There are loads of
lists out there detailing the nastiest villains and coolest bosses ever, so
there's no need to rehash them here. The five characters listed here are the
kind who are so evil, they make you feel like you need to eliminate them
from the game to make your life complete.
5. Stanislaus
Braun, Fallout 3
There are plenty of
characters out to do evil things in the Wasteland of Washington D.C. circa
2277, but Stanislaus Braun is the worst. Before the great war of 2077, Doctor
Braun successfully created a stasis pod system that was hooked up to an
uber-powerful virtual reality. Most of his superiors dismissed the project as
mad, but he had enough cronies to help him create a series of pods connected to
the VR, just before the great war started.
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| "I'm a little tea pot!!! No I'm not!! I'm evil!!!!" |
The original plan
was for everyone to stay safe in the pods while staying mentally engaged with
each other via VR until it was safe to come out. Doctor Braun had a different
idea entirely. He designed the VR so that he was the only one who knew that he
was in a VR. He saw himself as a sadistic god who could live out his fantasies
forever. Why would he want to go back to the real world where he was so
unaccepted?
Our main character
in Fallout 3 is searching for his father, and his quest eventually leads him to
the vault where Braun has his stasis pods. We enter a pod with the main
character, and find ourselves in a twisted take on Leave it to Beaver,
ironically called "Tranquility Lane."
A young girl named
Betty approaches us first, asking us to do more and more devious tasks in order
to get information about where the hell we are. Fallout 3 is all about choice,
but you have to do at least a few of the tasks before you can try to find your
own way out of the maddness. Betty asks us to break up a family, make a kid
cry, and... well, it gets much more nefarious after that.
No matter how you
play it, you eventually find out that Braun is disguising himself as Betty in
this particular varition of his VR hell. Braun is beyond your typical "destroy
the world," garden variety evil, because he keeps the only people who had
any belief in him alive for the sole purpose of torturing them. And the way the
technology of the stasis pod is designed, there's no way of knowing when it all
could end: without outside interference, it's conceivable that they could be in
there forever. It's already been 200 years, and they're still going
strong.
A developer from
Bethesda admitted that Betty was partially inspired by a Twighlight Zone
episode ("It's a Good Life") where a kid has the power of a god, and
destroys all of humanity excpet for some adults in his hometown, which he
treats as toys. That episode creeped me out for years, and so did Stanislaus
Braun.
4. Sinistar
(Arcade)
Sinistar is the
only character I can think of in all the thousands of video games I've played
that is so evil it scares me. Like every kid, I had to be smart with my
quarters and try to make my gameplay experiences last. I'd play games like
Donkey Kong and Jungle King, which I was quite good at, to get more playtime
while my mom shopped.
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| "Spaceships are like tasty edible evil in my mouth!!!" |
Then I'd hear that
scream from across the room - TERRIFYING for 1982 -
"RRRWWWAAAHHHH!!!!
RRRWWWAAAHHHH!!!!" The hairs
stood up on the back of my neck. I'd get suckered into believing that this
would be the time I'd take Sinistar down, perhaps multiple times. Take a look
at the video to see and hear what I experienced as a kid in 1982. Pure Evil.
Like a lot of games
at the time, the main character was a small triangle flying around in space,
shooting enemies. the hook in Sinistar was that by shooting and bumping into
the asteroids floating around, you could collect Sinibombs that you would
eventually have to use to defeat the infinite evil of Sinistar.
You had to work
quickly, because enemy minion ships were collecting the parts to make Sinistar
very quickly. Once he was completed, you were treated to his voice taunting you
with "Beware... I live." If you didn't have enough Sinibombs to take
him out, you were pretty much screwed. I always hoped to hear at least a few
voice drops like "Beware, coward," and "Run, coward,"
before hearing the primal scream from the deepest depths of Hell that made me
panic every single time.
The most evil thing
about Sinistar is that even if you manage to kill him, he keeps coming back.
When he does, his minions will be faster and harder to hit, and he will be
angrier than last time. He makes Sisyphus' boulder look like a tasty jelly
bean.
3. Harlan Fontaine
- L.A. Noire (PS3, Xbox 360)
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| "I wear turtlenecks because squeezing the life out of turtles makes me more EVIL!!!!!""" |
"Psychology is
a powerful tool... in the right hands, of course."
