Writing one villain into a game is easy. Wait, no it’s not… OK, writing one villain is hard. But SEVEN villains? That’s like twice as hard. But a big group of villains is so much fun. An entire cast of villains can unlock group
dynamics that you won’t get any other way. Evil organizations, lone wolves teaming up,
betrayals, turncoats, evil worldbuilding, you just get a level of complexity that you
can’t get from Johnny SingleBad. So what goes into creating a group of bad
guys? How do you balance a bunch of strong personalities
to make something worth the extra effort? Let’s get into how to create a cast of villains,
what games have screwed it up, and how to build a bad team. If you’ve got some bizarre indie game concept
that needs 5000 villains at one time, you’re going to need a powerful game engine. Try today’s episode sponsor, GameMaker! GameMaker is a perfect tool to take your first
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Light Drifter, Hotline Miami, and Chicory. It’s not kidding around. Start building your game today! Download GameMaker using the link in the description. Thanks, GameMaker. Ok, so this is about a CAST of villains, not
just villains. This is about the group dynamics of a lot
of them in the same game. This is also about a cast of VILLAINS - focused
on the antagonists that take a more prominent role in the story than just normal enemies. If you want a video on a Cast of ENEMIES,
hey we did that one already, check this link out afterwards. First things first. Why have multiple villains? I mean, you could have just one. That sounds easier, right? Some games can make that work, but a single
villain can box you in a little. Encountering a single villain multiple times
can get stale over the long run. Eggman. Eggman again. It’s Eggman. Turn a corner, oh, what’s that? There’s Eggman. Each time you beat them, you can very easily
make the villain less imposing if you’re not careful. Single villains need a progressive challenge
or some story framing to work best. Coming up with reasons for them to get involved
in every story beat and every dilemma can stretch believability. Now, if it’s a Sonic villain, maybe being
a little unrealistic isn’t a big deal, but the problem gets more acute the further you
try to get away from a Saturday Morning Cartoon vibe. Again, you can make a single villain work. Games do that all the time. But a cast of villains solves some of these
problems almost automatically. Having multiple villains lets a writer be
more flexible with characters and scenarios. Not everything has to hinge on a single person. Each villain can help tell smaller subplots,
or develop your characters and world from different angles. More than one villain lets you have more than
one villain’s motivation. More than one thing the villain is suited
to do. More than one place where a villain can feel
at home. More than one challenge for the heroes. More than one weakness for the protagonists
to exploit. More than one motif the game can use to explore
elements of the main character, or of the game world. Ok, so let’s have a bunch of villains in
our game. That sounds fun. Now you have to design the cast. If you’ve decided to have a bunch of villains
in your game, what are they all going to be like? Who will each of them be? Why do they do what they do? That’s a question that demands a different
sort of answer for a group of villains than just for one. So, where to start? Well, even if the villains are a part of a
team, it’s a good idea for each to have a sense of purpose. What’s the point of each villain? There are a lot of options. Take Mega Man. Mega Man has a huge cast of villains, serving
as checkpoints on the adventure and anchoring what could otherwise be pretty interchangeable
levels. Most Mega Man games follow a simple formula. Dr. Wily or some other mad scientist causes
a bunch of highly specific robots to go haywire and cause havoc to distract you. Most games have about 8 of these ‘Robot
Masters’ for you to work through in any order before you can take the fight to the
mad doctor himself. Each Robot Master has its own gimmick - a
theme that ties into the moveset, stage design, and corresponding weapon that the player receives
for defeating them. The specific themes of each robot master aren’t
all that important to the story. They might not even relate to the other robot
masters in the same game that much. The snake robot in one game could be swapped
with the centaur from another without too much of a problem. Their purpose is more about a central cohesive
visual and mechanical theme and as a climax to their levels. The robot masters tie the colorful stages,
distinct challenges, and weapon designs together, and the loose rules about what types of designs
feel like they fit in the world of Mega Man lets the designers be open to a wide variety
of unique villains that they can slot in as needed. Each villain in the set helps give a reason
for its portion of the game to exist the way it does, and the fun designs give you something
to look forward to as you go from level to level. But if you’re looking for villains with
more of a narrative purpose, you can go down another path. One popular option for narrative-driven games
