Games Where The 'Antagonist/Villian' Wins (Or Was Right)?

[Trunkage]

Spoiler: Mass Effect 3 (extended ending)

Mass Effect 3 (extended ending), if you refuse to make the choice, or you shoot the "god-child", you get an ending where the Reapers win, and the only vestige from your crew is a beacon and Liara's recording with the Crucible blueprints.

No matter what you choose, you choose it on their terms

That too (if you see an awful tri-flavor Deux Ex Machina as the antagonist).

Like Deus Ex (or 2 or HR)

Dude, spoilers!

Just kidding... in part. I haven't played any of those three (they are still in my backlog), so I can't tell how awful they are compared to ME3.

Well one of the games has you pressing one of three button. That determines the ending. No previous action makes a difference.

Another game has you merging with an AI. Or you let robots rule or humans rule.

 

[RaNDM G]

My surprise that no one has mentioned Red Dead Redemption in over a day and a half.

Silent Hill 2 as well, when most endings reveal James succumbing to his depression or narcissism.

 

[kenu12345]

But as you're trying to harvest brains, the humans are trying to stop you. They "antagonize" you, if you will.

Like being slapped by wet paper. I know what you're trying to say, but I'm the one terrorizing the cities and destroying the humans, and they're not evil. My man Crypto is an invader from space with no viable authority who has killed, destroyed, humiliated, broken governments, become President (illegally), fed humanity to itself, and committed genocide on a competing villain race who wanted the Earth to themselves. He's also a wisecracking, hostile-tempered, Jack Nicholson expy. Who's the antagonist?

Snip

This is why I'm saying you're splitting hairs. Because the act of doing so leaves you at odds with a hybrid example. The reversal of roles can, will, and does happen. The issue is point of view. The villain is most-definitely the antagonist no matter what position he's in, because those poor people he's murdering by the thousands are certainly the victims of some antagonizing behavior. DAS may be about saving the Furon race, but we all know that Crypto is in it for the funsies. He LIKES messing with people.

Incidentally, I'm gonna add the Saints to the list, from Saint's Row games. There is no way that they're anything but bad, no matter how much competition they cut down along the way. Johnny Gat lives to antagonize and I run over thousands of people every time I play. At best, characters like this are technically protagonist, in like name only. They are the bad guys and they antagonize. Case closed.

Antagonist doesn't mean bad guy. Antagonist is someone that opposes the main character. That is literally the freaking definition. No, its not splitting hairs, its the literal definition. Heck in Infamous, if you go down the evil path, the cops are one of the antagonist cause they stand against the main character. It really isn't that hard to understand. If anyone is splitting hairs, its you

 

[FalloutJack]

Do wop

Do wah diddy

Guys, as far as I'm concerned, the way writing can work out like this, the situation becomes more fluid than how you classify it. This is a case where the mold has been broken, the barrier crossed, and the waters more than adequately tested, but what it is not is a case where all the pegs fit in the holes you're use to. That happens sometimes.

 

[MASTACHIEFPWN]

Any Warhammer 40k game, because there are no "good" factions in the grimdark future.

I'm not sure if you can play as them in any 40k video game, but the Tau are notably not evil, per se. Certainly, they aren't good either, but calling them evil is a bit of a stretch. They are a pretty small bag of dicks, compared to all of the other gigantic bags of dicks in the universe.

 

[ecoho]

The Reapers win every ending in Mass Effect 3.

Control: The Reapers are still out there policing the Galaxy. It's just now they are under the direction of Shepard AI instead of Kid AI.

Synthesis: Hologram kid achieves the goal he was searching for and the Reapers now live in peace with the rest of the Galaxy.

Destroy: Yes they die in doing so but the Reapers goal of protecting organics from synthetics is achieved, at least in the short term at any rate.

Refuse: The Reapers win and carry on the cycles.

There isn't a single ending in ME3 where the Reapers don't achieve a victory of some sort and a complete victory with Refuse. Yet there is also no ending where Shepard achieves a clear victory. So Bioware gave the antagonists a clear win but not the protagonist.

I never realised how much that annoys me.

nah I see control as this I use the reapers to rebuild the galaxy that make a fully functional new body for my shepard though their advanced tech and the whole we can clone a shepard. after which my shepard would send them all to their deaths there happy ending with liara as that should only take a century or so.

 

[Poetic Nova]

I would nominate Carmagedon, and while the zombie version is saying that there is no cure or something, it is considered non-canon.

Max Damage, the guy you basically start every game with is a nutcase hellbent on causing mayhem.
Then again, the whole cast is basically, but he canonically stole a Supressor (huge ass 6 wheeled APC) and drove over goverment officials with it. All because he didn't get what was promised.

In C2 he's the guy who launched nukes, to mark the end of the tournament.

Oh fuck. Nevermind. In this case it is the protagonist. Sorry.

 

[crimson5pheonix]

Do wop

Do wah diddy

Guys, as far as I'm concerned, the way writing can work out like this, the situation becomes more fluid than how you classify it. This is a case where the mold has been broken, the barrier crossed, and the waters more than adequately tested, but what it is not is a case where all the pegs fit in the holes you're use to. That happens sometimes.

