Enjoyably Evil Villains

[Cmdr_King]

So most villains in RPGs suck.  We take this as a given.  Consequently, I thought it'd be cool to make a list of the ones who don't.  But due to the quirks of rpg writing, usually the ones who don't suck are largely not evil.  The Fou-Lus and Delitas of the world, who engage in morally questionable behavior for logical reasons, often out of a sense of resignation or desperation.  They don't take any joy in their lives of moral ambiguity; it's all duty and well intentioned extremism.

Anyway, so I'd like feedback from folks.  The villains should fulfill some basic criteria:

- They should be from RPGs.  Just to be clear.

- They are clearly villains.  Regardless of motive, their actions and plots should cause a great deal of suffering for an ultimately selfish (or otherwise plainly evil; sure, summoning Cthulhu will make you as dead as everyone else, but you're still basically evil man) end.

- They are major antagonists.  I want to stick to folks who play a major role in the plot, who motivate the events the heroes struggle against, whether by puppetry or by being enacting tragedies on the ground so to speak.

- Their villain must enhance the plot.  The machinations or actions of the villain should not just move the plot forward, but create a more engaging dilemma for the heroes, or provide a new avenue of development.

- The villain should be interesting to watch.  Whether because you're eager for the heroes to take them down, or because their antics are theatrical and campy, or because they have the spirit of Machievelli and seeing their plans unfold is dramatic in its own right, you like seeing the villain stick around even if you don't like them (seeing as they're evil).

So yeah.  I have some ideas, but getting you folks as a sort of extended brain bank is always helpful.  Post and have fun... please?

[Fenrir]

Most RPGs try portraying evil villains as unstoppable machines, most of the time with the help of some annoying unwinnable event battles. Few can really pull it off. The only examples I have in mind are:
- Balio and Sunder from Breath of Fire 3
- Luca Blight from Suikoden 2



The kind of evil villain I enjoy the most is the immense jerk (also: The best character to roleplay as in WRPGs)
He's a bully because that's just what he is. For one reason or another he thinks he's 100% better than the main character and always rubs it in his face. (He might have an inferiority complex) He often fails, but is so persistent and annoying he might end up as the final boss anyway.
Examples:
- Pokey from Earthbound and Mother 3 (my favourite)
- Gary Oak from Pokemon
- Drago Malefoy from Harry Potter (hey there are some Harry Potter RPGs)
- Kefka from FF6 (Kinda)



Demon's Souls spoilers
The last villain I am thinking about doesn't really fit this topic as he's not a major antagonist at all, but he's so interesting mechanically, and in the context of what we could have as RPG villains, that he deserves a mention.
You meet him in the prison level in a cell, and can choose to free him or let him rot. Free him and you might see some dead NPC bodies the next time you go to the hub world. Choose to ignore the threat, or fail at identifying it, and he'll go after most of your shopkeepers one by one, then eventually after you. (he's not too tough, but the dead shopkeepers are a major problem) Note that there's no way to reload an earlier save in that game.

[Yoshiken]

I'm going to probably disagree with most of the other people on here and say Kuja. He's got a, uhh, brilliant stage presence, he's quite definitively villainous (destroys one planet, tries to destroy another?) and spends most of the plot doing everything he can to destroy the world, a city at a time.

[DjinnAndTonic]

I think most of my favorites are "smart" sadists. They have really intricate plans and take pleasure in straight up torturing the heroes and/or the world. The best and most -believable- part? If they think they can enact everything from the shadows and get away with it.

Thuris and Raksha from Soul Nomad
Adachi from Persona 4
Yuna from BoF4
True Overlord Zenon from Disgaea 2
Leknaat from the Suikoden series (What? I'm convinced she's secretly screwing everyone over)
...and that's all I can think of that really fit the trope.


It's notable that if I can't have an awesomely clever villain like this, that I find cartoonishly-over-the-top villains to be at least a funny substitute.

Vulcanus from Disgaea
Aurum from Disgaea 3
Queen Protea from Radiant Historia
Dist from Tales of the Abyss
etc.

[Grefter]

If his name is TONY and he is a villain then he is the best.

[Dhyerwolf]

King Valentine. Even as a shriveled faceless bony corpse, characters still cower in fear of him.

