My 10 Favorite Villains Of The Last Generation (Xbox 360, PS3, Wii)

There is something really special about a great villain. A great villain can provide insight into heroes and worlds, they expose you to other moral codes and viewpoints and they motivate your actions as a player to find some way to stop or overcome them. Despite the fact that we are constantly battling enemies in videogames, truly enjoyable villains are exceedingly rare. That is why I wanted to take the time to look back at those from this past generation that I felt got it right. Now before we get into the list itself there are a few ground rules I want to layout.

1. My opinions of the villains in this list must be solely based on their depictions in games from this generation. Being a storied villain with a bunch of prior appearances is not a bonus. A classic villain can’t just show up again and ride the coattails of past success, the only way to earn a spot on this list is by being awesome in this most recently past generation. 

2. Villains who are cool or interesting because they were evil and then turned good or vise versa can only be thought of for their time as a villain.

3. Villains who originated in another medium are disqualified because this list is supposed to celebrate Videogames. 

4. I am focusing exclusively on individuals and not groups, so something like the Locust from Gears of War cannot qualify, but their leader Queen Myrrah does. 

5. I like these villains for many different reasons and ranking them seems a little weird and impractical so this list is in no particular order. Now that we’ve covered all of that let’s get to the first villain.

*Major Spoiler Warning for every game with a villain on this list*

Sovereign

Game: Mass Effect

Developed by: Bioware

Published by: Microsoft Game Studios

         The Reapers as a group are a great overarching enemy for the Mass Effect trilogy, but one of the reasons for that is how compelling Sovereign was in the original Mass Effect. That first interaction with Sovereign where you figure out that he is not just Saren’s ship, but rather some sort of ancient, fully sentient machine that describes itself in a god-like way (stating that it has no beginning, no end and is completely beyond your understanding) was a twist I did not see coming. Sovereign then delivers the chilling message that all the races in the galaxy have been wrong about the Protheans and the Mass Relays, for you all have been strung along by unseen forces just so that Sovereign and his kind could exterminate you all at your evolutionary peak. On top of that Sovereign was slowly infecting the mind of the primary antagonist Saren and single-handedly almost wiped out the whole alliance armada stationed at the Citadel in an attempt to bring back the Reaper army. Sovereign may not have been in the series, or even the first game, for very long, but he made a hell of an impression that never went away.

Chakravartin

Game: Asura’s Wrath

Developed by: CyberConnect2

Published by: Capcom

         After Asura’s first death (yeah that’s right he dies more than once) near the beginning of the game he eventually awakens in another realm called Naraka. There, The Golden Spider finds him and encourages him to return to the land of the living. The Golden Spider occasionally acts as guide and motivator to Asura, but then at the end of the game he betrays you and possesses Asura’s daughter Mithra. This comes right after having just spent the entire game trying to save her. In the downloadable add-on for the game that continues the story you get to battle against The Golden Spider, now known as Chakravartin. Chakravartin tells you that he created everything: the world, your race, the Gohma (monsters you fight), Mantra (the magical energy you use), and more. He did all of this to eventually produce a being powerful enough to rule over this section of the universe in his stead. You end up having an incredibly climactic battle through space and into Nirvana against a being that may actually be God. A lot of times one of the things that makes a villain stand out is the immense power they posses and this is because of the challenge it presents for the hero. In that particular regard I don’t think there has ever been a videogame villain as good as Chakravartin, as I can’t think of a greater challenge.

Caius Ballad

Game: Final Fantasy XIII-2

Developed by: Square Enix

Published by: Square Enix

         What makes Caius such a great villain is the tragic nature of his motives. Caius can live forever, but Yeul (the person he cares most about and is charged with protecting) cannot. Instead Yeul is constantly reborn after she dies. This leads to Caius spending centuries watching Yeul live a short life (her gift/curse of seeing the future takes a large toll on her) then dying, then being reincarnated just to die young again. Caius wants to free her from this endless cycle of death, so he sets out to kill the Goddess Etro. Doing this will end reality as we know it and turn it into a realm without life or death or even time, where instead you simply are. It is a strange thing to try and wrap my head around, but seeing how he is driven by the desire to save the person who matters the most to him rather than out of some thirst for power or just because he is evil made him compelling to me. There is also something about his personality and how he carries himself where he never comes off as maniacal like so many other villains who are out to destroy the world and is much more calm and determined. Lastly in the end of Final Fantasy XIII-2 Caius wins. He unleashes Chaos upon reality, and the game says: “to be continued”. I haven’t played Lightning Returns Final Fantasy XIII yet, where you get to see some more of Caius, but based on XIII-2 alone he is one of favorite villains of this past generation.

