I want another Bowser or Gannon

[anubite]

We need a strong transgender female deep complex antagonist that threatens the entire universe but really doesn't because we kind of want a down-to-earth personal story because games don't need to be epic to be good. She can't be too strong, because then you can't hate her, but she can't be too weak, because she has to offer a gripping, compelling point of view. She can't be too feminine, because females can't be too feminine in video games. She can't be too non-feminine because that's probably masculine and a masculine transgender female is skirting over the issues surrounding feminimity in video games.  She has to be complex but not too complex, but simple is kind of good (like Star Wars) but she can't be too simple because then nobody will say our game is deep, so she needs to be complex too. Oh, and she can't be transgender, I mean, she will be, but you just won't mention it - making it a big deal undermines the whole diversity argument, but it kind of has to be hinted at because games don't have enough sexually unique antangonists. But she can't be too unique, because people might get the wrong idea that we're stereotyping or making hyperbole of sexual orientation or gender identity. Also, she has to be cool, because all good antagonists are cool. But, she can't be too cool, because, well, you know - she's just a hipster if she's too cool.

Edited September 10, 2013 by anubite

[Longknife]

Ganon

 

Gannon

 

 

 

Know the difference!

[AGX-17]

if you go high enough, it always is one man that runs the show. however, to get that high you will have to go through the guys that seem to be the boss and all those who are under them

A hierarchy of goons leading you via linearly plotted confrontations to Ming the Merciless cackling maniacally from his nefarious volcano-island-castle base isn't exactly interesting or original.

 

Weakest boss to weak boss to moderately competent boss to adequately competent boss to above average boss to employee of the month boss to vice president of eating babies division boss to right hand man boss to the evil overlord himself boss doesn't sound like a phenomenal story progression.

Edited September 13, 2013 by AGX-17

[Lephys]

A hierarchy of goons leading you via linearly plotted confrontations to Ming the Merciless cackling maniacally from his nefarious volcano-island-castle base isn't exactly interesting or original.

 

Weakest boss to weak boss to moderately competent boss to adequately competent boss to above average boss to employee of the month boss to vice president of eating babies division boss to right hand man boss to the evil overlord himself boss doesn't sound like a phenomenal story progression.

He never said anything about boss cred, or power hierarchy. Even in the real world, where everyone's roughly the same "power," if someone's got some nefarious plot going on, you typically have to go through a lot of "seem to be running things" people to get to the bottom of things, which is strange-phrasingly enough where the top person is. Even if the "top person" isn't the one with the highest rank/position. It's not always that simple. But it always is a chain of connections/players/evidence until you finally figure out the source of the chain reaction that leads to the results.

[Frenetic Pony]

Really one of the big things for a villain is that they feel directly threatening, like maybe they are better than the protagonist and can win. No matter what other characteristics a villain has, a good villain always has that. They're smarter, faster, better than the hero. Otherwise the hero wouldn't be overcoming them right?

 

Take two completely different but fantastic villains, Darth Vader and Hans Gruber (Die Hard). Darth Vader is threatening because he's physically huge, he's vicious (the first time you see him he's strolling through a hall of corpses like he owns the place) and he seems infinitely more dangerous than Luke does, he chokes people with the ****ing force! He's also just sort of "evil" as a motivation for the most part, and doesn't usually even have a "plan" and etc. But he is intimidating, he is more competent than Luke and is obviously a challenge.

 

Meanwhile Hans Gruber is also vicious and willing to kill, but he's very different from Vader. He's not terribly imposing physically, but he's smart, determined, he's got a very direct plan that doesn't even involve our protagonist if he had the choice. But he's also intimidating in his own way. He's the smartest of the vicious men he has, smarter than our protagonist, and by commanding so many men he's also outgunning our protagonist. The one main thing he has in common with Vader is he's a threat, he's better than the hero, he's someone that doesn't seem likely to be overcome.

 

Whatever else a villain is, whether they have understandable motivations or not, whether the hero is their direct objective or just interfering, whatever they look like and whoever they are, they need to be better than the hero (or the player character in this case). They need to be a threat, they need to be bigger and badder and more badass and it can't seem like there's any easy or even only slightly difficult way to beat them until they finally, finally go down.

