The Villain Wins?

loa

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Nier does that although it is a bit more... involved than "villain wins".
 

JemothSkarii

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Final Fantasy Tactics Advance.

Game Theory-esque Philosophical discussions aside... Well, X-Com 2 state the aliens won after the first one, so there's that I guess?

To get a little more obscure, Reina Kamisu Scatters Here could count to an extent I suppose.
 

Hawki

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FalloutJack said:
Alien: Covenant spoilers
Yes, but (spoiler) doesn't regret his actions. The thread is based on stories where the villain wins, but regrets their actions.

If it's simply a case of listing where the villain wins, this thread became a lot easier.
 

pookie101

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Dalisclock said:
Saints Row 2. Possibly 3 as well, depending on if you see STAG as worse then the Saints or not. Let's face it, the Boss is not heroic in 2 and only a little better in 3.
the boss isnt evil shes a puckish rogue! just ask her :D

for my contribution every single player run empire in every single grand strategy game.. you conquer the world and slaughter millions to do it.

or anyone playing crusader kings 2.. if your current game hasnt involved sleeping with your sister and murdering your offspring and raising the anti christ you arent doing it properly
 

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The classic Pyrrhic Villainy/Victory.

Several:

"Helga and the Nanny". For those that watched Hey Arnold, you already know what happens. Let's just say that this episode and "Girl Trouble" made me hate her for a very long time.



Zaheer, because his victory caused a destabilized Earth Kingdom where there was nothing, but absolute chaos that ended up being quelled by a person worse than the Earth Queen. Kuvira herself. Not mention, that he lost of all of his allies and love of his life, is doomed to prison in chains for the rest of his life, and even regrets his actions.

Kuvira is to a minor extent in that she proves the leading successor to the earth Kingdom was just another figurehead that would not lead the Earth Kingdom any better than the Queen. Prince Wu, and the other heroes begrudgingly, even admit it. So he decides to make it the kingdom a republic. Though similar to Zaheer, Kuvira lost whatever bonds she had, and is going to spend the rest of her life in prison. But when you think about it, Suyin is partially to blame for letting Kuvira ascend by sitting on her ass and do nothing as she [Kuvira] increasingly rose to power. What sucks is that story barely or does not seem to acknowledge this. That made hate Suyin even more. And the spirits too.



Lord of War
 

bartholen_v1legacy

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Isn't House of Cards basically an endless parade of this? Granted, I'm not exactly caught up (about 75% through season 4), but Frank Underwood ends up burying so many of his enemies the Lannisters would be envious.

Dark Souls 1 and Bloodborne would perhaps qualify in a sense. In the former the "villains" (so or so) have not only won, they won thousands of years ago, and you're just exploring the aftermath. In the latter by the end even the mere concepts of "winning" and "villain" are so utterly bizarrofucked beyond human reasoning you could just as well yell "BANANA" for 5 hours while doing a chicken impression as an answer.

As an extension of that, most of Lovecraft's work qualifies as well.

Also, Suicide Squad. The real villains in that movie were the studio hacks who were rewarded with shittons of money for rushing schedules, interfering in the movie making, and having a trailer house edit their movie.
 

Hades

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Alvis from Fire emblem 4. He manages to win out in the end but when his empire starts to collapse around him and its revealed he's pretty much a puppet he surely ends up regretting it.
 
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Internal Affairs a.k.a. original "The Departed". So both films are about a dangerous game between the police secret agent sent out to infiltrate the organized crime and the mob's mole among police ranks. There's one important difference between the endings to those movies, however.
In the original, Hong Kong movie, only the police agent dies. The Triads' mole gets to survive and even participate in the agents' funeral, and he doesn't seem thrilled at all about winning in this showdown.

Also, since we at east-asia cinema:
springheeljack said:
Except here the antagonist shots himself in the elevator.
 

Battenberg

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Walter White might not be the bad guy at the start but he sure becomes one and he constantly finds himself "winning" but facing horrible consequences. After he kills Gus so he can walk away from the method business and finds himself missing the job is probably my favourite example of this. He's not the only character in that show who that happens to either, pretty much every character has a "careful what you wish for" moment.
 