Kai Leng

Game: Mass Effect 3

Developed by: Bioware

Published by: Electronic Arts

         Throughout Mass Effect 3 there is quite a bit for Shepard and his/her crew to worry about. The biggest threat in the game are the Reapers, but you rarely deal with them up close. The other major threat is the organization known as Cerberus, lead by The Illusive Man. While The Illusive Man is commanding his army of Cerberus soldiers and making plans, Kai Leng is the one with his boots on the ground leading the charge. Kai Leng was an interesting new character as he was the antithesis of Shepard. The fact that Shepard worked with Cerberus in Mass Effect 2 sets up common ground between you and Kai Leng, but these characters then take diverging paths that set them on a collision course with one another. Shepard chose to forge his/her own path, even if it meant going up against Cerberus. Kai Leng, on the other hand, is completely loyal to Cerberus and follows the orders he is given. It is important to remember that the Mass Effect series is built on choice and so Kai Leng just doing as he is told not only makes him the opposite of Shepard, it puts him in willful defiance of one of the fundamental principles that Mass Effect is based upon.

Despite the fact that Shepard has chosen to go against Cerberus The Illusive Man values and respects him more than he does Kai Leng. With Kai Leng being so devoted to the cause this naturally instills anger and jealousy in him towards Shepard. Shepard and Kai Leng are also quite possibly the greatest warriors to ever work for Cerberus, so Kai Leng wants to beat you in an attempt to prove his worth to The Illusive Man; to prove that he is the best and that Cerberus has no need for Shepard. And beat you he does. The reason I feel like Kai Leng belongs on this list is because of how much he made me want to kick his ass. First he kills Thane right in front of me, then he nearly kills my squad and I in addition to stealing the Prothean Virtual Intelligence that can tell me how to save the galaxy and then to twist the knife he sends me a message about how the planet of Thessia is falling to the Reapers because I lost to him. There isn’t a villain on this list that earned my unadulterated resentment to the extent that Kai Leng did.

Albert Wesker

Game: Resident Evil 5

Developed by: Capcom

Published by: Capcom

         Wesker has three classic traits of a great villain: he has the ambition to try and takeover/destroy the world, he has far more power than the hero (or anyone else), and he has a history with the hero that makes things personal. In a way this may make Wesker sound cheesy or clichéd, but these traits are familiar for a reason and that is that they work well for the foundation of a villain. The way Resident Evil 5 builds from this foundation though is why I’m such a fan of Wesker. The feeling that you are always one step behind Wesker and cross paths with him multiple times keeps him ever-present at the forefront of your mind as opposed to a distant goal for you to only worry about near the end of the game. The reveal that he didn’t actually murder Jill (which was why things were personal), but instead had made her into his mind-controlled slave (and things are personal again) was a fun twist. Then there is the fact that Wesker doesn’t want your character Chris dead as badly as Chris wants him dead because Wesker prefers to keep toying with Chris. His ruthlessness coupled with his over inflated ego gives him a larger than life personality and presence that, luckily, never felt silly. Lastly, there are the multiple boss battles with him. One of them is especially interesting as it changes up the dynamic of the game a little, as you have to keep running and hiding from Wesker because he is too fast and powerful to battle head on.

