The villains we see in most games are meant to be a dark reflection of our heroes- the ‘other’ side. With contrasting characteristics, these antagonists highlight the good our heroes are capable of. Through the protagonist’s failures, they bring the hero’s flaws into focus. They give us a reason to play our games, a reason to fight, no matter where the player character falls on the morality spectrum.
Sometimes, video game villains mess with our expectations, and they can even find a way to render our skills with the game mechanics useless until we find a way to get on top.
In a few rare cases, they make themselves relatable.
Spoilers for The Last of Us Part 2 and Assassin’s Creed 3 ahead.
Walking a mile in the villain’s shoes
Letting a player understand an antagonist is always a dangerous proposition. After all, we live in a grey world, and it would be nice if at least our game characters stayed in their nice white or black boxes.
But some games let us peek behind the curtain and see or read their stories, telling us why they became the “bad guys”. Just like that, we start to sympathize with them. But how do we view them as our enemy now that we have to walk a mile in their shoes?
The Last of Us Part 2
A game that explored this in recent years was The Last of Us Part 2. As a series, the games explore the worst humanity has to offer. Even though it uses survival as the excuse, most of the communities nurture fear of anything outside communal lines, which in turn leads to hate. Almost everyone in that world lives on a hair trigger as they are always looking over their shoulder. This leaves no space for kindness or patience as everyone looks to take care of me and mine.
This was the world set up in the first game. Joel takes care of his family. As he begins to love Ellie and see her as a daughter, he gets more fervent with this goal. Thus, it makes the game, in its own twisted way, one of love. As a result, we get incredibly attached to our protagonists, Joel and Ellie. As we try to keep them alive, it’s easy to ignore the damage Joel causes. After all, most of the time, he is simply reacting to keep Ellie safe.
His actions catch up to him five years later, violently. Right in front of you. You have to hear Ellie beg and scream as she watches on. It honestly shook me. I had to get up and walk away after that scene. It was incredibly hard to pick up the controller after that, especially since it was a character I loved.
Oh, did I hate Abby for what she did to Joel! After that sequence, I was more than happy to jump into Ellie’s rampage of revenge. Even as the voice of reason whispered to me that it was getting too violent, I brushed it aside. Then, around the 50% mark, the game flipped the script and made me play as Abby.
It was annoying. One of my friends called it ‘a cheap way to gain sympathy for the villain.’ Maybe it was. But cheap or not, it was effective. Since we had only ever seen the game from Joel and Ellie’s perspectives, it was gut-wrenching to see how they, and even Tommy looked from the outside. It was easy to understand why these other people saw them as villains.
We got to meet the people who loved and depended on Abby. We got to see her easy acceptance of those who were different because she is different. We now had to confront the deaths Ellie was responsible for, from Abby’s perspective. Abby was a woman who responded to grief with anger, just like Ellie. Since she was a child when she had to deal with that loss, Abby chose to work on herself. To use the gym to become powerful and strong, to feel like no one could defeat her. Abby made herself a tank. This is another way the game changed, in how you confronted the enemies.
In the middle of the game, I had to completely re-adjust how I played. Ellie was scrappy and fast. Abby, on the other hand, had incredible strength and tenacity, changing up everything from combat to stealth. With Abby, the infected were no longer the most dangerous things in a room. It changed the game experience completely.
I am not sure if I love Abby at the end of Part 2, but I do grudgingly understand her. You were left questioning everything, on all fronts, of this game.
Assassins Creed 3
When I met Haytham Kenway, I had no reason to question who he was. Through Desmond’s eyes, I followed Haytham as he crosses the Atlantic looking for a precursor temple. Considering that I was picking this game up after playing as Ezio Auditore, I needed a protagonist that could potentially match up. Haytham was a pretty admirable follow-up. He was suave, competent, and a good strategist- a colonial James Bond, a gentleman spy. It also worked in his favor that the opening level in the Opera house was incredible.
For the next few hours, you follow him as he puts his efforts into finding the temple to strengthen the order. You make friends, defeat slavers, and humiliate irritating redcoat generals. Through it all, he gets annoyingly charming as he parkours through the frontier and seduces the mysterious Ziio. You have time to get attached to him, to his ragtag group. You feel for him when his quest for the temple hits the hurdle. Then he returns to his group to initiate his student into the order. Into the wrong order that is.
The man was a bloody Templar. I was just as shocked as Desmond. I had just spent 4 games waging war against the Templars and their vendetta against free will. At no point in the 3 odd hours I had been playing as Kenway did I even suspect that he was the enemy. It painted an interesting picture that all secret orders, driven by conspiracy and secrets, look the same.
Then I had to play as Connor. Not that there is anything wrong with him. But he was angsty and lacked charm, a far cry from the character that brought us into this game. At the end of the game, all I found memorable was the character I was potentially supposed to hate. All I wanted was more playtime as Haytham Kenway.
Here, walking a mile in the villain’s shoes destroyed the game for me, because they won. The protagonist couldn’t even stand up. My entire friend group agreed that Haytham was who we wanted to play as more. All of us found Connor annoying. I do believe that I never even finished the game. We all jumped ship to Assassins Creed Black Flag as soon as that came out and fell in love with a whole new Kenway.
When the villain takes over
No matter how we interact with them, villains are an important aspect of our games. They are our hurdles, the reason behind our protagonist’s motivations, and sometimes we become them.
Giving us control of a villain is an interesting move for a designer. As a player, we could appreciate the nuance, as I did, with Abby’s story. Or we could end up falling in love with the villain instead, losing interest in the protagonist as a result.
Which game can you think of where we learned about or played as the villain? Where did that interaction change your experience? Do tell us about it in the comments below.