Queen Michael

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Doctor Doom once managed to mind-control the world by kidnapping the Purple Man and using his power. But it wasn't fun, because nobody knew Doom had done it.

EDIT: Ooooh, this is my 11,000th post! Nice!
 

Canadamus Prime

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I think for a thread like this we need to define the terms. People often confuse the terms "villain" and "antagonist." Those aren't necessarily the same thing.
 

Arnoxthe1

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Silentpony said:
Well I mean Rick is the villain of Rick and Morty,
Is he really though? He's obviously not a "good guy" per se, but rather a chaotic neutral. At the end of the day, he's an incredibly lost guy looking for meaning and finding at least some of it in Morty and in others as well occasionally like Unity, but he's so damaged that he doesn't know how to handle this properly or even sometimes realize it at all.
 

Silentpony_v1legacy

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Arnoxthe1 said:
Silentpony said:
Well I mean Rick is the villain of Rick and Morty, and he's always winning.
Is he really though? He's obviously not a "good guy" per se, but rather a chaotic neutral. At the end of the day, he's an incredibly lost guy looking for meaning and finding at least some of it in Morty and in others as well occasionally like Unity.
See I thought that until the season 3 opener. After that episode I realized Rick is the villain of the series. Everything that goes wrong is directly his fault, he often puts his grandkids in danger(who knows how many times they've died and Rick just got a new one) he willingly abandoned his own C-137 universe(meaning his daughter and 1 grandkid), openly admits the only reason he keeps Morty around is because of his 'stupid' brainwaves making it easy to hide, did a detailed chart on how much he hates Morty and Summer, and now he's basically holding Morty hostage, knowing he's the emotional center of the family, manipulating both his daughter and granddaughter to love him(I mean taking advantage of Beth's abandonment issues is fucked up), knowing Summer and Beth would gang-up on Morty to defend Rick and that the only one who had the spine to stand up to him, Jerry, was driven off by Beth's desperate love for her dick father.
 

Arnoxthe1

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Silentpony said:
See I thought that until the season 3 opener. After that episode I realized Rick is the villain of the series. Everything that goes wrong is directly his fault, he often puts his grandkids in danger(who knows how many times they've died and Rick just got a new one) he willingly abandoned his own C-137 universe(meaning his daughter and 1 grandkid), openly admits the only reason he keeps Morty around is because of his 'stupid' brainwaves making it easy to hide, did a detailed chart on how much he hates Morty and Summer, and now he's basically holding Morty hostage, knowing he's the emotional center of the family, manipulating both his daughter and granddaughter to love him(I mean taking advantage of Beth's abandonment issues is fucked up), knowing Summer and Beth would gang-up on Morty to defend Rick and that the only one who had the spine to stand up to him, Jerry, was driven off by Beth's desperate love for her dick father.
Well, I still like my theory [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/18.950296-Rick-Explained-in-Season-3-Rick-and-Morty-Spoilers] better. He may act manipulative and evil until the end but I don't think that's what he is inside.
 

Dalisclock

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bartholen said:
Isn't House of Cards basically an endless parade of this? Granted, I'm not exactly caught up (about 75% through season 4), but Frank Underwood ends up burying so many of his enemies the Lannisters would be envious.

Dark Souls 1 and Bloodborne would perhaps qualify in a sense. In the former the "villains" (so or so) have not only won, they won thousands of years ago, and you're just exploring the aftermath. In the latter by the end even the mere concepts of "winning" and "villain" are so utterly bizarrofucked beyond human reasoning you could just as well yell "BANANA" for 5 hours while doing a chicken impression as an answer.
I was gonna ask, are there even Villians in the Souls games(excluding Demons)? Gwyn was a major dick and Nashandra isn't exactly a wonderful person(not that she had much choice in the matter) either but the world was kinda fucked regardless long before you came along and nothing you do improves this situation. The best(debatable) you manage to do in DS1 and DS2 is to hit the reset button, DS3 is debatable if anything you do matters considering the world is spent and in BB you can either escape, stay go the extra mile and turn into a magical squid thingy at the end(yeah, I know what that's supposed to mean).
 

