How to Fix Borderlands 3's Villains

Sephiroth from Final Fantasy seven vas from Far Cry Andrew Ryan from Bioshock GLaDOS from Portal flowey the flower from undertale walter all of these iconic gaming characters have in common yep you guessed it they're all villains antagonistic characters have been a cornerstone of storytelling since long before the rim word and many of the most influential and beloved people in all of fiction aren't in fact the good guys but the very characters we're supposed to be rooting against of course video games are no exception were attached these characters because they're often the ones to have the biggest personalities the most screen time and take center stage in any games biggest moments a villain is a step above you're one of the mill bossfight they're a character someone they knew was the player can develop a bit of a relationship with as you play but what elevates a villain from a justification to go and shoot things to a persona capable of carrying entire games on their own it's a more complex question than it would initially appear simple logic says that a good Vern is one you hate enough to want to take down for good after all that's how most of the baddies I mentioned earlier work they're bad people who have done or will do bad things so you feel morally obligated to take them down and have fun doing so but this theory doesn't hold true for everyone a lot of the most compelling villains in all of gaming are sympathetic or times downright likeable what characteristic do they all share well I think a good way to find out will be to take a look at two very similar groups of video gaming buddies one that works o to the don't to find out that secret ingredients Borderlands 2 is dominated by handsome jack Borderlands 3 has the Calypso twins Tywin and Troy for its central agonists both sets of villains are charismatic have appropriately evil plans and interesting aesthetics but one is infinitely more successful as an antagonist than the other I don't even like Borderlands that much and even I have to admit the handsome jack carries his respective game on his well sculpted face whereas the Calypso's are a boring blight on an already flawed game so why don't the Calypso's work as baddies well it comes down to the nature of the conflict they portray all villains need to have conflict with the protagonists in some way and it's through this relationship that the story advances the writers of Borderlands 3 couldn't seem to get a handle on what the Calypso's want and how their ends up bringing them into conflict with the rest of the cast Cyrene and Troy love telling you how either they are over the comms and the duo will beat up a side character now and again but in terms of an organic conflict that we as players can really get our teeth stuck into we're not left with much the main plot the game involves a treasure hunt that's not tyreme becoming a god but despite being powerful enough to amass a seemingly inexhaustible supply of cultists and to win cutscene fights without breaking a sweat they never really present much in the way of tangible opposition to what the player or the protagonist wants to do which is mostly just kill stuff and get shiny new guns without a sense of animosity or conflict between the protagonist and the villains it's almost impossible to get invested in beating them or take their actions seriously in short the Calypso's fail as villains not because they're weird streamer theme is played out or because their story doesn't make sense they just don't really seem to care about the player and wait given no reason to care about them without a conflict there isn't much of a story handsome Jack's whole deal on the other hand is that he hates you for playing Borderlands know what I'm serious he wants to make pandora nice and oddly and you as the kleptomaniac and murder hobo mercenary that you are stand in direct opposition to his plans just by playing the game how its intended is the aliens can have some psychopathic murderers getting to the ball before I do I mean don't get me wrong it's cute that y'all think you're the heroes of this little adventure but you're not you're bandits not only do handsome Jack's plans pose a tangible threat to the players goals his jams and insults are that much more effective at building up a sense of animosity because his elitist perspective is justified you are barely better than the bandits you spent the first half of the game in discriminately slaughtering Jack killing the side characters and his gradual turn from aloof and smug to vengeful carries that much more dramatic weight because the conflict between you two feeds into itself organically you was a player of Borland's want to loot and shoot a hansom Jack wants to kill you to stop you doing just that and the rest of the plot evolves as a consequence of this simple dichotomy handsome Jack works as a villain because his primary conflict isn't with the other characters in the game or really even with the player avatar but the player themselves and I think it's in this one raishin ship the great video game villain Eli's video games a uniquely placed to make the most out of their villains in nearly all other forms of media Weir's and audience are expected to sit back and watch the antagonist and protagonist juke it out but in video games we as players take on a much more active role in the narratives conflict more often than not we are the protagonists in order for a game to portray a compelling villain who's satisfying to go toe-to-toe with they need to conflict first and foremost with the player because it's our conflict with the game and by extension the villain that drives the narrative forwards even the villains of older games with much more simplistic stories engage with this idea no one remembers Donkey Kong as a villain because we as players never really have that much of a stake in his King Kong ripoff antics what we do remember is the way Ganondorf felt like an unstoppable on a sport of evil during the kid segments