[OblivionKnight]

Definitely going to be a lot of conflicting opinions here. 

Lekain
Jon Irenicus

[AndrewRogue]

-Kefka
-Luca Blight
-Hazama/Terumi

...you know, I just apparently like villains who are complete tossers.

[SnowFire]

Arguably should go to Misc Links., but a relevant post from a friend of mine on the topic:

http://hckleinman.tumblr.com/post/28719261311/why-video-games-need-good-villains

This is more "villains in general" rather than "enjoyably evil villains" but it's a good read, and one I largely agree with.  Give it a look.

Applies now certainly since I too am going through FF13-2 (no XBC yet), and once more the narrative slant is all screwed up.  If Caius was played for *menace* he'd be sort of okay, but the narrative assumes he's sympathetic when he's really not, and it kills the effect.  I should probably yabber about my own favorite & least favorite villains some time, but Caius seems to come from the Genesis school of Final Fantasy villains who are angsty madmen with ultimate power running around that the game inexplicably treats sympathetically.  Sigh.

One thing I will mildly disagree with the post on are 11th hour villains.  I think they're fine if and only if they're treated as basically an excuse for a tough battle, and not THE REAL THREAT ALL ALONG or something.  Necron sucks because just WTF, they forgot to even have an excuse for what's going on and it just distracts from what's already a somewhat confused Zidane / Kuja wrap-up.  Zeromus is fine because eh, we've got unstoppable adventurers on the moon, let's make them fight the incarnation of hatred or something to give 'em a good run.  (And Zeemus gets mild credit as basically being "Yeah it's his fault Golbez did all that crap" even if his actual screen presence is tiny.)  I suppose the best example might be, say, the Wind Rincar or Sun Rincar in Suikoden III/V; Luc & the Godwins are the real villains we care about, but look have a giant rune monster to fight but don't think too hard about it.  They don't try to replace the real villains and they have a vague excuse for existing.

[Meeplelard]

To be fair, one thing Caius has going for him is the aspect of "prescence."  When Caius appears, the game makes a major shift in tone, and even the music has that feeling too.  I'll grant trying to make him sympathetic was a dumb move; its really hard to get behind someone whose entire goal is basically KILL EVERYONE for the sake of one person, and that one person doesn't even want that.  That would be Caius' failing.

If the motive was more just a starting point, and it was a "devolves into insanity" style villain, to the point where "no, you're just evil", which frankly the way Noel and Serah treat Caius in the game's ending feels like was going on ANYWAY, that would have worked far better.  Instead, yeah, Caius is definitely someone the game tries to make us sympathize with because "He's not really a bad guy, honest!  He's just misguided!", which it fails at.

Caius does have all the other traits needed at least.  Going down the list...

-Presence.  Its hard to deny that Caius doesn't steal the scene when he appears, and become the focus of everything.  Whether he's enjoyable during this time is a different argument, naturally, but he definitely changes everything.
-Credible Threat.  The opening displays him as being good enough to hold his own against a Suped Up Lightning, but he also clearly is stronger than Serah and Noel (though oddly, he has no "Unwinnable/Optionally Winnable fights", which is weird because the outcome, plotwise, could have supported that easily)
-Personal Impact on the Hero.  Self explanatory really; everything you do is because of Caius' actions.

So...the only one I feel he fails at is the Motive one, which goes back to the whole "they want him to be sympathetic, even though he's not" thing, since the motive is WHY he fails at being sympathetic.  To be fair, his motive could have worked if his goal wasn't so obviously horrible.  If it was sold as more of a "Less than ideal outcome" rather than "Worst possible fate one can imagine", it may have worked.  But I digress, its kind of impossible to sympathize with a villain whose motive is "Blow up the world because he's sad."

If you want a sympathetic villain whose goals are incredibly drastic, but you can at least understand his side (though still not side with him), look no further than Fou-lu.  Yeah, doesn't qualify what CK wants, but he's a good contrast to Caius if nothing else.


On a different note, I will say one thing about the article:
He does label out WHY Sephiroth is an effective villain in a decently thought out manner, not in some fanboy raving "He's awesome" style.  He establishes criteria, and shows how Sephiroth fulfills them, and why he works.  Its sadly rare to see this for someone like that.


