Your bad-guys are merely unpleasant

[Zebulous.2934]

 I do find it odd, that the writing team keeps pulling punches when it comes to antagonists.  If the bad guy is raciest the racism is mentioned, but isn't portrayed well.  We are supposed to dislike the bad guy, they are supposed to offend us.  If they are going to be an -ist of some sort, show them being unfair, rude, and mean to that group of people. Do this multiple times as well.  Give us plenty of opportunity to connect that unpleasant character with unpleasant feelings. One demonstration of cruelty isn't enough.
 I need the villain to make me mad because of how he treats people.  I need to feel the injustice.  Don't simply have members of the target group tell me that the bad guy has done bad things to them.
I thought the whole point of a villain was to "trigger" people? That way we get a corresponding sense of satisfaction when they are defeated.  

Edited September 23, 2022 by Zebulous.2934

[RadiantWolf.2058]

Try playing a Sylvari in Heart of Thorns. It's a hoot and a holler.

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

To which 'bad guy' are you referring?  There's certainly many instances of 'bad guy groups' being bad throughout the game. 

[Randulf.7614]

The problem is often down to a couple of issues

- a lot of people can’t separate the views of a character from the creator. A vile, bigoted character often offends someone to the point the writers get attacked for it and accused of being the same way. and the hate gets misdirected away from the villain. Getting people to trigger in the right way is very hard as our sensitivities have changed a great deal.

- the other issue is that it has become popular to find villains as “cool” - Joko in this case. There have been so many strong portrayals of villains like The Joker, Skeletor etc that people don’t like seeing them killed off. Good villains aren’t defined anymore by wanting to see them beaten, it’s quite the opposite.
 

Wrestling has the same problem. In what used to be a clear cut good guy vs bad guy, has become harder to find a way to get the bad guy booed. Often the trick is focus on making the hero the one to cheer for instead or keeping the villain off screen enough so as not to over develop the character, but see their effects - eg Sauron

Edited September 23, 2022 by Randulf.7614

[Dib.4612]

Yeah Minister Lee kind of came out of the blue. I don't even recall anymore what he was doing inside the ministry that was wrong.  

 

I just remember from the strike that he thinks he's the future of Cantha or something. And I have a vague memory that he's right wing or something. And supposedly that was enough to oust him and portray him as a villain.  

 

White Mantle are kind of obviously kittened up, drugged on that Blood Shard magic and such. Although they do want to oust the Charr from Ascalon, man would I like to see that! Perhaps a WvW map based on it. I digress.   

 

Yes the devs at Anet are very progressive and seem to struggle to make good story because their propaganda checklist also needs to be met while writing said story.

[Danikat.8537]

For me showing the effects can have more impact than showing the villain initiating their plan. I don't think seeing Joko striding around ordering the awakened to take food from a village would have as much impact as coming in afterwards and being asked to help them hunt rats for meat or salvage what's left of their crops.

Although there are places where we get to see the villains in action, all the starter maps have hearts and events where you see that race's enemy faction attacking people and have to fight them off and it comes up at various points through the story as well, like the section in Season 2 where you play as Caithe and see the Inquest kidnapping sylvari and using them to power their machines, and Sadswept Isles where you can go into their base and see both their experiments and the effect it's having on the subjects and the researchers (and the area around them).

[Dawdler.8521]

Yeah next expansion should have an axis of true evil.

Risen Tybalt ressurecting Traherne, joined by a disillusioned Logan since Rytlock keep rejecting his love.

[Freya.9075]

Praise Joko! 

[Kalavier.1097]

4 hours ago, Randulf.7614 said:

The problem is often down to a couple of issues

- a lot of people can’t separate the views of a character from the creator. A vile, bigoted character often offends someone to the point the writers get attacked for it and accused of being the same way. and the hate gets misdirected away from the villain

- the other issue is that it has become popular to find villains as “cool” - Joko in this case. There have been so many strong portrayals of villains like The Joker, Skeletor etc that people don’t like seeing them killed off. Good villains aren’t defined anymore by wanting to see them beaten, it’s quite the opposite.
 

Wrestling has the same problem. In what used to be a clear cut good guy vs bad guy, has become harder to find a way to get the bad guy booed. Often the trick is focus on making the hero the one to cheer for instead or keeping the villain off screen enough so as not to over develop the character, but see their effects - eg Sauron

Another issue is having the villain "get away" without feeling cheap or cheating the player. Too many interactions with the bad guy getting away, it can make the players/readers hate them for the wrong reason.

[Randulf.7614]

27 minutes ago, Kalavier.1097 said:

Another issue is having the villain "get away" without feeling cheap or cheating the player. Too many interactions with the bad guy getting away, it can make the players/readers hate them for the wrong reason.

Yes that can be an issue with stories aimed at older audiences for sure. It’s important for serialisations though, but as you say it’s how their defeats are handled without going too cheesy (comics and cartoons are an exception to this)

 

Edited September 23, 2022 by Randulf.7614

[Ashantara.8731]

Characters are often "flat" (i.e., two-dimensional) across the board, good guys and bad guys alike.

That said, I don't need "more offense" to "feel it" -- I just need better writing. 😉

[Vayne.8563]

Subtle evil is scarier than in your face evil. I  mean Joko was making a plague to kill off all humans. Scarlet attacked Lion's Arch. Jormag was awesomely scary. No idea what you're on about.

[Farohna.6247]

6 hours ago, RadiantWolf.2058 said:

Try playing a Sylvari in Heart of Thorns. It's a hoot and a holler.

Absolutely agree on this.  My first play through was on my sylvari and yeh it's more impacting.  IBS I had switched over to playing charr and it felt more personal.

