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Games where you are clearly the villain beating up the good guys to win

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
I'm not talking about anti-hero, or you're playing a customizable game where you decide to be chaotic evil on your own while other gamers might play the game being Mother Teresa.

I'm talking a game from the get go, you are the villain trying to win.

Here's a cool oldie my brother's played in the late 80s on their Apple II clone. I didn't bother as I was concerned with playing NES. And Genesis was around the corner.


Werdna.jpg
images


- You play Werdna. The bad guy boss from the older games
- The plot is you're imprisoned and have to make your way out summoning monsters at pentagrams to help you
- The "monsters" you fight are parties of classical D&D ranks. So you'd be fighting against fighters, mages, clerics etc....
- Was a very difficult game
- Sold poorly as people hated the difficulty (read Wiki)

The Return of Werdna is drastically different from the trilogy that precedes it. Rather than continuing the adventures of the player's party from the previous three games, The Return of Werdna's protagonist is Werdna, the evil wizard that was defeated at the end of Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord and imprisoned at the bottom of his dungeon forever.

Gameplay

The game begins at the bottom of a 10-level dungeon. Most of Werdna's powers are depleted and must be gradually recovered throughout the game. The initial goal is to climb to the top of the dungeon, reclaiming Werdna's full power along the way. Each level has one or more pentagrams at specific points. The pentagrams have three purposes: The first time a pentagram is discovered in a level, Werdna's strength increases, and a portion of his powers are restored. This only happens once per level; finding multiple pentagrams on a single level will not increase his powers multiple times. The second purpose is that monsters may be summoned from the pentagrams. The higher the level, the stronger the monsters available. There is no cost to summoning monsters, but only three parties of monsters may be summoned at a time, and any existing monsters will be replaced by the summoned ones. The third purpose is that pentagrams refresh Werdna's health and spellcasting capacity.

Instead of fighting monsters, the player fights against the heroes from the past three Wizardry games. Players of the first three games who sent their character disks to Sir-Tech might have their characters present in Wizardry IV.
 

Pagusas

Elden Member
Kotor if you play it a certain way… which is supposedly the canon way the game was meant to be played. So that should count.

but otherwise I’d say Dungeon Keeper.
 
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Atrus

Gold Member
Witcher: Monster Slayer.

You play a psychopathic Witcher who kills monsters for free and whose bloodlust is so great, they actually get more powerful after taking enough monster heads as “trophies”.

The title isn’t about a Slayer of Monsters but about a Monster who loves Slaying.
 

Danjin44

The nicest person on this forum
SMT IV killing Isabeau honetly most SMT games based what side you take.
 
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TheSHEEEP

Gold Member
Lots of games were already named, but the essence of that idea is probably Overlord

Other than that:
Hearts Of Iron - you can play as Nazi Germany or some other "less reputable" evil options
The Dominions games (though I don't know if any nation there can be considered "good" lol)
Any fighting game where you are an "evil" person

Prototype
Don't think that counts.
You are not really the villain there - although you could argue you are beating up some good guys along with the bad guys rather indiscriminately. More like an anti-hero, anyway.
 

Guilty_AI

Member
Factorio. You land on a alien planet, start destroying the local terrain and flora for the sake of exploring resources, all while building factories that produce toxic waste further destroying to the enviroment.
When the locals try to stop you on your tracks you relentlessly exterminate them along with their houses/villages, often with non-ethical means like fire and nukes.
 
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yamaci17

Member
neighbours from hell

the neighbour is just chilling on his own and this douche bag woody comes in and does all kinds of pranks on him. some of them are brutal, can cause injuries etc. i see woody as an absolute villain, the lenghts he goes for his pranks are unhinged

ac: rogue, kinda
 

SJRB

Gold Member
Don't think that counts.
You are not really the villain there - although you could argue you are beating up some good guys along with the bad guys rather indiscriminately. More like an anti-hero, anyway.

You literally kill hundreds, if not thousands of random people in the most brutal ways to gain power, how are you not the villain in that scenario lol
 

TheSHEEEP

Gold Member
You literally kill hundreds, if not thousands of random people in the most brutal ways to gain power, how are you not the villain in that scenario lol
The people you kill are the ones attacking you - afaik you CAN also wreck general havoc with bystanders, but you certainly don't have to.
IIRC you even get an achievement for not killing innocents.
At best you could argue that you can play as a villain if you want to - but you don't have to.

The character you play in the first game does become the villain in the second game, though.
So I guess the "play as a villain" path is the more canon one :messenger_winking:
 
I don’t know if I’d say clearly, but Sekiro kind of screws everyone over in his single minded quest to rescue Kuro. He spreads Dragon Rot around everywhere and his actions influence the Interior Ministry to invade Ashina. Isshin isn’t really a bad guy at all and Genichiro felt like more of a “Protagonist “ as he was trying to save his clan. The only thing that made him bad was his means of achieving that goal.

In the “bad” ending you kill Emma and Isshin and become a Demon of Hatred. In the “Good” ending you kill your dad twice and may end up commuting sudoku or having Kuro die. The Dragon Return ending is the only decent one in terms of Sekiro being redeemable IMO.

But yeah I love how morally ambiguous it is.
 
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The PS Vita had a little game called "Tales From Space Mutant Blobs Attack".
You play as a tiny little slime creature in a lab that breaks out and gets bigger after eating everything in it's path.
Eventually your absorbing entire towns and it just keeps going.
 
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