Am I Evil? - September 10, 2001 - Brooke Bolander
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed within this column are those of the participants and the moderator, and do not necessarily reflect those of the GIA. There is coarse language and potentially offensive material afoot. When it comes to brute strength, I'm afraid I'm at the shallow end of the gene pool. Don't say we didn't warn you. This topic brought up one of the odd little obsessions of my younger days, one that still persists to this very day. Some people picked Sephiroth as a good example of the 'sympathetic villain' mold, and others chose Ghaleon...but I'm going to go out of the relm of video games for my example. Join me, won't you? I think...I think the villain I've felt the most sorry for, in any medium, was Scar. You heard me. Now before you get the pitchforks out, think about his situation - from what I could gather, all he wanted was a little respect, and to be loved. To be a king. Sadly though, because he was the younger brother, this chance was denied him. Boo, hiss. I still don't know why, but out of all the characters in that movie, the one I identified with most with was him. Maybe I'm nuts, but Scar always struck me as pretty damn sympathetic...which is why a small statuette of him continues to guard my monitor. Here's to the outcasts. | Pfft, everyone loves Sephiroth. | | Hey Brooke, After reading all the letters from yesterday's topic, I'm convinced I've got the most warped view of FF characters of anyone on the planet (and it tends to show in my fanfic). Now, when I think of sympathetic villains, two names immediately pop into mind. One is Seifer Almasy. He wasn't pure unadulterated evil, IMO, just a schoolyard bully with the insecurities that go with it. Every action he took in that game I saw as a screaming cry for help. The other name will probably shock people, but I'm going to have to say it: Sephiroth. Yes, Sephiroth. And this is coming from a huge fan of both Aeris and Cloud. :P Why? No, it's not because he's dead sexy. It's because even though he killed someone I grew to deeply care about, I couldn't help but feel nothing but pity for him. From the minute he was born, he never really had a chance. The experimenting, the conditioning: hell he was just plain USED by Shinra. He reminded me a lot of Celes Chere in that regard. His true mother, Lucretia, never got to hold him, or tell him that she loved him. His father was a psychopath scientist hell bent on playing God, and damn the consequences. All his life, he was used by Shinra like some kind of weapon. No one cared about him, not one person (well you could make a good argument that Cloud did, but that depends on what side of the shounen-ai fence you sit on). The utter loneliness of his situation must have been heartbreaking. Then he finds out his "mother" was a malevolent alien entity and he was the product of a twisted experiment. Is it any wonder he went mad? Hell, I would have too. This will sound strange, but when I fought Seraph Sephiroth I had just as many tears in my eyes as when he killed Aeris. That he had gone so deeply into the abyss of madness that *this* was the ultimate image he had of himself, was sad to me. I wanted to save him more than I wanted to kill him, and he was truly at a point where he was beyond all redemption. That's what hurt me the most. It was at that point that I truly understood Vincent Valentine's guilt over his "sin". Ah, maybe it's just a Goth thing. --Celestra, who always seems to have sympathy for the devil. | Actually, you're not nearly as original and/or odd as you think you are - a simple look at the number of fanpages and fanfics devoted to Sephiroth will quickly show that he's probably one of the most loved anti-heroes to ever appear in a game. That said, I agree with all of what you stated above. The guy did have a miserable life, yeah, and for that I pitied him. However, by the time you reached the final confrontation, the best thing for him was probably death. Even if he had survived and changed his ways, the entire planet would have hated him, no matter what the excuse for his behavior. He would have been an outcast, and an outcast with Hojo as a father, at that. Do you think he really would have wanted to live in that state?... | The suits came with the job. | | I really like the Turks. They're villains yes, but they're cool 'coz they're not evil. They're pros. And even though they are somewhat sympathetic to your cause, you never feel bad for whacking them, because they're pros. They're doing their job. They understand that, and so do Cloud and company. On a side note, is Nich from the Philippines by any chance? While the mention of Marcos may be quite commonplace in the world, the fact that he named Macapagal as Marcos' predecessor shows his knowledge of Philippine history. -roy | Yeah, not only were the Turks just doing their jobs - not evil, nothing personal against your own party, of course - but then the game actually gives you the option of letting them off the hook. I cannot stress how cool that is...just imagine a game where you could actually do this with the end boss. They could make it hard for you to forgive them (forget the pain of getting one beloved character iced; what if your entire party fell victim to the evil?) thus giving more of a moral edge to it. Do you overcome your emotions and help the guy, or do you let him have it? I can only hope someone actually goes through with this someday, instead of leaving your decision on a moral 'rail.' As for Nich being from anywhere but Crazy Town - and I quote - "What it shows more than anything else is that I know how to use google." Take that as you will. | Fou-who? *BOF4 Spoilers* | | Ms. Bolander, I really don't like sympathetic villains. It seems as if the bad guy at the end of the game is generally being driven by some other raging psychopaths who were using them for their own purposes. In some cases, you don't even get a chance to TOUCH said raging psychopaths. Consider Fou-Lu from Breath of Fire IV. Here is a dragon emperor who wakes up to a group of soldiers waiting