*TIME OUT*

         It occurs to me that it might actually seem a little strange that this is the first time I’ve specifically called out a boss battle in a list of videogame villains, almost all of whom you eventually have at least one boss battle with (Sovereign being the exception). I want to take this opportunity to note that in the interactive medium that is Videogames the way you as a player interact with the villain matters. For instance Kai Leng beating Shepard on Thessia hurts more because I got to battle him just prior to the cutscene where he beats my team and I. The thing is that boss battles are somewhat of a given, so having something that draws you in beyond that is what can make for a standout villain. Chakravartin though is on this list because of the epic scale of your battle with him, which is almost entirely playable through combat sections and quick-time events. If I had no playable interaction with the character and just watched some cutscenes that had some spectacular action in them I wouldn’t like him nearly as much. The boss battle is typically the culmination of your hero and villain’s story together so it is a special thing and helps provide finality for the villain. With that said, this list is focused on the character or essence of these villains and the impression they left me with as a player. The boss battles contributed to that, but in the same way that most boss battles do. To warrant mentioning here they really have to go above and beyond or stand apart from the rest of the game in a unique way like the first battle with Wesker did. A list of my ten favorite bosses would look quite different from this one, as it would be entirely influenced by the quality of the gameplay and the uniqueness or challenge of the encounter.

*TIME IN*

Augus

Game: Asura’s Wrath

Developed by: CyberConnect2

Published by: Capcom

         I found Augus to be a surprisingly interesting and very likeable villain. Despite being one of the self pro-claimed seven deities you are battling against and helping the rest of Asura’s enemies to accomplish their goal he doesn’t care about them or their plans. All Augus cares about is fighting. He has no goal or motivation outside of fighting things and testing his limits. To quote him “I don’t fight for good and I don’t fight for evil. I just fight.” He loves every moment of combat as shown by his laughter and constant smile. Even in defeat he holds nothing against Asura and encourages him to continue on his quest to defeat the seven deities. He does this not because he has any ill will towards them or that he truly understands why Asura fights against them, but simply because he believes that everyone must choose their own path and in the end the one left standing will have earned it. Plus when you throw in that he took you to a hot spring to drink before you two would fight to the death, his cool character design, his sword being able to grow longer than the Earth and that he once flipped an elephant with his thumb like a coin how can you not like him?

Shadar

Game: Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch

Developed by: Level-5

Published by: Namco Bandai

         Shadar is an interesting villain because while he is not the mastermind behind the evil going on in the world he is the face of it. Ni No Kuni spells out in its subtitle that the main villain is The White Witch. You see The White Witch in cutscenes every now and then starting really early on as she gives Shadar orders, but the heroes of the story are completely unaware of her existence for the vast majority of the game. They think that Shadar is behind everything when he is just following a more powerful villain’s orders. With that said, Shadar is the one who is actually doing the terrible things to people in this world and who your characters are all working to stop, thus making Shadar the one who is at the forefront of your mind. Because the world’s inhabitants kept describing Shadar as pure evil and immensely powerful it always seemed strange to me that he was subservient to someone else. This combined with the way he interacted with The White Witch and how some members of her council expressed distrust in him gave Shadar a level of intrigue, and planted the idea in me that he had some scheme up his sleeve to betray his master. Disappointingly, this ends up not being the case. However, we do get an interesting connection between Shadar and your main hero Oliver when we learn that their souls are intertwined and an interesting and understandable backstory that shows how Shadar came to be how he is. I also learned while looking up info on this game that it was originally released on the DS and in that version The White Witch does not exist and Shadar is the sole antagonist, which explains why I liked him more and why he was the game’s primary villain focus.

Vamp

Game: Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots

Developed by: Kojima Productions

Published by: Konami

         I might as well be straight with you; when making this list I figured Vamp would be on it entirely because of how badass he is in cutscenes. There is nothing overly compelling about him as a person and I liked him well before learning of his past and how he got his healing ability near the end of the game. Vamp is just an incredibly lethal and sadistic fighter who is seemingly immortal and has an incredible battle with Raiden during one cutscene, plus an encore that I desperately wanted to look at on one side of the screen (you can only sneak peeks because you have to play the game and fight for survival on the other side). But when I thought about what I would write for him on this list it dawned on me that Vamp isn’t on this list entirely because of how badass he was in those scenes. There is something else about him that helped draw me in.

