Jimquisition: To Play The Villain

[K12]

There are plenty of different ways to have a protagonist who isn't the unequivocal good guy (i.e. his moral failings are definitely in excess of the players) and it's weird how few genuine villain protagonists there are compared to how often it seems to be advertised as part of the game.

I am slightly sick of the badass characters who "just happen" to do good whilst always saying that they are motivated by more selfish reasons. This is a "have your cake and eat it" situation, allowing the character to have the things we like in villains and heroes.

It's difficult to make a good game where we don't in some way want the protagonist to succeed, because by playing it we are helping them do so. With almost villains like Captain Walker (Spec Ops: The Line) a lot of the most horrible stuff you do unwittingly and there's the vague hope that you may get redemption by playing on

It's worth doing but

I think the genuinely good guy protagonist (who isn't bitingly sarcastic/cynical or an alcoholic or have dark secrets/ history) who saves people because he actually wants to help is a threatened protagonist type too. It's always a dark cynical badass who "ain't in it for your revolution" just the money and then ends up winning the war on his own anyway.

 

[hermes]

I tend to dislike playing as a villain. Even in game were the options are do-gooder or douchebag, I tend to gravitate over the "good" choice (like Mass Effect or Infamous). I think most game are not really well balanced to be played both ways: if I am a bad person, NPC will generally give me less quests and less rewards.

The ones I have a problem with are games were I play as the villain but the game insists on calling me a hero. For example, by the mid point of God of War 3, I was actively rooting against Kratos. I knew I couldn't let the enemies kill him or it was a game over, but I ended up hating the protagonist a lot more than their nemesis, and the game trying to hammer down the point I was in a righteous fight really felt unearned. By the time he tries to redeem himself through Pandora (after killing her father and fucking her stepmother), I knew that I had to just stop thinking of him as a character and more like an avatar that moved through the script. GTA 4 had a similar problem to me, since the troubled, nihilistic portrait of Niko Belic had little to do with the way the game expected me to experience it.

 

[Vale]

I love Niko to bits. Even though his name is as unsubtle as it gets. "Niko" sounds Eastern European, but is not an actual Serbian name.

Niko would be an acceptable shorthand for Nikola - a a popular serbian name.
You know - same as that very little known Serb, Nikola Tesla.

It comes from "Nikovo", Russian (Niko is a Serbian, mind) for "Nobody".

Not entirely correct. "Noone" in Russian would be "nikto" (никт&#1086. "Nikovo" is Genitive from "nikto".

Figures.

 

[Elijah Newton]

huh... alright, I guess... some people juggle geese.

My hand to God. Baby geese - goslings! They were juggled.

[quote="ImBigBob" post="6.829099.20191146"I liked the previous GTA games, but I'll be skipping GTAV, especially now that I've played games like Just Cause 2 and Saints Row the Third, where I get to cause all the mayhem I want without feeling bad about it.[/quote]

In no way is this a criticism of the poster's choice to skip GTA V, but this sentiment pinpoints why I've felt GTA V has the right approach to its violence. If a game's design going for adult violence, if they want a mature take on it... then shouldn't it be, to varying degrees, repugnant? Is this not why in real life we are taught to recoil from violence?

I read Greg's article, respect his opinion and - full disclosure - I have not played GTA V yet myself. His criticism of the torture scene seemed to be largely due to the game not letting the player look away. GTA games have always been cinematic in nature, by which I mean they pay a great deal of attention to where they point a camera and why. I can't help but think, given the game's tendancy towards social satire, that they way they presented this was in some way a reaction to popular culture's tendancy to cut away from torture scenes. To allow audiences to look away from acts which are horrific but all too often accepted both in fiction (Jack Bauer in 24) and real life.

Just my two cents.

 

[MB202]

When I saw the age verification thing, I thought "Oh God, what has Jim done this time?!" Oh, so he reads gay furry pornography, that's what the age verification is. Well at least he didn't show us the pictures, but Jesus... As for the subject matter itself, well, I was talking with a friend of mine, how there apparently is a "controversy" around this new Grand Theft Auto game, which didn't register with me because I'm not a GTA fan, nor do I think there's anything really shocking or surprising about the idea of controversy in a game that's mean to be controversial. I do agree, though, villains are fascinating and I typically like them more then the heroes. Doesn't mean I'll enjoy playing as them, though really, it depends on what the villains do...

 

[omnifarious]

OK I get why people send him gay porn but why furry porn?

Because it was gay furry porn.