And we all love to hate Joko.

[Farohna.6247]

I do think the writing struggles and is weak.  They have a lot of difficulty giving a lot of depth to characters and making things feel like a truly desperate situation.  

However not all villains need to be cackling, over the top, obviously evil.  Sometimes being sinister in a business suit is just as bad as wearing a cloak and living in a volcano.  

It tends to be more of the world in crisis than just one baddie.  You eliminate them but there is more to it than just one single head bad guy.  They're decent at capturing the shades of gray and the consequences of actions.  And it all really messes with the Commander's head at times.  That is surprisingly nuanced in the sometimes cheesy story writing. 

Sometimes corruption and desperation are more frightening than henchman and their 80s cartoon boss.

[Mungrul.9358]

The other problem that MMO writers face is escalation.

It's hard to dial back the scale to more personal stories after you've had the player save the world.

So villains in turn end up having world-conquering or destroying goals that aren't easy to relate to for the average player.

 

I'd love it if GW2 went back to examining the personal story and the characters within for smaller scale, but more intimate results, offering choice and consequence again to give more nuance to each player's character.

But that's incredibly hard to write, even for the best single-player RPG makers.

And then you factor in the genre and gameplay itself, which by its very nature is "Go large or go home", and it's very hard to write convincing small-scale stories.

[Astralporing.1957]

8 hours ago, Zebulous.2934 said:

 I do find it odd, that the writing team keeps pulling punches when it comes to antagonists.  If the bad guy is raciest the racism is mentioned, but isn't portrayed well. 

You see, that's the issue. It's not that they are pulling punches. It's the exact opposite - instead of making our opponents more nuanced, they just slap a (for example, "racist") tag on them to make it clear that they are The Enemy and must be opposed at all cost. And equally handwaving or laughing off any issues that any of our allies might have.

8 hours ago, Zebulous.2934 said:

We are supposed to dislike the bad guy, they are supposed to offend us.

I'm not a kid. I'd rather not have the story filled with cartoonish cliche villains that are intentionally turned up to eleven just so our conscience will always remain spotless cleand and we'd never have any reason to doubt our actions or the side we're on.

[Gehenna.3625]

Oh I really hate a particular bad guy. He speaks with a monotone voice and for hours on end...oh wait, I guess he wasn't one of the "bad guys". 😕

nvm.

[Tsakhi.8124]

Wouldn't it be funny if Hideo Kojima guest wrote a chapter? It would be like:

"And what would you know about being good? All you do is go forward like a mindless blade, slicing the throats of those you know nothing about. " 

*reads your character list* 

"Say, you've been playing *certain character*, do you have something against the people that aren't you? Don't you think that's horrible? Oh, wait, you can't think. You just act. You have less agency than you know. Pathetic."

*Your character just straight up dies*

"See? Absolutely pathetic."

Also, there are some villains that played psychological mind games. And I loved it. 

Edited September 24, 2022 by Tsakhi.8124
Tsakhi is dumb pay her no mind.

[Gryphon.2875]

Joko is sort of a special case. In GW1, he was an ally. He taught us to ride Wurms, made us feel like Paul from Dune, kept us safe in his bone palace. Yeah, we knew he'd been bad... Hundreds of years ago, but that was then.

I loved Nightfall. When I encountered Joko in GW2, it was like seeing an old friend who lost his way. Putting him down felt more like a mercy killing.

*burp*

[Super Hayes.6890]

I think Zojja should be the next big bad 😬

[Beast Sos.1457]

4 hours ago, Vayne.8563 said:

Subtle evil is scarier than in your face evil. I  mean Joko was making a plague to kill off all humans. Scarlet attacked Lion's Arch. Jormag was awesomely scary. No idea what you're on about.

Is that not seeing them being evil though. Jormag turned the norn to sons of svanir. Scarlet destroyed LA. Joko was turning people into his minions. These are all "in your face" evil actions. None of which are subtle imo. 

[Farohna.6247]

1 hour ago, Beast Sos.1457 said:

Is that not seeing them being evil though. Jormag turned the norn to sons of svanir. Scarlet destroyed LA. Joko was turning people into his minions. These are all "in your face" evil actions. None of which are subtle imo. 

I think it's more that they played a lot of mind games with the Commander.  While they have plagues and minions and more visual actions, they also play a lot of mind games with the Commander.  Joko causes a lot of self doubt and uncertainty. Jormag is talking to Aurene and it's like having a bad influence talking to your kid and you hope they see through it.  It's quite menacing.  

Edited September 23, 2022 by Farohna.6247

[Funky.4861]

Evil is a matter of perspective.

I think the biggest issue with portraying 'evil' characters is the games' PG rating.

I also think that a big issue with anets' portrayal of 'evil' characters is that they rely on enough of the playerbase sharing the same (or similar enough) moral compass as they do, which is a very nebulous goal. If the writers could just remove their personal agendas for a while we might actually get some good stories. When i saw the story step 'Kill the Bigot!" i literally rolled my eyes because it was so cringey.

[Astralporing.1957]

13 minutes ago, Funky.4861 said:

Evil is a matter of perspective.

"Very well. Let us proceed to your final judgement. The victor shall write the tale, and the vanquished become its villain".

It's definitely possible to create characters whose villainy is a mater of perspective. Or even create opponents that must be defeated while also not necessarily being villains - just as a direct consequence of clashing goals that are mutually exclusive.

Edited September 23, 2022 by Astralporing.1957

[Funky.4861]

8 minutes ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

"Very well. Let us proceed to your final judgement. The victor shall write the tale, and the vanquished become its villain".

Sounds like most of human history to me ^^