in ocarina of time and the way Bowser loves to taught you when plasterers face everywhere in the best mario games these guys stick in our memory because they implicitly or explicitly challenged the player constantly many of gaming's most famous villains engage with this player versus game opposition very directly Andrew Ryan and Alice from Bioshock for example are all about manipulating the player into doing what they want and making you hate them by attacking your perceived sense of agency as players the satisfaction we get from making tactical as well as moral decisions it's one of the primary sources of our enjoyment so the idea that these actions might not be our own is deeply unsettling and the desire to regain that sense of security and control makes the quest to hunt down the villains of Bioshock incredibly compelling even if the final boss is basically complete garbage crear from nice The Old Republic - and flowey from undertale a great metafictional villains - because not only do they have relatable perspectives and nuanced character motivations but when they call the player out for cheating or being nice for selfish reasons they're criticizing you specifically and that is my lesson to you be careful of charity and kindness lest you do more harm with open hands than with a clenched fist making your eventual confrontation with them and your journey to prove their warped war for you wrong are much more personally meaningful one of course not all gaming villains need to engage with the player in quite a a literal sense well designed baddies don't have to be explicitly metafictional but it does help to keep the players experience and goals in mind when writing them depending on the kind of game a player could want to feel powerful explore new places or simply progress with the story and creating a villain that stands in the way of one or more of these goals is a great way to instantly build up some without all-important animosity that's key to a sustainable conflict bum face or as he's more often known gary-oke is a classic example of this kind of villain in Pokemon your primary goal is to both cash them all and become the very best like no one ever was Gary crucially has the exact same goals and constantly competes with you over the course of the game usually being one step ahead the entire time not only does he have a tendency to surprise you please also got high-level teams of rare Pokemon like Abra Gyarados and growlithe as well as a stance book wander has a type advantage against yours he's a constantly evolving threat right up until the end of the game where he's become champion of the pokémon league before you this rivalry is a driving force to become ever stronger it's something that none of the other Pokemon games have managed to replicate with most of the characters that fill the same role as Gary being a little bit too nice and supportive future really get motivated to feed them in your next battle a more niche example will be in the case of Shadow Man from the original Prince of Persia this weird evil doppelgangers whole purpose is basically just to screw with you and always at the most inopportune times for example he'll steal this potion you worked very hard to get and close a gate to stop you progressing he's got no dialogue and no real backstory to speak of but I so badly wanted to get revenge on this deal bastard that it took me a while to figure out how to beat him in the final confrontation at the end of the game which I won't spoil it's actually quite nice puzzle villains don't always have to be some solve omnipresent rival though some of our favorite video game villains only appear once or twice and it's in just a handful of really intense encounters that they're able to build up a great conflicting relationship I love the fan favorite bosses in Dark Souls meet this criteria the smelter demon Snorlax and Pikachu or the nameless King don't have much in the way of lore or main story significance but they're made legendary by the struggle we go through to eventually beat them in Dark Souls 2 the main villain Shondra is pretty forgettable despite being the driving force of the narrative and a pretty interesting character if you delve into our backstory because she's just such a pushover the fume knight on the other hand some random optional boss fight found deep in the second DLC is a character I've always remember facing off against because of how darn tough he is over many attempts and just as many deaths I gradually got to know him and that buildup made my eventual victory all the more meaningful whilst a little bit more controversial semi scripted boss fights they are not supposed to beat to create very memorable villains even if they've only got a small screen presence jetstream sam in Metal Gear Rising is an utterly lethal opponent your first time facing him and immediately knocks you down a few pegs after your first boss encounter this makes your real fight with him towards the end of the game feel like the culmination of your journey and makes the humiliation you suffered getting there completely worth it that's not to say that making players feel frustrated or challenging their skills is the only way to create a compelling villain by appealing to a player's emotions players not only become more invested in triumphing over a villain but are more likely to pay attention to their actions and what they have to say death said in Wolfenstein the new order is a personal favor example of this over the course of the tutorial you're introduced to Fergus the cool Scottish pilot and Wyatt a scared rookie and you're given just enough time to get attached to the two of them before death sir captures you and makes you choose between them the one you picked a sacrifice is dead forever it's the sheer sadism of what you're asked to do the turns death said from a fairly generic evil Nazi into someone you can't wait to get revenge on death said doesn't reappear in person until the end of the game but his presence is felt throughout he