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

[Infernai]

What about Drakengard? Ok, so you start off as a guy who's fighting against an evil empire in a battle to save his sister? Ok, yeah, i can get behind that...decent motivation and all tha- Wait, why are you murdering child soldiers? ....Wait, you seem to be a little bit TOO into this whole 'killing soldiers' thing. Hold on, did you just bring a Child murdering Cannibal into the Party!?

In Drakengards Defense though, morality was so fucked up in that game that it was literally a battle of: Evil vs Evil vs EVEN WORSE.

 

[Fiz_The_Toaster]

As mentioned the first Terran campaign in Starcraft. You think you're freeing the sector from the corrupt Confederacy just to hand it over to Mengsk, who turns out to be a total space-prick, and is just as bad. You and Raynor quit when you find this out, but the damage is already done.

Amnesia: The Dark Descent? There's a reason you wiped your memory...okay, it was not a big reveal at the end, was easy to see it pretty soon, but...it's not presented as "villain protagonist" from the start.

In the same vein, Amnesia: Justine where you are the villain, but you wiped your memory just for giggles and as an experiment.

The reveal was huge and shocked me because you are lead to hate Justine, and SURPRISE!!

Ya know, I haven't gotten around to playing Justine yet, but thanks for the spoiler. I'm sure the game will be just as enjoyable now that I know the end. This game isn't all that old. Spoiler tags: They're there for a reason.

In my defense, I didn't feel the need to since the thread title did hint at how games end, so my bad. Didn't mean to ruin the ending for ya.

 

[Exius Xavarus]

The original Golden Sun... if you look at it in a reeeally obscure way. Your party tries throughout the whole game to stop the Elemental Lighthouses from being lit. Then you find out in the second game that they have to be lit otherwise the world will die an inevitable death. So in the second game the other party goes around lighting them all and it all ends fairly well, after you almost kill the world by STOPPING this from happening in the first game. Apart from the power-hungry dude gaining the power of Alchemy at the end and all, but ehh, you can't have everything.

The lighthouses in Golden Sun are kind of a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation, if you will. I could go into larger elaboration, but that would probably derail my entire comment, and possibly part of the thread. x,x

Saints Row would be my contribution. The Third Street Saints were founded as a solution to the gang wars. For all intents and purposes, you're being portrayed the good guys, taking up a noble cause as the solution to gang wars and stopping them. But in reality, all you're actually doing is the exact same thing every other gang is doing: Murder the other gangs and dominate Stilwater.

Tales of Symphonia can also be looked at in a similar way. Colette's journey of world regeneration would not only save the world of Sylvarant from total destruction, but damn Tethe'alla to fall down that road until Tethe'alla's Chosen of Mana performs the same process. And thus both worlds damn one another to ensure their own survival and prosperity, so the Chosen can be looked upon both as a savior and a harbinger of death. Of course, they find a way to save both worlds later, but that is neither here nor there. You get the gist of it.

 

[Nuuu]

Heavy Rain:

Spoiler

One of the characters you play as is Scott Shelby, a man you later find out to be PRETENDING to be a unofficial detective on the case of the murders, and he turns out to be the Origami Killer all along, the kills he did during the story were either him in disguise or cleverly cut out with what your partner was doing at that time.

other than that, not any i can think of at the moment.

 

[TheMann]

In my defense, I didn't feel the need to since the thread title did hint at how games end, so my bad. Didn't mean to ruin the ending for ya.

Eh, fair enough. That's a valid point. I'm actually not that butt-hurt; it was free DLC anyway. Now, on the other hand, if anyone ruins the end of Bastion, or the new-to-PC, Alan Wake for me, I will reach through the internet and employ my Fist of Doom. Don't make me get out the fist. (Besides, Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs looks to be awesome.)

 

[Fiz_The_Toaster]

In my defense, I didn't feel the need to since the thread title did hint at how games end, so my bad. Didn't mean to ruin the ending for ya.

