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Gaming Therapy: Villainous Intentions
By: Jesse Lee
Aside from being a bit of a geek for RPGs, I also happen to be a bit of a geek for comic books. As such, I am quite obviously also a geek for cartoons which are based off of comic books. The old X-Men, Spider Man, and Bat Man cartoons from the '90s were integral to my childhood, and I still love watching them when I can, and I've always been a big fan of Justice League Unlimited. I was watching one of my favorite episodes of JLU the other day, the episode in which The Flash and Lex Luthor get their brains switched. This is an old, old gimmick in cartoons, and yes, it's been overdone, but for some reason I never get sick of it. While in The Flash's body, Lex Luthor takes advantage of his powers to wreck all kinds of havok, with much comedic effect at times. The Flash, on the other hand, who is in Luthor's body, is confused and just kind of goofs around. At one point he emerges from the bathroom, and his villainous companions ask of him, "Aren't you going to wash your hands?" He looks at them and says, "No... Because I'm eeeeevil." I laughed at this. I always do. And I thought, "You know, that's a pretty common excuse." In both comic books and RPGs, you frequently see villians with questionable motivations. You see them go to great lengths to do things sinister, evil, and just all around not nice, and you can't help but sometimes wonder why they wish to do these things.
In the earlier days of comics, movies, games, and just about all forms of narrative media, it was often enough for them to just say, "Pfft. He's doing it because he's EVIL. He's THE BAD GUY. DUH!" And of course they're evil. That's why they're the antagonist and you, the valiant hero, are attempting to foil their dastardly schemes. Early RPGs, movies from the '70s, and comic books before the mid-'80s are prime examples of stories in which the audience seemed content with the explanation of, "This is the villian. He is a bad man. Hate him! Boo! Hiss!" But over time, people begin to demand more. You see, when movies started out, there was a kind of novelty to them. "Hey, look! Pictures that move!" You were happy just to be seeing the movie by virtue of the fact that it was a movie. Your RPGs were no different. The interactivity of it made if fun and worthwhile enough that you didn't really care that the story was generic or that the villian had no motivation. But this wears off after a time. You start to want a villian who is a character - not a plot device. And in the end, if your villian is only attempting to take over the world or become god by virtue of the fact that they are the villian, that is all they are: a plot device.
The egomaniacal villian is a classic, but it's a classic that I've gotten tired of. If you have a villian with an ego the programmers struggle to fit into the disk space of the game, it makes it very convenient for that to be their motivation. They want to become a god-like being simply because they think they should be. They want to take over the world because they think they're the only ones worthy of doing so. But this kind of cookie-cutter villian gets old, and has gotten old, and has been old for a while now. Of course, this is only if they bother to give a motive at all.
Numerous examples can be cited from RPGs old and new. Earlier games, such as the original Dragon Quest, and Final Fantasy are somewhat excusable simply because of their age. At the time, a deep story wasn't exactly the priority for RPGs, especially considering that they hardly had room in the cartridge to include one. But the trend continued far beyond that. When you look at RPGs throughout the years, you'll find that the majority of villians fit this mold. If a motive is given, it's a weak one. Sephiroth, likely the most popular RPG villian, is ironically also one of the most heavily criticized, and with good reason. It's generally agreed that he wanted to - one way or another - become a god. The adjacent entries to the series, Final Fantasy VI and Final Fantasy VIII, both have villians with similar goals. Kefka is somewhat excused due to the fact that he was genuinely insane. Ultimecia isn't excused, because if she had any motive, she wasn't in the game long enough to reveal it, seeing as she came right-the-hell out of nowhere. Lavos from Chrono Trigger can be excused to a degree. Lavos's only motive was to consume. The only thing that made him an antagonist is that he happened to want to consume planets.
That said, there ARE examples of good villians in RPGs. The creation of a good villian requires good writting, which in my opinion, is necessary for a truely good RPG. Final Fantasy Tactics and Suikoden II are both games which I consider to have good, strong, well developed antagonists. Delita Hyral and Luca Blight are both dynamic and interesting characters, and their games are much more memorable for it. As I've stated in my previous columns, if the RPG genre is to be recognized as a valid and viable platform for storytelling and narration, we need quality stories. And for quality stories, you need to have quality villians. I've always hoped that one day RPGs might be viewed near or equal to books and movies in terms of their ability to convey a story. Granted, just as some stories would never work as movies, and some would never work as books, only some stories can make a good RPG but that's no excuse to slack in quality. Narration is what makes an RPG an RPG, and a good story needs a villian who you can hate, or who you can sympathize with, or atleast feel something towards. It is the responsibility of the writers to give us reasons to feel emotion towards these villians, or any character for that matter. As I've stated, regurgitation and stagnation will be the death of the RPG genre. Who wants to face the same villian game after game, with no real difference but a costume and a name (I rhymed! Ha ha!).
-- Jesse Lee
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