is for each villain to challenge a specific aspect or character trait of your protagonists. This can make a villain that isn’t even
all that connected to the main plot contribute to the game in a longer-term way. Persona 4 has a chain of antagonists, each
one exploring the inner conflict of one of the members of the main cast. Persona 4’s narrative revolves around a
supernatural murder mystery where victims are thrown into a mysterious ‘TV World’
where dangerous shadows are brought to life by the people that enter it. Shadows are the manifestations of suppressed
human thoughts, representing the least desirable aspects of ourselves that we keep hidden from
society. That sounds like the kind of thing you
can use to explore character personalities. Each major boss in the TV World is a reflection
of the internal struggle of one of the main characters, brought to life with an explosively
over-the-top monster design. Yosuke’s childish desire for adventure and
excitement. Yukiko’s sense of being trapped by her family’s
expectations and her dependence on others. Kanji’s personal shame and insecurity. Teddy’s… wait, what IS Teddy? Each fight is a not-very-subtle symbol of
the character’s internal struggle while also tying back to the game’s overarching
murder mystery. The chain of clues runs through each of the
shadow selves, and the threats you deal with in the TV world reveal more secrets, or add
complications, or ratchet up the stakes of the main plot without having them all directly
connect to each other. The villains tie to the game’s central theme
of finding and accepting truth, and the changes the main cast goes through by defeating each
shadow make the final payoff all the sweeter. Since we’re talking about games, there are
some special considerations to a cast of game villains that you couldn’t do in other kinds
of entertainment, like movies or books. Villains can have a mechanical purpose as
well as a narrative one. Now, a character that is just mechanically-focused
can be a great boss, but not much of a villain. On the flip side, a game villain who is just
a basic human whose flair is entirely in the writing, that might be underwhelming as a
game boss if you’re gonna just punch him in the face. But if a villain happens to have a mechanical
hook as well, that can be a great way to anchor a narrative to a game’s mechanics while
making the villain that much more memorable. Metal Gear Solid does this very well. Most of the minor villains in the series are
members of crazy special ops mercenary teams full of over-the-top personalities and wild
supernatural gimmicks that blend story and gameplay to become some of the most memorable
villains in gaming. Psycho Mantis is a classic. He’s a real actual psychic, with plenty
of story lead-up and foreshadowing. Once you get to fight him, he uses psychokinetic
powers to float and throw stuff at you. If that was all, that’d be fine, but Psycho
Mantis leans into the psychic theming even more by shattering the fourth wall and getting
in your head. He reads button prompts to dodge you, alters
controls to confuse you, and even reads the save data from your plugged-in memory card
to judge your taste. To take him down, you have to kick him out
of your brain by swapping controller ports. Psycho Mantis is a masterful blending of a
villain’s backstory and personality with fresh gameplay, and the other villains in
the game aren’t too far behind. Dealing with Revolver Ocelot’s ricochet
shots without hitting a hostage or a bomb. The tense sniper battles with Sniper Wolf,
or the game of cat-and-mouse with Vulcan Raven. And of course, fighting Liquid Snake in Metal
Gear Rex, and later with just your fists. The set piece fights are astounding, both
in concept and in mechanics. At least for the time. The series kept that design philosophy going
wherever it could. Metal Gear Solid 3’s The End is just as
memorable of a fight. A 100-year-old sniper who can use photosynthesis
like a plant, and you have to duel, either by outsmarting him or breaking the 4th wall
again and just waiting him out. The Sorrow is literally the ghost of another
psychic, a manifestation of grief, whose fight is entirely dependent on your playstyle up
until that point. Every living thing you’ve killed, whether
it’s animals for food, or enemy soldiers, appears as a ghost you have to get around. The more of them, the harder the fight becomes,
and even when you think you’ve won, the game forces you to think laterally to beat
him for good. The meshing of personality and gameplay in
Metal Gear Solid’s villain cast provides that unforgettable something that makes those
fights stand out. The series isn’t always as good as that,
though. For every The End, there’s a The Bees. Err, The Pain. The Pain is pretty memorable, but I wouldn’t
say the mechanics are doing much for him. It’s more about the bees. Metal Gear Solid 4 has a harder time making
its villains stand out. Each member of the Beauty and the Beast Unit
is a woman augmented with a power suit that makes her look like a robotic animal, and
each gets assigned one emotional trait. ONLY one. You have Laughing Octopus, Raging Raven, Crying
Wolf, and Screaming Mantis. The encounters are on average some of the