Re Snowfire on the 11th Hour thing:

He actually acknowledges that some.  He says the villain can appear at the end IF they are hinted at throughout the game, if there's some reason to believe there's someone behind them, etc. 

And honestly, Necron was not meant to be anything but "a big final boss fight."  They wanted Kuja to have one last act of redemption in the game's ending, and as such, you needed one guy who wasn't Kuja, so Kuja could rescue the team from him (game blatantly states Kuja saved the crew.)    There are a bunch of far better ways they could have handled this of course, and Necron is anything but ideal, but FF9 doesn't pretend he's more important than he is.  I think the best theory I've heard is that if FF9's theme is about LIfe and Memories, Necron is the Anti-thesis of that, being an Incarnation of Death itself.  And given that's a shaky reason at best, and its the best explanation of his existence I've heard...you get the idea.

His example of 11th Hour villain doesn't really include "Giant Monsters for sake of final boss fights."  That feels more like an N/A factor.  He means genuine characters who replace other villains when there's no reason behind them.

In truth, Zemus is a pretty shitty villain for this reason.  Oh, now we can forgive Golbez...even though there was no reason to care about him, or anything like that beforehand.  The "Brother" reveal didn't come until way too late for me to care about that.

I hate to use this example, but Ultimecia controlling Edea was better from the "Puppet Master" perspective.  FF8 reveals BEFORE the fight with her that Edea use to be a nice person, and now your team goes "wait, why did she become evil? And why did she create an organization that is now her arch nemesis?"  It leads to a bunch of unanswered questions, and then revealing "Ultimecia was the true culprit" is the answer to all of those.
FF4 lacks any of that.  FF4 is just "Golbez is the bad guy! ...no, just kidding, Zemus is the real bad guy, Golbez is puppet.  Oh by the way, he's also your brother." 


And before someone uses the "argh Orphanage Scene!" argument, discussing this a bit, I agree the scene would have worked if it was relegated to just Squall, Seifer, Edea and Ellone.  Including the entire cast (Sans Rinoa) kind of killed the scene.  Giving Squall a personal connection to Edea is kind of needed nonetheless though, as its the only way you can pull off the Ultimecia reveal.

(now, Ultimecia's failures stem from a whole lot of other factors, but lets not get into that)

[Grefter]

So we are going for a 10/10 for Seymour then?  Does a decent job at ticking off most of those boxes.

Stepping away from the glib response though (as someone who did genuinely enjoy Seymour but for the camp factor), it is any interesting article, but I think it is oversimplifying a bit.  It gives you so little room for movement in other kinds of villains. 

Compare Seymour who hits nearly all those check boxes to some other antagonists I consider to do the job really well, Kato for example? 

He plays with most of those key points and pulls up short on them.  He is around, but he doesn't have much stage presence.  He certainly isn't ever particularly impressive or threatening.  He obviously swings that personal impact on the main character thing in spades, but never in the way the post describes it.  I might read it differently than others but to me right up to the end Yuri kind of hates having to do this stuff.  Him showing up just after the peak of a big climax is like the whole twist to SH2 (I am interpreting 11th hour fairly liberally here from literal last minute to a rapid shift at the culmination of a plot climax).  His motivations are illogical and entirely emotional.  Every step of the way what he does is kind the reactions of a heartbroken man and honestly kind of petty at the heart of it all.  The game calls him on it.  Maybe the argument is going more for internal consistency than outright logical?



Or Myria from any of the two BoF games really but especially BoF 3 where she is um actually good.  Not that everyone will agree with me on this one either, but BoF 3 and Myria are something formative in my transferring from gaming as a child to adulthood.  BoF 3 of all things was a game that I sat down and analysed in-depth a touch excessively.

She has 3 scenes in the whole game.  The whole reason she works as a villain is because she is so remote and distanced from the main character.  Her "threat" is mostly a passive thing.  She does very little directly offensively and the biggest threat she makes is the consequences of her death.  She is mentioned vaguely and nearly entirely as a figure of myth through the entire game until that ending sequence.  Otherwise she is an entirely unnamed presence during dream sequences.  She does have logical motives, I will give you that.  In the context of the game though they are largely laid to rest for hundreds of years.  Myria won.  At this point her motives are maintain status quo, keep society functioning.  She is well outside the archetype that this model describes.  Hey I guess she does meet the points for the last loose one though.  There is an option not to fight!