Eh, fair enough. That's a valid point. I'm actually not that butt-hurt; it was free DLC anyway. Now, on the other hand, if anyone ruins the end of Bastion, or the new-to-PC, Alan Wake for me, I will reach through the internet and employ my Fist of Doom. Don't make me get out the fist. (Besides, Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs looks to be awesome.)

Yeah I'd be super pissed if anyone ruins Bastion for me, I haven't played it yet and I've been avoiding threads about that game like the plaque. Ditto about that new Amnesia game, I can't wait to be scared and have sleepless nights!

 

[salinv]

Hmm, I could see Dead Space on that list almost. I never fully played the sequel, but since:

A) You enter the scene in denial of what happened to your girlfriend
B) You aren't exactly a sane person during the entire game
C) You effectively have no face or personality until the end of the game (he can't see himself trapped on USG Ishimura fighting for his life against zombie-analogues)

Spoiler: and

D) The game ends by revealing that Isaac's girlfriend committed suicide, and by playing the "you went off the deep-end a long time ago, you've just been enjoying the cuckoo's nest" card, effectively questioning everything you've done up to returning the marker at the end,

I half expected Isaac to wake up in an asylum after single-handedly killing the entire crew of the planet-cracker USG Ishimura and the military USM Valor in a crazed rage. Perhaps the necromorphs were just a side effect of his mind snapping.

edit:

Spoiler

Apparently, I wasn't that far off, seeing how the beginning of Dead Space 2 starts Isaac running for his life trying to escape such an asylum. Maybe it ends with Isaac killing off everyone living in the Sprawl while escaping, and the necromorphs are just a figment of his mind giving him a reason to jump ship.

 

[Kriptonite]

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

Damn... ninja'd..

Ah well, he's right. Doesn't stop it from being one of my all time favourite games. Ever.

It's just...really good.

 

[zerobudgetgamer]

Actually, the Legacy of Kain/Soul Reaver Series pull this off pretty well.

The first game, Blood Omen, has you, Kain, as a newly-revived Vampire trying to find your killer. Through a series of events, you go back in time to kill a Tyrannical Dictator, but when you return to the present, you discover that killing him when you did, before he turned tyrannical, caused people to develop an irrational hatred towards Vampires, which led to their wholesale slaughter. At the end of the game, you can choose to sacrifice yourself to bring balance/peace to the world, or stay alive and be an immortal vampire and basically ruler of the world.

The Soul Reaver series plays as if the latter option was chosen in Blood Omen, and features Raziel, one of Kain's vampire subordinates cast into damnation for rather conceited reasons, as he walks the path of redemption. It's only until somewhere through the second game or so that you realize that you're a pawn in all of this, trying to kill Kain for all the wrong reasons, and Kain is actually NOT the real bad guy.

I find the story's twists and turns throughout all four games to be quite enjoyable, and the world it crafts to be quite rich with lore, and one I would dearly love to explore again.

 

[ExileNZ]

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

OR you might also be the guy she gets back together with. It's not terribly clear at the end (by which I mean the epilogue tomes, and not the much more straight-forward "Ohhhhhhhh" moment).

 

[Zipa]

Knights of the old republic one , you are well everyone should know by now

 

[ExileNZ]

The Bard's Tale (2005) you actually are helping the bad guys, and at the end, you get to choose if you want to be good, bad, or not give a fuck and walk straight out. Good game, funny as hell.

Shame they never made a sequel to this game. But I doubt the sequel would have been as good/funny as the first.

Bard's tale was a reboot/sequel anyway. The original was much, much older.

 

[ExileNZ]

Well, it seems not many people are too keen to read anything passed the title. Because if they were, they'd realize they weren't supposed to name ANY game where you are the villain. Just the ones that are presented as good, and in hindsight are HORRIBLE people.

I'd have to say Heather Mason from Silent Hill 3. Even after the possibility that the monsters you've been killing are actually just random people she's murdering, does that stop her? No.

