Villains you felt sympathy for, but felt you weren't meant to?

[Vault101]

Also anyone the Saints have killed except the Ultor Exec, he had that shit coming.

Mareo (Maro?) in particualr..you can't really blame the guy after what you did

and shogo

yeah Shogo is a shithead, however he is just a kid trying to be a yakuza...he's in way over his head and then its too late

the sons of samdi however...yeah they had it coming

 

[chinangel]

Loki, considering that he was just looking for his father's affection and kinda kept getting overshadowed by Thor.

While we are told that 'Odin loved them equally' it doesn't seem that way to me.

That, and considering what happens to loki in terms of punishment, they seem...extreme.

 

[Aprilgold]

Also anyone the Saints have killed except the Ultor Exec, he had that shit coming.

Mareo (Maro?) in particualr..you can't really blame the guy after what you did

and shogo

yeah Shogo is a shithead, however he is just a kid trying to be a yakuza...he's in way over his head and then its too late

the sons of samdi however...yeah they had it coming

Actually I got my points messed up, I thought it was villains we were feeling sympathy for were the saints, and not who they killed... WOOPS!

But yeah, though Samndi at the start of their line didn't deserve it.

 

[Vault101]

Actually I got my points messed up, I thought it was villains we were feeling sympathy for were the saints, and not who they killed... WOOPS!

But yeah, though Samndi at the start of their line didn't deserve it.

I didn't catch the part where shogo betrayed his familiy...more being a "disapointment"

its a shame because I feel that saints row 2 actually had an interesting story under the sillyness...havnt finished SR3 but mabye the series is a victm of flanderisation

anyway..I feel in some cases we werent really supposed to feel "justified" in all our actions..the 3 are all as bad as each other

 

[Littaly]

There's an old Swedish movie called Hets, Torment in English. It's about a school boy being psychologically tormented by his Latin teacher. The teacher, nicknamed of Caligula, is infamous for being one of the most despicable characters in Swedish fiction.

I gave the movie a watch, and sure enough, it's one hell of a villain, and I'd feel the same kind of hatred for him as everyone else if it wasn't for this one thing. At repeated occasions throughout the movie, often when he's being called out, he laments "You see, I've been terribly sick" or "I've just come off of this terrible sickness". For some reason that changed the entire character for me. What if he's not just an a-hole? What if he's not supposed to be the incarnation of evil, but is a deeply troubled man himself? Did the disease change him, put psychological pressure on him that drove him to do the things he did? It doesn't exactly redeem him, but it put him in an entirely different light for me.

I think I might be reading too much into those couple of lines, since nobody else seems to have had the same reaction. If anyone else has seen the movie I'd love to hear what you think, cause it's been bothering me ever so slightly since I saw it :-/

 

[Suomimaster]

-snip-

And Wheatley...I felt terrible about Wheatley

Me too. I mean, it wasn't his fault that he always made the worst possible decision, he was programmed to do so.

 

[emmettr3]

I'm surprised no one mentioned Cameron's Avatar yet.

I felt kind of bad for the humans towards the final fight sequence.

This. The humans are far more sympathetic and reasonable than they realistically would be, even without knowing any of the backstory (the Pandora mining operation is absolutely critical to maintaining Earth's survival). The Na'vi are just as (if not more) racist, and do everything they can to incite a war. I mean, neither side were saints, but the humans were far more defensible.
Poor Colonel Badass.

 

[dementis]

One of the few times I felt genuinely sorry for a villain was in a The Walking Dead story.

Andrew St. John from Starved for Help, to be specific. In the end the guy lost his mother, potentially his brother and his entire farm. I know he killed one of my guys, but I still couldn't help but feel slightly sorry for him when my Lee walked away and Andrew just kept mewling Lee's name in a sad, defeated tone of voice.

I entirely agree with this post right here, I really didn't want to fell sympathy for the guy but the way he just kept saying Lee's name made it impossible.

 

[GamerFromJump]

Lore from Star Trek TNG. He was a monster, but he didn't have to be. Maybe if his "father" wasn't a massive dick from a line of massive dicks, it could've been different.

 

[Kiardras]

Tywin Lannister - He starts only being involved in the war because it is his honour and children that cause him to be. He seems to bear no ill will for the starks, for the north, or anything. But he has to side with his children in the war they started.

