I need an example of a badly written antagonist...

[JdaS]

Seymour Guado from FFX

He may as well wear a shirt that says "I heart nihilism"

This. I love antagonists and just couldn't come up with a shitty one. My mind drifts off to Kuja from FFIX, who is awesome, and then it hits me: Seymour Guado. God what a dipshit.

 

[Harry Mason]

He's also the protagonist.

It also appears that you do not know what happens in the game.

I played Prototype (sorry, [Prototype]) all the way through multiple times, and I never found a single good reason for him to be acting like such a dick. There's angry anti-hero, and then there's psychotic mass murderer...

Remember that he is the physical embodiment of the blacklight virus that built itself upon the genetic makeup of the real Alex Mercer.

Considering his(its) nature as a biological weapon, whose base personality is built on the asshole who released the virus out of petty revenge, his motivation is rather clear.

Again, there's petty revenge, and then there's psychotic mass murder. There's a difference between "fuck those guys! I hate them!" and eating old ladies. And as far as I could tell from the plot, the personality of the Prototype was based off of Alex Mercer, not the creator of the Blacklight virus. Why else would he run around going "WHAT AM I!? WHAT'S GOING ON!" the entire game.

Also, that REALLY needed a spoiler tag...

 

[Boom129]

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CardCarryingVillain
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/VillainSue
done

 

[OtherSideofSky]

I suggest you check out some classic Go Nagai villains for the ultimate in ludicrous, one-dimensional evil. Dr. Hell is probably the best example of this (the name pretty much encompasses the entirety of his characterization). Of course, when it gets that blatant it pretty clear good writing wasn't really the intent.

 

[JdaS]

Again, there's petty revenge, and then there's psychotic mass murder. There's a difference between "fuck those guys! I hate them!" and eating old ladies. And as far as I could tell from the plot, the personality of the Prototype was based off of Alex Mercer, not the creator of the Blacklight virus. Why else would he run around going "WHAT AM I!? WHAT'S GOING ON!" the entire game.

Also, that REALLY needed a spoiler tag...

Okay. I've played Prototype WAY too many times. Allow me to weigh in.

Spoiler

When you take control of that slab of meat on the morgue table you are NOT Alex Mercer. You are the Blacklight virus that took over Mercer's body when he smashed that vial and got gunned down. For some reason the virus "thinks" that it is Mercer and for the first 60-70%(?) of the game you're indeed running around crying about your memory loss. That is until the virus finds out that it's only that, a virus.

The real Alex Mercer was already a douche nozzle before Blacklight, as mentioned by DarkRyter (a guy releases a deadly virus and dooms NYC for petty revenge and cowardice???), if he got those powers and wanted revenge he sure as hell wouldn't care who he kills on the way, the virus itself? It's a virus. Its sole purpose is to create death and destruction, so much so that in Prototype 2 it creates a foil apparently just for kicks.

This is by no means srsbznz to me. Just saying that Prototype had a good story. There were poorly written characters in there. ZEUS just isn't one of them.

 

[Pandabearparade]

Eden wanted to "purify" the wasteland by wiping out all semi-mutated life

The problem is that a super computer should be familiar with why that's a really bad idea:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_bottleneck

A species typically doesn't recover from a population dip like the one he proposes, and would spell certain extinction for the entire human race. A poorly reasoned motive.

Autumn wanted to do the same and also wanted to see the Enclave become the power it was prior to the Oil Rig being nuked.

Actually, you're wrong. Autumn refused. If he'd agreed, Eden wouldn't have had a ridiculously contrived plot-device to give the protagonist. Autumn -could- have been an excellent villain (or even an anti-hero that I'd have sided with, given the option) with some real development. He wanted to rally the people of the wasteland into accepting the Enclave as an autocratic state by having an endless supply of something very valuable to offer them in return for obedience.
I fault Autumn for wasted potential and that stupid magical anti-rad shot he gave himself, not motivation.

Could have done much better for Burke.

Agreed. He had an -excellent- voice actor, all he needed was motivations that were more than '...cause I'm so evil!'.

 

[zehydra]

The guy who the minor villain had actually been working for all along, and is incredibly powerful and unstoppable.

Until the protagonist fights him once.

 

[VivaciousDeimos]

Ummm that General guy from MW2

He betrays you and goes kill crazy with some private army he pulled out of his ass for no reason whatsoever. Maybe i need to replay it but i don't think it was ever properly explained. He just went into some semantics over the nature of war to cover up the fact that the writers couldn't think of an actual reason for his actions

Was still pretty entertaining, a "so bad it's good" type thing.