It is the mystery around Vamp and the uneasiness that comes from his presence in the world. Metal Gear Solid is about tactical espionage action; it is about spies, politics and conspiracies. The series may have some weird or zany moments and it definitely goes into the realm of science fiction, but all of its fiction is grounded in a sense of reality. Why then is there an unkillable monster of a man who calls himself Vamp, which is obviously short for Vampire? Vamp’s very existence in this game world makes you question possibilities about what can and cannot exist within it in addition to causing you to doubt if there is anything your character Solid Snake can do about a being like him. Vamp represents the supernatural in a sci-fi world where he doesn’t belong and because of that there is no telling how many other things like him might be hiding in the shadows. This elevates Vamp beyond the position of just some cool dude who shows up and has a really impressive cutscene. These two aspects: the mystery surrounding his presence and his incredible fighting ability, feed into one another. Vamp becomes more badass because he is an unknown quantity, and the fact that he shouldn’t exist is made more impactful and striking because he is so dangerous and (as I keep putting it) badass. This is truly, and entirely, why I had to put him on this list of mine.

Nene

Game: Blue Dragon

Developed by: Mistwalker

Published by: Microsoft Game Studios

         Nene was cruel and sadistic and epic. He was a terror to the entire world and he loved it. He derived joy from encasing all the citizens in a town within ice or sending machines to simply slaughter a village. Nene’s incredible power and fiendish nature often reminded me of Frieza from Dragon Ball Z. Now I still prefer Frieza (he is one of my favorite villains in any medium) whom you get to see interact with heroes more and who does more heinous things, but Nene is like a Frieza at 70% villainy and in my mind that still makes him more than twice as good as the majority of villains. I also have to give him praise for manipulating the heroes of Blue Dragon for so long that more than halfway through the game all you had really manage to do was help him. For those unfamiliar, this was because Nene had secretly been behind giving the heroes their shadow magic just so that they could train with it and grow it. He wanted that to happen so that he could then absorb their magic and repair his failing body, which he does. The fact that he was not just this sort of personification of evil who was immensely powerful, but was also much smarter than you and had been playing you all along was great.

Saren

Game: Mass Effect

Developed by: Bioware

Published by: Microsoft Game Studios

         This list is no stranger to Mass Effect villains, but I have saved my favorite of them for last. Saren was skilled, intelligent and proud; he was the best of the elite group of soldiers known as Spectres. Your character, Shepard, is granted the rank of Spectre so that he/she can hunt down Saren, who has gone rouge, and bring him to justice. One of the great things about Saren is that he is doing what he believes is right not just for himself: but for all species in the galaxy. He learns from Sovereign about what the Reapers have done to organic species in the past and decides that being their loyal and useful followers is the only method of survival possible. Unfortunately for Saren, Sovereign slowly corrupts his mind through its power of Indoctrination. Using this ability Sovereign takes Saren’s values and manipulates them slowly over time in such a way that he is unaware of any changes in his thoughts or behavior. This leads to Saren believing that organics must instead merge with machines, rather than work for them, in order to survive, which is what Sovereign wants as it gives the Reapers full control.

Saren was smart enough to be concerned about Indoctrination and even built a lab to study it out of fear that he may be corrupted. It was because he was aware of his limitations and the danger of working with Sovereign, as opposed to being so arrogant as to think that he is beyond Sovereign’s control like so many other fictional villains who get corrupted by a dark force, that you are able to break through to him in the end and convince him that he has fallen victim to Sovereign’s Indoctrination. This was a remarkable moment for me in Mass Effect as what I chose to say convinced Saren, the main antagonist, to finally see the truth, which in turn causes him to take his own life (if you don’t get through to him you actually have to kill him yourself in a boss battle) so that he will no longer be Sovereign’s pawn. Seeing Saren attempt to atone for his sins in that way was an unforgettable moment and really turned him from great villain to incredible tragic villain. It is interesting how Bioware likes to use a lack of the ability to choose as an element in its Mass Effect villains and how giving that ability back to Saren proved to be such a mind-blowing experience for me.