Trunkage

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Dalisclock said:
bartholen said:
Isn't House of Cards basically an endless parade of this? Granted, I'm not exactly caught up (about 75% through season 4), but Frank Underwood ends up burying so many of his enemies the Lannisters would be envious.

Dark Souls 1 and Bloodborne would perhaps qualify in a sense. In the former the "villains" (so or so) have not only won, they won thousands of years ago, and you're just exploring the aftermath. In the latter by the end even the mere concepts of "winning" and "villain" are so utterly bizarrofucked beyond human reasoning you could just as well yell "BANANA" for 5 hours while doing a chicken impression as an answer.
I was gonna ask, are there even Villians in the Souls games(excluding Demons)? Gwyn was a major dick and Nashandra isn't exactly a wonderful person(not that she had much choice in the matter) either but the world was kinda fucked regardless long before you came along and nothing you do improves this situation. The best(debatable) you manage to do in DS1 and DS2 is to hit the reset button, DS3 is debatable if anything you do matters considering the world is spent and in BB you can either escape, stay go the extra mile and turn into a magical squid thingy at the end(yeah, I know what that's supposed to mean).
Maybe Frampt and Kaathe? The guys are pretty manipulative and drive you forward to their own goals.
 

Combustion Kevin

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trunkage said:
Dalisclock said:
bartholen said:
Isn't House of Cards basically an endless parade of this? Granted, I'm not exactly caught up (about 75% through season 4), but Frank Underwood ends up burying so many of his enemies the Lannisters would be envious.

Dark Souls 1 and Bloodborne would perhaps qualify in a sense. In the former the "villains" (so or so) have not only won, they won thousands of years ago, and you're just exploring the aftermath. In the latter by the end even the mere concepts of "winning" and "villain" are so utterly bizarrofucked beyond human reasoning you could just as well yell "BANANA" for 5 hours while doing a chicken impression as an answer.
I was gonna ask, are there even Villians in the Souls games(excluding Demons)? Gwyn was a major dick and Nashandra isn't exactly a wonderful person(not that she had much choice in the matter) either but the world was kinda fucked regardless long before you came along and nothing you do improves this situation. The best(debatable) you manage to do in DS1 and DS2 is to hit the reset button, DS3 is debatable if anything you do matters considering the world is spent and in BB you can either escape, stay go the extra mile and turn into a magical squid thingy at the end(yeah, I know what that's supposed to mean).
Maybe Frampt and Kaathe? The guys are pretty manipulative and drive you forward to their own goals.
All in all, I don't think there are any real "good guys" in the Soul's series, everyone serves their own interests, even those that act altruistically struggle to desperately preserve their power if it comes under threat.
Even Gwynn is a good example of this, he was a powerful and capable ruler that led his followers into an age of prosperity and enlightenment, but even he knew fear, whether it was directed at humans, the abyss of the fading of the flame, it was this fear that motivated his ignoble actions.

Even fewer are the people who are just "nice" to you, indeed, you are a tool to most, and narratively speaking you embody the power of inevitability, you are just an undead or unkindled passing through, any other undead could have succeeded where you did and one probably would eventually... even if you had given up.
 

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Since it would feel weird putting my entire post into a spoiler box, I'll just announce the danger in the first line here and be on my merry way. *ahem*

Spoilers for the initial premise and one branch of SMT: Nocturne below.

This is a bit of a borderline case, since the realization of how wrong he is doesn't hit him by the time the ending where he gets his way concludes, but in every other ending it's strongly foreshadowed that he doesn't realize what he's bringing about.

I suppose I should provide some context, first: Shin Megami Tensei nocturne takes place just after the apocalypse. The world has been destroyed, humanity decimated to what can be counted on a single hand, and the earth as we knew it has been replaced with the "Vortex World", an enclosed circle of a place that is home to demons.

What makes this premise unique in nocturne, however, is that this apocalypse was not an act of destruction for its own sake, but a part of how God plans to reincarnate the world after it reaches the limits of potential in its previous existence. Each of the small number of humans who survived the end have earned the right to create a "Reason" within themselves. This basically means they get to come up with a personal philosophy that they would have become the the core of the new world. Once they've established their Reason, demons who would support their philosophy gather beneath them and form their army. The strongest army may climb the tower God has created, and the human who reaches the summit of the tower can have the world reincarnated in the way they desired.

