CaptainVanguard

I did actually bring up a topic of this before a good while ago. Villians arent the only important aspect of an RPG but as an antagonistic force they should feel like a true obsticle to you, not just something that seems over done and cliche without any depth or reason behind their actions. Now, Emoish villians that people have talked about, I totally agree, they need to go, misunderstood villians are fine as long as they dont act like the world did them some kind of wrong. Sometimes unshead tears and a silent monotone voice of void hatred can be just as effective as "WOE BE ME PITY MY VOICE ACTING" if done well. what matters to me though is who or "what" the villian is, and ultimatley the villian is the antagonist. Heres the thing: In an RPG with morality defined not by good or evil but by what ever I want to be, the antagonist should not necessarily be a bad guy at all. Why should the villian be a steriotypical evil dark lord or some metaphoric blight that covers the land when it can just as effectivly be the king of the nationt rying to stop me from destroying it. Why should there be one antagonist? The antagonists role is to hinder the protagonist, the protagonist doesnt "have" to be good to be the protagonist, the entire point of being the protagonist is that you are the "leading" character. How many video games let you actually conquer the noble kingdom of humanity? How many actually let you be the villian of your own story? Few if any, to my knowladge. Havent you got tired of the DnD DM campaign when your DM tells you "Your here to save the kingdom" why not just take it for granted, loot it, or usurp the king or make him owe you a favour taht demands a price heavier than he can pay. Why play nice? Well even then, being nice has its own downside. Its overdone, and its predictable to play a char that only ever does one dimensional roles of saving the world from great tyranny. Tyrants need to be believable, and it needs to be reasonable that your going to kill the bad guy if there is one because the bad guy can sometimes be unrealistic. The best key to this, as I have said in my own topic, is to make the more villianous antagonists reprisent your hinderance, your personal antithesis. This means they will hurt your companions, this means they will destroy friends and family, they will turn towns, cities, nations into ash just to see you beg for mercy. But you wont beg, because this creats a compulsion to aspire to bring justice to these fiends, because those people, that nation, they were your people, your nation. If you care so much then only then will you truley find it such an affront that you will seek to anihilate this foe before worse tyranny can be inflicted, or oblivion. ...Or maybe... just maybe, you will seek to join them... after all that pain and suffering, maybe they break you down and finally you join their ranks... only, unawareley, they dont realise the slow but subtle plan for revenge you are building, infiltrating their forces, drawing knife in the dark, taking their army and using it to ruin their homeland. One act of vengance deserves another after all. The real key is to make the player feel like you can be the hero or the villian, and that the antagonist, regardless of morality, is effectivly an obsticle to your personal progress. By the sounds of the games premise of being a victim of circumstance, you can work alot with this, creating many scenerios a player tdoesnt necessarily have to ncounter in other fantasy games. Its simply a matter of how to impliament it, how to make the player feel in control of the world, and how to avoid making consequences feel too unrewarding. Consequences for decisions can be fine, but if you railroad them into option A/B it instantly kills the mood or the enjoyment of the player. Theres a reason so many RPG's today do it wrong when old rpgs did it right, because they had multiple, many options to the scenerio ahead. I would take new vegas as a good example of non linear endings and a good way to impliament them. There must be about 16-17 different versions fo the ending, depending on morality, alignment and faction. Thats the kind of thing that PE should be regarding its morality and its story antagonists, it shouldnt be clear, it should never be that obvious, because it can be increadably anticlimactic to find the villian is nothing more than a typical dark lord, an evil cooperate business man or some predtably obvious wizard who has comical messups all the time. This is an overdone, unambitious and uninspired way to create bad guys, and if im honest? I want it to die in a fire.

Dun agree with the Sephiroth choice to be honest, I do understand the value of his purpose and that alot found him a deep villian but that was primarily because Cloud as a protagonist was overly portrayed as tradgic and weak, as a consequence, his role was weak and thus elivated Sephs too much. A good final fantasy villian was Kefka by far, primarily becuasse throughout the game he turned from being a small nuicence into 'the' main antagonist of the story which in a way is why I still personally find him the greatest J-RPG villian of all time. He was with you from the begining, even to the point you found him comical, a char you loved to hate. But then as the story goes on he starts doing darker and darker things untill suddenly you realise this clown isnt joking, he really is as demented as he acts. I think I loved Kefka because he turns from being this villian with a corny theme tune and a memorably silly laugh with some hilariously angsty dialogue to being this guy who has one of "The" most complicated and psychotically derranged reasons to annihilate the world and rebuild it in his own madness. He "was" a true antagonist, where as Sephs role depended more strongly on Cloud's lacking role which really, while Seph was a good villian didnt really let him characterise himself enough so much as let others do it for him. Its not a bad approach no but maybe if it was done in a way that didnt make the protagonist look any lesser it would have been more immersive, again some loved Seph, some loved Kef and most of one party didnt like the other but we can all agree they were memorable villians. But since this is a western rpg id prefer a western written villian, but an origional one, if it even needs be one villian or many. There are too many fantasy rpg's out there that exploit the following: Evil Undead Army. Evil Dragon. Evil Demon Lord. Not enough of them try to be origional or unique, less focus on dragons and demons being bad guys please, lets see something new come into the foreground and really push the trail of thought to the moral apex, while at the same time, truley getting you to feel a need to stop this person or being for one reason or another.