Fontaine is a post
WWII psychiatrist who makes this list because he destroys so many lives while
believing he's doing good, all while championing himself as a mental health
advocate. Developer Rockstar is most often cited as a company that champions
debauchery and chaos, which is a real shame because there is so much more to
the characters in their games, especially Red Dead Redemption, GTAV, and L.A.
Noire.
It's a complex
detective game where you play as Cole Phelps, a decorated WWII veteran who's
making his way up the LAPD food chain in the late 1940s. There are many, many
story threads with a rich diversity of characters that rarely cease to
surprise. Harlan Fontaine is heralded for his work with WWII veterans in
particular, helping them to readjust to life after the war.
As the story
develops, we learn that Fontaine is not what he seems. Not by a damn sight.
What makes him more evil than the other psychopaths and criminally insane
characters in the game is his insistence to himself and the world that he's
just trying to help, by any means necessary. These were the early days of
psychiatry, when "experts" were trusted at their word because there
was so little science to support or defame what they recommended.
Fontaine reveled in
this position of power. He used it for profit, but mainly he used it to feel
like and act like a god, convincing all of his patients that he was acting in
their best interest. When one of the patients, or anyone for that matter,
questioned his methods, he'd simply deflect them with his wall full of degrees
as proof of his good will. Anyone who disagreed, in his estimation, simply
didn't understand.
His treatments lead
to horrific consequences that he has multiple opportunities to stop, but
doesn't. He's so full of himself that he'll let horrible things happen as long
as he's sticking to his belief in his own infallibility. He's evil to the core.
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| See this guy above! Yup. Pure evil!!! |
2. You People (Any
Game That Lets You Make Moral Decisions)
I'm not a great guy
in real life. Ask anyone. But when it comes to video games, which are my art
and my haven, I find it very, very difficult to do evil things to
innocent characters.
Then I check your
guys' trophy and achievements lists, and I'm horrified. Almost everyone I know
played the Mass Effect Trilogy picking exclusively evil choices in dialogue and
actions. I brought Infamous over to my buddy's place, and two hours later he
was glowing red and had everyone in town running from him.
I've played through
Fallout 3 over a dozen times, and I still don't have the evil or neutral
trophies. I always say "I'll do it
next time," then I feel like a total dick when I'm given the option to
blow up beloved Megaton.
How do you do it!?
How can you live with yourselves, knowing you just decimated an entire town of
decent people!? How can you use the mighty Commander Sheppard to punch an
innocent journalist in the face? It's real! I've seen it!
I am NOT trying to
claim some kind of moral superiority here. I'm just baffled, both by my
inability to do bad things to good people and your gleefullness in being utter
dicks every time you have the chance. I don't get it. Maybe I'm the evil one.
Maybe I do good things in video games to make up for the bad stuff I do in real
life.
Nah, you're just a
bunch of jerks.
1. David - The Last
of Us (PS3)
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| "My beard cannot be shaved.........for it is EVIL!!!!" |
I have never hated
a character as much as David. The Last of Us is emotionally exhausting enough,
then they throw this much creepier Jim Jones type asshole at us. He arrives in
the second half of the game, and The Last of Us must NEVER be spoiled for those
who haven't played it yet, so I'll be careful in my description of what makes
him the worst of the worst.
Basically, The Last
of Us is a post-pandemic adventure featuring Joel, a hardened man who lost his
daughter at the beginning of the outbreak, and Ellie, a young teenager that
Joel has been tasked with protecting. It won most game of the year awards for
2013, mainly because of the way it develops these two characters.
Let's fast forward
to a scene where the adventure has come to a very scary halt, with Ellie
helping Joel recover from an injury. She's out hunting for deer, when she meets
some people from a camp who want to trade with her. Like a good
post-apocalyptic survivor, she is skeptical and distant to them. One of them is
David, the leader of a nearby city where they are having a decent time
surviving the pandemic.
It all goes wrong.
Ellie discovers horrible things about the city and the people who dwell within
it, and naturally wants to escape. But David has different plans for her.
Horrible, unspeakable plans for her.
The reason I have
David at #1 really must be experienced to be understood. I'll leave it at this: by the time his and Ellie's interactions were finished, I was sobbing
inconsolably. So much had changed because of this bastard. The BIGGEST thing
had changed because of him. Writing this makes me want to play the game again
right now. My hatred for him is just that strong.
-Tom McDaniel