 

[simon oeyen]

I'm sorry to hear that you have to deal with that kind of "funny" fanmail, Jim... As always a great episode, looking forward to the new one each week. Thank God for you!

 

[XMark]

I gotta say, I've been really enjoying the narrative of GTA 5 so far (about 35% completion). Like Jim said, Niko Bellic kind of came off as hypocritical in GTA 4, but the characters of GTA 5 are refreshingly unapologetic about their evil actions, and Michael in particular tries to confront the reasons for his psychopathic outbreaks with his therapist. I loved the line in one of his therapy sessions "I probably killed someone on the way here", kind of a wink to the player

 

[PuppetMaster]

Totally fricken awesome! The 1st thing I did with Trevor was give him Lynch's skullet haircut, after the "Flying on soda" scene I decided Mike was Kane.
Dead Men is one of my favorite games if only the way the player learns about the "evil" of the charectors throught conversations and their own actions.

No spoilers but Kane is your typical "F*&% you! they got ma FAMILY!" anti-hero and Lynch is the women and children butcherer recruited to help. by the end I wanted to hug Lynch and throw my hat in with the countless mobsters after Kane.
Dog days was shit though

 

[dochmbi]

I googled that comic and read some of it, it's actually quite hot! I love that sort of lavish, indulging, joyful, powerful celebration of sexuality!

 

[Steve the Pocket]

No, the only one who epically missed the point of Rockstar's franchise is you. The point is that it's their franchise, and if they want to make protagonists that players are meant to hate, then they can fucking do that because it's their franchise. So why don't you tone your arrogance down and stop trying to tell the developers of the franchise what the point of their franchise is? It is theirs, not yours, they can do with it as they please and you have no authority in the matter.

Except that games are an interactive medium, and the player's input is as much a part of the whole as what the developers produced. If people are playing it for a completely different reason than to further the developers' side of the narrative, then that side is no longer an integral part of the product. If that dissonance itself were the point, like in say Spec Ops: the Line, then that would be another matter.

Besides, in any medium, it is the audience's experience, not the author's intent, that matters. An "artist" can throw paint onto a canvas and say it's a statement about human suffering, but if nobody else sees it that way, then the artist has at best failed to convey his point and at worst is just talking out of his ass. Otherwise nobody would ever be qualified to say whether a piece of media is good or bad, because if the creator says it's good then it must be! That's extreme example, but do you see where I'm coming from here?

 

[EstrogenicMuscle]

It's okay that other people like that sort of thing. Personally, I don't.
And just as there might not be too many true 'villain hero' characters in games, there's not that many good heartwarming stories, either.

Personally I really distaste those sort of games and don't really enjoy them. I never have. I never really liked the Grand Theft Auto series and haven't been looking forward to Grand Theft Auto V. And I've also never been interested in the Saints Row series. In fact I find the whole Saints Row franchise gross and don't want to go anywhere near it. Despite any apparent diversity. It's a nice gesture that Saints Row is diverse as people claim it is. But that's the only nice thing I can say about it. It's gross and I don't want to have anything to do with it.

May I just say "yuck" yet again to get that out of my system? It especially disturbs me that it seems like they try to make the immorality of characters in games like Saints Row "cool".

In the "heroic power fantasy" that you speak of, it isn't so much the morals I have a problem with so much as the power fantasy itself. In fact, like you've mentioned, the power fantasy in games often only takes away from the heroism in many games. Creating dissonance. They could make a moral game with a moral protagonist, but instead, out of need to make a power fantasy, they cheapen the morality of the hero in order to make them powerful or "badass".

Heartwarming stories make me feel comfortable. And maybe while it is good to be challenged in some way. It feels deeply satisfying to read a heartwarming tale. And how many games today are truly heartwarming? I think I've seen enough shallow power fantasies from both moral and immoral characters. I would like to see something for once that plays on empathy properly and isn't an excuse to be a badass.

That's the real problem. It isn't that too many characters are heroes. It's that morality and empathy are just a tagline excuse to be a badass. To make the player feel strong. To give the player a sense of dominance. Special, and more important and more worthy than other people. Many of these games may be supposedly about heroes, but the majority of the gameplay tells a different story. Which is to not only not be heroic, but to be not empathetic at all.

For all that people attempt to justify and defend the use of the "damsel in distress" trope in games. I see very little empathy portrayed in video games though gameplay or narrative at all.

