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Are there any games where you start as a hero but slowly become the villain?
- Thread starter Jadow
- Start date
Oh yeah thought of another one! OFF fits, but more in the sense of the player realizing that the character they are playing as is not the upstanding person they assumed they were.
There are quite a few games that like to use the twist of "the main character never was the good guy to begin with, you just didn't know", but examples of characters starting as genuinely good guys and degrading over time to villains seems rarer for sure.
There are quite a few games that like to use the twist of "the main character never was the good guy to begin with, you just didn't know", but examples of characters starting as genuinely good guys and degrading over time to villains seems rarer for sure.
prototype maybe? I don't remember exactly how, but the main dude from the first one is the baddie in the second one.
Little Nightmares - Only in the final minutes of the game.
Baroque (Saturn, PS2, Wii) and I'll use a Spoiler tag for this one:
Baroque (Saturn, PS2, Wii) and I'll use a Spoiler tag for this one:
Short version: the antagonist wants you to fix the world that got broken due to some experiments. After regaining your memories you decide to break it even more and have everything rot away. NICE.
in getting closest to the 'hero slowly being corrupted' premise of this rather than any simple 'choice to be evil' deal or "you were the villain the whole time"
OG God of War Kratos starts a vaguely dickish(and a little bloodthirsty) dude who could genuinely have emotions and be remorseful, not much anger in his heart. except he gets shit on big time with hard betrayals, and tons of manipulative actions, and doesn't take it well at all and starts aiming for revenge. justifiable to start with, at least.
as he keeps being betrayed and fucked up by the gods, he continues getting more and more brutal, where his quest for 'revenge' at some point seems to be getting lost to his basic bloodlust. even enjoying the sheer brutality he inflicts on other gods, tearing them limb from limb in a fashion that's hardly ever necessary or in equivalent retribution to the pain he's seen himself.
the gods themselves aren't 'good guys' by any means, but Kratos through the series becomes a fucking monster of an existence, bringing abject pain and misery to many to somehow compensate for his own pain. 'villian' would be a very easy word to describe him with.
OG God of War Kratos starts a vaguely dickish(and a little bloodthirsty) dude who could genuinely have emotions and be remorseful, not much anger in his heart. except he gets shit on big time with hard betrayals, and tons of manipulative actions, and doesn't take it well at all and starts aiming for revenge. justifiable to start with, at least.
as he keeps being betrayed and fucked up by the gods, he continues getting more and more brutal, where his quest for 'revenge' at some point seems to be getting lost to his basic bloodlust. even enjoying the sheer brutality he inflicts on other gods, tearing them limb from limb in a fashion that's hardly ever necessary or in equivalent retribution to the pain he's seen himself.
the gods themselves aren't 'good guys' by any means, but Kratos through the series becomes a fucking monster of an existence, bringing abject pain and misery to many to somehow compensate for his own pain. 'villian' would be a very easy word to describe him with.
The hero doesn't get corrupted into evil but Sorey in Tales of Zestiria goes from a bright eyed over zealous "I'm going to save the world" and "This is awful how could anyone do this!" to a world weary man who just barely can handle the evil around him by the end. You don't pick this up easily except in the side conversations/skits but it really elevated him for me as a protagonist compared to other Tales games.
At the end of the game his sacrifice is as much selfish as selfless if you of it as him finally want to get rid of all the issues plaguing the world that he no longer has the energy to handle
I remember I was blown away when playing the game for te first time when I was a teenager! Such good memories of this game, I'd buy a remastered version in a heart beat.
He was essentially always the villain but started out with memory loss and wanting to do good, help people and stop the infection. After a certain point you learn that he was never actually the person he thought he was and was actually the virus mimicking that person (and that person actually released the virus). Instead of fighting against that or denying it he embraces it fully and decides to fight only for his own survival (which does involve killing certain evil characters and stopping the nuking of Manhattan but he stops caring about innocents and "his" sister).
Of course since it's openworld the player can always be an asshole or nice to others outside of the story.
Well, by choosing to betray your former allies Langrisser II has some rather interesting paths in that sense.
I was gonna say the old God of War games but then I remember that you're a villain the entire time and the game hilariously tries to paint you as a sympathetic hero (seriously, everything that happens to Kratos is entirely his fault).
At no point you are a hero, at no point you are a villain.
Being selfish doesn't make you a villain. Most humans (all?) at some point are selfish.
What he did isn't selfish. Did you have a single child and lose him / her ? It is easy to judge.
Yep and at some point GoW too.
She's not his daughter and he chose to doom the human race just to keep someone around who reminds him of his actual daughter. As is said ingame, Ellie would in all likelihood have wanted it anyway.
I guess you got a point of him not being a typical hero to start with though.
Warcraft 3 has the only "becoming" I can think about.
Others have information hidden from the player, your character is delusional (Spec Ops) or being fooled (SotC?) or it is a sudden action (Joel) or the character was actually always a villain (Kratos, Joel again)
Others have information hidden from the player, your character is delusional (Spec Ops) or being fooled (SotC?) or it is a sudden action (Joel) or the character was actually always a villain (Kratos, Joel again)
Well he was getting there before the end anyway. "That's alright. I believe him"
Spec Ops is both. The protagonist 100% changes into a villain... but that turn happens about 10 minutes in and it isn't explained to you until the ending.