Sith. The jedi are the most hypocritical, arrogant bunch of people in Star Wars. Half the time they do not even seem to know their own philosophies - comments like "only a sith deals in absolutes" followed by the jedi doing the same. Yes, there are psychopaths in the Sith, but this arises from millenia of psychopaths leading the sith order - the main difference is that they take power from emotion, not from emptiness.

Magneto, from the films. I'm pretty certain you're meant to feel sympathy, but I cannot see him as a villain at all - after what he went through, its no wonder he acts and feels how he does.

 

[kickyourass]

There's also Tywin Lannister, in large part due to Charles Dance's amazing performance in the HBO series, but he honestly seems to love his family, and his interactions of Arya are really kinda heartwarming.

If you read the books, Tywin seems like one of the few genuinely sympathetic Lannisters.

Hell, I can understand where the guy comes from, he's essentially grown up seeing his family screwed over by fate a thousand times. His father turned their house into a joke, to the point where his Vassals made him follow their orders instead of them following his. Is it really that much of a surprise that, when his family came to power, Tywin did all in his power to keep them from becoming a joke? Plus, he isn't that bad of a ruler, from what I recall his reign as hand was supposedly very harsh, yet the common people absolutely loved him because of the fact he was the only person who actually managed to do anything to help them.

I've read the books and I agree with you completely, despite some of the genuinely awful things he's done it's kind of hard not to feel sorry for him. Not only are two thirds of his children massively fucked up, his grandson nearly destroyed the entire damn realm single handed despite being on the throne for what, a year. And even before all that his father nearly drove their entire house straight into the ground, if I was him I'd be pretty fucking grumpy too.

I'm just saying that Charles Dance plays the role SO well it's hard not to side with him.

 

[GameMaNiAC]

The main villain of Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura.

The people who played it know why and what I'm talking about.

I'm not going to say anything else to avoid spoiling anything, but he is simply my favorite villain as well.

 

[afroebob]

The Sith are a big one for me. Since the Jedi's position is basically, "What is this thinking for yourself? Emotion? Pah!" and the Sith's seems to be, "I kind of like emotion to be honest." Plus there's the whole "bringing balance to the force" thing that suggests the Sith are just as valuable to the force as the Jedi. Not that Lucas would ever think that making a well thought out argument that makes his films much more mature part of the canon would be a good idea.

If you're still not understanding why I would like the Sith, this is the Jedi Code:
There is no emotion, there is peace.
There is no ignorance, there is knowledge.
There is no passion, there is serenity.
There is no chaos, there is harmony.
There is no death, there is the Force.

Whereas the Sith Code is this:
Peace is a lie, there is only passion.
Through passion, I gain strength.
Through strength, I gain power.
Through power, I gain victory.
Through victory, my chains are broken.
The Force shall free me.

The Sith one is just better.

First of all, the Jedi put aside emotion so they are effective peacekeepers and warriors, but they don't oppose emotion in others. Just because they sacrifice their emotion doesn't mean they dislike emotion. Also, the 'Balance in the Force' refers to the absence of the Sith. The Sith are (among others) create a unbalance in the Force, balance does not refer to a balance between Jedi and Sith, but rather a complete absence of the Dark Side of the Force. Not to mention the Siths ideals are power through passion, which is in most cases greed and/or fear.

 

[MarsProbe]

The Reapers from Mass Effect (yeah, that's right, come at me bros). They were just tools, used for their creators retarded ideals.

Well if they're just tools then why feel pity for them? It's not like The Collectors who started out as regular sapient life before being sadly twisted and changed. The Reapers started their very existence as tools for an intended purpose so really, pity on them is wasted.

Yeh, would have a hard time feeling any sympathy for the Reapers, cold, heartless machine race that they are. Indeed, if they are just tools, you shouldn't feel pity on them.

Although on my first playthrough I didn't, working through ME3 again and having enough renegade points to unlock all the dialogue for the final meeting with The Illusive Man, I did feel a bit sorry for him. Sure, he messed up big time and completely lost his way, but something about his final words (before the one's about Earth) still struck me.

Captcha: this is it.

Or as they said at numerous points during the latter stages of ME3: "This is it, isn't it"?