 

[Superior Mind]

Good points about Saints Row. I missed the brutality of being the bad guy after Saints Row 2. The reason the game worked so well wasn't just because it didn't take itself seriously, (which is what Volition caught on to which is why they turned the silliness up to 11,) it was the contrast. I mean okay, you have those silly time-wasted things and some humour in the main story. But you couple that with having the protagonist do some utterly brutal stuff that makes you feel uneasy. I mean the whole Brotherhood story arc: You blow up a dude's shit, burn half his face off, murder his girlfriend, cripple his best friend for information that you already know, and then wipe out the rest of his gang before corning him, stabbing him in the neck and finally killing him after blowing up his favourite toy. And all because he didn't give you enough of a cut from a deal he was letting you in on out of kindness! Then there's that brutal scene when you bury a kid alive while he pleads for you to kill him - a kid who is demonstrably over his head and clearly acting out just to try and get attention from his father. You're the psychopath among psychopaths, you were the Joker arriving in the criminal underworld, and that's what made it interesting.

You didn't get that contrast with Saints Row 3, (haven't played 4 yet.) It was just silliness. You were a cartoon, your enemies were cartoons, you we're all pretty much on the same levels of being 'bad'. The only thing resembling a bit of a shock was one of the twins getting her neck snapped - but by the established bad guy, making you the de facto good guy no matter how many prostitute assassins you killed. In all its desire to provide constant stimulation it became boring. Entertaining but just unsatisfying and empty.

Edit: Fully understand the opinions of people who don't like exploring things as admittedly foul as Saints Row by the way.

 

[Doclector]

Hey, I was eating.

Interesting points as usual. I agreed with Tito's review (if true, I haven't played the game myself yet) that it's offputting to have such realistic violence depicted as part of scripted sections of the game with no attempted justification of the character's actions. Harmful? No, but it might not be good storytelling, and storytelling's become incredibly important to GTA and even rockstar as a whole. This doesn't mean a character must be an anti hero or the lesser of two evils, only that there's a story behind how they got there, whether they were put in a corner or wanted revenge or even simply had a normal job and life for a while and one day decided that he wanted more, and decided to simply take it.

But Jim's got a point, perhaps true villainy doesn't have a motive or excuse or even explanation, it simply is, and being put in those shoes could be interesting. So maybe I will pick up GTAV at some point after all, just not whilst it's still full price.

As for other games with villainous protagonists, I haven't finished it yet, but the more I play sleeping dogs, the more I find myself agreeing with the stuffy police liason that Wei's going off the rails, and that's very interesting to and play as.

 

[sparkie1]

if you dont like playing the villain then why the fuck would you buy a game about shooting, robbing, and killing?
its very clear that in the trailer you will be playing as bad guys robbing banks and such
the fact that it was given a lower score for something you knew about going into it makes no sense
its like if i ordered a burger then gave the resturant a poor review because my burger had meat in it

 

[Habballah]

What can we possibly send him (that's legal) that tops that!? I don't even know.

You've broken me, Jim! Completely and utterly!

Too fucking funny.

Vore furry porn?
Come on this is the internet, ask me a hard question.

Back on topic it's always fun to hear about villains. It would be nice if we got a batman game we're we played one.

 

[RobfromtheGulag]

How many news shows would read western doujin to their audiences.

I won't be getting GTA due to hipster-ism mainly, but I hadn't ever thought of being forced to play the 'bad guy' before. I know Bioware or some other developer had gone on record being upset about how much work went into the 'bad' side of moral choice games while so few people ever took that route. I do suppose I'd prefer that to another Uncharted or MGS wherein we beat our chests for self satisfaction. I guess it'd be cliche at this point to point out that games where you're secretly the bad guy a-la Silent Hill 2 are nice as well. But then Yahtzee just finished mentioning that amnesia is an awfully tired trope in games these days.

A shame Overlord 2's controls were so wonky. I rage-quit after my seafaring vessel strayed out into the riptide one too many times.

 

[Last-Socratic]

Jim should review Super Columbine Massacre RPG for us.

 

[kklawm]

Personally just not that interested in playing a true villain, just because generally villains are completely unlikable and therefore boring. If I don't like the character, why am I playing the game? This is the problem I had with the Saints Row games, and such. The good guy is nice and the anti-hero is boring as hell, what I really like is games that move beyond ANY of these archetypes, to someone with understandable if questionable motivations that don't include being a badass and do include making you truly consider how good or bad that character is.

But I can't think of any games that do that, beyond ones with a little bit of roleplaying.