This is mostly just to say, yes, I think for a specific kind of story this checklist holds up pretty well for setting up big rivalries or set piece fights.  Very far from a framework I would be using to consider all villains in RPGs, let alone in gaming as a wider medium.  There is so many more fascinating stories you can tell with different types of villains than they describe here, but for your gritted teeth rivals crossing swords while the fortress burns to the ground?  Sure that works.

Trying to view something as fascinating as say Arcanum's Kerghan through that lens is entirely insufficient however.

[Meeplelard]

Pretty much agree with you on this Grefter, for all that my earlier post wasn't making that clear.  I was mostly just saying "by his logic, Caius does follow most of the points he thinks are required for a villain."  The sympathy aspect (tied in with motives as I said) could be argued big enough to kill him as a character, but then that begs the question of Quality vs. Quantity, is it really an "Have all or you suck" scenario, etc.

Either way, I generally agree otherwise.  It works as a checklist for Rivals or "Big Evil Bad Guy" villains, but when you get to something a little more complicated (BoF3 Myria and Kato are indeed good examples), it sort of falls short.


NOW FOR RANDOM RAMBLING JUST FOR SHITS!

Speaking of Seymour, he's interesting because the game could have very easily tried to play the "sympathy" angle but didn't, and the game is better for not doing it.  Seymour is, as we know, someone who was persecuted as a kid, lost his mother for power, and grew up with a fucked up perception of life as a result.  Very easy to twist that into "awww, he had such a hard life, can't you give him a break?"  Thankfully, FF10 doesn't do this.  It uses that as a mere catalyst for "This is why he's evil" and then doesn't try to hide the fact that he's a corrupt bastard who tries to hide this with a flowery speech about why Death is good. 

Heck, I think what sums it up best is the very last scene with him.  He says "Even after I'm gone, Spira's sorrow will still prevail."  Yuna sends him anyway, not a moment of hesitation, and Tidus' response? "Sin will be right behind you."  No regret, no hesitation, no "I wish things could have been different between us!"  Just a simple "we won, you lost, now onto bigger threats."  As such, Seymour's line comes off as one last desperate attempt to stop Yuna from killing him, not because of sympathy or anything, but because HE'S ABOUT TO BE KILLED PERMANENTLY.  To have him "accept" death would be out of character too, naturally, and it would by nature mean the sending is irrelevant, so I feel the line was also there to say "He's clinging onto his corrupt beliefs to the very end." 

In short...Seymour could have been ruined by "intended to be sympathetic, but is clearly a douche" angle that so many "sympathetic" villains have (hi Caius!), but game avoided this, and just played the "he's evil, KILL HIM!" at pretty much every turn.

[Dark Holy Elf]

I don't think that article need necessarily be taken as "this is the ONLY effective way to do a villain". Obviously Kato is a success, but he's written in an unusual manner. I actually think he -does- meet most of the criteria though... he certainly has stage presence in my mind (he appears frequently in the second half of the game, engages in dialog with the PCs, and kidnaps then later kills the most important antagonist aside from him. He doesn't have super-creepy music but there is more than one way for a character to make an impact). And I think his motivation is logical for someone to have, even if it, itself, is not supported by logic, if that makes sense. Plenty of people get emotional and do emotional things as a result, there is nothing wrong with a villain acting this way.

Meeple, just a nitpick, and only because I love FFX:

As such, Seymour's line comes off as one last desperate attempt to stop Yuna from killing him

I don't agree with this at all. Seymour says "So... you will be the one who sends me," and the tone of voice leaves no doubt that he says this with resignation. He's not pleading for sympathy; he knows he'd never receive any (and this is consistent with the fact that he didn't receive any when he was a child). His final comment is a defiant one; he believes that Sin can not be stopped, and defeat has not changed that belief for him.