for him so that they can kill him. He quickly dispatches them and attempts to leave the area, only to be attacked by an old man's summoned monsters. He gets hunted like a dog, shunned by certain members of a small village, and even has a superweapon fired at him (which has its own upsetting story attatched to it). Long story short, there was some evil necromancer guy behind a lot of his persecution (and some of the crap your own party goes through), but does your party ever make a concentrated effort to kill him? Nooo, you're supposed to find this dragon emporer and eventually defeat HIM instead. Being the Breath of Fire series, of course there's an alternate ending (the 'bad' ending) where you could choose to side with him, but it's an ultimately unsatisfying ending that leaves Fou-Lu ready to destroy the world. That's not to say that beating the tar out of this guy for the 'good' ending made me feel any better about the plot -- the real enemy was still out there with plans to make the world miserable again. And this is just one stinking example of a sympathetic villain! Sure, in a lot of games the party gets a hold of the 'real enemies', but those fights feel almost like an afterthought. Gotta save the guy we feel some amount of pity for till the end so we can beat 'em into the ground with our biggest, nastiest weapons, right? -Some Random Jerk | Fou-Lou wasn't really even a nut as much as he was just a ticked-off badass. I mean, how many times have you looked at the state of things in the world and wanted to just blow the whole damn thing up? ...Um, not that I think of such things, heh heh heh. ...Anyways, another thing I liked about Fou-Lou was he had the closest thing to a romantic relationship I've ever seen. And why not? Why can't 'villains' have people who care and love for them, no matter what they do? Why can't they have family lives? It's a lot more realistic than everyone just hating their guts, especially with the ratio of pretty boys who usually end up as the villains. Yeah right, like Sephy didn't have a girlfriend. Pfft. Plus after seeing what that Hex Gun did, I really couldn't blame Fou-Lou for wanting to do some damage. Sheesh. | Watch her overanalyze! Wheee! | | Howdy, Brooke! For the record, I think you're doing a great job! With that out of the way, to the Topic-moblie, Batman! I'm personally all for sympathetic villains in games. It makes things that much more interesting. Think about it...which resonates with you more, and completely insane nut case who only wants to destroy the world, or the guy who honestly believes he's doing the right think, is perfectly justified in his own mind. Yes, I think they should be doing bad things, to give us a reason to hunt down their butts and beat them down....but if they have human touches, it makes them more alive. The villains are, for the most part, humans too. Shouldn't they have self doubts, fears? While the just pure nutcases are great every once in a while (Kefka being a prime example) I find it more interesting for the villains to have just somehow gone down the wrong path in life, and they just keep going forward. Maybe I want to hate the villain all the more, because there is the scrap of humanity about them, and they're slowly killing it as they make themselves supreme over lord of whatever. All I really want is for the villains to have a reason for wanting to destroy the world...without that, I don't care. Kelly ~I want to huggle Ghaleon, too....after kicking his ass~ | You bring up some good stuff in your letter, but since I'm a heartless bitch with a short attention span, I'm only going to focus on one thing you mentioned - Ghaleon. Here is the perfect example of a sympathetic villain, someone who thinks he's doing the right thing despite all evidence otherwise. In a weird way he reminded me a lot of the Grand Inqusitor in The Brothers Karamozov. Each of them thinks that what man needs to be happy is not freedom, but just the opposite - they think they need to be safeguarded from freedom, need someone or something strong to guide them. The difference here is that Ghaleon thinks that having a Goddess will solve that problem, instead of the church. I'm probably reading too much into his character, but in that way Ghaleon seems almost cynically heroic - he's trying to protect humanity from itself. ...Or maybe he was just supposed to be a crazy elf-bishonen. I've probably screwed up my analogies to hell; it's been awhile since I read that chapter. | A little bitter, aren't we? | | Sympathetic villans? Who needs them? If the main villan of a game isn't burning villages to the ground, slaughtering hundreds of innocent people for his own amusement, or at least threatening to destroy the world for purposes other than to merely "conquer it", the desire to get to the end of the game and beat them to a bloody pulp is gone, and it takes far too much fun away from the game with it. Down with non-evil villans, and please, don't even get me started on the way I would react if there was a sympathetic one. Remember, you can't spell sympathetic without pathetic. - Esto Carass | Awww c'mon, give them a chance. I personally enjoy the sympathetic villains a lot more than I do the crazy-ass ones - I liked Kefka as much as anyone, but sheeze. I like for my heartstrings to be tugged as well as having my ire raised. You know what I'm really waiting to see, though? A female sympathetic villain. And no I don't count Edea as one, she was more of a pawn or vessel than anything else...I mean something in the vein of Sephiroth, a woman who's been manipulated, scorned, and left for dead - and now she wants revenge. Ooooh yeah. It's not like we don't get pissed too, you know. And I want her to be named after me. Yes. And while I'm dreaming, can she wield a sword? There's a sad lack of female katana-wielding sociopaths in games, and if I ever design a game, you can bet your balls there's gonna be one. Just watch me go, baby. | Che Guevara - The RPG! | | Brooke, Continiuing in what Nich started, which I feel is one of the better discussions we've had in a long time, (no insult to any of the