Top 5 Adventure Game Villains

Well, I haven't had much time to devote to games lately what with life stuff going on and despite feeling nostalgic, I haven't had a chance to replay any of my favourite games in the hopes of talking about them.  So for now...another list!  Lists are awesome and you know it.


Everyone loves a good villain.  And I mean everyone.  I mean...who wins all the Oscars?  The villains, the people you love to hate.  And in gaming, they're just as fun to have around.  Even in adventure gaming where you're not really physically fighting the villain in some epic battle, they're just as important.  So...here are some of my favourite ones!  Fun.  Keep in mind, these are from games that I have played.  There are probably plenty more out there.

WARNING: HERE BE MAJOR SPOILERS.  IF YOU HAVEN'T PLAYED THESE GAMES BUT WANT TO, DON'T READ TOO MUCH BECAUSE I MOST DEFINITELY DISCUSS MAJOR PLOT POINTS.

***Edit:  You will note, as a few people have already freaked out at me for, I have not included GlaDOS in this list.  A couple of reasons:  one, I tried relegating the list to adventure games.  Zelda has more adventure elements than Portal does, although it's belonging on the list is also shaky.  Two: although I played Portal and loved it, I never actually finished it myself, and I kind of wanted to include games that I had completed.  Does this make me lame?  Yes.  Is GlaDOS a cold calculating computer with a corrupted warped logic that makes her one of the potentially scariest villains?  Heck yes!  Was she on the list at one point?  Yeah, she was.  But I'll stick with my decision.  So please note: my GlaDOS love knows no bounds, and had it been a generic villain list and had I finished the game she would have been on here...as it is, it's adventure game specific, and complete game specific.  End edit!***

5. Saveedro: Myst 3 Exile- Now here is the definition of a tortured villain.  He just cannot catch a break.  He opens his home and culture to a complete, albeit kind, stranger only to have his two evil sons swoop in and practically destroy his entire world through civil war.  THEN when he decides to confront the ungrateful bastards, they respond by tying him up and trapping him on an abandoned Age (or world) where he's trapped for 25 years with nothing to think about but the sweet sweet revenge he is going to get on the entire family.  And boy oh boy, does he ever.  Not only does he set a psychological guilt trip extraodinaire for Atrus (the first stranger and "main" character of the Myst franchise) but he also lures him there by stealing a new linking book which holds Atrus' entire race of people.  PHEW!  What he didn't bargain for is that you'd be going in Atrus' place of course.

Saveedro...is just batshit insane.  He's played by Brad freaking Douriff, master of all characters bat shit insane, who does a great job scaring the shit out of you with his mood swings and getting you to actually pity him and his plight as the game progresses.  But make no mistake, there is BARELY any bargaining with this guy.  The only way to get the "good" ending is by sheer trickery.  Any attempts to actually reason with the guy?  Are often met with a batshit crazy club to the head.  Saveedro goes at the bottom of the list because he was never evil per se, more the product of what evil things can do to a guy.  But he certainly made for an worthy adversary at the end of the game.

4.  Tetelo: Gabriel Knight Sins of the Fathers- Lest you think only men can truly be evil, get a load of this bitch.  This gets a bit spoilery since the identity of Tetelo is not revealed until later in the game.  Again, she's one of those villains who didn't have to be a villain in the first place, beginning as an innocent victim in a witchcraft trial and then transforming into full on voodoo revenge queen.  Seriously.  She then curses Gabriel Knight's ancestors entire family line to die horribly in every generation (and Gabriel's next, of course).  And THEN she inhabits the bodies of her descendents, forcing them to continue her work 200 years after her death.  All because the love of her life let her get burned at the stake.  yeah, so she has a thing against men after that.  Men with the last name of Knight especially.  She's absolutely consumed with the idea of revenge, and you love every moment of it.

3.  Ganondorf....any Zelda game:  Okay, so it may look like I loves me some tortured souls twisted over time, but sometimes it's nice to have a villain who's evil just because it's the cool thing to do.  Ganondorf doesn't need a good backstory to be evil, he doesn't need a reason to have all this hatred and contempt in him, he's evil because he's evil and that's the way he likes it.  Cover the land in darkness?  Sure, why not?!  Covet power and might and rule the land with an iron first?  It's what he was born to do!  And no matter how many times the weeny kid in green tights defeats him, he doesn't let that stop the evil at all.  In fact, it increases more than anything.  And unlike Bowser, he knows how to make a final battle as epic as possible...

2. Jacob McAllen: The Longest Journey:  You know, if there's one villain who fails at following The Rules of an Evil Overlord, it's this one.  He has dimwitted henchmen (well, except for one), he's caught monologuing in the most cliched way possible, and instead of killing the heroine outright he leaves her to her own devices.  By all accounts, I shouldn't enjoy him.  But...oh hell, watch his monologuing (skip to 2:20).

Jacob McAllen is a wonderfully classic villain.  He just oozes evil and he loves every word he speaks.  And yet he's a surprisingly complex villain as well.  Oftentimes in fantasy stories with an evil villain, you always have to wonder why anyone would follow these douches.  But McAllen is a charismatic political figure, working his way into the limelight while maintaining a surprising amount of secrecy.  He seems to keep a low profile, and then you discover that he has his hands in every political pie there is.  He sort of reminds me of Magneto in that he feels that what he's doing is actually the better option.  That doesn't stop him from being utterly sinister though.  OH, and just when you thought you had this cold calculating menace figured out?  He turns into a freaking dragon!

1. Gehn: Riven:  I can't help it.  Someday there's going to be a list that isn't topped with Riven, or possibly doesn't involve it at all, but for now...Gehn...I was actually ping ponging on whether to make him number 2, but Gehn comes from a time in the Myst series where the decisions you made were still a little ambiguous.  In Riven, the villain and choice you had to make was still obvious and yet...and yet...Gehn is just an amazingly written character with a horribly tragic past.  The reason he made number one?  When I thought about it, I realized he only really shows up for a total of 10 minutes of game time.  And yet his presence and his backstory are felt throughout the entire game.  His eyes and oppressive nature are always on you.  Your goal seems simple enough through the game:  find Atrus' wife, stop his evil father from being stupid and destroying the world with his stupidity.  And as you go through the game, you see his presence everywhere and how he views himself as a god and you think, yeah, this man is a fruit bat.  But then when the big moment comes to finally meet him....you hear this:

Myself, I had read the novels by this point, so I knew not to be fooled.  But anyone who hadn't?  Well, it's very easy to suddenly be doubtful when presented with this clearly regretful old man, although you do see the hunger in his eyes everytime he mentions the linking book.  That is an incredibly well thought out and frankly human speech.  And even though I knew he probably meant to take me out the first chance he got, I still had that tiny twinge of doubt.  It's very well acted, and very well written.  Even afterwards when you finally defeat him, you get even FURTHER evidence of his humanity with an extra journal revealing some of his very heartbreaking past and photos of his long dead family.  He is truly a man who was shaped by his circumstance, and it makes all the more easy to pity him rather than hate him.  Although if you end up screwing it up, stuff like this happens:

So yeah...despite all that charactization....crazy, power hungry fruit cake to the end.