Top 5 Most Interesting Gaming Villains of All Time (Part 4) - 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…).

Now it’s time to leave fantasy behind and head back into the world of sci-fi.  Our fourth interesting villain is quite possibly my most favourite character to ever grace a video game; and yes, he still lives…:

   

Kane - Command & Conquer Series (PC/OTHERS) 

Fight!

Win!

Prevail!

If any character in gaming history has ever summed up what it is to be an interesting villain, it is the messiah-like figure that is Kane.  He is the Prophet of the Brotherhood of Nod; the semi-religious, entirely terrorist organisation which exists in the alternate reality Command and Conquer Universe originally brought to us by Westwood Studios (now swallowed whole by the uber-beast that is EA).

But the back story of Kane goes far further than his merely being the L. Ron Hubbard of C&C; throughout the various games in the series, it is frequently implied that Kane is none other than Cain from the biblical story of Adam and Eve; you know the one that became the first murderer by killing his brother Abel, and was banished by God (who was apparently a lot more active back in those days; less carbs in His diet?) to forever wander the land of Nod. He’s also been blamed for starting WW2 by controlling Stalin in an alternate-future (this is no longer canon, unfortunately) , and is apparently immortal; he’s well over a hundred years old (possibly thousands if he is the biblical Cain), has been impaled, and even supposedly killed by an orbital laser cannon!

Played by Joe Kucan (who was the FMV director for Westwood), Kane became an instant classic when he ruthlessly executed his traitorous lackey Seth on camera during a cutscene in the original C&C (Tiberian Dawn).  Over the course of the numerous games and expansion packs, Kane continues to show a truly villainous ruthless streak, frequently killing underlings who betray or fail him, experimenting on his own followers and innocent civilians with the alien (and highly deadly) Tiberium crystals, and seeing his entire loyal organisation as little more than an expendable tool to aid his own “ascension”.

Besides being a total bad arse, however, the main selling point of Kane as an incredibly interesting villain is the sheer magnetism and charisma that Joe Kucan brings to the part.  I’ve referred to this man as being immensely scary for how well he portrays a sociopathic character like Kane, and those comments still stand; it is impossible to imagine any actor ever playing this role as well as Kucan, because he IS Kane.

His performance as the Prophet is a masterfully feverish portrayal of a man who believes wholeheartedly that he is the Messiah of mankind; and woe betide any fool who gets in the way of the Brotherhood using the Technology of Peace to aid humanity’s (and Kane’s own) ascension to the next evolutionary stage.  Every immensely quotable speech he makes is packed full of such meaning and sense of purpose that it is perfectly feasible to imagine the poor and downtrodden of a ruined world flocking to him in droves to “save” them.

The fact that he is as tactically savvy and cunningly manipulative as he is charismatic ensures that the Brotherhood of Nod will always go from strength to strength, even with the occasional temporary setback like being pretty much annihilated repeatedly (cough).  Kane routinely manipulates the media, various governments, the Global Defence Initiative (the successor to the UN), and even his own organisation to achieve his ends; he has often faked his death where necessary, and even engineered the appointment of a particular politician as leader of GDI just to manipulate him into destroying Kane’s Temple with the Ion Cannon, thus awakening the alien Scrin and beginning the invasion of Earth (also a part of Kane’s overarching goals); talk about convoluted long-term planning that would make Machiavelli’s head explode!

Kane really is the ultimate interesting villain, combining the maniacal-yet-enthralling oratory skills of a Hitler with the military genius of a Napoleon; not to mention the willingness to sacrifice his own people possessed by Stalin.  Whether fighting with or against him, every time Kane appears he will command your attention, and I challenge anyone to tell me that they have never been drawn to the idea of joining the Brotherhood simply due to the sheer power and magnetism of his presence.

Peace through Power! 

                  

Kane gives Seth a rapid demotion (sound lags a bit behind the video unfortunately, still awesome)

     

Only one more left now; Kane is such an incredible villain, who is worthy enough to follow him in this list? 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)

Ranting Wombat: E-General Cyber-Court Marshalled Me for E-Dereliction of My Online Duties!

Bitching about people that play games online is a bit like making fun of the crapness of Mark Gasnier; it’s good for a cheap laugh at first, but at the end of the day it’s such an obvious thing to do that it get’s kind of sad.  People that play CS and all the rest are morons; we know, we know, get some new material already.

But recently I’ve begun to experience a more sinister online game player.  Unlike the teamkilling, randomly swearing, childishness of your average 14 year old Counterstrike player, this person is an older, more subtle beast; one prepared to charm you with his slightly-older-than-14 wiles and ability to almost string a grammatical sentence together.

I like to call him the E-General (I didn’t coin the term), and most recently I have been encountering the blighter in Team Fortress 2, having previously encountered them in pretty much every team based game I’ve ever played. 

He seems nice enough at first, the E-General, talking over the microphone and giving “suggestions” on where to go, who should be what class, and overall strategy.  When you’re winning, everything seems to be going swimmingly, and the E-General doesn’t cause too much in the way of annoyance; mainly he just congratulates everyone on a job well done, and maybe takes a little more of the credit than he deserves, but nothing terribly bad.

It’s when the team starts losing that this absolute slapper comes into his own realm of pure arse.  Suddenly his “suggestions” rapidly turn to “orders”; if he feels that you aren’t pulling your weight and contributing to the team, then he will damn well tell you about it.  He’ll also tell you what you should be doing instead, what class you should be playing as, and whether you’re the direct descendent of some form of inbred goat, or more just the child of a garden variety female dog.  When his orders are disobeyed, his full wrath is felt through a combination of verbal abuse, high-pitch whining, and attempts to ruin any sense of enjoyment you were getting from the game.

What’s even worse is the fact that there is no easy way to deal with the problem of the E-General.  Inevitably a few players will resist his ministrations, refusing to be ordered around by a teenager with a god complex (or worse, the middle-aged armchair general); unfortunately such acts of resistance are usually just as disruptive to everyone’s enjoyment, if not more so. 

Other players will just assume the position and listen wholeheartedly; these players subsequently sacrifice their own enjoyment for what this joker tells them is the betterment of the team.  Of course, he’s most likely an idiot who couldn’t come up with a successful strategy if he had both Sun Tzu and Mat Cauthon giving him advice.

Even if the guy is the next coming of Alexander the Great, it’s still no excuse to act like such a complete turd to everyone else in a server.  Just like any other fun activity, whether playing soccer with friends down at the park or, yes, playing games on the internet; generally speaking, things become a lot less entertaining when some idiot starts treating it like a real-life struggle of epic proportions.

I don’t advocate mucking around to the point you aren’t playing the game properly (because this impacts on the fun of everyone else playing, which is awfully like what the E-General is doing), but I do encourage people to simply play for fun and enjoy themselves, rather than treating every game as a must-win competition; losing at a game should still be enjoyable, albeit probably not as much as winning (just being realistic here).

Games are, at the end of the day, supposed to be about a combination of personal enjoyment and enjoyment as a group; when people start throwing orders around, and a win at all costs attitude develops, it just becomes another job.

Let’s leave turning fun into work to the athletes and leet pro gamerz of the world, shall we?  

        

- The Evil Wombat