Controversial Club – Gaming’s worst Villains!! | Respawning

Welcome one and all to our Saturday club feature “Controversial Club”. As so much of our content is positive, charming and a lovely read, we thought we’d start a weekly article where we can get a bit of rage out, or just generally be dicks!

I introduce our controversial club, a place where we can all write about things that get on our nerves, rub us the wrong way…

With more and more games coming out with well crafted stories, intricately planned bosses and professionally written characters, we’ve decided to reflect on those dastardly devils, the belittling baddies, and oppressive overlords who didn’t quite make the cut, and ended up being nothing more than silly pantomime bosses.

Javier

Worst villains… Nothing exactly fresh here but Alduin from Skyrim, you spend 100 hours in an open world, killing dragons and maxing out your character only to be faced with a relatively easy boss battle which is a… Dragon… In a small space… This final boss battle was utterly disappointing and not a reflection of the rest of the game (much like the end of Oblivion). What a trainwreck.

Will

Another Bethesda one here – How about Colonel Autumn from Fallout 3?

Fallout 1 had ‘The Master’, a giant monster that infested the control room of a Vault, and was the mastermind of the entire game’s super mutant threat.

In Fallout 2, the final showdown was with Frank Hourighan, a Super Mutant in power armour designed to be the Enclave’s greatest weapon, as someone that was encountered at various points throughout the story and struck you as the most terrifying thing in the wasteland.

In Fallout 3, you get a white bread sandwich who gives you the world’s least memorable speech, then dies with a single shot to the head.

What a pancake.

Austin

While God of War’s Baldur ground my gears, gaming’s worst villain has to be the third incarnation of Diablo’s titular antagonist. In the first two iterations of the franchise. Diablo is a looming menace, the source of all Tristram’s troubles and woes.

Even in the second game, where Diablo appears to have vanished from the world, the cutscenes which allude to his presence in the Dark Wanderer cast the Lord of Terror as a clever manipulator with a scheme. In Diablo 3? So much emphasis is placed on the other Prime Evils that Diablo feels like an addendum by the time he shows up. Blizzard could have overcome that, had Diablo’s reveal been appropriately dramatic.

They tried, but fell short. The reveal is rushed and underdeveloped, and Diablo’s form is changed in a radical way. The cutscene tries to sell the player ‘Imperius vs Diablo, Round 2’ and instead, we get ‘Imperius VS someone that only vaguely looks like Diablo’ and the fight, such as it is, lasts only a moment.

And then Diablo is slain by the end of the act in a rather dull boss fight.

Clarice

When I think of worst villains I think of the Aesir (or Loptr) from Bayonetta 2… When we are first introduced to him you think of this maleficent evil that wants to destroy the world and to take the Eyes of the World back from the Lumen Sages and Umbran Witches. He wants to be the God he once was, an almighty raging God with the power to create balance from Chaos…

Or so we thought when really it’s a bunch of time travel nonsense, and the Aesir’s good side splitting, creating Loki and his evil side wanting all that power back to basically render the two clans useless; essentially he was having a tantrum and not only that… HE WAS AN ICE CREAM CONE… Like no joke. Take a look for yourself. A nice waffle cone with vanilla ice-cream. Cornetto Personified. Yummy.

Please don’t take this as me saying Bayonetta 2 was bad, oh no it was bloody brilliant and I loved every second, but when humanity’s biggest threat ends up being nothing more than a battle of good vs evil (which you kind of get bored of), and the Aesir (Loptr) was really nothing more than a physical representation of an inner fight between what’s right and what’s wrong.

Joe

Growing up as a kid, I was ridiculously invested in the world of Jak and Daxter – Being one of the first games my dad ever let me pick out and buy (After years of hand-me-downs), I began my journey with The Precursor Legacy; a few years later, I come across a stray PS2 demo disc (Official PlayStation 2 Magazine Demo 39, for reference!!) and discovered that this amazing game has a sequel – Regardless to say my little child mind was officially blown – I picked up Jak II Renegade, struggled my way through, and fought against not only the forces of the Metal Heads, but the oppressive forces of Baron Praxis and Errol… Then… I discovered Jak 3.

Now, there’s not anything inherently wrong with Count Veger as a character… But as an antagonist… Boy does he basically do nothing at all. Let me explain. At the start of the game, it’s implied that Count Veger is the one responsible for convincing the Haven City Counsel that Jak was actually nothing more than a Metal Head ally, defeating the Metal Head Leader and killing off Baron Praxis and Errol to allow the Metal Heads a greater chance in destroying the barrier walls around Haven… What…?

Not only does this snot-nosed twit go through the trouble of exiling Jak, but he also… Resurrects an ancient Precursor Robot..? Alright, cool, cool – What else? Oh… He… Uh… He just comes in at the end of the game and claims the power of the Precursors for himself… And just ends up turning into a small weasel… No climactic boss fight, no end to his character, no actual character arc to speak about… Just a waste of a character honestly and a villain that wouldn’t even be seen in some of the worst films you’ll find on your local Poundland’s shelves.