Most Effective Video Game Villains?

[D-Soul]

I gotta with Handsome Jack as well but my reason is this if you played BL1 he killed Pierce. Yeah she was a ***** but she more the "You made your bed, now sleep in it" kind and also that dude take being a D... to an literal art form, because of all the crap he pulled you kind of wish you can just skip to ending and just put more brass in him than a firing squad.

Sofia Lamb(Bioshock 2) I'm going with Yahtzee said about her. "Every time she's opens her mouth you want to jam a comically oversize strynge(don't know to spell that sorry) in her every time she speaks"

 

[Driekan]

Going to throw a guy in here who hasn't been mentioned yet and deserves to be. Sarevok, the original Big Bad for Baldur's Gate. His first appearance just freaked me right the hell out, and after that he kept giving me reasons to want to kill him. Not saying he's better than Irenicus, just gets disproportionately less love (Hate?) than he deserves these days.

 

[Phenomenis]

Kreia is not getting enough love right here. Played Kotor 2 like 10 times over recently, loved it every time. Straight up, Kreia is damn near the best game character of all time.

Another who ain't getting enough lovin' right now is Edgar Ross from RDR. Anybody else remember that awesome mustache and sheer ruthless efficiency. You morally grey heartless backstabbing bastard.

 

[Baldry]

Well if we're going for effective, Kefka. He blows up the world...Doesn't get much more worse then that and he was effective at it too.

 

[wolf thing]

kria from kotor 2, she evil but not a bad person so to speek, she cares about the exile and has arguble good motives. she is also vital to the plot and has intrestin motive which go beyond what we usually get in a star wars game.

 

[SajuukKhar]

I like Dr. Breen from Half-Life 2, mostly because he was a villain that wasn't so stereotypical, and his non steriotypicalness made me want to beat his ass even more.

I really WANTED to get to the end to meet this guy, one of few video game villains I didn't just go, "ehh I would kill him the first second I see him just to get him out of the way."

 

[aegix drakan_v1legacy]

Most effective? I got two master manipulators here:

Spoiler: SPOILERS FOR DEUS EX 1

Bob Page from Deus Ex 1.

He has the world dancing to his tune, armies and all. Anyone who disagrees will eventually die by the plague that he is responsible for. And yet, the world loves him. If JC and Paul hadn't been truly good people as well as nano-augmented spies...It would have been over, for sure. His only huge flaw is that he underestimated JC. Oh, and he didn't predict his merged AI would turn out more good than evil.

Spoiler: Spoilers for VAMPIRE THE MASQUERADE BLOODLINES. If you have not played this game, GO DO IT NOW, don't spoil yourself!

Lacroix from Vampire the Masuerade bloodlines.

He's insanely manipulative. He sends you on suicide mission to kill you off, while profiting greatly when you succeed. Oh, and capitalizes on your ignorance of vampire politics to get huge advantages. And the second you become expendable (and/or are getting actually close to discovering his plot), he manipulates everyone to think YOU'RE the bad guy.

Sadly, he's a total wuss when you finally tear through his lies and his army of followers.

 

[SodaDew]

Kefka, from final Fantasy 6, he essentially became God. How can you be more effective?

 

[ward0630]

Well, best villain and most evil villain are probably 2 different things. Dmitri Rascolov, from Grand Theft Auto 4, was always the most evil, in my opinion, because he was a despicable rat, who always put himself first and was willing to hurt or kill anyone close to Niko in order to see him hurt.
Best villain is different, because they make you think about yourself and philosophical stuff. That award goes to Andrew Ryan, from Bioshock.
Btw GLaDOS doesn't count as a villain unless you ignore the 2nd portal game.

 

[Gabanuka]

This *****.

Jontron explains it better than I ever will.

 

[Kotep]

Gehn from Riven: The Sequel to Myst really stuck with me as a great villain. His stance, that he's as a god to the people of the Ages that he writes, is something you can understand and even almost agree with. He's cruel but civilized, and when he's confronted with a very woo-woo mystical problem (because of the way he thinks about the Ages he writes, his Ages decay and the linking books require power sources) he just methodically powers through. By the time you meet him, he's writing stable Ages, not because he's any better of a person, but because he's that clever.

Saavedro from Myst III: Exile is also very good as a villain, but it has more to do with being played by Brad Dourif than by the writing. The writing's still good, don't get me wrong, but the character isn't as unique. Seeing the utter pain he goes through in his journals and videos and paintings though, it makes him incredibly sympathetic.

 

[RandV80]

Kefka and Jon Irenicus are two of my 3 favourites, rounding them out is the first mention for Luca Blight from Suikoden II.

And it's not a video game but from fantasy novels I just finished reading Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn trilogy, and gotta say that the series going with the premise of "what would happen if the legendary hero failed", The Lord Ruler is a really awesome villain.

 

[kyogen]

The Thief series has the Trickster, Karras, and the Hag. Each game is written so that Garrett spends most of his time figuring out who they are and what the nature of the threat actually is. As a result the player's relationship to the villain is never easy or obvious, which keeps it interesting.