You remember that nuke from the first Modern Warfare? He's pissed about that. Those were his guys.

"Five years ago, I lost 30,000 men in the blink of an eye. And the world just fuckin' watched. Tomorrow there will be no shortage of volunteers, no shortage of patriots. I know you understand." ~Shepherd

Now, how well they executed conveying his motivations and tying it into the story is a your mileage may vary type of thing, but he did have his reasons.

Try Darken Rahl from the Sword of Truth series.

He's a villain who had added rape and torture because if you strip away the pointless sadism his actual goals are almost exactly the same as the protagonist.

Protip: the Sword of Truth series is your go-to source for a badly written anything.

This is copy-pasted from the duplicate thread. Regular forumites may notice I rant about these books a lot. The writing offended me that much. I, the reader of fanfiction, the man who read the Twilight books and FOUND A CHARACTER I LIKED was offended by the writing.

Out of curiosity, which character did you like from Twilight?....I kinda liked Jasper.

I think the Sisters of Light irritated me the most from TSOFT books. Too holier than thou, I know best attitude. And, ugh...yeah, there's a lot of irritation in those books. It would take more time than I want to spend listing everything.

 

[kurupt87]

That's actually very debatable. But as it turns out I don't know how to use the spoiler function so I'll just leave it at that.

Heh, you just used an extra /.

It goes (spoiler)information(/spoiler), with square brackets. This gives:

Spoiler

information

Or (spoiler=Title)information(/spoiler) which gives:

Spoiler: Title

information

I'll rescue and fix your post with my supreme powers of necromancy. I know, I am amazing.

That's actually very debatable.

Spoiler

Seeing as by the time you are, say 80, your body has completely cloned itself at least once, yet you are still you. Likewise, the virus completely replicated Alex Mercer, he had the same memories, same feelings, and thought himself to be Alex. There is not much of a difference.

But like I said, it's debatable.

Well...

Spoiler

The virus has it's own personality. It would be a very basic one, it would be akin to basic instincts and impulses. But it has an original framework that the complexity that is a human personality almost completely overwhelms.

It doesn't completely overwhelm it though, it's just that the original framework isn't intelligent enough to be self aware and differentiate itself from this Alex Mercer person it's eaten. That absorbed intelligence, Alex Mercer, can't recognise an individual in the pre-existing subconscious and so assumes it is the original. And, he/it is intelligent enough to be able to seperate itself from, and pick and choose what it wants from, any new victims it noms on.

But, the important part of what I'm saying is that the virus added its own personality (urges/impulses/instincts) to Alex Mercer's without its copy of him or itself knowing.

At least, that's how I rationalised that craziness.

 

[jakefongloo]

The general from Mw2

I want more soldiers so I'm going to let the Russians take over America and kill half of the population

I forget the name but the black guy in dead rising 2 he did it solely for the money despite the fact he was the host of the most popular T.V. show in America (the world??)

If you ever cross a point where you need a good villain do the Dark ones from metro 2033 Wikipedia that one because it will throw you for a loop.

edit: T.K! that was his name. I'd would get it eventually

 

[Pappytech]

Hmmmm, well, the villain with the least clear motivations I can think of is Aizen from Bleach.

"Why do I want to kill everyone? To make a key to the king's palace! Why do I want to do this? To kill the king! Why do I want to kill the king? ...Because shut up."

But, the worst written villain period? I'd have to go with the bad guys from the original Jak and Daxter. Seriously, what was up with those guys?

 

[Baneat]

The Joker.

Well he's crazy and more a chaotic evil.

What do you need this for?

THe only Joker I know is the Dark Knight Joker, and I constantly use him to answer the question "Hackers, why do you do this?"

Some people just want to watch the world burn, and I think that Joker was a great antagonist who's becoming increasingly relevant over time.

 

[mysecondlife]

Jessie and James from Team Rocket.

Makes me wonder how they will themselves into stealing pikachu from 8 year old boy after so many failures.

 

[Yopaz]

And to think that my first thought when I saw this thread was Albert Wesker.
Other than that I have problems coming up with a terrible antagonist on the fly. I guess maybe Alice from Tales of Symphonia 2 could count since she does things simply because she loves causing pain.

Edit: whoops, quoted the wrong post.

 

[Arehexes]

Sephiroth.