[Grefter]

I am probably only so down on it because it is an article talking about how games need better villains and then just goes with villains that we have had as a stock standard for ages (pick an RPG from like 96 to early 2000s and chances of them following this archetype are fairly high).

Kato is certainly present, but he isn't a show stealer or a game changer.  It isn't what I would call "Presence" like it is described there.  Part of why we like him is because he has chemistry with Yuri.  They interact!  There is actual dialogue instead of exchanged one liners!  Actual coherent dialogue and give and take in their relationship!  He is a far more subtle than that definition outlines.  Certainly lacking in the presence of Rasputin (or even Nicolai even if it is super lols).  If we were talking like stage presence of a character actor or the like?  Yeah I would say that.  There is a reason probably the most impacting scene in SH2 is one between Kato and Yuri in a graveyard.  After all the stuff that leads up to that he gets Yuri to try to resurrect Alice which the series has show like what 3 times now to always end horribly?  With Yuri knowing the exact outcomes of all of them at that. 

Certainly I see the line of thinking Kato has.  That is why I wondered if they were more meaning the motivations have to be internally consistent.  Reading the paragraph again I guess they do kind of argue that it is so because they use at least one emotionally driven example (Loghain from Dragon Age, not that I agree with the interpretation of the character being entirely motivated by hatred for Orlais, there is definitely some disdain for Cailan as the heir there.  He is decidedly not living up to the man his father was and general paranoia in play).

And man, you can't see any sympathetic response in Seymour at all?  He was an abused kid that was born and raised in an abusive religion that he has seen first hand as worshiping the thing that goes on a world wide killing spree every 20 years.  Sure he is certainly a piece of work from a young age, when his mother sacrificed herself to become a Final Aeon where assuming that went the same way Yuna's did and her father's did has it revealed to him that his mother will then become the big genocidal Kaiju and he chooses "Nah fuck that, I am going home" and uses her to show off instead.  To say that there is no sympathy in a kid being a clear product of his environment though?  Eh maybe it is just the nihilist me, but I could totally get someone's reaction to that setting being "Fuck you, fuck this and fuck everybody in this place".

[Meeplelard]

I said FF10 doesn't play the sympathy angle for Seymour, not that you can't get Sympathy from him.  You're clearly meant to hate and despise him.  You are not meant to go "awww, poor child, you were so abused!"  FF10 clearly tries to sell Seymour off as a corrupt, asshole, evil individual that is a threat who needs to be taken care of, and would be the game's primary villain if the Sin nonsense didn't exist.  Make no mistake, FF10's Villain is Sin, Seymour's mostly there to have a consistent Anti-Thesis character to challenge your team.  Yes, this is USUALLY the job of the villain, but FF10 makes it clear your goal is to beat Sin, he's the big bad of the game and your mission will not end until Sin is defeated.  CT used a similar style for that matter, naturally.

Basically, I said they COULD have pulled the Sympathy angle on Seymour, and unless they totally revamped his character and motives, he would have had a lot of the same problems as Caius.  What makes Seymour work to me is that they make it clear he's a despicable person.  A Corrupt individual to its core, even by the standards of Yevon, a corrupt theocracy.   I mean, the game has both his parents saying "Seymour is evil, HE MUST BE KILLED!"   They very clearly want you to detest and hate the guy, and each time you fight him, there's really no remorse in kicking his ass.


That's what I mean.  FF10 doesn't play the sympathy card with Seymour.  Every-time he appears, he just gets all the more despicable, going from small scale evil deeds (Unleashing fiends in the middle of a Major Blitz Ball tournament just to raise approval value), all the way to his grand plan of "become a god and kill everyone in Spira!"   Its kind of hard to get behind that, so yeah, going to say its the "nihilist you."  The abused child past comes off as more of a "this is why he's evil" than something to sympathize with.


EDIT: Watching the Anima scene again, for what its worth, Seymour's mother says that  what made him evil was actually tasting power once.  Instead of giving him the strength to live on by himself (which was her intent), it made him go "ooh, I like this, I want more!"  and that sort of just snow balls from there.  The scene is really about her own faults that led to Seymour.  The sympathy it tries to convey is for Seymour's Mother, not Seymour.  It even says "He is to blame."  Seymour's mother is the one who started this, but she had the best of intentions, and hoped to help her son, but it backfired horribly, and now she wants to make amends. 