GLaDOS is great! but that's due to how she's voiced as much to how she's written. Gotta love the passive-aggressive menace.

Letho from The Witcher 2 turns out to be a very interesting adversary. He's almost Geralt's double in personality, perspective, and ability, so it's hard not to sympathize even when you're fighting him.

Between Lord Gwyn, both of the primeval serpents, and every other NPC with her or his own agenda in Dark Souls, the challenge of figuring out who's playing whom for a fool is a great villain in its own right.

 

[Slitzkin]

Others that aren't really villains. Jecht from Final Fantasy X for example. What an terrible man and father. Largely neglected and emotionally abused his son because he doesn't know how to communicate with children. He is pretty much the genesis of everything Tidus has to go through, from being a athlete to the final boss fight.

It was tough love. I actually liked Jecht. He wasn't the best dad and he knew it but not everyone is good at that. My dad is far from great but the further you get in life the more you understand and I think Tidus understood at the end of the game. Also Jecht was hot! I'm tired of seeing FF guys that look like girls.

That is one way to look at it I guess and dont'get me wrong he was a great character for a story. However it doesn't justify his drinking problems. Tidus mentions this a few times at the start and Auron mentions it a few times about halfway through the game. Drunk adults frightened the holy hell out of me when I was a child, so I can't imagine how Tidus would have felt. Anyway my views on fatherhood are probably a lot more idealistic than a lot of people's; never having a father figure growing up does that to you.

 

[Lunar Templar]

i'm going to add to the 'Kefka' stack of votes

and throw in behind Lavos as well, just cause there was no gray area at all, you get to see what happens if you fail

can't say i hate ether though, Kefka = The Joker in a JRPG and Lavos doesn't seem to be more then a parasite in all on honesty.

 

[Starbird]

Kreia is not getting enough love right here. Played Kotor 2 like 10 times over recently, loved it every time. Straight up, Kreia is damn near the best game character of all time.

Another who ain't getting enough lovin' right now is Edgar Ross from RDR. Anybody else remember that awesome mustache and sheer ruthless efficiency. You morally grey heartless backstabbing bastard.

Ah, Kotor 2. How I wish they would do a total remake of it, add about 3 hours of content at the end to round it off and fix it's problems. Dammit, but I loved that game.

 

[Snydeclyde]

For me, Seymour Guado
Like someone already said, after the first fight every time he turned up i just wanted to hurt him, as opposed to say Ultimecia from FF8 where i didnt really get what her plan was so it was more a case of ´so i beat her and squall gets to do stuff to rinoah right?´ that said i also enjoyed alot of FF10 villains, such as Yunalesca who wasnt really evil.
But yeh apart from that, G-Man cos hes all mysterious and scheming

 

[Starbird]

I lost interest in G-man when they continued to reveal...nothing whatsoever about his character.

 

[Judgment90]

Luca Blight from Suikoden 2.

Due to tragic events in his childhood, Luca grew up hating all of humanity, to the point where he wanted to start a war just to sacrifice everyone's souls to an all-powerful Rune. Extremely sadistic, he revels in humiliating his victims before he kills them (he once ordered a woman to act like a pig before killing her). Assassinating his father, the king, Luca proceeded to extend the war further.

The point where you confront him is one of the more difficult fights in the game, requiring 18 people just to WOUND him. Even after 18 fully prepared characters and innumerable amounts of arrows have damaged him, he STILL has the strength to move around and challenge the main character to a duel, in which he can still be a major threat. After he is defeated, his life ends with one of the most impactful speeches I have ever heard, claiming that he is, "The true face of evil".

If one were to read the extra information Konami provided for Luca that wasn't explained too well in the game, they can understand Luca's insanity, and it is proof that given the right situations, a devil can be made from a man.

However, the most frightening part for him is that unlike most JRPG villains who rely on magic or otherworldly influences for power, Luca contains nothing but brute strength and power, in which, imo, is more devastating than magic.

 

[Xanadu84]

Not a villain as such, but a character who incited the most rage: Larry, from the Walking Dead.

In episode 1,

Spoiler

he punches you (Lee) in the face when you're trying to escape from the pharmacy, if you chose to try and defend Kenny and his family when you enter, and after you find some heart pills for him.

From the time between that and playing episode 2, I was just going "Fuckin' Larry...rrrgh" quite a lot.

I agree that Larry is a total douche, and I will definitely feed him to the zombies given the chance (I'm part way through chapter 2) because he is totally a liability, but I did learn to have a little appreciation for the guy. In one conversation he is threatening me because he thinks I'm dangerous, and he basically threatens me if anything bad happens to his daughter...or Clemintine. I was like, "Wait a second, he cares about the well-being of a complete stranger, a kid, and one that I happen to have affection for? Well... I can't HATE him now". It definitely made me see him as less of a cartoonish bad guy, and more like a nuanced character that I have to respect.

He's still zombie chow if I have the chance, but thats not because I want to see him dead so much as his attitude puts the whole group in danger. If that happens, Ill be sad to see him go, but also relieved.