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

[Treblaine]

I realised this and rolled with it:

Resident Evil 4, Leon is a foreigner who walks into apparently benign village with handgun already drawn

HAH, fucking priceless! I never even realized that.

Considering that, the opening sequence has a totally different meaning:


-Leon bursts into home with gun drawn: *speaks foreign gibberish*

-Villager thinks: (holy shit! Some american gangster has broken in! He's got a gun! Is he trying to kill me? Just be cool, no sudden movements and when he realises I'm just a poor humble farmer he'll leave in peace)

-Leon: *walks over, approaching from blind side*

-Villager: (OH HOLY SHIT! I'M GOING TO DIE! I can't bear to face him, I'll turn around the wrong way, see if he has any confederates)

-Leon: "Durka Durka America Speaky, Bush Apollo Creed, Star Wars Rambo... THIS GIRL yadda yadda"

-Villager: (oh sweet jesus, he's some sort of sex offender, he is looking for our young women to kidnap)
in spanish: "I don't understand your language you armed villain! Just leave this place, you are trespassing and threatening me... I... I have a right to defend myself in my own home!"

-Leon: *foreign derka, reaches inside coat again*

-Villager: "I'm sorry... you leave me no choice" (grabs axe that he'd innocently been using to chop wood)

-Leon: "Freeze! Drop the weapon"

-Villager: "Get out of my home you crazy gunman!"

BANG!

-Villager (outside): "oh my god! That weird armed foreigner just ran in there and shot Juan! JUAN! Don't worry! We'll capture your murderer and haul him to the local magistrate and give a fair trial! Jose, quickly run to the village and form a posse, this criminal shall not escape!"

5 days later, Leon is in straight jacket in padded cell.

Leon: "That's what I'm trying to tell you, they were all ZOMBIES! I did nothing wrong and they attacked me, I had no choice but to kill all of them... all 786 of the unarmed villagers, even the women... and steal their money and jewellery... and sell them to magic teleporting wizard in a purple cloak for more weapons. Don't you understand! I'm on a mission to save the President's Daughter from Satanists! I'm not crazy! Would a crazy man go on an investigative mission in Spain without any understanding of the local language nor a guide or interpreter! I think not... I speak perfect Spanish: ying tong ying tong yiddle eye pooo! AHH HA HA HA! Ashley Bush, gotta save her! Gotta save the world! Terrorists! Satanists! Zombies! I'm not the crazy one, you are!"

But can anyone else think for games that do this?

Not GTA, you KNOW you are the bad guy as in "I know I shouldn't kill cops, but ahh what the fuck". Games that cast you as the hero but really if you think about it, you are a bastard. The so called fridge-logic moments.

 

[Iwata]

Tomb Raider/Uncharted.

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

 

[Vegosiux]

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.

 

[Fiz_The_Toaster]

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!!

 

[The journey man]

Just Cause 2 (Well you might as well be seeing how much distruction and death you cause!)

and Shadow of The Colossus

 

[DoPo]

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.

 

[octafish]

Call of Duty 4. Price is a fucking War Criminal! Murdering prisoners should get him tried at the Hague. COD4 is bleak game, very bleak.

 

[JaceArveduin]

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.

 

[Hal10k]

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.

 

[Soviet Heavy]

Killzone. The fist pumping, gung ho ISA attacks Helghan following a failed attempt to retake territory the Helghast were forcefully annexed from because the ISA's overlords the UCN were paranoid about losing control of the colonies.

It also helps that despite their extreme tendencies, the Helghast are far more likeable and sympathetic than the ISA, even with genocidal maniacs like Stahl and Visari.

 

[triggrhappy94]

Anyway, I choose to believe that all of my characters were brought in on unusually aggressive jaywalking charges.

I always play as an Argonian and as an act of good role-playing, I always think I'm in jail due to racial profiling.

OT: Fifa. You're the villian unless you're playing as Manchester U. /straight-face. Nah, good team as far as I can tell as an American, though. I got into Man U playing Fifa and a friend of mine got really into Barcelona.

