As we established in our last “Interesting Villains” series, bad guys that really appeal and draw you in can be rather hard to come by in the gaming world. Conversely, finding villains that fulfil the basics of evil without ever stepping out of their generic, clichéd shell is unfortunately about as easy as pointing at a random game on the shelf at your local EB and playing it for five minutes.
There does exist a third tier of gaming villainy, however, one that is rarer still than the really great fiends like Kane, Irenicus, or even (shudder) John Romero himself. I am, of course, talking about the villains that are “interesting” for all the wrong reasons; the ones that make you wonder just what the hell the designers were thinking when they put a character this undeniably poorly designed (or just plain stupid) into their multi-million dollar project.
So in order to honour those villains that make gaming audiences around the world sit back and say “What the frick?”, I’d like to present to you this, the first part of my Top 5 Most Disastrous Gaming Villains of All Time; the games themselves may have been successful, but that doesn’t mean we didn’t spend all our time laughing at the absurdity of our foe.
For our first entry, I would like to take you on a visit to one of my favourite games ever, set in one of my favourite fictional universes ever, and then present to you one of the most illogical choices for a main villain ever! I give you…
Desann – Star Wars Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast, Raven Software (PC/Xbox/Gamecube/Mac)
Jedi Outcast was a terrific game, there is no denying that. It had a great storyline that was darker than the typical Star Wars game, was built using a strong and good looking (for the time) engine, and brought comfortable and deep Lightsabre mechanics to the masses for the first time.
The story itself focused on a hidden Dark Jedi taking control of part of the Imperial Remnant post-Return of the Jedi, and using a secret source of Force power to create an army of other Dark Side users to conquer the galaxy.
The Empire are the quintessential bad guys in that they are essentially Space Nazis; they’re racist, sexist, all look the same, and enjoy shooting the crap out of things. Perhaps it was this pro-human, anti-alien xenophobia in the background that made Raven come up with their master stroke: lets make the evil villain behind the Empire Reborn an alien himself, sending out his secret apprentice and manipulating the bad guys from behind the scenes for his own benefit.
Probably not a bad idea, right? I mean look at Grand Admiral Thrawn, Star Wars fans love him and he was an alien leading the Empire. There was, however, just one teensy weensy little problem with this plan to make the Dark Jedi leading the Empire into an alien master of destruction…
Raven decided to make him a dinosaur.
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- Maybe the next Jurassic Park movie will have dino-men with stripy pants? One can only hope!
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- Desann with his apprenctice Tavion; notice she is NOT a dinosaur-woman
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- Oh yeah, xenophobic humans would just LOVE him!
They may say he’s an alien of the Chistori race, he may have a bipedal body with hands that can hold a lightsabre and feet that can wear boots (would love to see the evolutionary theory behind THAT species!), but the fact remains that the Empire Reborn was being led by a man with a brown-and-purple Tyrannosaurus head.
Look at the pictures, watch the video, and tell me if you can take this guy seriously at all? I kept expecting him to reveal that he had been created in a lab by splicing human DNA with that found in a fossilised mosquito for the purposes of entertaining Jedi children in a future-style Jurassic Park.
The truly tragic part was that every other aspect of Desann made for a remarkably interesting villain; he had a tragic back story, terrific voice acting and dialogue (especially for an FPS), was presented as being supremely powerful and dangerous, and was suitably menacing in combat.
Shame then that it was impossible to see a cutscene starring him without immediately imagining him eating Newman from Seinfeld while he’s hiding in the crapper.
Desann: Though he may be deadly, if you stand still he probably won’t be able to see you, and instead will wander off in search of easier prey (including obese men in toilets)
Well that brings us to the end of the first article in this series; who can top Darth Dinosaur? You’ll just have to wait and find out, won’t you?
- 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)
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