So yeah, really not seeing FF10 trying to garner sympathy from Seymour.  His mother?  Sure, but that's obvious given she's clearly a good hearted person who just made one bad decision (out of good intentions), but Seymour himself just kind of went mad with power.

I don't agree with this at all. Seymour says "So... you will be the one who sends me," and the tone of voice leaves no doubt that he says this with resignation. He's not pleading for sympathy; he knows he'd never receive any (and this is consistent with the fact that he didn't receive any when he was a child). His final comment is a defiant one; he believes that Sin can not be stopped, and defeat has not changed that belief for him.

...ok, I did completely forget about that line and yeah, it does completely change the context of his follow up.  So yeah, guess I'll take back what I said.  My general point either way is that Seymour wasn't trying to make the player sympathize with him, and the team certainly feels no ill will in taking care of him once and for all (as evident by Tidus' line.)

Basically...damn you and your better memory of FF10!

[Yoshiken]

Too lazy to read much here atm, but just to elaborate on Necron, the idea behind him is meant to be that he's the incarnation of the Iifa Tree or something. He's the reason for the mist, and they want to stop that because it causes aggression and violence, etc. And, yes, since the Iifa Tree is in charge of the dead souls, and given the name Necron, it is meant to be that he is the antithesis to the cast (and the real focus of the plot, Vivi) who represent life and hope and other cheesy fantasy ideals.
This is vaguely similar, I guess, to the final boss from Persona 4. Plot-wise, they're terrible, and it's basically an excuse for a big bad boss to tie up a few loose ends elsewhere (for Necron, see what Meeple said about redeeming Kuja. For P4, it's basically "Wait, how did this whole thing even start to exist?") that still makes some sense in the story because there's a vague threat in the background when you think about things a little.

[SnowFire]

Meeple: Sorry if I wasn't clear; yeah, Zeemus is not a good villain and I'm not hyping him, I'm just willing to throw him a minor bone.  I actually don't mind Ultimecia either and agree she's a better example of "villain who interferes with the plot despite sitting in her inaccessible castle", since she's directly responsible for Disc 1 & 2 plot via possessing Edea.  (For all that she does have her own shortcomings.  Luckily, I don't mind batshit crazy villain plots so long as they're basically solo quests and treated as batshit crazy.  Rather than, say, Lambda of WA4, who has a batshit crazy plot the game treats as tragic idealism and that he gets non-Farmel people to take seriously.)

Also agree that Seymour is a great villain and would have been harmed had they played up the violins too loudly.  Yeah, Seymour had it rough and it might even be sort of understandable what he's up to, but it's not excusable.  I'd have been pissed if there was some kind of FF7CC "hugs for Seymour in the afterlife" thing where Yuna got up and said that really Seymour was a great guy all along.

Yoshiken: That isn't actually in FF9, or to the extent it is it's far too subtle.  It's like bringing up Ultimania information; I want a complete story in game.  (Meeple's reason is better, for all that it still doesn't work.)

Grefter: Video games do "core" villains wrong all the time including from 96-03 so it's worth calling 'em out on it.  And despite Kato being a "sympathetic antagonist" I'd argue he still qualifies for all the "rules" listed, interpreted a bit more broadly than usual.  Take, I dunno, Luther from SO3.  Sits in his tower almost all of Disc 2, only interacts indirectly via Proclaimers & such.  He blows up Earth, I guess, except we haven't met anyone on Earth in-game.  (SO2's Wisemen, while not great either, at least had the decency to blow up a planet you've traveled and gotten to know to piss you off.)  Other than that he, uh, harasses his sister or something, and the party likes her?  And his motives are not great.  There are worse out there, but eh.  My point is that something as simple as following the checklist could have mildly redeemed Luther as a villain, for all that he's a wacky example in that having him taunt computer programs he doesn't consider worthy of existence wouldn't make much sense.  Change his motive some, too, I guess.