agents, there have been many great single shot columns recently, but this one looks like it could drag a few days and be a lot of fun). I like the idea of a sympathetic hero for the same reasons I like a jerk as a hero. It's more believable, more realistic. About a year ago, a lot of weird shit happened, and 6 months after that, some more happened, and last night I got into an argument that culminated everything. "I'm can be a jerk sometimes, and I'm also a little arrogant, but despite my reputatin, I am not an asshole" ...was my response to sometihng,....I want a villian like that. He wants to rule the world, he wants to get back at someone for something, but he still happens to be a decent guy. I'd like an RPG where your not sure of which side is which. It would have a political basis, the bad guys trying to overthrow the current government and the good guys trying to stop them. But let's say that the current king is cruel, and a jerk, and charges ridiculous taxes. The main villian is a decent guy who wants to end this, but instead of going the legal route just feels passionatly enough to get a group together and take over by coup. The main heroes would be possibly a soldier, a few commoners, people set in their ways that the current system was good, and they would try to stop them at every turn. Eventually however, the main charecters would see the villians point and help reistablish the government. Untill the leader of this rebel faction was assissinated by someone with a similar attitude, but a touch of insanity and bent on taking over the world, and the heroes have to pull together and stop him. But to make it interesting, a few heroes would switch over, and a few enemies would do so as well. And in the end, the world would be saved....but if you stop and think about it, life under that rebel group probably wouldn't have been to bad at all. You would justify your actions with 'absolute power corrupts absolutely" but youd always have that touch of wonder... Ok, a little off topic, but not much Peace, - Ray | *SUIKODEN II SPOILERS. ENTER AT YOUR OWN PERIL.* Actually, I think the Suikoden series has a lot of what you're looking for. People you would never expect to turncoat defect and betray your party, while soldiers and generals from the other side have a tendancy to do the same thing. Along those lines, I think Jowy was a great villain, if you could even call him that - he just wanted to change things, but stupid little details like 'law' and 'friendship' didn't stop him. Final Fantasy Tactics is another good example of this, although I think Delita was even more ruthless than Jowy, and thus a little less likable. I still think it'd be nice if your own party could go bad, though, without any preset scenarios. Murder a townsperson and go on the run - see how fun evil is, kids? | The villain with the laughing face. | | Phooey on sympathetic villains, what about pathetic villains? I've always been a big fan of long-suffering comic relief, and when they're making miserable attempts at being evil, I get the added pleasure of making their darkly-amusing life that much more torturous. But getting kicks out of other people's headaches isn't the only reason I like loser villains, or even the main reason. Primary villains in games, even the sympathetic ones, are irritating because almost all of them have a 'master plan' that they can bring to the boiling point (where, naturally, you slay them as the final boss) with maximum cackling and minimum effort. I like to see would-be villains work for it, try again if they fail, and more often then not trip over their own flaws. It's so much more compelling than the garden-variety 'bad guy who builds himself into a god only to be arbitrarily struck down, by the people he's been ditching for the whole story, at the moment he's most powerful'. People say they want real heroes, I want real villains. Admit it, can you or anyone else really say you've played Megaman Legends for Roll and Data instead of the Bonnes and Co.? -SonicPanda | Oh come now. How are you supposed to fear a guy or see the challenge in beating him when the poor sucker can't even tie his own shoelaces without falling over backwards? The thrill of beating him or her would be slightly lessened if the only way they thrashed you was by sheer dumb luck - it would be like kicking Mihoshi's ass or something. ...Still, it might have been good for a giggle if Sephiroth had been that way. "Oh wow! I'm so sorry, I seem to have impaled you! Here, let me try to pull that ou- whoops!" Great, I'm gonna be snickering over that vision the entire night. Closing Comments: Short column this evening, yeah - I dunno if Nich cursed moi when he made that remark about me getting lots of letters or what, but the flow slowed to a trickle after he hosted. Grr him. Since I didn't get any topics for tomorrow, however, I'm going to pull one out of my hat sent to me a few days back by a very intelligent young man who shall remain nameless. Since any attempt by myself to summarize what he said will end up looking pathetic in comparison, I'd better just give it to you straight from the horse's mouth. ...Base a day's topic on whether RPGs could/should lean more towards becoming a medium for the exploration of certain relevant issues - much in the same way novels and films have been used to explore questions about (to name a few) religion, individuals, human nature and so forth - and what sort of issues could be discussed and what consequences this might have. After all, of all video game types surely the RPG is best suited to this role, being a cross between a novel and a film: when done correctly, of course. What with the Xenogears prequel finding itself based on Nietzsche's "The Will To Power", is this a welcome development? Should RPGs attempt to tackle weightier topics with a greater level of maturity, rather than "he's in 'Church', he must be evil!" ? A wise topic from a much more intelligent individual than I. Go to it, my Flying Monkey Minions! Fly! Fly! -Brooke Bolander, who thinks that the release of ICO this month is a sure sign of a higher power. |
