Jimquisition: To Play The Villain

[Carpenter]

Snip

He wasn't complaining about GTA 5. He says several times he likes playing the villain.

Watch the video before whining about it perhaps.

He said he hates the characters but that's what makes playing it all the more compelling. Maybe don't cast yourself as the authority on who is allowed to play which games.

Nooooo...

what he said was these people were villains that he not only didn't like, but didn't like what they were doing. Kane and Lynch for example. Didn't like the concept of shooting up innocents for the sake of it. However, by definition, playing the game requires you to participate in the story and that action. A subtle form culpability, by the way. Not in the Kane murdered someone therefore you are a murderer way, but in the idea that by buying the game and playing it, you can't distance yourself from saying you support it. Saying you don't like what the characters are doing WHILE doing it sounds weak.
"Oh I'm sorry, the game made me shoot you. If I had a choice, I wouldn't but its the plot so oh well."

That's my point. If you find the characters so repugnant that the very idea of them winning is sickening but then you play through the game, which requires you leading the characters to victory...well guess who doesn't get to claim neutrality?

Hint: You.

Kid, it's a game. He says he likes playing characters that do things he would never do IN REAL LIFE because he can do it in a video game.

Try to think about this and understand this, you are saying he is somehow wrong for paying for games with "bad things" but why? The characters are not real, he is not supporting murder or torture by paying money for the games featuring these things.

I noticed you "snipped" your comment out, the comment where you said nothing like you are claiming now but instead complained that Jim says he doesn't like games where you play bad guys.

I am guessing you watched the video since posting that and realized you jumped the gun but instead of admitting your mistake you are pretending you never said that to begin with, problem is anyone that wants to can still go look at your comment.

 

[Carpenter]

I would say I like playing as a Villain, but from Gregs review the protagonists just sounded lazily written.

I like it when a had guy and villian has just cause, even if it comes down to some mental disorder. What makes a bad guy even better is playing witness to their downfall, Capt Walker from Spec Ops and Walter White from Breaking Bad are two such great cases.
I felt the protagonist from Saints Row was cartoony, and I will lament that I found a lack in motive to be something I found lacking in the character. I eventually came to the conclusion that the character was driven by a psychological need to be top dog, in that the character wasn't trully content until they had control. Over time however the protagonist grew tired of their lacking influence, hence the need to rise from gang boss, to celebrity, to the president. Until their wouldn't be anybody who could oppose their influence.

But with that said I'm mostly not interested in GTAV because I've already played Saints Row. I don't care how technically profienct it is, just sounds sort of boring, especially in contrast to what can be in done in SR.

I'll leave it at; a faultless hero is as boring as the cartoonish villian. The best Villain is the kind that sees himself as the hero, but a dick just being a dick, eh.

Yes from Tito's review they do sound lazily written, but they are far from it.

Look I love people having a wide spectrum of opinions but most of the things listed in his review are not matters of opinion but demonstrably false, like him claiming the "Life Invader" mission had no context or explanation, that's a flat out lie. Now I can assume that maybe tito accidentally skipped a few cutscenes or something but even that is just unprofessional to base your entire review off of.

He says the characters have no real motivation, again that's demonstrably false, each character has their own motivations. You may not agree with Trevor's motivations or call it "illogical" but he's a meth head with psychological problems, him having a perfectly logical mindset would be pretty dumb and irresponsible considering you really shouldn't try to glamorize meth use.


EDIT: I love that you say you want deep character motivation and hate "lazily written" protagonists but then say you love the saints row series. The protagonists motivations in that series always boil down to "I want to take over the city" and "I have been wronged, let's kill person and take over the city"

How deep and riveting.

 

[Carpenter]

I'll be honest my only issue with playing the villain is the premise of the game. GTA is seen heavily as a sandbox, a "do as you wish" style of game. In that respect it seems silly that it forces you to play as villainous characters. Skyrim was also a sandbox but never forced you to do well...anything really besides get passed the tutorial.