Minecraft. Deffinately Minecraft. It might not seem like it, but Minecraft is just GTA if you replace gangs with mobs, most weapons with swords, pickaxes, and axes, and all the other weapons are dynamite. Actually it's a lot more violent. GTA never let you replace the floor of an innocent villager's house, blow it up, then murderize any survivors with a pickaxe like you're audientioning for The Hills Have Eyes 3.

 

[FirstPersonWinner]

InFamous

In a very literal sense

 

[Ordinaryundone]

Final Fantasy Tactics Advance: Marche is, quite deliberately, trying to eradicate an entire world full of sentient beings, with their own lives and histories and everything. He's also going to ruin the lives of his friends and put his kid brother back into a wheelchair, just because Ivalice "Isn't real".

Farcry 2: You're trying to eliminate an arm's dealer accused of destabilizing an African country...by completely destabilizing said African country.

The Darkness 1 and 2: Jackie himself isn't THAT bad, and the guys you fight are typically worse. But every person you kill, every heart you consume, just leads to the Darkness becoming more and more powerful. Which is a bad thing. And though he is nominally "good", Jackie isn't exactly a saint either.

Catherine: The majority of the game is Vincent desperately waffling between two women while having a relationship with both. The game does force you to man up and decide by the end, but in the interim Vincent comes across as a real jerk.

 

[Richard Hannay]

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

 

[Vegosiux]

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.

In Morrowind, no idea what you did, yes. That would maybe make you a bad guy, I suppose. But not the bad guy.

Same for Oblivion. Then again, you bumped an apple off the table, picked it up to put it back up, and don't want to pay the fine? THEN PAY WITH YOUR BLOOD!

In Skyrim you were a prisoner only because you happened to be at the right place at the right time, the Imperials were after the rebels, and you were just passing by.

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

True, how have I forgotten this? That ending sequece is quite well done.

 

[Zeh Don]

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.

 

[Gottesstrafe]

Jack from Bioshock. Yes, you end up saving Dr. Tenenbaum and the little sister (or not), but before that you're a mafia-trained assassin bred to take down countless human lives in the process of accomplishing the singular mission of destroying one of the few sane people left in a fairly isolated landscape that poses no threat to the world at large.

Luigi from Luigi's Mansion. After being round up and trapped in a small box like a stamp collection by a mad scientist, the souls of countless people trying to make their peace with the world are finally freed by a chance of fate. Gathered by revolutionary freedom fighter King Boo, they proceed to build a mansion far away from the rest of humanity to act as a boarding house of sorts where they can rest until they're ready to pass on and let go of their earthly desires. Suddenly, a tall mustachioed stranger kicks open their front door, kidnaps them in a small cramped vacuum cleaner (women and children first I might add), rummages through their rooms and steals their belongings, then traps them in portraits and sells them to the same sick pervert they tried to escape from earlier as part of his new "collection".

Pacman from... Pacman. C'mon, giant guy running around eating stuff he finds off the streets? He then finds a "power pill", which grants him the ability to shrug off pain and eat the people around him? People that turn "blue" when he goes on his cannibalistic rampages, their only crime being trying to corner and detain him? It's f*cking PCP!

Spoiler: Drugs are bad for you, kids

Mario, just... Mario. Red guy who invades a sovereign nation and kills countless soldiers and civilians on the way, destroys infrastructure, and takes over "capitol buildings" all the while replacing their flags with his own Red star? A singular Red force aggressively expanding its sphere of influence further and further?

Spoiler: Sound familiar?

I always play as an Argonian and as an act of good role-playing, I always think I'm in jail due to racial profiling.

Imperials always tryin' to keep the scaly man down, brother.

 

[DioWallachia]

Eversion:
You are the reality warping Eldrich Abomination............or is it?

Braid:
Stalker with delusions of being in an "heroic" quest to save "your" princess

Blood:
I mean, how can this man who laughs like a mad man when he kill tons of zombies and sings "the best things in life are free" could EVER be a bad guy??

Mindjack:
YOU the player are the evil, the character you are possessing however doesn't have a clue of what you did with his body. Too bad the game sucks too hard to understand that

 

[ResonanceSD]

*looks around*

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

KOTOR! You're REVAN!

 

[Artorius]

Portal series comes to mind,
and Postal series also.
and Prototype, please the dude commits mass genocide.