weaker ones in the series. Though they start strong with Laughing Octopus,
where you have to pay close attention to your surroundings to find her. The rest of these fights aren’t as strong. Raging Raven is one of the more annoying encounters,
boiling down to a boring shooting galley on top of a clock tower. Crying Wolf is essentially Sniper Wolf but
less fun, and Screaming Mantis is more of a puzzle boss with a very specific solution
that trivializes the fight on repeat playthroughs. The fight structure for all 4 is super formulaic
too. You’ll fight one, they’ll have a mental
breakdown, and then they all have this…weird “2nd phase” in their “Beauty” form
where they just…slowly approach and try to grab you. After the fight, you then get an exposition
dump of a codec call where the game offloads their whole backstory and why their name fits
their personalities. The members of the unit aren’t memorable
enough as a story fixture as individuals and don’t do a great job building up Liquid
Ocelot as the final bad guy, but their formulaic nature especially makes them not stand out
compared to the better boss fights of the series. The villain fights in MGS4 show off how far
unique mechanics can go to give a villain enough presence to stand out from the cast. So you have ideas for a big cast of villains. They’re all unique and cool, good job, A
Plus. One problem, though. Villains can tend to be lone wolves. They’ve got their own weird motivations
or backstories or superpowers that might not play nice with each other. Jam together a bunch of those characters willy-nilly
and the story might fall apart. A cast of villains often feels best when they’re
all working together, at least in part. How can you structure your villains to make
them a more cohesive unit? Well, easiest would be to make them all work
for the same organization. EvilCo, or the Evil Empire, or the mystical
society of We’re All Evil. Organizations can provide a base for each
villain’s motivation to stick around and to stick together. Almost any hierarchy can be a great place
to set up villain motivations. Maybe it’s about rank and prestige. Some villains might report to others. Some might want to rise through the ranks
at EvilCo, or topple the Evil King and grab the crown for themselves. This can set up great extra motivations for
a villain. They could want to show off in front of their
boss. Or maybe they want to sabotage them instead
- they are villains after all. They could want to steal the glory of knocking
out the hero character, but maybe that opens them up for careless mistakes. The structure can create motivation, the motivation
acts with the villain’s personality, and those can combine to create some great drama
where a single villain can take the spotlight for a bit and smoothly lead the narrative
to other villains and other moments. You can see how hierarchy builds up even a
paper-thin villain by comparing Andross from Star Fox 64, to Andross in Star Fox Adventures. Andross is the main villain in both games. In Star Fox 64, he’s the commander of a
solar system-spanning army, and your job in the game is to planet hop, take out his lieutenants
in charge of each planet, deal with the mercenary Star Wolf team working for him, and bit by
bit work your way up to the final encounter. The villain cast’s motivations range from
money to… also money… to… mostly taunting you… to duty… to
nepotism, to… well everyone kinda turns to revenge by the end of it. None of it is super deep. But they’re all working for the same evil
team, and each of the encounters leads you closer to the top of the ladder. Andross doesn’t have any sort of deep reason
to be doing what he’s doing in Star Fox 64, he’s just evil. He just does it. None of the villains are much more than cardboard
cutouts either. The hierarchy itself is what provides the
narrative material to work with. It gives structure and context for the main
bosses, the dramatic run-ins with the sub-villains you find along the way, and a reason for the
player to keep traveling towards the end game. Andross in Star Fox Adventures has basically
none of that. Andross just shows up at the end, auto-defeats
the bad guy you originally were gunning for, and starts a carbon copy encounter of the
older games. There’s no build-up. No structure that the game telegraphs as you’re
going along. You don’t get to fight the original main
villain the game had been leading you towards. The lack of structure makes Andross appearing
out of nowhere that much less satisfying even though it’s exactly the same thing from
a character and mechanical standpoint. You know, this episode isn’t ‘Team of
Villains’, it’s ‘Cast of Villains’. They don’t all have to be quite on the same
page. Great casts of villains aren’t only found
in strict hierarchies, of course. Villains that have loose allegiances to a
larger organization can be especially fun to write thanks to the opportunity they open
up for shifting alliances. Especially if they’re the type of people
that mainly look out for themselves and are written in shades of gray, a big cast of villains
gives a lot of opportunities for one of them to jump ship - if not forever, at least for
