I am kind of tired of having the villains turn out to just be misunderstood with a bad leader and really they are good guys…
Why can’t we just have utterly contemptable enemies that deserve nothing but to be wiped out? Why can’t they be treacherous and irredeemable rather then misunderstood?
I can’t really think of any beyond the scourge and legion that have fallen into this camp in recent times. Even then the scourge is more portrayed as victims half the time. Can we not have something refreshing evil? Not the void or jailer where their gimmick is some 600iq plan foiled by a guy with a spear. Just unrepentant destructive malefic evil.
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Pretty sure up to this point Xal counts. By proxy her only real goal is consumption of all Life and matter in the Great Dark Beyond for the Voidlords.
Wish she was interesting on some level then… these master mind villains are not really great narrative devices when all their accomplishments are done by other people or the product of insane luck.
Thrawn is an example of a villain in this vain done properly. The book one at least…
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Yes, I want to role play Space Ghost too!
Most folks don’t seem to get the appeal of Denathrius, but while it’s true he uses the Dreadlords for just about everything, he at least PLANNED his schemes and gives the orders.
He’s one of the few “tell don’t show” master mind villains we have that work, we are successfully fooled into thinking he is just running Revendreth as usual, and that the wicked souls are just running their mouths cause they’re EVIL or some of them actual pathological liars.
The reveal is done perfectly, it takes someone formerly in Denathrius’ court to convince us that what is going on ISN’T part of the penance process.
His plans also seem to work WITHOUT actually having to dumb down the rest of the characters you may have noticed. He’s always genuinely one step ahead as shown by his escape while still in the sword. He has legit backups for when a plan fails, not just riding on the good grace of everyone else being dumber the way Zovaal and Sylvanas did.
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We just had Fyrakk.
Also Ansurek might have been using a flimsy excuse about trying to make Azj’kahet great again or whatever at the beginning but she was pretty blatantly evil.
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I really liked the Mantid. I think they worked so well because they had that hive mind thing going for them–purely pragmatic, so it made sense for them to help you a little bit before immediately turning around to be a raid boss when the BBEG-juice started flowing.
I’d probably prefer more of that than ‘muahahaha, i was evil all along you fool!’
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I think that’s called incompetent or petty evil. Most failed dictatorships or authoritarian overthrown governments tend to be this if ended fast enough.
The issue is that Blizzard has since fallen behind on writing these kinds of stories because (I’m assuming) of the backlash. The Nazmani from BFA are another good example of this kind of enemy. People who knew full well what was going on, said “screw it, I’mma do it anyway” and did terrible things. Yes, in reverence to a blood god, but also because they just wanted the power.
The last time we had terrible people doing terrible things because they was just terrible people has been too long, to be honest.
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Gone are the days of truly unapologetic villains.
Every villain these days has to have some kind of sympathetic backstory or something like that, and yeah it’s lame lol.
I bet Xal is gonna have some backstory about how she was bullied by the other Old Gods/Void Lords, watch lmao.
Like the creepy murloc worgen who drown people after luring them to the water? Or the shadow cult people who kill their own family for power?
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I think it appeals to a lot of people that like to blame those up the ladder from them for their own wrongdoings, failures, etc.
If everything bad happens due to bad leadership and you’ve never been a leader then you’ve never done anything wrong.
It’s a copeful storytelling method that reflects a lot of sentiments that people hold outside of the game. Where they blame everything on politicians, CEOs, and management.