GTA however forces you play as some questionable characters and won't let you skip the cruel elements, such as the torture scene. Either focus more on the story and characters or be a true sandbox and let us at least have the option of not being a dick and I'll be happy with it.

Every GTA game had you playing a criminal psychopath.

It doesn't "force you to be the villain" in fact this is the one GTA game where you can really just roam around helping people that are being mugged or attacked.

In other GTA games the closest thing you could do to being the good guy is getting in a cop car and murdering people that the police deem ok to murder.

 

[Syzygy23]

3. Even if it were, Yahtzee would have to give it an amazing, orgasm-inducing review to convince me to buy it at release price.
4. It's the annoyingly hyped up game of the day no one will care about in a few weeks. Anyone remember Tomb Raider or Bioshock Infinite? Yeah, didn't think so.

Wooooooah nelly! I don't know about you but I find it hard to take every single Yahtzee opinion (or the opinion of any critic for that matter) as gospel and base ALL of my purchasing decisions around him. I think I was a bit soured by his outright dismissal of The Last of Us and complete misunderstanding of what it was all about.

As for BInfinite, that's still considered by a hell of a lot of people to be one of the best games this year and, indeed, this generation. I for one still care about it, and I'll almost definitely still care about GTAV for a long time coming.

It was a ladder carrying simulator where the one NPC you're supposed to protect doesn't need you because she is invincible and undetectable. Also the story was just a retread of the themes from The Walking Dead, and pretty much every piece of zombie media ever made. "Man is the REAL Monster", yeah, we get it, we've heard it so many damn times already. It was a boring game that offers nothing new or interesting.

Still, you're spot on about taking the talking heads of the internet as the final word in what one should buy.

 

[endplanets]

Wait, who would play a GTA game and be surprised that the main character(s) are evil. I remember Mr. Sterling did a thing on bias back in the day (FF13), but shouldn't someone who wasn't biased to not like GTA not have been put on the review for it?
On that note: I am always surprised when people say some of the GTA protagonists are likable. As Darth Vader esc villains they are likable, but as actual moral people hell no. While playing through the first 8 hours of GTA 4 I kept getting this feeling that the game wanted Nico to be a good guy. Which seems pointless given how he had viciously murdered dozens of cops and civvies and that's not counting random chaos. Unless Nico stops the Martians from invading he is a horrible evil person in my book and if the game ended with him being given the Hostel treatment I would feel he had it coming.

 

[hazydawn]

There he goes again bragging about the porn he gets for free :/

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

Well if your into regular porn chances are you like hentai and if you like that it isnt a great step to furry
Maybe they just wished him to experience new things he may not know that they exist!

 

[TallanKhan]

I very much agree with Jim's stance on this. That is not to say that I very much enjoyed GTAV's characters, but that had really nothing to do with their morallity.

I didn't really like playing as any of the chatacters in GTAV because I didn't really connect with any of them. They were all pretty scummy people, and by and large I enjoy playing that kind of character, but to me it felt like they were all scum, just, you know, because. They do unpleasant things because it fits the tone the developers wanted rather than their actions flowing as a natural extension of their personality and I wasn't that invested in it.

I found playing as the protagonist in Saints Row 2 compelling, primarily because my character did terrible things, but I was fully invested every step of the way. When he killed Jessica, I understood and shared that desire to take that revenge. Rather than have the protagonist kill someone in a messed up way just because it was a convenient way to reinforce that the character is fundamentally unpleasant, it instead chose to give you an insight into the characters personality. We got a glimpse of how the protagonist reacted to being wronged, the lengths he went to in order to achieve his revenge demonstrated how little he valued life, and through this I understood a little of what made him tick and was able to connect with his motivations.

Don't get me wrong, I thourally enjoyed GTAV and will doubtlessly have hours more fun with the game, but none of the moments in GTAV, even the much discussed torture scene (which as I have said to at least a dozen colleagues who have made SAW comparisions - without playing the game -, is not as bad as it has been made out to be), have had the same level of impact on me that murdering Jessica or burying Shogo Akuji in SR2 had. Why? Because none of my character's actions in GTAV resonated with me, and thats fine, just being evil for the sake of it is fun, but it isn't deep.

