emerge in eery city across the globe

No, I recall the entire reason for E-Day coming to pass was because Marcus' dad did not stop the emulsion infection.

If I remember right the locust were perfectly happy derping underground when they suddenly realized the emulsion was a parasitic entity. Marcus' dad made a deal with the locust queen that he would find a way to stop it, and this deal was supposedly made twenty years before E-Day, I believe it was. He took to long because he was having trouble finding a way to set off the weapon he created so that it WOULD NOT kill all of the locust as well as the emulsion. Eventually the locust began to come topside to try to clear the humans out so they could get away from the emulsion.

Then the queen got all bitchy and went all, "KILL ALL THE HUMANS!"

And in the end his father didn't find a way to spare the locust from his emulsion-killing weapon, and so all of the locust were killed at the end of Gears 3.

The queen went kill all humans before E-day, and purposely staged E-day to do as much damage as possible to Humans society. You can not be mistaken for the bad guy because they explain why everything happens. You own argument works against you, Adam Fenix took so long solving the problem because he didn't want to kill the locust. Then the Locust got impatient and started to kill humans and attack human cities.

 

[Richardplex]

Pokemon!

And now to warble so I don't get a low content post...

 

[freaper]

I feel that most of the people in this thread have missed the point. He's talking about games where the designated hero can, with a different perspective, easily be seen as the villain, not games where it's dramatically revealed or presented as a choice. At least, that's the impression I got.

On that note, Mirror's Edge. I can't shake the feeling that the Runners are probably drug traffickers at best and terrorists at worst, and there seem to be subtle hints that at the very least Faith and company aren't as noble as they make themselves out to be. In the first level Faith complains that the police "just opened fire," leaving out the bit where they warned her to drop the bag and put her hands in the air and only shot after she refused and ran away. Not that that's going to matter much in the face of the many murders you'll have committed before the game is over (murders of high-ranking law officers, no less.)

I would agree with you on this if Mirror's Edge wasn't so camp. They present all the runner characters as only good doers with a straight face. The fact that one of them became a cop and another betrays Faith makes it hard to have the remaining ones look even slightly biased.
Then again, this is a problem a lot of games have. That's why I liked Skyrim's civil war arc; you're never a 100% on the good side.

Assassin's Creed anyone? (tough someone might have mentioned it) You slay hordes of guards, with each a family to feed, and more often than not for no apparent reason other than to test whether you can impale two brutes with one spear. Also punching beggars...

 

[Korak the Mad]

Kirby: Any game in the series.
You're a cannibalistic, regicidal, mass murderer.

Kirby really is a horrible character, he eats you and then becomes you.

I'm pretty sure if "The Thing" and "The Blob" had a child, it would be Kirby.

 

[Ilikemilkshake]

snip

I've thought about that alot recently while playing EU3. I wondered if it were possible to roleplay as an ethically concious kingdom.

And it's incredibly difficult but it is doable.
You pick whatever event options result in the most ethical treatment, even if it costs you a shittonne of taxes or whatever.
You set your sliders to Free Subjects and Plutocracy.
You take national ideas which increase peoples rights and increase tolerance of other religions.
You negotiate with rebels rather than slaughtering thousands of people (although you are limited, so some are okay to put down like ones from angry nobles who want you dead because you're giving the peasants some rights).
You expand not by war but by diplomacy, through royal marriages and alliance.. and if you really must have war you can guarentee the independance of other countries so you'll come to their aid if they are invaded.

 

[Plinglebob]

Assassin's Creed anyone? (tough someone might have mentioned it) You slay hordes of guards, with each a family to feed, and more often than not for no apparent reason other than to test whether you can impale two brutes with one spear. Also punching beggars...

This was the first game that came to mind for me. The majority of the guys you fight are the equivalent of the local cops who, in all fairness, have every right to arrest you yet they are portrayed as the evil "Man" compared to the freedom the Assassins claim to support/provide. For some reason it really came to a peak for me in the intro sequence of Revelations as all the guards you end up killing look a bit pudgy and really pathetic. It felt like they were just local cops who got ordered by their evil sergent to guard an old castle because a dangerous assassin was likely to turn up.

 

[veloper]

The Elder Scrolls franchise? In Morrowind, Oblivion, and Skyrim (you didn't in Daggerfall, as I recall, and I haven't played the others) you start off as a prisoner. The guards don't strike me as jerks who'll stick anybody in prison just for kicks.

Could be true for Oblivion as they leave it blank, so you can imagine your character being anything between wrongfully arrested, to Tamriel's version of Marc Dutroux.
But in Skyrim you're arrested for just happening to be in the vicinity of a rebel leader, and they don't even have you on their death list, but they'll chop off your head anyway.

....in order to defend some kind of elven inquisition running around torturing random people.


As for ontopic; Overlord, obviously. You literally play an evil overlord.

Funny thing is that for Overlord 1 it's actually the exact opposite, provided your pick the "evil" path instead of the really evil path. You think you were the bad guy, but...

Tropico series also comes to mind. You play a dictator (and pirate lord in part 2) whose job it is to... well, dictate stuff and make sure no dreadfull stuff like democracy ever happens, while your advisor whines that you need to direct more money away to your bank accounts in Switserland.

It's not that democracy doesn't happen in Tropico 1,3 & 4, in fact it's rather difficult to stop it, it's just that the voters are very easy to please even on harder difficulties, so you stay on as president for life.
The game is actually much easier to win with high scores, when you go all soft with free health care, full employment and quality entertainment, than as a ruthless dictator.

 

[iseko]

Kratos from god of war.

You are punished because you murdered your own family in cold blood. And because you want redemption, you keep on killing whatever is in your way. In god of war two you crush an innocent man's skull on a platform because you need some blood...

In god of war III you rip of a god's head and use it as a flaslight. And the gods only try to kill you because you don't stop murdering people. Seriously! Like Yathzee said: the heroic thing would be to stop playing the game before kratos kills any more people.

Kotor I. You are revan! The dark lord of the sith.

Which brings me to the force unleashed ultimate sith edition. You are starkiller, you kill obi-wan and convert Luke to the dark side.

Rome total war: This one depends but I'm always an A-hole in this game. I conquer cities and exterminate the populace to show them who is in charge. If someone offers me peace. I accept it if they give me a city. And then I just keep on attacking them. Yea, I guess in that game I am the evil character.

Command and conquer tiberian sun: NOD campaign. Those guys are impossible to defend.

 

[Jazoni89]

Baten Kaitos, and this is a good one...

Spoiler

You don't know that you are playing as a bad guy, until the end of the first disc, when one of the greatest plot twists in videogame history is shown to you. The character (Kalas) who you play as does come around to become a good guy however (after a confrontation battle with his friends) in the second disc, and agree's to stop the bad guys.