[Cmdr_King]

The oddball not really explained in game fanwank for Necron I've heard is... if you poke around the summoner village, you find that they created some sort of ultimate power that they had to seal away because it tried to destroy the world or something.  So given lack of other reason for this to exist, people latched on to the idea that they used the Crystal to seal it, and thus Kuja released it with his Ultima bomb.  I'm not sure how seriously to take Law of Conservation of Detail in a video game plot, but hey, it certainly makes more sense than random incarnation of death out of nowhere.  Heck, one reading of FFIX's memories theme is "resolving the issues of the past", which necron kinda works with.

He's still a lamer, but that's at least marginally LESS lame.

[Meeplelard]

Yoshiken: That isn't actually in FF9, or to the extent it is it's far too subtle.  It's like bringing up Ultimania information; I want a complete story in game.  (Meeple's reason is better, for all that it still doesn't work.)

Worse than that; its not even in Ultimania.  Necron is completely out of nowhere, and the "Incarnation of the Iifa Tree" is a shakey claim at best.  It revolves claims like "Iifa Tree deals with Souls!  You killed the Front Side only! Necron is the backside!"  It then deals with nonsense using freaking Soul Cage, a filler boss who IS a genuine manifestation of the Iifa Tree, and the lines don't really match up at all beyond "they both talk about life and death" which is a "no shit" scenario.

In fact, if we do use Ultimania, it suggests the complete opposite; that Necron COULD NOT have been the Iifa Tree.  Iifa Tree was created by Garland, and Garland, or the Terrans in general, do not have the power to create a being as powerful as Necron (Necron has to be believably more powerful than Trance Kuja, after all, and Trance Kuja is way more powerful than even Garland believed was possible.  Its worth noting he considers Zidane his greatest success; its hard to suddenly believe that Necron could exist as related to Garland when you take this into account.)  Ultimania further suggests that only the Madain Sari summoners could create a being that strong, and Garland does make a note about an Eidolon "being so strong they sealed it up" in Memoria or something, so Necron being related to that is plausible, but there's absolutely nothing linking him so its a guess at best.

...what I'm getting at is at best, Iifa Tree = Necron has about as much going for it as Daryll = Gogo.  Which is to say "You can't disprove it" and some very strong stretches that seem to match up, but don't actually connect the two.

The last theory I heard about him is "Your team is already dead thanks to Kuja, they are LITERALLY FIGHTING DEATH ITSELF!"  Though, given it states "Kuja saved us", and we have no reason to believe Kuja can resurrect people, as well as Kuja blatantly says "After you defeated me" to Zidane...yeah, its kind of hard to take this theory seriously.

Edit: Damn, CK Ninja'd about the Eidolon thing.  It probably is the best explanation of his origins, sadly.

[Grefter]

Power begetting more power is pretty much what the entire religion is based on though and Seymour grew up in the thick of it.  Yeah it isn't his mother's fault but saying a downtrodden kid is entirely at fault for his environment is way harsh.  Someone can be sympathetic without you backing their motives or goal or without the plot doing so.  I am more arguing that Seymour is sympathetic at times more in spite of the game than anything else.  Probably because Seymour is a 12 inch ham and cheese Sub and the game has me looking for more what in the fuck happened here than to just accept he is inherently evil.

And Snowfire, yeah there is a lot of villains in that decade or so that got done wrong and it was such a prevalent template.  Which is exactly why I would argue to try something more outside of it than to try to do it and staple something else on the side and expect it to work.  Alternately, yes, a lot of stuff tried to do it and fucked up, so why the fuck are we holding it up as the template of how to do things right?

[SnowFire]

Grefter:
Went over this in chat, but:
A) This checklist is for "villains" not just "Sephiroth clone."  Seymour, Kuja, GlaDos, Liquid Snake, etc. aren't Sephiroth but totally fit the checklist IMO.
B) In referring to Sephy clones specifically, so what that other games screw this up?  Even if there are lots of bad Sephiroth clones out there, if somebody does a good Sephiroth clone, well, it'll be good, so I won't complain.

[DjinnAndTonic]

Isn't Ghaleon pretty much a Sephiroth clone? I can't remember, I just remember liking him as a villain.

[Grefter]

Ghaleon predates Sephiroth (not saying Seph is the guy that made that archetype certainly) with Lunar 1 originally coming out in 92.  Dunno how much of the character was in that Mega CD version though.