 

[TheMadDoctorsCat]

I'm not into villains but I think that's largely because I have had some fairly villainous things done to me. Don't want to get into it. I certainly think it's a practice underdone in the virtual market, and would probably be a good experience for people to avoid doing in the real world if they could get it out in a game. I think it's just hard to write it in.

That being said, my favorite game may very well be fallout 3, if not one of the earlier fallouts, and you can be pretty villainous in that series.

See, that's why I DIDN'T like the main campaign of "Fallout 3" (and there wasn't much I didn't like about that game.) You can't kill your father, you can't kill Doctor Li (and boy oh boy does she deserve SOMETHING horrible done to her), you can't do anything except follow the predetermined story. In a sandbox game. Isn't the whole point of a sandbox game that you shouldn't be constrained any more than is necessary?

 

[Spud of Doom]

Good to see a different angle on the topic. I agree that it's not always preferable to play the "good guy" in games. Spec-Ops was the clear example in my head, but surely there are more. I just hope that people don't hear this and criticise the Escapist review. It's certainly still legitimate to diminish the review score for such a reason. After all, the review is nothing more than describing your personal response to a game.

 

[thewatergamer]

I don't personally enjoy the GTA series as I find alot of the stuff in it goes to far, but with that said I personally love to be the villian in some games, look at Payday 2, one of my favorite games, you are certainly not a hero in that game, you rob banks, murder cops and move drugs around, but I still find it super fun and fascinating, I really wish the games industry would actually try to move away from stereotyping and let us play some villians, outside of tongue-in-cheek "Your not really evil" parody games

 

[tyriless]

As a rule I always love the villains more then the heroes, regardless of whether you play as them or not. Villains are always so much more interesting. The only time playing a villain turned me off was with Kratos because I felt the game saw him as a hero or at least anti hero rather then the biggest villain around.

This rule often does apply to many movies and games. Except for Robocop, because Robocop is freaking awesome.

 

[Infernai]

Say Jim, question: What's your opinion on Drakengards main protagonist?

Cause seriously, Caim's a fucking psychopath.

 

[blackrave]

I have a theory- maybe it's Fantasywilemdefoe who is sending these gifts to Jim.

 

[blackrave]

As a rule I always love the villains more then the heroes, regardless of whether you play as them or not. Villains are always so much more interesting. The only time playing a villain turned me off was with Kratos because I felt the game saw him as a hero or at least anti hero rather then the biggest villain around.

This rule often does apply to many movies and games. Except for Robocop, because Robocop is freaking awesome.

I don't know- Bodicker (or whatever his name is spelled) was some badass psycho.

 

[evilneko]

I guess I really gotta play through Saints Row 2 again. I didn't really think a lot of the stuff Boss did was all that bad, considering the circumstances.

Or maybe I'm just an evil, evil little kitteh.

 

[martyrdrebel27]

Who are the weirdos sending Jim this stuff? You won't send a card to your Grandma on her birthday but you'll seen Jim Belladonnas fist and Furry porn? Uh, the world we live in! XD

weirder than anyone sending Jim anything is how easily you identified that rubber fist... not judging, but something just tells me you didn't have to google that.

 

[TheOrb]

I was always a fan of villains, when I was a child at a pantomime, I cheered whenever the villain entered the scene.
The villains are dynamic, they DO things, they do things which are wrong, and revel in it.

I want to be like that one day.

P.S. I feel I should apologise for the furry porn; but you seemed to be enjoying it. So it's fine, I guess.
Not my kind of thing, really; don't understand the "being used as a slut" turn-on.

 

[vgmaster831]

I like that comic, it's a good one. It's also available for free online if I'm not mistaken.

I will be playing GTA V as soon as it comes out. I don't really mind playing the villain as long as the character is good. I think it's a question of what's interesting, not what best fits your moral code.