Edited September 19, 2013 by Frenetic Pony

[AGX-17]

He never said anything about boss cred, or power hierarchy. Even in the real world, where everyone's roughly the same "power," if someone's got some nefarious plot going on, you typically have to go through a lot of "seem to be running things" people to get to the bottom of things, which is strange-phrasingly enough where the top person is. Even if the "top person" isn't the one with the highest rank/position. It's not always that simple. But it always is a chain of connections/players/evidence until you finally figure out the source of the chain reaction that leads to the results.

This is a video game, not reality, and in video games, bosses exist to challenge an ever-growing/improving player. You already know enough about the game and genre to know you're just splitting hairs over a tangent (they're obviously not going to model their game's antagonist on King Koopa.) The poster I was responding to was clearly operating on the model I was making fun of.

Edited September 19, 2013 by AGX-17

[Lephys]

This is a video game, not reality, and in video games, bosses exist to challenge an ever-growing/improving player. You already know enough about the game and genre to know you're just splitting hairs over a tangent (they're obviously not going to model their game's antagonist on King Koopa.) The poster I was responding to was clearly operating on the model I was making fun of.

Clearly, from his 2-sentence, mere suggestion of a hierarchy, with no mention of actual individual combat-threat-related power, the only possible thing we could deduce is that he was talking about tougher and tougher chains of bosses, and not, say, the hierarchy of a real-world drug-trafficking operation, in which everyone is of roughly the same skill/toughness, and the boss isn't necessarily any larger/stronger or better with a gun, or more capable of mitigating/absorbing damage than anyone else "under" him. He simply makes sure any investigation trails lead to people other than himself, so that he never gets caught. Thus, people think they've gotten to the "top" of the drug-trafficking ring, but really haven't.

 

Also, apparently knowing "the genre" somehow means that we know they can't do anything the genre doesn't typically do. Man, I wonder how people first established the genre if there was no genre to go by at the time... o_o

Edited September 20, 2013 by Lephys

[bonarbill]

Does the game really need an main antagonist to tell a good story?  Surely there can be other ways of motivating a person without chasing or being chased down by a villain. I rather deal with conflicts in other unique ways than deal with a cliche villain.

Edited September 21, 2013 by bonarbill

[Lephys]

Even if the main antagonist is simply an idea or force and not some individual person, yes. A story without an over-arching antagonist isn't much of an adventurous tale at all. It's just an account of some events at that point, with nothing really tying them together. No conflict, at least. And since the game will heavily be about you combatting things, I'd say that wouldn't work too well. *shrug*

 

That being said, the existence of a villain hardly mandates anything cliche or simple.

[Fearabbit]

I think we went from "I want a recurring villain whom you never actually defeat" to "I want a villain, period".

 

Maybe speaking in very abstract terms, it's possible to create an engaging adventure where the enemy is a philosophical idea or something to that extent without having it embodied by a specific character or group of people. I think that would be very difficult, or that it would require a completely different narrative structure. (Two games come to mind, namely Shadow of the Colossus, which didn't have a "villain" except maybe yourself, and Journey, which was just as much an adventure as any other story, but didn't need a villain to be exciting. But those are entirely different genres and I'm not sure this could be replicated in an RPG.)

 

So yeah, the original question was, do we want a villain that keeps coming back, and do we want the narrative associated with this kind of villain? My answer is no, I don't want that. Anything that has been said about villains in general has been beside the point.

[AGX-17]

Does the game really need an main antagonist to tell a good story?  Surely there can be other ways of motivating a person without chasing or being chased down by a villain. I rather deal with conflicts in other unique ways than deal with a cliche villain.

There's no conflict if there's no antagonist. That said, I'm not trying to support the OP and its ilk. Antagonists can take many forms. Protagonist doesn't mean "good guy," and antagonist doesn't mean "bad guy." Protagonist's Greek root basically means "lead actor," antagonist's Greek root means "rival," "opponent" or "competitor."

Edited September 24, 2013 by AGX-17

[Karkarov]

My only real concern for the villain is this....

 

1: They have their own personality and be a real character, not one or two sided.

2: They have legitimate motivation for what and why they are doing whatever it is they are doing.

3: They give me a real reason for not liking them, a really really good personal to my character reason.  No, they are out to conquer the world, resurrect an ancient evil, gain immortality at the cost of thousands of lives, etc are not good enough reasons.  Those are reasons to want to stop them, they are not reasons to be personally emotionally invested in their defeat.