and the equally horrible Frau Engel give a face to the otherwise faceless Nazi regime both of these characters are actually fairly minor presences in terms of the game's actual plot appearing in four levels between them but the way your few interactions with these characters manipulate your emotions brilliantly gets you into BJJ blaskowitz his frame of mind and sets the tone for the rest of the game on the complete opposite end of the spectrum humor can also be a phenomenal tool for giving a villain depth and ensuring a player cares about them GLaDOS from the portal games is perhaps one of the best and most elegant uses of this particular technique when you get right down to it gravis is actually a pretty hackneyed evil AI go rogue trope it's in her humor and the way that characterizes not just her but also her relationship with Chell the player character that she really stands out see the great thing about funny villain who's good with a quip is the audience are inclined to listen to what they have to say when you're first taken off guard by GLaDOS the helpful tutorial robots outright lying to you in test chamber 5 you're conditioned to always listen in when girl speaks and analyze what she says in order to catch the jokes as part of a required test protocol a previous statement suggesting that we would not monitor this chamber was an outright fabrication by the time test chamber known as rot around your relationship is evolved again the enrichment center regrets to inform you that this next test is impossible make no attempt to solve it this line signifies a shift from you doing what God tells you to actively defying her helpful advice of course once the end of the game rolls around and it's revealed that oh the cake was a lie we're only able to appreciate the twist and our final confrontation with GLaDOS because we'd gone to know her over the course of the game and internalize her undying hatred for us video games are at their core a storytelling medium and whilst not every story needs a villain a lot of gaming narratives really stand to benefit from a compelling antagonist or to just consider how much less interesting shadow of morals actual villain is whose name whereas some of Gump it's the black hand of Sauron by the way compared to these systemic enemies created by the Nemesis system which turns random orcs into bad guys with quirks and characters based on the player's history with them simply by injecting a bit of personality and giving each nemesis a unique Flair it's much easier for players to create an emergent story around these characters and thus feel more motivated to engage with and destroy them as a result the same is true for other games as well civilizations leaders or XCOM to is chosen are all timoni just NPCs executing simplistic instructions but by giving them a bit of flavor we're able to latch onto them and create a story in our heads around they're ultimately fairly random actions really what this video comes down to is that while video games are constantly making massive strides in graphical fidelity creative mechanics and jiggle physics technology our understanding of video game storytelling is still very much in its infancy for too long a lot of developers and critics alike have approached gameplay and narrative as two opposing forces but as the best gaming villains like handsome jack or bum face proved that's not the case at all telling better stories isn't a matter of making flashy ER cutscenes or paying interns to write more law it comes down to an understanding of character cymatics and most importantly the unique ways audiences experienced interactive stories and villains are a fantastic intersection of all three and worthy of putting more effort into to put what we've learned today into practice allow me to tell you that you're a [ __ ] idiot and there's no way you'll be able to summon the brain power required to like comment or subscribe I bet you'd really show me if you somehow managed to do that yeah is this working hi and welcome to the end of the video thing that I do all the time you doin all right good awesome if you need someone to pass the time during hopefully the back half of the great 20/20 lockdown might I recommend at listening to North Star rising which is a cool sci-fi podcast Rim by one of my favorite video game writers Mike Bethel and starring a bunch of cool people like Rao Kohli scrupulous Pip and Samantha Burt it's it's good go watch it you might like it but the people you should be looking out for are my cool patrons if you want to support the channel and get my personal permission to use adblock then please consider giving me some money if you want generous enough to give me $10 a month you'll get to join the illustrious list of people who get their name read out at the end of each video like these wonderful people who are Alex to launch Alexander Kramer a Saran Baxter heel big chess Bodie Brian Atari Ani Daniel matches David to petrescu David's Esther Dirk Jan Karen belt doodle hog Evie eyebath on Jordan Joshua Binswanger Kai Gillespie Lieberman Lucas slack lunar Eagle ice 96 mace winter 54 max filippov Michael Koch mr. tea with some tea Patrick Romberg Phil be the bill be Prospero Ray's dad Samuel Vander Plaats shel earng Steve Riley strategy in Ultima and chaough okay I've got to go have a nice day remember to play good games and bow before my rattler bye

Channel: Adam Millard - The Architect of Games

Views: 168,676

Rating: 4.8955965 out of 5

Keywords: Games, Video Games, Gaming, PC Gaming, Adam, Adam Millard, Architect, AoG, Architect of Games, Review, Analysis, Game Design, Boderlands, Borderlands 2, Borderlands 3, Handsome Jack, Tyreen Calypso, Best Videogame Villains, Villains, Bad guys, Antagonists, Portal, Glados, gary Oak, pokemon, Dark Souls, Fume Knight, video game stories, Andrew Ryan, Joker

Id: WqNMu8V9Rjw

Length: 15min 45sec (945 seconds)

Published: Fri May 22 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/folake712]

What do think of the recent dlc3 villain OP?