Gaming’s Best Villains Don’t Think They’re Evil, And These 5 Antagonists Prove It

Skip to content Add Us On Google The greatest villains in gaming history aren’t mustache-twirling vaudeville villains who tie puppies to train tracks; they’re the heroes of their own stories. Even in a franchise like Borderlands, which not-so subtly satirizes and critiques capitalism, the most memorable villain is one who thinks he’s actually making the world a better place. While these villains are clearly still flawed and we love to put a heroic end to their reign, we can often relate to the good intentions behind their actions, twisted though they may be. This relatability only makes these antagonists all the more tragic and memorable, sticking with us long after we beat the game.

Chances are, you already knew this guy was going to be on the list, so it only makes sense to get him out of the way first. The ego-maniacal CEO of the Hyperion Corporation, Handsome Jack was the antagonist of Borderlands 2, and is considered by many to be the main reason why the title was the best in the franchise. Rich, rude, and commanding an army of robots, Jack spends the entire game trying to find the Vault Key and kill the protagonists while mocking them for being nothing more than “bandits.” The worst part? At times, he makes you wonder if he might be right.

The father of one of the universe’s legendary Sirens, Jack learned firsthand the dangers of Pandora and its bandit population when one tried to kidnap his daughter, Angel. Driven by the tragedy of the event, which ended in his wife being accidentally killed by Angel herself, Jack would devote himself to ridding Pandora of its bandit population and turning the planet into a paradise. He truly believes himself to be a bastion of law and order in a desolate hellscape, and there are times in the game where you can believe that maybe things would be a lot safer under Jack’s rule.

Despite genuinely believing himself to be the hero of the story, Jack is far from a good guy. He keeps his own daughter imprisoned, exploits his own employees and the citizens he wishes to populate Pandora with through horrible debt schemes, and indiscriminately inflicts violence on Pandora’s population that rivals the Bandits themselves, even if his targets are innocent. He is a textbook dictator, and while he makes a few good points, it is incredibly satisfying to put a bullet in his head at the end of the game.

Sephiroth is one of the most iconic villains in video game history. It isn’t just his awesome character design, his place in one of the most interesting fantasy worlds ever seen in gaming, or his overwhelming aura of danger and superiority, but his tragic backstory and relatable motivations that make this antagonist so memorable.

In the original game, Sephiroth was designed from birth to be a super-soldier for the villainous Shinra Corporation. Sephiroth’s discovery of his origins shatters him: unable to process the great anger and sorrow, he chooses to view himself as the last survivor of an ancient, superior race, and seeks to save the planet from humanity and Shinra by ruling as a god.

Sephiroth’s motivations, on the surface, are driven by a savior and superiority complex, but deep down, he is a deeply hurt, lonely individual. That doesn’t excuse the evil behind his actions, however, with the worst of his crimes being the burning of Nibelheim, a village full of innocent bystanders, shortly after discovering the truth behind his identity. It is very easy to feel compassion for Sephiroth, even if we don’t forgive him for his actions, and ultimately are in the right for putting an end to his grand ambitions.

As we continue the wait for Bioshock 4, it is easy to look back and see what made the franchise stand out to begin with, especially with villains like Andrew Ryan.

Andrew Ryan is the very definition of an idealist capitalist. Traumatized at a young age by the violence of the Soviet Revolution in Russia and later again as an adult by the bombing of Hiroshima, Ryan began to view the world as one where parasitic mobs would leech off of and abuse the creations of the intelligent and talented. That is why he used his immense fortune to build Rapture, a city built on the floor of the Atlantic Ocean and designed to be a sort of safe haven for those who shared his ideals. Andrew Ryan himself explains it best in the opening to the original BioShock, describing Rapture as “A city where the artist would not fear the censor. Where the scientist would not be bound by petty morality. Where the great would not be constrained by the small.”

Though Rapture was meant to create a laissez-faire society, free from religious and government interference of any kind, the complete lack of any regulations led to a total lack of public services and dangerous, definitely unethical business practices. As resentment began to grow within Rapture’s lower class, Andrew Ryan himself became what he despised: a despot.

It is easy to understand Andrew Ryan’s frustrations. We have all, at one point or another, felt like someone else was unfairly profiting or exploiting our hard work, and it is hard to think of a single person who likes paying taxes. However, very few of us take this feeling to the extreme and create despotic societal hells full of subscription-based firefighting services and mutating psychic drugs.

Originally introduced as a villain in the first Red Dead Redemption, we are then shown a softer, more noble side of Dutch in the sequel, only to watch his self-image unravel in real time, creating an unaware monster.

If you ask Dutch Van Der Linde, he and his gang aren’t a pack of outlaws who ruthlessly rob and engage in violent gang wars across the American frontier. They are a family, stoically opposing a regime that wants to crush their independence. He champions freedom, loyalty, and sees himself as the last great American philosopher fighting against changing times that would see his way of life obliterated.

There was a time when some of this was true. Dutch has shown at times to really care about the people in his gang, and stories about who he was before the events of Red Dead Redemption II show that he did truly inspire those around him, even raising some of the members of the gang, such as Arthur Morgan and John Marston, like sons.

Unfortunately, the times truly are changing by the events of the game, and Dutch’s ego makes it harder and harder for him to accept failure. As the walls begin to close in on Dutch and the gang, his paranoia worsens, and his inability to distinguish protecting his family from protecting his own self-image leads the gang into worse and worse tragedies.

The rest of the characters on this list were shaped by some great trauma that led them to believe they were the only hope to change the situation that affected them. You could make an argument for all of them that they might have been someone else if not for that one, terrible event. Unfortunately, in the case of GLaDOS, there never needed to be any kind of traumatic turning point: “She” is just a machine mind taking its programming to the logical limit.

GLaDOS (Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System) is an artificial intelligence created by Aperture Science for the sole purpose of continuing to run the company long after the death of its founder, Cave Johnson. After killing almost the entire company on Bring Your Daughter To Work Day, GLaDOS eagerly continues the experimentation at Aperture, often trying to kill the series protagonist Chell in the process.

To GLaDOS, the constant drive to murder every human she comes in contact with isn’t cruelty, psychopathy, or the revenant-like haunting of the once human woman forced to become the machine mind itself: It is just science. Good, logical, future-of-humanity-improving science. How could she be the villain if we learn something from her experiments?