4: They don't go down in game one.  Lets be real, they want this to be a new IP, new IP means sequels, and they have already made it clear we are level capped.  No reason not to let our conflict with our "nemesis" not stretch out over more than one game.

5: Flexibility.... why does it have to be one person... why cant there be a little bit of variance based on the choices we make?  Meaning there could be more than one potential "villain" and your "villain" might actually be my friend, etc etc.

 

They manage to believably pull off those five things I will be very satisfied.

[bonarbill]

 

Does the game really need an main antagonist to tell a good story?  Surely there can be other ways of motivating a person without chasing or being chased down by a villain. I rather deal with conflicts in other unique ways than deal with a cliche villain.

There's no conflict if there's no antagonist. That said, I'm not trying to support the OP and its ilk. Antagonists can take many forms. Protagonist doesn't mean "good guy," and antagonist doesn't mean "bad guy." Protagonist's Greek root basically means "lead actor," antagonist's Greek root means "rival," "opponent" or "competitor."

 

 

My message wasn't clear enough.  I just simply said I'm sick of main antagonists being the same overused cliche villains.  Why does the antagonist have to be human?  Why does he have to be the typical rival?  Why does he have to be good villain or an evil villain?  That's my complaint.

 

 

I hope PE has no main villain.  Perhaps you need fight your own personal demons that doesn't involve some random loser getting in your way.  Antagonist doen't have to be just human beings, they could be some metaphysical, an addiction, a belief, etc.

Edited September 28, 2013 by bonarbill

[Dawn Quixotic]

Does the game really need an main antagonist to tell a good story?  Surely there can be other ways of motivating a person without chasing or being chased down by a villain. I rather deal with conflicts in other unique ways than deal with a cliche villain.

 

Even if the main antagonist is simply an idea or force and not some individual person, yes. A story without an over-arching antagonist isn't much of an adventurous tale at all. It's just an account of some events at that point, with nothing really tying them together. No conflict, at least. And since the game will heavily be about you combatting things, I'd say that wouldn't work too well. *shrug*

 

That being said, the existence of a villain hardly mandates anything cliche or simple.

 

 

I mean, it's an RPG with combat. Of course there's going to be a Final Boss. Even if main conflict is some kind of inner turmoil, you're still going to have to go inside your head and beat the **** out of it's abstracted-incarnated form at the end of game.

And I think if you're going to do that, you're better of having that final battle be fought against someone that has a personal enemy relationship to you, rather than some symbolic entity that just shows up, or a big bad you never met before but knew you had to face...

Even in something like Chrono Trigger... you never really speak with the villain, Lavos, and it's really just a monster that shows up and tries to destroy the world that you have to fight in the end... but the plot develops that villain subtly and powerfully until confronted.

And then you have guys like Jon Irenicus who personally screws with you in some very serious ways and keeps getting away until you finally corner him.

That's the kind of antagonist I like.

 

I mean, Torment was kind of different in that the villain was less a personal relationship enemy and more an embodiment of the various explored themes, and you had the option of beating him with dialogue options rather than combat (but then, in Torment, dialogue options were designed to be just as interactive as combat), but that's still similar in principle that you had a conflict that got summed up in an appropriate final boss.

 

And if you don't want a final boss at all, well, sure, okay, but I like having a structured plot so I can get a sense of finality and purpose when I get around to finishing that end of the game.

 

And... I mean, there's dozens of ways you can do this too. Take Pokémon for instance, you're big climactic fight is against your rival, who, while a jerk, is pretty much a hero in his own right, and while you fight him repeatedly, the conflict is much more about your personal growth and journey coming to a head, rather than merely fighting your rival one more time.

 

 

My message wasn't clear enough.  I just simply said I'm sick of main antagonists being the same overused cliche villains.  Why does the antagonist have to be human?  Why does he have to be the typical rival?  Why does he have to be good villain or an evil villain?  That's my complaint.

 

 

I hope PE has no main villain.  Perhaps you need fight your own personal demons that doesn't involve some random loser getting in your way.  Antagonist doen't have to be just human beings, they could be some metaphysical, an addiction, a belief, etc.

 

 

Ehhh, that kind of conflict works for novels. Less so for video games.