The point is more things like Lloyd from LoD, it was a done thing.  Edit - That is clones that fit the archetype and suck big ones.

Anyway like we back and forthed on in chat.  It isn't that I object to this being A way to make good villains, it can certainly work.  But good villains can come through plenty of other avenues all the same.  It is just a smattering of ways to do one archetype.  It still relies on you doing them all well.  Just like you could do a sympathetic villain that uses these traits well like the article rages against in FF13-2.  The villain sucks in FF13-2 because the writing for those games blows chunks, not because they broke some established formula for how to make a villain good.

It defines an archetype and certainly highlights important aspects of that archetype, but it isn't a checklist of instant win or a secret formula for success.  Hell lets be straight up on this.  It defines a highly popular archetype, but that means all of dick when trying to quantify in an absolute like it presents itself.  Which to be entirely fair, sitting as a random blog post on the internet is pretty douchey of me to call it out on it.

As a run down on why Sephiroth and others done well like him (Ghaleon etc) work though?  Yeah certainly and it brings up points you can take to heart.  I just think it approaches it from the wrong angle.  Less "This is how you do villains" and more "This is why good villains worked" would be how I would frame this argument.

[Meeplelard]

Thinking on it, Fou-lu is a sympathetic villain who hits all the Tick Marks:

Presence: You actually play as him, and his sections greatly contrast Ryu's.  Not a conventional way to deal with presence, but he certainly has it.

Credible Threat: He's a god and not afraid to go to extreme measures if he feels its necessary.  An example is having his pet A-tur destroy Chedo.

Personal Impact on Hero: He's literally the heroes other half.

Not 11th Hour:  Given how early he's introduced...

Logical Motives:  He was betrayed by his own followers, actively attacked when he woke up after a 600 year sleep.  He consistently shows restraint throughout, and often suffers for it.   Then sees aspects of human decency through Bunyan and, more importantly, Mami, and actually starts to reconsider his views on "Mortals suck."  This all just spits back in his face as he gets a shit bomb of evil dropped on him, completely compromising the 2nd thoughts he was having, to the point where you really can't blame the guy for saying "Mortals are evil and flawed beings, they must be eradicated."

Option for final battle: A literal option to play as Fou-lu after fusing with Ryu and killing off your own teamates.  If that aint an option, I don't know what is.


So yeah, Fou-lu does show that a Sympathetic Villain can very easily follow the Guide Lines, and general consensus is that he's a good villain.   Doesn't go back to the original purpose of this topic, given he's not "Enjoyably Evil", but the list still succeeds for him.


As far as why Caius fails...unlike Fou-lu whom we actively see getting screwed over time and time again, and actually recognize his willingness to reconsider his actions, etc., Caius doesn't have that.  The Yeul thing is all we have, but the issue is something that Noel himself brings up, and that is Yeul clearly does not support Caius' side.  Caius is acting "for Yeul's sake", but he never considers Yeul's opinion on the manner.  Noel basically calls him out on this, though the game STILL tries to play the sympathy angle at the end, as I believe Serah does a little "Poor guy, he just wanted to end his suffering!" type speech, which kind of clashes with Noel's stance on the manner of calling him out, and basically saying "You're full of it; I can tell you rather plainly Yeul does not want that."  Plus his actions are kind of hypocritical, as he's trying to SAVE YEUL, but really he's just condemning her in a completely different way.

Caius COULD have worked, but they needed to approach him differently.  Basically saying "the entire world must die!" because he feels bad for one girl's fate is not going to win him any points.

Frankly, Caius would have been a stronger character if they just made him a corrupt douche who was more "style over substance", because he does have a certain sense of charisma and style that he could have worked if they just played that angle, and worked more towards giving you reasons to hate him, rather than keeping him this ambiguous character who you KNOW is clearly the main antagonist from the first scene in the game.

[Niu]

The biggest slap on Caius's face is that Yuel is trying to get Snowe to help her instead of Caius. So yeah, Ciaus is really no more than a self pleaser.

And just to clarify something on Necron. He is not the Edilon that was created by Madain Sari. That Edilon is really Alexander, where the artifact to summon him was divided into four as a seal. Horrible thing had happened when he was summoned for the first time.