Best PC Game Villains

Once videogames were more like tests of logic and/or reflexes, with some color and story to make them interesting. That is, until someone realized that they were a great way to tell stories. Like any good writer know, a story is only as good as the villain. The user need an intriguing story, great scenes, but also someone to hate and destroy.

As a general rule the bad guy are divided in two categories:

A) Stage Boss: it's the oldest archetype. Usually this knid of opponent never appears before the last stage, except maybe to taunt the hero or in some cutscenes

B) The Villain: this kind of opponent is a memorable part of the story, he appears constantly, sometimes he's even an ally that later betray the protagonist

List items

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  1. Kane

  #1 - Shrouded in a mystery that becomes deeper and deeper with each passing game, the leader of the Brotherhood of Nod is a surprising character. Not many bad guys will contatct you to admit that the horrible accusation of crimes against humanity that are making you a criminal are actually false and he's the one responsible. But this doesn't matter because nobody will believe you. Extremly manipulating, driven by unspeakable objectives, cinical, smart and apparently immortal, Kain is able to take by surprise both aliens and humans.

  Among the sea of biblical references he usually left is trademark: "He who controls the past commands the future. He who commands the future, conquers the past."

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  2. SHODAN

  #2 - Okay, being lost in a space station with no sign of human life - except for tons of corpses and desperate messages - chased by horrible monsters and cyborgs is bad enough. Add a cold, malevolent, sarcastic voice, filled with contempt for you and everything you do - with the addition of a chackling that makes it even more inhuman, instead of ridicolous - and this is the stuff of nightmares.

  Meet Shodan, what you get by mixing Hal 9000, the Terminatrix and a femme fatale with god complex. She will harass you for the whole game, manipulating you, bring you to key elements for the story only to blow te right before your eyes. Always mocking and gloating about how weak and pityful you're compared to her.</br>

  Shodan is a f***ing mosnter, nuff said.

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  3. LeChuck

  # 3 - You're in the Carribenas, you're a Mighty Pirate (TM), you're in love with the toughest girl around - who's also the local governor - and you're born for great adventure. Then brace yourself, because the most amazing will hit you when you met your undead rival in love! Ghost/Zombi/Demon, but always filled of arrogance and malevolence, the Evil Pirate LeChuck and his obsession for marring Elaine Marley are the cornerstoen of one of the greatest serie of adventure games ever.

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  4. Luca Blight

  #4 - Brutal, rage-filled, full of contempt for anything and anyone, slave to a desire of apocaliptic destruction. Luca Blight is even more dangerous thanks to his extraordinary strength a military prowness. To kill him you need to assault him with THREE different teams one after the other armed with the most powerful weapons avaible, then put him under a rain of arrows and finish him in a one-on-one with the main character. The scary part, he's just a normal human, and not even the final boss of the game!!!

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  5. Vizier

  #5 - Since 1989 this slimy, slippery, smooth-toungued man plot to take over the kingdom, usually by kindnappping the princess and entombing the Prince in a dungeon filled with lethal enemies and deadly traps. A true motive force behind the events of the game. Let just say that to fairly represent him on the big screen they cast sir Ben Kingsely.

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  6. Kefka

  #6 - Contrariwise to other main opponents from Final Fantasy, we are able to witness the character eveolution of Kefka. At first he's just a minion - not even a terribly powerful one - of the apparent Big Bad, just with a strange look and behviour; as the story goes on he will become stronger and stornger, eventually showing the depths of his destructive madness; until, at the crucial moment, he will kill his emperor stole the absolute power and kick the heroes' asses, blast half of the world and became a sort of vengeful god for the survivors. When the heroes finally gather again to beat him, he horrifies them with the depths of his nichilism even before the main event.

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  7. Ganon

  #7 - At first a simple final boss with a pig face. Over the years he evolved becoming a warlord, a thief, a wizard and more. But he always kept his objective very clear: get the Triforce. Even if he doesn't appear in all the chapters of the franchise he's one of the pillars of the serie.

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  8. The Guardian

  #8 - Sarcastic, brutal and egomianiac, the destroyer of worlds suffered a strange fate: being destroyed not by the Avatar, but from someone even more evil than him. The Electronic Arts.

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  9. Dr. Elvin Atombender

  #9 - "Another visitor! Stay awhile! STAY FOREVER!!"

  "Destroy him , my robots!"

  Two phrases in the whole game, but make no mistake they are enough to highlight how f***ing difficult this game is and how bad this psycho is!

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  11. Sarah Kerrigan

  Honorable Mention #1

  Sarah Kerrigan is another of those character that we saw the evolution of. She started as pretty much your standard action girl character, strong and skilled, with a dark past, but in the end nothing more than a glorified dog soldier; then she was infested and evolved into a one-woman engine of destruction, spiced with a good dose of black humor; again in Brood War she became the true motor behind the whole story. Now in Wings of Liberty she is the Big Bad and the Vengeful Past rolled into one, with just a bit of Damsel in Distress (at least from Jim Raynor perspective). Now I'm waiting Heart of the Swarm to see how she will change next.

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  12. Revolver Ocelot

  Honorable Mention #2

  Ocelot is another character that could have made to the list but I decided to restrain myself. While he was never the Big Bad, Ocelot was one of the few constants of the Metal Gear Franchise and later revealed to be one of the true motor behind the whole story.

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  13. Kain

  Honorable Mention #3

  Kain is difficult to judge because his motivation and plots are so damned complicated. At first he's the villainous protagonist, then the antagonist, then again it was revealed that it was all a cosmic gamble to beat a cthuloid entity at its own game.