If I'm going to be fighting stuff this whole game, I want to end it with one big last fight. And I would want that fight to be against another character. Not "addiction demons" that are given stats for the purposes of serving a boss fight to represent overcoming my addiction.

 

You might suggest a different method of conflict resolution rather than "representation by combat" but if you're going down that route, well, that's going to be creating a wildly different kind of experience/game, and would probably be better as a choose-your-own-adventure novel rather than an RPG that involves you getting into mechanics-based fights.

 

 

 

People in bad relationships are not having these relationships because their partner is a strange resurrecting villain cliche. They just choose it to be that way - on their own! Sorry, but this part of your post is completely missing the point. Still, I loved that part when I read it; it made me chuckle

 

 

Though the idea of somehow caught in a relationship with a resurrecting comic book/video game style villiain is fantastic story premise.

 

 

 

Make of it whatever you will, but I find that for me often times antagonistic characters are just so full of cliches and tropes that impersonal antagonists (man vs. self, vs. environment, etc.) work better. If we must have an antagonist character, let's make sure that their identity is betrayed by a thick accent, facial hair, or other shallow features that reveal them to be a mere xenophobic caricature of foreign cultures.

 

That said, given the traditions associated with PE, I think a characater antagonist is largely inevitable, but it's actually interesting to think about how RPG characters mirror our Western culture's preoccupation with individuality.

See, I never got the appeal impersonal antagonists. I find them boring as hell, and it's why I hate so much "literature" because of it's preponderance for those kind of conflicts.

Also why I can't stand the vast majority of zombie stories.

 

For me, people are what is most interesting. So I want a villain-person.

 

Though I am still displeased with "cliché" villains (and other characters) who fail to be closer in complexity to what real people are like, I still find them more interesting than anything else if they're entertaining enough.

Edited September 30, 2013 by Dawn Quixotic

[Kjaamor]

I'm not too bothered with the idea of the personal antagonist notion, because I think it's the easiest one to get a good result from. Man versus environment and particularly man versus self don't seem to lend themselves as immediately well to rpgs.

 

My biggest concern however, is that we get man versus company management that IWD2 brought: Fight a series of bosses with nary a mention of the boss above until the current boss has drawn blood. I never felt my npcs had any relationship with any of them and I didn't regard any as having any personality in the story.

[JFSOCC]

You don't need to have an end Boss inn order to have a climactic battle at the end.

 

For instance: you need to re-activate the pillar of ascension ultimate badassery or doom.

As you do this, guardian creatures are spawned/activated: those statues you walked past suddenly lurch and move towards you.

 

As you proceed, more and more powerful guardian creatures are spawned/activated.

 

You need to get doodad A, now unlocked by completing step 1, but it's behind the surge of enemies that you're holding off

After you get doodad A and succesfully add it to the Pillar of epeen compensation, the lights go out, you best quickly deal with getting light back up or dealing with your foes in the dark

 

And after you've completed all of this, perhaps you still need to survive for a minute as the monument charges it's power of plague restoration to cure the land of the terrible blight that was terrorising it.

-

You don't need a boss for a battle to be climactic, is what I'm saying.

Edited September 30, 2013 by JFSOCC

[Dawn Quixotic]

I'm not too bothered with the idea of the personal antagonist notion, because I think it's the easiest one to get a good result from. Man versus environment and particularly man versus self don't seem to lend themselves as immediately well to rpgs.

 

My biggest concern however, is that we get man versus company management that IWD2 brought: Fight a series of bosses with nary a mention of the boss above until the current boss has drawn blood. I never felt my npcs had any relationship with any of them and I didn't regard any as having any personality in the story.

 

Yeah. I hate that when... you walk into what is clearly supposed to be a "big fight" and there aren't any lines or dialogue, they don't even have a token "have at you!" it's just a room full of red rings that attack you.

 

 

You don't need to have an end Boss inn order to have a climactic battle at the end.

 

For instance: you need to re-activate the pillar of ascension ultimate badassery or doom.

As you do this, guardian creatures are spawned/activated: those statues you walked past suddenly lurch and move towards you.

 

As you proceed, more and more powerful guardian creatures are spawned/activated.

