I need an example of a badly written antagonist...

[Sir Broccoli]

Lucien from Fable 2. He could easily have gotten away with his plan if he stopped acting like a dick.

 

[eggmiester]

Sephiroth.

And cue Flame War.

not really dude. what always interested me about sephiroth was the fact that he WAS a good guy- and then he found out about his mam and went nuts.he's interesting because he's a dude who is practically unstoppable physically, but so fragile mentally.he's a well written villian because it actually seems like its impossible to beat him.he's a good villian because EVERY SINGLE TIME he appeared, i thought to myself OH SHIT.

maybe not the most original villian- but a good one nevertheless.

He was well written? How? Just because he was powerful and well respected and went crazy because he found out he was a experiment? If that is the case what about Kefka? He had more or less the same back story (Great rise to the top but went crazy due to a crazy experiment to power up the soldiers, which caused a mental break down which lead said person to destroy the world). Well I agree sephi isn't "bad" he is still a poorly done, I mean there isn't a really good written villain from the Final Fantasy games. Garland wants to live forever, Empoirer wanted power, CoD wanted to return the world to the darkness/Xian wanted revenge for getting the gift of mortal from master Noah, Zeromas wanted to wipe human life on earth for his people on the moon, Exdeath wants to return the world to the void, Kefka wants to destroy happiness and hope from peoples, Sephiroth wants to destroy the world for his "mother", Ultimicia wants to compress time to live for ever (I think I really don't remember), and I don't remember the rest. The FF villains aren't written well at all.

i agree with ya that there isn't any original villain's in the final fantasy games- definitely not. but i think that they are, more often than not, good, well written villains. because they're almost panic-inducing. video game villains, in my opinion, have to be different than tv or film villains.it helps if they're well written, with realistic motives. but i always thought sephiroth, and kefka, and kuja, for example, were good because every time they appeared after they're initial appearance, i thought myself "oh crap, what're they gonna do know? they can't make it worse... can they?" and they do. my god they do.

i think the final fantasy villains are good- they have that epic, almost unreal quality that fantasy games require for villains. look at sauron, from lord of the rings, or voldemort from harry potter. what's they're motivation for what hey do?

world domination. and yet, no one considers them bad villains, do they? thats because everyone in their universes treat them with a respect and fear that makes them seem like impossible obstacles to overcome.and in those books, and in regards to every final fantasy vilain, they're defeated and overcome. you went beyond the impossible and won. and it's a great felling, right?

ya wouldn't get that feeling if they weren't well written, if the villains didn't seem so powerful.and that's why i think final fantasy villains are good villains.not because of their motivation- but more because they seem almost terrifyingly powerful, and because you feel that fear everyone else feels when they see them. that, in my opinion, is a good villain.

bit of a spiel, innit? sorry. hope it gives ya somethin' to talk about.

 

[zelda2fanboy]

Really? I thought the antagonists in most of Stephen King's novels are the best written out of most.

Also, I don't think you have read The Stand since you clearly don't understand the motivations behind the "nerd" - Harold Lauder - at all. If you did, you should maybe go and read it, and not scan over it like you did last time.

His antagonists are sadistic, and maybe sometimes even over the top. But they are morphed that way, they weren't made that way. There are also sadistic people in this world, so it's not hard to believe some of the things they do as well.

Sorry, I probably should have just limited it to the movies. In the TV movie of The Stand (which I have seen recently), Harold is pretty goddamn pathetic, annoying, and just "there." The only Stephen King book I've read all the way through (not counting a few short stories) was Cell and that kicked ass.

 

[Orcus The Ultimate]

(Please disregard if this ends up as a double post. My internet's acting up and it looks like my first attempt at posting this did work. Thanks for understanding)
Well, after my original example was destroyed in a different post, I now need a poorly written antagonist. I need someone whose motives come down to "Just cause" or something like that. Someone who acts without reason. This can be from movies or books.

The Enclave from Fallout 3. They make no sense what so ever.

I actually liked the enclave, I thought they were pretty awesome, typical capitalist attitude gone wrong.

So my list so far is:

Sephiroth for being awesome as a character, but having a pretty terrible motive :/
Kratos for taking out his rage all everything that exists because of his own mistakes

Now I'm adding Ultimicia for coming out of nowhere with some lame reasoning, Seymour because he was pretty annoying for no good reason and most if not all evil final bosses at the end of fighting games ¬_¬

Except they were de-humanized in Fallout 3. The Fallout 2 soldiers had personality, where in Fallout 3 they are robotic, and seem to be made on a conveyor belt before they die. In Fallout 2 their plan actually made sense, but in Fallout 3 it just random.

How the hell can Fallout 3 Enclave ever beat the sergeant?


In fact, how can they ever beat this?

(Please disregard if this ends up as a double post. My internet's acting up and it looks like my first attempt at posting this did work. Thanks for understanding)
Well, after my original example was destroyed in a different post, I now need a poorly written antagonist. I need someone whose motives come down to "Just cause" or something like that. Someone who acts without reason. This can be from movies or books.

The Enclave from Fallout 3. They make no sense what so ever.

what fallout games have you played?

Fallout 1-3, tactics, and New vegas. The enclave was on the oil rig, and all was killed when modified FEV was released into the vents causing explosive death before the reactor exploded. Nevarro was just a refuel point, not a major base. In fallout 3 they have unlimited amounts of soldiers, when the Enclave are just a shell now. Hell, the Enclave numbers that died on the Oil Rig numbered in the thousands. It follows Modern Warfare logic, not Fallout logic.

a shell in the western part of the country, not in the mainland i guess... plus it doesn't mean they don't have other vaults for recruits.

They don't use vaults for recruitment, they use them for experiments for FEV or for data on their now defunct plan for the moon base. Hell, Fallout 3 states Nevarro moved east but Nevarro is only about 10-20 people and one vertibird. Not an army. Hell, FEV research was ONLY done at Mariposa military base by order of the United States on military prisoners in secret. Mariposa however is completely destroyed and its FEV contaminated. FEV is gone. There wont be any new FEV for a while. West Tek, the guys who made it, shipped all data of FEV to the base and even then the West Tek facility is completely gone as well.

that's where you realise how much Bethesda fucked up the franchise.