Top 5 Most Interesting Gaming Villains of All Time (Part 2) - Feature

Interesting villains in videogames can be surprisingly hard to come by.  Thanks to the veritable bevy of clones, cheap knockoffs, strange Japanese games, and sheer, unadulterated crap on the market, it’s easy to find one’s attention wandering when pondering which bad guys are actually worthy of the title, and thus your time.

But of course, like moustachioed, beret wearing wheat being sifted from the generic, nuke-possessing, stupid-name-wielding chaff (how’s THAT for a metaphor?), there are a few examples of true, interesting, honest-to-Bill-Gates villains just waiting to receive your worship and adulation…before executing you in true villain style, no doubt.

For you see, complex characters (good or bad) are always about motivation; a bad guy that wants to destroy the world simply because he was christened Baron von Evilpants III is not going to be anywhere near as interesting as a character who wants to destroy the world due to the unbridled torment and infinite pain caused by selling his soul to the Chaos God of Confectionary for immortality and an endless supply of Tiny Teddies.  Even when they’re our enemy, we still want to know why they tick, and we definitely want the ticking to have some sort of significance.   

So in order to honour those villains (or really, the writers behind them) that stimulate our collective minds, and to help you all get your evil on, I’d like to present to you this, the first part of my Top 5 Most Interesting Gaming Villains of All Time; they may not always be the nastiest bad guys you’ve ever come across, but they’re definitely more than just the clichéd, caricatures you see in so many games (and movies, and books, and…).

After visiting with Grand Admiral Zaarin, our last interesting villain, it’s now time to duck on over to Castle Wolfenstein for numer zwei:

   

Adolf Hitler - Wolfenstein 3D (PC/SNES/OTHERS)

OK, so when it comes to villains, this guy is kind of an obvious choice right?  I mean, it’s freaking Hitler, pretty much the ultimate bad guy ever!  Wolf 3D was hardly known for its advanced storyline or in-depth character exploration, so it was pretty obvious for a simple WW2 shooter to use Hitler as the main boss.  So why then is big bad Adolf an actual interesting gaming villain, rather than just another gaming cliché?

Because he appears in three different, incredibly bizarre forms, that’s why!  Taking one of the most fascinating real-life villains of all time and inserting him into a game as the last boss may not have been a particularly exciting thing to do, but when he appears as a series of priestly-looking Hitler-ghosts which float above the floor and fling fireballs at you; a power-armour wearing, quad-chaingun wielding monster; and of course, in his more traditional, sans-armour brown-shirted form; well lets just say that developer id Software got a pretty decent amount of mileage out of the Fuhrer.

While lacking in exposition or great amounts of backstory, Wolf 3D nonetheless explored some aspects of Hitler and the Nazis which were rather surprisingly based on real-life occurrences.  Don’t get me wrong, there weren’t actually armies of zombie Nazis eating brains across Europe; but Hitler, as well as many of his underlings, actually did have a great deal of interest in the supernatural, particularly religious artefacts, as well as things like genetic manipulation in the effort to create the ultimate ‘Aryan’.  The manipulation of science and the supernatural to further the efforts of the Nazi war machine was of definite interest to Hitler and co, and this theme is explored gradually throughout Wolf 3D.

After battling your way through various undead soldiers, unnatural scientists, and massive, armoured bosses, you finally reach the home ground of Adolf himself, and encounter the aforementioned Hitler Ghosts.  Why are there Hitler Ghosts when he’s still alive at this point?  I really have no idea whatsoever; maybe they’re ghostly clones, or evil spirits taking on his form, or little pieces of his soul or something, who knows?

What I do know is that they are monsters in every sense of the word.  They fly around the room, throwing fireballs at you like it’s going out of style, and laugh maniacally when you finally gun them down.  What the hell are they, and how were they created?  Who knows! I mean, this is Hitler we’re talking about here; he probably just did it for gits and shiggles.

After annihilating the various ghostly clones (seriously, no idea what’s happening there), the Fuhrer comes out to handle things personally.  Wielding those four chainguns and wearing a suit of armour which makes him look like one of those old head changer Transformers toys, Adolf the Armoured is far tougher than his numerous ghostly counterparts.

When the big man finally falls in a clatter of metal and sauerkraut, he simply steps out of his armour and continues to go toe to toe with the player.  Satisfyingly, when the moustachioed-one is finally gunned down, you get an action replay of the gibs flying, as well as the real story behind Hitler’s death. 

Suicide in a bunker with Eva? Ha!  Being gunned down by an Allied spy after raising an undead army, numerous ghostly clones of yourself, and becoming a walking tank is a much more believable death for the big daddy of all real life evil.  After all, he takes 40 hits from a chaingun when he isn’t wearing armour; as if cyanide would have killed him!

A run through the Hitler level of Wolf 3D

              

That’s our Germanic second entry, and manages to fulfil both the interesting and pure evil requirements for villains. Stay tuned for tomorrow when the next classic villain is revealed.

  

- Tim Sweeney

  

(Please note that all images and videos appearing in this article series are not my property, but were instead sourced from Google Images and Youtube for non-commercial purposes; if there is an issue with my making use of these, please contact me and they will be removed immediately)