 

You need to get doodad A, now unlocked by completing step 1, but it's behind the surge of enemies that you're holding off

After you get doodad A and succesfully add it to the Pillar of epeen compensation, the lights go out, you best quickly deal with getting light back up or dealing with your foes in the dark

 

And after you've completed all of this, perhaps you still need to survive for a minute as the monument charges it's power of plague restoration to cure the land of the terrible blight that was terrorising it.

-

You don't need a boss for a battle to be climactic, is what I'm saying.

 

Admittedly, I have a bias there in that, I just don't feel engaged in a battle against enemies that don't have personality or characterization. Doesn't matter if the fate of the world is in the balance or how climactic it technically is, I don't want the final battle just being more random redrings.

It's why I like the of a villain that gets developed as such throughout the storyline, to get the satisfaction of, "FINALLY I get to go toe to toe with this guy and beat him to the ground".

[Messier-31]

WARNING: Possible spoilers to follow!

 

There are many interesting ways to go through for a cool, climatic, epic, whatever, story ending, like:

• inevitable main boss at the end, perishes from your hand (evil, I smite thee) - e.g. Baldur's Gate
• kill everyone (wake up, breakfast, death, death, death, afternoon tea, death) - e.g. Septerra Core
• survive bloody waves of enemies and pick a path (what does the red button do?) - e.g. Mass Effect 3
• have a few shots of vodka with your nemesis and fight him or walk away (see ya!) - e.g. Witcher 2
• spoil the plans of the bad guy(s) and get the hell outta there (all your base are belong to us) - e.g. Fallout *

 

* note that in Fallout you could either fight the boss, set up a bomb, or talk your way out of trouble (or join them, even!) - and that's the way to go! Choices! Choices are the most important thing in a role-playing game and they don't interfere with a developed villian. You just decide what to do with him at the end - could be the ultimate showdown, could be something else. You decide, it's your game (sort of).

[AGX-17]

WARNING: Possible spoilers to follow!

 

There are many interesting ways to go through for a cool, climatic, epic, whatever, story ending, like:

• inevitable main boss at the end, perishes from your hand (evil, I smite thee) - e.g. Baldur's Gate
• kill everyone (wake up, breakfast, death, death, death, afternoon tea, death) - e.g. Septerra Core
• survive bloody waves of enemies and pick a path (what does the red button do?) - e.g. Mass Effect 3
• have a few shots of vodka with your nemesis and fight him or walk away (see ya!) - e.g. Witcher 2
• spoil the plans of the bad guy(s) and get the hell outta there (all your base are belong to us) - e.g. Fallout *

* note that in Fallout you could either fight the boss, set up a bomb, or talk your way out of trouble (or join them, even!) - and that's the way to go! Choices! Choices are the most important thing in a role-playing game and they don't interfere with a developed villian. You just decide what to do with him at the end - could be the ultimate showdown, could be something else. You decide, it's your game (sort of).

 

How a conflict with an antagonist is resolved is tangential to the topic, which is that the OP wants the antagonist to be like a one-dimensional Nintendo villain whose existence consists of kidnapping the same princess over and over and over for no apparent reason in a game world meant to be taken at face value. This is about the nature of the antagonist, not how players can resolve the game's central conflict.

Edited September 30, 2013 by AGX-17

[Messier-31]

How a conflict with an antagonist is resolved is tangential to the topic, which is that the OP wants the antagonist to be like a one-dimensional Nintendo villain whose existence consists of kidnapping the same princess over and over and over for no apparent reason in a game world meant to be taken at face value. This is about the nature of the antagonist, not how players can resolve the game's central conflict.

 

I know - this was my explication of thoughts about a developed archenemy that "should be" confronted via battle.

My answer to the OP's query is available on page 1.

[jamoecw]

i was hoping that the final battle at the end of DA:awakening was you defending your keep, running off to hot spots to do certain tasks, all while your forces/resources are being expended until you can get to the next hot spot, using all those things you spent the earlier game building up, while choosing what to sacrifice in order to defend to keep (maybe hard decisions like sacrificing your forces to keep the villagers huddled in the keep safe, or conserving forces by and sacrificing the villagers safety).  maybe even have it so you can sacrifice your keep's resources to make the battle easier on yourself, or make things harder on yourself to preserve your keep's resources.

