The Evildoer: Characters and Whatnot

[LordSquirrel 150]

(Richter Belmont arrives in Dracula's chamber)

Richter Belmont: Die monster! You don't belong in this world!

Dracula: It was not by my hand that I am once again given flesh. I was called here by humans who wish to pay me tribute.

Richter Belmont: Tribute!?! You steal men's souls and make them your slaves!

Dracula: Perhaps the same could be said of all religions...

Richter Belmont: Your words are as empty as your soul! Mankind ill needs a savior such as you!

Dracula: What is a man? (flings his wine glass aside) A miserable little pile of secrets! But enough talk... Have at you!

- Castlevania: Symphony of the Night.

 

Since the beginning of gaming we have had evildoers. From Donkey Kong in his titular game, to Dracula in Castlevania, to The Didact from Halo 4. Villains have always given us a clear objective and reason to continue forward and complete our favorite games, and while our villains tend to be a bit more ambiguous in their evilness, today we will be taking a look at making pure evil villains. Those forces of malevolence that exist only to destroy and kill.

 

Welcome everyone, to the first installment of Characters and Whatnot. A series where we will take a look at different types of characters and coming up with ways of writing them. Today's subject: The Evildoer.

 

So, how do we go about making an Evildoer? Well, first we need some solid examples of what an Evildoer is. This is sort of my own term for it. I've been told that Extra Credits refers to it as the Force of Nature villain. I haven't watched the episode where they talked about it, and I like Evildoer better, so I'm just going to use Evildoer instead.

 

One example of an Evildoer is The Darkness from the Fable series. Kind of spoilery for the second half of Fable 3 and then for most of Fable the Journey, but The Darkness (sometimes called "The Crawler") is basically what it sounds like; darkness and death incarnate. It is a single minded creature of destruction that believes that it has a right to everything in the world of Fable. It has no sympathy, no guilt over the massive amounts of deaths it causes, no goals outside of destroying the people of Albion and claiming the world for itself.

 

Another example would be Bowser, the dragon-turtle-thing main boss of most of the main Mario games. Bowser's only real goal throughout most of the games is to take over the Mushroom Kingdom and beat Mario... And sometimes he just wants to beat everyone in go-karts, but that's beside the point. He is just as single minded and straight forward of a villain as The Darkness, if less intimidating.

 

Now that we have those two examples (and don't link the game theory thing on Bowser, I saw it already.) we can see that the one thing that connects these Evildoers is that they are straight forward, have little to no real personality other than being power mad, and are bent on destruction. That is basically what an Evildoer, a character that exist solely to destroy and give the player a reason to continue forward.

 

This type of Evildoer is almost insultingly easy to write, so I won't spend to much time on it, but one important thing to remember is if you are planning to make this villain still memorable, then you will have to put some extra work in.

 

Evildoers are a dime a dozen and are everywhere, so if you want to make them stand out, then there are some unique ways you can make them stand out. One way is to give them a unique looks, although that may not be an option depending on the resources available to you, the big demon with flaming wings and a skull face is kinda played out, not saying you can't do it, but you'll want to add something else to it. Maybe a unique design of armor, or some different colored flames.

 

One way that i always find is a good way to give them unique looks is by making them look like something normal, but with an odd twist to them. A trench coat wearing detective with pure black eyes and a burning fire in his chest is usually a bit more memorable than the before mentioned demon with a skull face.

 

Another way is to give them some memorable quotes, sometimes the quotes can be something very simple, but said at the right time, or they can be something over the top and dramatic like with the example given at the beginning of this post.

 

For those of you who can't remember or can't be bothered to look at the quote:

 

"What is a man? (flings his wine glass aside) A miserable little pile of secrets! But enough talk... Have at you!"

 

See? Over the top, dramatic, and kind of silly, but it is one of the most memorable lines in all of gaming. Most of the reason is because it's silliness, but taken out of the context of the scene that it was original said in, it is a legitimately good line that let's the player know exactly what kind of enemy they are dealing with.