And cue Flame War.

not really dude. what always interested me about sephiroth was the fact that he WAS a good guy- and then he found out about his mam and went nuts.he's interesting because he's a dude who is practically unstoppable physically, but so fragile mentally.he's a well written villian because it actually seems like its impossible to beat him.he's a good villian because EVERY SINGLE TIME he appeared, i thought to myself OH SHIT.

maybe not the most original villian- but a good one nevertheless.

He was well written? How? Just because he was powerful and well respected and went crazy because he found out he was a experiment? If that is the case what about Kefka? He had more or less the same back story (Great rise to the top but went crazy due to a crazy experiment to power up the soldiers, which caused a mental break down which lead said person to destroy the world). Well I agree sephi isn't "bad" he is still a poorly done, I mean there isn't a really good written villain from the Final Fantasy games. Garland wants to live forever, Empoirer wanted power, CoD wanted to return the world to the darkness/Xian wanted revenge for getting the gift of mortal from master Noah, Zeromas wanted to wipe human life on earth for his people on the moon, Exdeath wants to return the world to the void, Kefka wants to destroy happiness and hope from peoples, Sephiroth wants to destroy the world for his "mother", Ultimicia wants to compress time to live for ever (I think I really don't remember), and I don't remember the rest. The FF villains aren't written well at all.

 

[Dr. wonderful]

(Please disregard if this ends up as a double post. My internet's acting up and it looks like my first attempt at posting this did work. Thanks for understanding)
Well, after my original example was destroyed in a different post, I now need a poorly written antagonist. I need someone whose motives come down to "Just cause" or something like that. Someone who acts without reason. This can be from movies or books.

Step Up 3D: The Samurai. I had to write a report about the compare and contrast between West side story and Step Up 3D this is some of what I worte:

Spoiler

"Let's go to 3D with The Pirates and the Samurai (Should of been Ninja but hey, what can you do about it.) The Pirates are the typical good guys down on their luck. They have a charming leader and two new recruits. While the Samurai is run by the charming leader former friend. Now you can tell they are the bad guys because their dance style and clothing reflect their dark altitude.

Really, it sounds like I'm describing one of my anime shows but let's carry on.

Now, the gang are actually comparable...sort of. The Pirates and the Jets are show to really like having a good time and are actually nice to one another. The leaders cares about their members. How they contrast are their time periods but it seems weird to me that the 1950's are portrayed as darker and edgier then the modern Step up set in 2010. Also, their rivals are portrayed flat out differently. The sharks? They have a excuse but the Samurai is the problem here and the reason I said the gangs were sort of comparable. The Samurai have NO REAL reason to antagonize the Pirates. It their leader that want the pretty little clubhouse for what? Because he was caught gambling? Wow, what a petty reason for that. "

That's it. The bad guy was caught gambling and wanted the clubhouse in which the heroes lived for no damn reason just cause.

There your badly written bad guy.

 

[Sinisterair]

Alex Mercer from Prototype.
"What?! Someone gave me awesome superpowers? MUST DESTROY MILLIONS OF INNOCENT HUMAN LIVES!"
*gets in tank and begins crushing old ladies*

Seriously. He sucks.

hate to be "that guy" But no,
The story goes as such.
Alex was a person working on the virus that infected NY city, But he himself was infected, When he died the virus basically recuperated his entire body, started producing cells.... basically cloning him and who he was.....the real Alex died but the virus became him, But honestly the story's pretty shaky.
He himself is not as bad character...but not great either....he's "meh"

 

[Ghored]

Orphan from FFXIII.


Orphan wants to die so that Cocoon, the very thing it created and nurtured, would fall with it and awaken the Maker. The most this did for me was cause me to furrow my brow and say "What?"

I've only played a few Final Fantasies. XIII did not help raise my opinion of it.

And then there's a sequel to it coming out. Ugh.

 

[MadCapMunchkin]

Poorly written? Hmm...methinks your brother from Fable 3 would qualify...or, I suppose...

Spoiler

The Crawler. Wanton destruction needs no explanation, but some explanation would have been nice. Where the hell did it come from? Who trapped it down there? And why exactly does it want to cover the world in darkness?

oh... and Sauron from Lord of the Rings! Why is he evil... who knows?!

There is actually a reason. Read the Silmarillion, granted, the explanation is trippy as hell, but it sort of makes sense...sort of. Also, Sauron didn't really have much of a role in the books beyond forging the plot coupon...and having the gigantic army, demon wraiths from Hell, etc.