It's not a question of breaking the mold or anything, it's a question of definitions. The antagonist isn't the person/concept that opposes the good guys, it's the person/concept that opposes the protagonist.

The alien in Destroy All Humans is the protagonist, thus he isn't the antagonist. If there was a mode where you played as a human against the alien, the alien would be the antagonist there.

 

[beyondbrainmatter]

Soul Nomad and the World Eaters if you go for the demon route. Ooh boy.

 

[FalloutJack]

Snip

Actually, it's a case of point of view. You want to more-strictly define the thing, I play it a little more loose because there are exceptions to the rule. It's not BAD, just different.

 

[sXeth]

inFamous (the original, before Second Son sort of retconned it).

Evil or Good path, Cole still becomes powerful enough and defeats the Beast. Which was Kessler's whole plan.

Castlevania Lords of Shadow. To a degree, the bad guys plans are thwarted. But at the same time, they basically destroy Gabriel and he becomes Dracula, creating an antagonist.

 

[gyrobot_v1legacy]

The Reapers win every ending in Mass Effect 3.

Control: The Reapers are still out there policing the Galaxy. It's just now they are under the direction of Shepard AI instead of Kid AI.

Synthesis: Hologram kid achieves the goal he was searching for and the Reapers now live in peace with the rest of the Galaxy.

Destroy: Yes they die in doing so but the Reapers goal of protecting organics from synthetics is achieved, at least in the short term at any rate.

Refuse: The Reapers win and carry on the cycles.

There isn't a single ending in ME3 where the Reapers don't achieve a victory of some sort and a complete victory with Refuse. Yet there is also no ending where Shepard achieves a clear victory. So Bioware gave the antagonists a clear win but not the protagonist.

I never realised how much that annoys me.

Destroying the Reapers is your goal. The problem is the Geth had taken the side of the Reapers and when the Catalyst was used they had to go. No major decision in ME was ever easy and even the Rannoch save everyone option came at a cost.

Even if we won conventionally vs reapers the Geth will still have the specs to upload races into a massive mind? And to speak nothing of the holdouts who now have the forbidden fruit.

The reapers gave you a gun with obvious knowledge of the cosequences. It was a case of how you use the gun.

 

[crimson5pheonix]

Snip

Actually, it's a case of point of view. You want to more-strictly define the thing, I play it a little more loose because there are exceptions to the rule. It's not BAD, just different.

Er, no. About the only way for it to be an exception is if the story changes point of view. Even then, you would say that person A is the antagonist for this part of the story and person B is the antagonist of this part.

 

[Mangod]

Snip

Actually, it's a case of point of view. You want to more-strictly define the thing, I play it a little more loose because there are exceptions to the rule. It's not BAD, just different.

You're conflating "antagonist" with "villain", which is an inaccurate use of the term. The antagonist is the central opponent of the protagonist, aka. the main character.

Let's say I've written a six issue miniseries about the Joker, where the Clown Prince of Crime is the main character. In this story, he's trying to set up a plot to kill the Mayor of Gotham, because he feels like it, while he's being dogged at every turn by Batman.

Batman is the antagonist of the story, because he's the one opposing the Joker, the main character/protagonist of this particular story. When the Joker is defeated in the end and hauled back to Arkham, his plot thwarted, the antagonist of the story has won. But the Joker is still a villain, motivated by his own sadism and psychosis, and Batman is the hero trying to save lives by stopping him.

Villain =/= antagonist.
Hero =/= protagonist.

Main character/s = protagonist/s.
Opposition to the main character/s = antagonist/s.

 

[WhiteNachos]

Twisted Metal Black

SPOILERS:
Long story short Twisted Metal is a contest where the winner gets a wish.

Any person who wishes for something virtuous gets screwed over in the end, and then there's John Doe which I'd rather not spoil.

 

[Dreiko_v1legacy]

True Fiend end in SMT Nocturne is the ultimate antagonist win, with the orthodox meaning of the trrm, not the more modern synonymous to "bad guy" one.

 

[Dr. Crawver]

Final fantasy XII. For the majority of the game you assume Vayne is trying to go to war for power, but really his motivation is to literally take power away from the gods and give it to man. It is probably true that he also wanted to be at the top of the pile, but every action he takes is to force the occurias hand, to make them give the party a weapon capable of cutting the nethecite, and then put the party in a position where they have to destroy it, cutting off the gods from their ability to manipulate mortals. Even when he thinks he has failed, his biggest lament is to his mentor that they will have to find another who can actually finish the job, not knowing that he had finished his task.

Vayne has a Pyrrhic victory, and while he dies and will be branded a war criminal for his actions, the world is actually better off for it.

 

[Dr. Crawver]

Final Fantasy XIII.

The bad guys get exactly what they want. The protagonists are a bunch of idiots who do exactly what the bad guys do.

Hey guys, we're not going to do what the fal'cie want us to do. Let's do that by doing exactly what the fal'cie tell us to do.

 

[Sonmi]

Silent Hill 2 as well, when most endings reveal James succumbing to his depression or narcissism.

I wouldn't say narcissism, sexual frustration and exasperation is more like it.

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

Does Stubbs the Zombie count? 'cause you're technically eating innocent people's brains and murdering hundreds of people with your zombie horde.
And lets not forget break-dancing against the chief of police. Then eating his brains.