In all fairness, it's a Silent Hill game - in most cases, if you're killing stuff instead of running away, you're doing it wrong.

 

[Miyam2]

Haze, of course. That's pretty much follows the exact formula.

 

[Ninjafire72]

Soooo many people missed the point of this thread... It's about protagonist fridge-logic in games people, not the game's story where it turns out you're the villain.

OT: Fallout 3 or NV, where you start to think up tragic back-stories for the poor and sickly drug addict you just gunned down in cold blood.

 

[Zyxx]

Any Warhammer: 40K game. You're a monster no matter what race you choose.

Prey: Your actions will prevent the seeding of life on countless worlds.

A good number of JRPGs fall into this category:

The second Tales of Symphonia was already mentioned, but the first falls into this category too.

Spoiler: What do you mean Spoiler? Go play the game already!

A single man has established a pretty amazing system for preserving the dwindling mana of his world, and your little band of so-called "heroes" wants to disrupt this fragile balance because they can't accept the sacrifice of one or two people every few centuries.

Personas 3 and 4

Spoiler

each threaten an apocalypse brought about by the will of humanity. If everyone (or very nearly), on some level, wishes for the end of all things, can it really be right to stop it?

Really, just about any Shin Megami Tensei game.

Spoiler: In most of them, you make this choice in some form.

Which is worse: a world overrun with demons, where only the strong survive, or a world managed by the angels, without individuality or passion? Or do you leave the world in the hands of humans, who are capable of far worse things than any demon could manage? You're a villain to someone, no matter what you choose.

 

[ExileNZ]

Okay, so I've made a few comments to other people's posts, but I've yet to really add my own.

So: Earth 2140 (as evidenced by both the intro and the plot of Earth 2150).

The intro sequence shows 3 minutes of glorified massacre on both sides, culminating in data-theft and the self-destruction of a base. This is actually directly tied to the start of both campaigns.

You play as either Not-The-USA or Not-The-USSR, sending out either terminators or conscripts to win a bitter war for supremacy to decide who gets to milk the Earth for its fading resources.

This isn't like Total Annihilation, where it all starts over a difference in ideology. War breaks out simply because both sides have run out of space to pilfer resources from and they want more - none of which will be evenly distributed, since Not-The-USSR is a Stalin-esque dictatorship and Not-The-USA uses robots while the rich sit quite literally fat and happy in their underground cities, consuming like good little sheep.

Both victories are essentially the same: Congratulations, you've broken the back of the other army and won the war! Now you can pick off the stragglers at your leisure...

Which brings us to the mission packs!

The first one is just 40 more missions (you read that right, it's game-sized) of wiping out pockets of resistance with a couple of new units, but the second one introduces super-weapons. And to memory, you already had nukes by the end of the first one, so now you get super super weapons!

The resulting clash of which ruptures tectonic plates and knocks the Earth out of its stable orbit around the sun.

Cue Earth 2150: The Earth is doomed, so mine the crap out of it and build an escape ship!

Seriously, that's the basic plot of 2150. Neat game though, especially for anyone who played Dune 2. Remember wishing you could use your carry-alls to pick up tanks and drop them on each other? Well, now you can...

Also, I saw someone else refer to Warzone 2100. Earth 2150 is arguably a copy (or more flatteringly, an "evolution") of Warzone, and not just the build-your-own-tanks mechanic - the backstory of Not-The-USSR holds some startling similarities to the beginning of Warzone as well (except that it starts in nuke-winter-Russia instead of nuke-winter-USA).

 

[TerribleAssassin]

World at War.

How will General von Reich be able to feed his 3 children now that his head has been re-purposed as a fatally wounded drinks holder?

 

[Scarim Coral]

Command and Conquer? I mean at least Kane wanted to save the Earth and actually do something about it unlike EDI who only interests is stopping him but not looking at the big picture (how to stop Tiberian).

 

[sb666]

I am going to say the Uncharted series seeing as Nathan Drake has almost killed as many people as Stalin.