 

i found the decisions in the final battle of ME1 to be far more compelling (sacrifice humans to save the council or not, though it could have been phrased better) than in ME2 where it was just your party members on the line, and they had right and wrong decisions (instead of upping the difficulty in order to save your party members, and thus a cost benefit for 'everyone lives' ending).

[neo6874]

 

You want a memorable adversary? Make them not suck, make them smart, efficient, collected, and most of all, active.

-

The antagonist lets others do the dirty work, no, they do not share information with the goons executing the plans. No, they hire professionals, not idiots who are easily beaten and talk when pressed.

The antagonist "real" life is filled with virtue and little fame or ambition.

The antagonist has friends and allies, who help him for other reasons than fear or coercion.

The antagonist has a real base of power, both public and secret.

The antagonist is ruthless, but not needlessly cruel.

The antagonist accurately gauges the threat you pose to him or her, and provides you with serious obstacles. obstacles anyone would reasonably think would be enough to stop you.

The antagonist doesn't stick to one tactic. If force doesn't work, persuasion, distraction or evasion might.

 

This kinda reminds me of the KoTOR games... at least in some senses:

 

KotOR1 - Malak is the bad guy from  pretty early on, since Revan was taken out ~somehow~ by Bastila (who I found more or less useless for a Jedi).  stuff happens and you're fighting Malak, where you end up getting a choice --> fall to the dark side, or not (add more game here).

 

KotOR2 -- Kreia acts as a mentor and helps you re-attune yourself with the Force ... ends up being a Sith Lord who you have to beat down at the end.

 

The replay factor is admittedly pretty low, due to the story arc being pretty linear in these two games, but it wouldn't be impossible to set up the story outcome to be based on the sidequests --> e.g. help out a group to keep a shifty noble in check, he's just some noble ... don't do that quest (or help the noble out somehow) and he's the BBEG at the end...  

 

*NOTE -- very glossed over because it's been a long time since I've played either ... (*goes off to find the discs*)

Edited October 31, 2013 by neo6874

[Chairchucker]

A lot of people have said they don't want the 'big bad' to be cliched, and while I can understand that, many cliches exist for very good reasons.

 

A lot of 'big bads' have very simple motivations; they want money and power etc, and are totally OK with crushing people underfoot to get these things. The reason this kind of motivation exists for villains in many forms of media, including games, is that this kind of motivation exists for humans in real life.

[Fearabbit]

A lot of people have said they don't want the 'big bad' to be cliched, and while I can understand that, many cliches exist for very good reasons.

 

Yes, but I'm assuming that most people here aren't actually talking about cliches like "they're powerhungry" and stuff like that.

 

We actually don't want characters without cliche traits - we don't want characters who are cliches themselves.

So it's kind of a criticism of the metanarrative. For a typical RPG villain to be a cliche, he must go beyond "powerhungry". He must also have a secret base under a volcano, he must have armor with lots of spikes, he must say "fool" a lot, he must have minions, he must have a throne, ...

 

And I guess the things he doesn't have are also quite important. For example, a loving family. I don't think I've ever seen a villain in an RPG with a family, with a partner, with friends... really anything that would be normal for a human being. Of course, it makes sense because he's so powerhungry that these things would get in the way. It's this type of ridiculous caricature of a bad guy that we call cliched and do not want to see.

 

It's very, very specific in its absurdity and therefore the opposite of a cliche that exists for a good reason.

 

The crazy thing is that this cliche villain is not only highly unrealistic, it's also very useless for an RPG with choices and consequences. It's impossible to compete with a villain that's so comically evil when you play an evil character yourself, for example. Imagine how interesting things could get if he had a weak spot, like a family or friends. How would the story unfold? Maybe you can lure him out of his fortress by capturing his best friend and forcing him to go on a rescue mission? These interesting opportunities are completely blocked out if you design a villain that's "too evil" to care about friends.

[cleric Nemir]

Dunno if I really like the whole super-villain thing,or the "good" ole "great evil at end-what will you do?" type of story. Heck,I would be amazed if it was anything other than that,like positively amazed,if it was done good. I cannot properly imagine an ending that would knock me off and that it doesn't involve "ultimate end evil",and that's what bothers me often. If there's anything I would really like,it is to see an ending idea never seen before in fantasy crpgs; as for villains-I would love them ingame and all,but not in a role critical to the plot. I wouldn't like it less if it was done with same old  "great evil at end-what will you do?",but still..