That said, Spec Ops is one of the best depictions of a player character going off the rails that I've ever experienced. The changes to animation and voice sets was so gradual I didn't notice. Until suddenly I did and it blew my goddamn mind.
i never played it but the concept of evil opa opa is goddamn hilarious
i never played it but the concept of evil opa opa is goddamn hilarious
It's a reoccuring theme in the series. The original boss for the first Fantasy Zone is Opa-Opa's dad who turned evil, and in the original Fantasy Zone II, the evil master mind was Opa-Opa's rage, formed into an evil Opa-Opa.
Far Cry 3?
As others have said: Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain. You start out on a simple revenge quest, but by the end, you're the baddest mofo around.
You can argue whether Kain is a "villain" or not (Soul Reaver 2 does a lot of pontificating about this), but as of the immediate sequel, Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver, Kain was definitely the primary antagonist.
As others have said: Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain. You start out on a simple revenge quest, but by the end, you're the baddest mofo around.
You can argue whether Kain is a "villain" or not (Soul Reaver 2 does a lot of pontificating about this), but as of the immediate sequel, Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver, Kain was definitely the primary antagonist.
This is the only one that comes to mind. You start off as a Paladin who are known to be lawful good, you know righteous and shit. Arthas tries to do what is right which is to purge the land of the infection to save the people. In the end he becomes obsessed and over-zealous and it leads to him burning bridges with friends, isolating himself, and continuing to choose the path that leads to him being selfish, cruel, and evil until he eventually just accepts it and becomes a death knight.
Any Grand Strategy game, Total War, Civ, Crusader Kings, you name it.
It always start like this : " Hey neighbor, let's be friends, make an alliance and protect each other from the other big aggressive neighbor. "
And it always end like that : " Hey neighbor ally, sorry but i have to expand and you're in the way, so say hello to my armies and my knife in your back. K thx bye ! "
It always start like this : " Hey neighbor, let's be friends, make an alliance and protect each other from the other big aggressive neighbor. "
And it always end like that : " Hey neighbor ally, sorry but i have to expand and you're in the way, so say hello to my armies and my knife in your back. K thx bye ! "
Funny enough in Growlanser 4 you can make some choices that put in a evil route too.
I only did remember because these games have the same artist.
Saga Frontier 2 Gustave story
he started as a guy who got banished by his own family due to him having no magic capability. He then rise as a hero using a steel sword to compensate his lack of magic, and become a ruler known as Gustave the steel. Later on his life, he massacre a small cult he believed to be responsible for killing his brother and nephew. That probably put him in villain category, since one of the protagonist even need to run away to avoid getting indiscriminately murdered by his army.
Far Cry 3
Jason started out as someone who just try to survive, to someone drunk with power and given the choice, might murder his friend and brother.
he started as a guy who got banished by his own family due to him having no magic capability. He then rise as a hero using a steel sword to compensate his lack of magic, and become a ruler known as Gustave the steel. Later on his life, he massacre a small cult he believed to be responsible for killing his brother and nephew. That probably put him in villain category, since one of the protagonist even need to run away to avoid getting indiscriminately murdered by his army.
Far Cry 3
Jason started out as someone who just try to survive, to someone drunk with power and given the choice, might murder his friend and brother.
Well, is more what the protagonist believes, which at the same time makes the player fall into believing that is playing 'the hero' of the story.
Silent Hill 2 is my vote. Also MGS5 ofc.
I need to know more about this 🤔
I don't think that counts. The game is up front about you being a shapeshifting mass murderer. Within the first five minutes of gameplay you've caved in a mans skull and devoured him. The intro has Mercer, looking pretty bored, as Blackwatch executes a civilian, then leaping into the fray once they notice him. The point of the game was to give a character who was a legit monster, give him other monsters and a horrible black ops agency to fight (I actually saw a twitter thread on this--the head writer of the game mentioned "Ohey, I made a game about a killer virus decimating new York", a follower said "Weren't you playing as a Badguy", and the writer was "Yes. That was the point"). The entire point of the game is giving the players a sandbox to unleash ridiculous cruelty upon, because they felt that, based on their previous Hulk game, if you give the players a lovingly recreated city, their first impulse would be to smash it (plus the writer's super into the Cthulhu mythos and conspiracy fiction, so shoggoth versus an amoral black ops team is ground he's quite familiar and happy with).
You start off pretty evil, and you're seeking the truth of your stolen memories. The twist here, is that the player isn't really Alex Mercer, the scientist who lost his memories. It's just the horrible virus that rent Alex apart and has a fractured part of his intellect and is using his appearance as a convenience--in other words the exact same thing you've been doing to mooks and passersby this entire game. And the virus is a bit of an improvement on Mercer, in terms of morality.
The sequel has a completely different writing staff. Mercer's kinda gone completely Albert Wesker for reasons, and the new protagonist is just about as monstrous as Mercer was in the first game, they game just sorta wraps a traditional "revenge for my dead wife" narrative around that, whereas the original game was all about the main character being an inhuman monster, and the important humans in the setting having been monstrous in their own way for decades.