One human established the reason of "Yosuga", a world where strength and beauty are synonymous, and the strong are free to prey upon the weak, allowing the world to advance rapidly thanks to the endless competition of life.

Another human established the reason of "Musubi", a world of solitude where every human lives in a paradise of their own mind's creation, but with the caveat that each individual lives in isolation. The people they would encounter in their personal paradises are merely shadows their minds created, and it is impossible for one person to ever reach another.

For my purposes, I'll be concentrating on the third of the primary reasons to awaken in the game. Now, calling any one of the surviving humans the "villain" is a little unfair, since the player character ally with any of them, or fight all of them. As the player character was given the body of a fiend (the highest class of demon) on the eve of the apocalypse, he was deemed unworthy of creating a Reason of his own, and so enters the Vortex World neutrally. However, as relative as the game's morality is, there's one character who has a stronger right to the title of "villain" than the others.

His name is Hikawa, and he was the man who caused the apocalypse in the first place. Prior to the events of the game, he was a self-made billionaire who spent his entire young adulthood fighting in a corporate world where ambition and cunning were tools of warfare. In a sense, he can be considered a kind of antithesis to a character like Andrew Ryan. Both built a fortune from hard work and ambition, but where a character like Ryan would internalize his success to inflate their self worth, and in so doing come to love capitalist principals and human endeavor to the point of making it almost a religion, Hikawa found himself disgusted by what he saw. To him, the human race had begun to destroy itself due to individuals allowing their ego to constantly inflate their importance above the rest, regarding their confidence as unwarranted arrogance, and a lack of ability to understand others.

As he came to this conclusion about the world: that it had become stagnant due to the unchecked greed and corruption of the individualistic human race, he learned of the cycle of death and rebirth the world could undergo, and set into motion the chain of events that lead to the death of the old world so that he could create his ideal world in its place.

Hikawa represents the most law-oriented of the Reasons, "Shijima". Shijima, as he envisions it, is a world of tranquility and silence. Individuality diminished, and the flame of human ambition controlled so that it would not become a conflagration that destroyed everything for the benefit of the arrogant. In the world of shijima, all people coexist in flawless stillness and harmony, sharing a collective inner peace and equality with all parts of the universe.

Since he is the only human who survives the apocalypse who also knows in advance about the Reasons and the cycle of rebirth, he has a considerable advantage over the others, quickly amassing an army comprised primarily of demons and evil spirits and establishing a base at the tower long before the player reaches it. (It's interesting to note that the demons who occupy hell and are associated with evil primarily join the reason of Shijima, since they're exhausted from the constant chaos of the world they used to inhabit, and long for the peace that Shijima would bring, while Angels and other holy demons joined the reason of Yosuga, because they were weary of order and longed for chaos... but I digress... this post is long enough as it is. DX)

As I mentioned in the first place, his ending being disastrous for him isn't directly mentioned if you ally with him and obtain the shijima ending, but this is only because the Shijima ending concludes just before the new world is established. In all routes where you do not ally with Hikawa, you must fight and kill him to climb the tower. It's when he lies dying that he realizes a truth about his Reason that he had not been consciously aware of before: Shijima would not simply control the fire of human ambition, it would snuff it out entirely. The world he wanted to create would rob humans of an essential part of their identity, and thus would instill in them a subconscious horror that could not be dispelled.

Granted, all of that was confirmed in supplemental materials, with the game being much more subtle about it. Throughout the entire campaign, each time you speak to Hikawa he complains about the "noise" of the human world and how much he longs for silence. As he lays dying, and glimpses his ideal world one final time, all he has to say is, "It's so quiet... It's... It's too quiet."

So even in the ending where he wins, he would ultimately have that moment of fear... and then no emotion at all, for he created a world where emotions would serve no purpose.

*whew* sorry for the word count there... maybe I should have put it in a spoiler tag just to save space.