Summary
Open world games are something of a challenge for narrative designers, because the player can feasibly do the story at any pace they like. That means any urgency or dread an antagonist might be trying to get across just won’t work. This challenge means that developers need to work harder, and sometimes, that means the villain becomes not only great, but far more interesting than the hero character.
Whether it be Machiavellian masterminds operating events from the background or in-your-face charismatic dictators spouting pseudo-philosophy, there are plenty of greatovershadowing villains to choose from in the world of open-world gaming.
TheBorderlandsfranchise has a strange tendency to make the protagonist characters more interesting in the following games, rather than the game they first feature in. For example, Lilith is nothing in the original game, but she becomes incredibly important in the second. This vacuum for the hero means the franchise has increasingly leaned on outlandish and bravura villains, with none being as famous as Handsome Jack.
From the very beginning ofBorderlands 2, the CEO of the Hyperion corporation makes himself known, and his presence looms large throughout the entire game, taunting the player constantly through brash humor and becoming the central way of personifying the unfeeling corporations. Yet, by the end of the game, Handsome Jack becomes a villain of considerable depth, and his enduring presence inthe canon of the franchise’s villainsspeaks volumes about how beloved he is.
Bethesda RPGs tend to havea pretty major problem with uninteresting protagonists. This is for good reason, though, because they’re meant to be blank spaces that the player can project themselves onto. However, this also means that other characters in the story need to pick up the slack, especially inSkyrim.
Enter Alduin. Taking a leaf from the kinds of intellectual dragons found in the Forgotten Realms world,Alduin is not just a big scary dragon; he occupies a philosophical position about the nature of death in the world of Tamriel, and he single-handedly forces other characters, like the Greybeards, to become more interesting by proxy. Though he’s not in-game in-person very much, Alduin is a memorable foe who is far more interesting than the hero.
It wouldn’t be a surprise if many gamers played through the entirety ofElden Ringwithout fully understanding what the story actually was about, and likeSkyrim, the Tarnished is a complete uninteresting blank slate with little perspective of their own.
Luckily, FromSoftware makes some of the most depth-filled characters in modern RPGs if players are willing to do their homework, and no FromSoftware antagonist has reached the levels of complexity, mystery, and sheer intensity as Radagon, the counter-part to Marika in more ways than one. He’s a mystery that befuddles the lore community to this day, making him a fascinating counterpoint to the blank slate of the Tarnished asthey journey to become Elden Lord.
Though it can be painful to admit, one of the weakest parts of everyThe Legend of Zeldagame is Link himself. Again, he’s something of an audience insert character, but it’s hard not to wonder whether he could be a more interesting character if any of his games chose to shine a spotlight on him with a bit more detail.
This remains true inThe Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, which actually features one ofthe best incarnations of the franchise’s perennial villain, Ganondorf, a tragically evil character who is willing to go to extreme lengths to disrupt the peace. He’s a compelling counterpoint to Link, and he is also the most memorable character of the game by far.
First thing’s first, Silverhand is a very complicated character. Anyone who has playedCyberpunk: 2077knows that this ghost that haunts V’s mind is abrasive, rude, and often antagonistic. In many versions of V’s journey, he can be a friend, but in others, he is the exact force V is fighting against, literally and metaphorically.
Despite V being something of a fleshed-out character, they can’t hope to stand up to the brilliant writing of Silverhand, who is a flawed foil to V the entire way through the game,even through the side quests, constantly questioning, bargaining, hijacking, and being a general nuisance. Some may not even see him as a villain at all, but he’s certainly one of the most compelling antagonists to come out of video games.
By the timeFar Cry 5rolled around, theFar Cryfranchise had become well known for its focus not just on the villain but the villain’s entire family and philosophy, defining the marketing for each game and the themes therein.
InFar Cry 5,the well-armed player characterfaces off against Joseph Seed, the leader of a Christian fundamentalist cult who has apocalyptic plans for the world. Like otherFar Cryvillains, he is certifiably insane, but he is incredibly compelling, really well-written, and entirely overshadows the nothing character of the protagonist.
Despite being a broadly silent character, Obsidian Entertainment’s brilliant writing actually makes the Courier perspective character ofFallout: New Vegaspretty interesting. That said, the Courier has to contend with some of the best-written villains in all gaming, which is a bit of an unfair comparison.
Of the many great choices that could have filled this spot fromFallout: New Vegas’s diverse and interesting factions(Joshua Graham or Ulysses were strong alternates), none loom so large as Mr. House, the epitome of nihilistic corporate greed who manipulates the world into a libertarian dictator state. He’s complex, insane, and utterly compelling, making him not just the best villain in the game, but one of the best villains in gaming.
Expectations were generally low forFar Cry 3when it was first announced. That all changed, however, when Ubisoft realized the pure gold they were sitting on with Michael Mando’s performance of Vaas, the psychopathic pirate captain who has taken over one of the main islands of the game, muses over the philosophy of insanity, anddominates the pantheon ofFar Cryvillains.
Vaas, as a character, entirely changed how villains were presented in video games. Instead of afterthoughts, they became central to how games were pitched, and Vaas himself would go down as one of gaming’s greatest baddies. While dude-bro Jason Brody as a hero is actually more interesting than he seems at first, he is nothing compared to Vaas, who has rightly become famous even outside of the video game world.