Im not entirley disagreeing with that regard Kevadu but it was also "cliche" which I hope Eternity tries to avoid when it comes to protagonists, companions and antagonists alike. Still Im also agreeing with Knight aswell as I do have faith in Obsidian I just hope it doesnt under shot itself as some great developers get over-confident and forget that they are making a product that will hopefully appeal to a good number of people and please them. Granted, you cant make the world love you but you can try to make as much of it satisfied with your work.

In a great many RPG's I have played in my time I often find one of my biggest angsts is that the guy I want to oppose never really felt opposing or someone that made my life a personal hell. I want that to change in Eternity. I like what this game could be but what I really want to see is another Memorable Kriea/Trancendant One/Jon Irencius. So what ultimatley makes a villian like these ones so special? These Antagonists all had a personal attachment to you in one form or another. They exist consistantly in the story of their games rawly to make your life a living hell. They actually effect you by hurting friends, you and the world in ways that will all link back to the pain you suffer for them. They are damned cool to look at and have memorable voice actors that leave shivers down the spine. A villian to me needs to be a person that reprisents all of these things and more. We can be the villian in some rpgs and that too is fun but perhaps the most important essense of an antagonist is to remember with a story, they must be the obsticle to the player. It can be anything to me, be it a person, a metaphysical force or a very concept that can be the main villian but as long as it convinces me that its worth my investment to destroy it im happy. So, what "doesnt" work for a villian? The list I generally find most bad guys are overly cliche for is the following: Dragons, there are too many of them latley. Evil Wizards, again, overkilled cliche of late. Female seductive sorceresses, far too typical and predictable. "The Black Knight" usually an armored or imposing super strong male figure who wants to destroy you. Orcs, Goblins or an army of boringly predicable hordes of evil that force you to unite the races (yawn). These things are the things I really do not hope Project Eternity will be filled with in my opinion purley because of the amount of times they've been done. I know in this day and age its impossible to avoid a cliche but I really hope Obsidian (and I know you will because you guys are awesome) do a deep job of making an origional anti-force for the protagonist (you). Im also going to name a few faces that I feel I do not want to see either, examples of villians that are so predictable it hurts and equally feel week and shallowly developed: Alduin in Skyrim, granted this guy is supposed to be a world eater but not once is a city destroyed by him and he even saves your life (accidently) at the very beginning of the game. Malak from Kotor 1, because granted, while Malak was your apprentice (and the twist was really cool) he never felt like an interesting villian himself other than "go destroy things Bwahahaha!" -Cough- booooring. The Blight from Dragon Age, it had potential to be interesting (and the architect was a good example of that) but otherwise its just a predictable (yet another zerg) force that comes to consume and swallow everything and never feels personal or truley your problem. You could have just run away but you chose dumbly not to (granted thats one opinion and alot of others might have different ones). Thats a good example of naming and shaming. None of these antagonists felt personal it wasnt like Malak was after me or Alduin even destroyed or hurt anyone I loved. Thats the wrong way to make me care, I shouldnt have to go to them to care, they should come to me and "make" me care about who "they" are. The antagonist is the obsticle and opposite of the protagonist, be you the hero or the vilian your opposite has to be that which hinders your progress and chooses to object you as the center of their goal to stop or destroy. That goal should be a personal and emotional journey, loosing companions, being hurt literally by them and metaphorically. Made to question weather your morality is better than theres, these are things that make a good villian. So what I am saying here Obsidi is, please make us a well done antagonist, one that leaves us with shock and awe at twists and turns they take us through and ruins our hopes and gives us reason to repent for their victories, avenge ourselves, and conquer or save the world. Make these foes, the main foe, or foes! Who said its limited to one? A group or individual that truley want to ruin my chars life. "THEN" I will go and stop them, THEN I will rally an army to end their tyranny (or conquer their heroism) THEN I will liberate nations from their hand (or send daggers in the dark to unmake their merciful rule). Make me care, Obsidian, make me care who, or what these things are that oppose me.