a couple of story beats. Like in Yakuza. Or ‘Like a Dragon’ I guess now. The series revolves around the Tojo Clan and
its many crime families. Each game has a collection of major players
both in and out of the Tojo Clan doing all kinds of shady stuff to reach their goals. The game is an over-the-top melodrama, and
with so many ambitious characters with flexible morals in one place, you’re gonna trip over
all the power grabs and criminal politics. In Yakuza Zero, a plot hinging on the acquisition
of an empty lot in Kamurocho leads to a complex power struggle full of kidnapping, attempted
assassinations, framed murders, puppet masters, and tons and tons of shirtless brawls while
they philosophize about the right way to do crimes. Oh, and your character is part of this whole
family too, so don’t act like your hands are clean. Everyone’s true allegiances and goals are
kept hidden for the majority of the game, and more often than not, the major players
are more focused on each other, even though they’re ostensibly on the same team. If you can help them reach their end, come
on board. If you can’t, they’ll flip on you without
a second thought. One scene might have you beating the crap
out of a large shirtless man, and the next he’s taking a bullet for you out of sheer
respect for how good you beat him up earlier. The cast are all villains of one sort or another,
but that creates the right environment for the twists and turns of one of the most gripping
crime dramas around. If that’s all a little too morally ambiguous
for your game, you can always simplify it. Sometimes your cast of villains doesn’t
have to know each other at all. No More Heroes pits you, Travis Touchdown,
against an association of assassins. Everyone is ranked, and the only way to climb
up to the top is to cut down everyone in your way. The structure of the game is very episodic,
with an ‘assassin-of-the-week’ formula as you move rung by rung up the ladder. It’s rare for the assassins you fight along
the way to have anything to do with each other. That structure comes with some big advantages. It makes it easier for the developers to add
in much more inventive and unique villains. One minute you’re fighting a Cloud Strife
knockoff, the next it’s a football player and a harem of clone cheerleaders. There is a drawback, of course. A cast of villains with no relationship to
each other will almost certainly make it very difficult to keep a coherent story, but if
you want the game to focus more on combat and spectacle than a gripping narrative, that’s
a totally reasonable path to take. The game’s focus shifts mostly to Travis
and how he reacts to what’s going on around him. Also, you can have it both ways. No More Heroes sprinkles in some more important
assassins that are connected to each other to tell a more traditional story. The contrast in moving from a zany, obviously
throwaway villain to one that you’ve already dealt with before and might have a connection
to others helps keep the assassin-of-the-week format from getting too monotonous and low-stakes. No matter their relationship, though, the
most important thing is to make sure you actually USE all of your villains. A cast of villains is like a whole bunch of
Chekov’s Guns. If you present a big group all at once, you’re
setting up the player’s expectations for encountering them in some significant way. That might sound obvious, but not every game
takes that advice to heart. Back to Sonic for this one. Sonic Forces does a huge bait-and-switch with
its cast. Eggman has taken over the world, with the
all-new villain character Infinite by his side, along with all the heavy hitters from
Sonic’s history. Metal Sonic. Shadow. Chaos. And everyone’s favorite…Zavok The four returning villains are treated as
marketing material, meant to get long-time fans hyped up on the nostalgia of old faces
returning. Zavok’s fight is actually just a generic
bee enemy scaled up. The final battle against Infinite is a rehash
of a Metal Sonic fight from earlier. Two of the villains don’t even get a boss
battle at all. Chaos is taken out in a cutscene, and Shadow
is… also taken out in a cutscene by…Shadow…the real one though. Because the original one was an illusion. The combination of nostalgia-fueled hype and
a lack of payoff across the board for the cast of villains in Sonic Forces makes for
a toxic combination. This is just scratching the surface, we haven’t
even talked about villains as members of a set, or escalating the importance of different
subgroups of them, or how they can inform and be informed by the game structure you
want to create, but I think we’ll save all that for a future episode. Head down to the comments and let’s talk
about your favorite villains and how they work together. Or how they work very badly together. A cast of villains can be incredibly fun to
design. With an enormous range of motives, relationships,
and goals, your cast of villains can set up the structure of a game’s plot, while being
flexible enough to twist and turn as your story pace needs it. No matter if they’re a mook, a lieutenant,
or a puppetmaster, the right cast of villains can form the backbone of your story. *chill vibes outro from Final Fantasy XIV*