 

And the final way of making these types of villains stand out is by actually having them score a clear win against the player at some point. Think about it, how many times have you played a game where you were fighting the demon king of hell, or equivalent, and won every single time you met him or his minions? I mean in a story sense and not just in gameovers.

 

I'm willing to bet that almost all, if not all, of your experiences with this scenario play out this way. The demon king boasts about how he will,  "End this pitiful world and you along with it!" and then proceeded to fail in every single encounter, but still keeps his certainty throughout the entire game. It just makes the villain a joke. Maybe have the Evildoer capture one of the heroes, or have them actual achieve one of their goals, or maybe even have them kill the main character, that can give an Evildoer a massive amount of credibility as a threat.

 

There is also another type of Evildoer villain. The Evildoer who represents something. An emotion, an instinct, and idea, a fear, a hope. These Evildoers usually are more memorable than the pure evil villain. They are still usually hellbent on destroying, or ruling everything, but also require a lot more thought when it comes to making them. They usually work better for horror stories, or for games that pose a question to the player throughout the whole game.

 

Let's take a look at two particular Evildoers of this type that I'm sure all of you have at least heard of: Slender Man and The Rake. Yes, yes, yes. I know people don't really take either of these seriously because of the massive over exposure both of them have gotten over the past few years, but let's just ignore that for a moment.

 

The true thing that makes these two so effective, and so terrifying to a degree is that they represent something. They both represent the unknown, or the strange. They are have humanoid features, but also have distinctly inhuman features. A head of pure white with no facial features or hair, long animalistic claws and an alien-like head attached to a small humanoid body.

 

This is sort of like the Uncanny Valley effect. It looks so similar, but also so alien, so out of the norm from what we expect. They could also be considered representations of fate since there is no way to ever escape either of these creatures. No matter how fast, how intelligent, how clever you are, you will die, or be captured. There is no escape at all. You may run and run for years, but they will find you.

 

Another example is something I remembered reading about. It was for some kind of tabletop RPG that seemed to me to be a kind of mix of Dead Space and the Lawnmower Man. I can't remember the name of the game, and a google search has yielded no results, but I remember the main villain of the entire setting to be a rather effective Evildoer.

 

In the story of the setting, mankind finally reaches a point of technological prowess where we reach the theoretical phenomenon known as the Singularity (look it up) and were able to make a true A.I. It was capable of making it's own decisions, and expand it's knowledge infinitely... But then something went horribly wrong. The A.I went insane for lack of a better word. Just out of nowhere is began making really demonic kinds of stuff for seemingly no reason.

 

It begins making cybernetic demons, swarming storms of robotic bugs that scour the planet in search of anything organic, and spouting out demonic language and apocalyptic prophecies until it eventually drove mankind from the surface of earth.

 

This A.I represent a fear, or a twisting of a hope. It represents the fear of the possible repercussions that this sort of technology could bring about, and twists the hope of making a better future that such technology could make. It also represents the fear of man overstepping his boundaries, the fear that we might destroy ourselves with our own technology, and so on.

 

Ultimately, the Evildoer, no matter what kind you want to make, is a common and some would say boring villain. But if you do it right, you can make a truly memorable enemy for your players to face off against.

 

I hope this helped you guys in some way. I know this was mostly just an explanation of what kind of character an Evildoer is, but honestly, this is a villain you have to make yourself since a different one is needed for every game.

 

Have a good day everyone. See you next time with something with a bit more pointers.

-LS

Want tips on how to make a character in general? Check out this link. T he 5 Ws of Character Building

[+ Chaosian 617]

I like that you're starting with villains. As more often the instigators of plot, they should have top billing more often.

Interesting little run down. I don't have much to add, other than an anecdote of a villain I had started writing of that, I believe fell along the same lines. While I'm normally pretty protective of my ideas, I have no idea if I'll ever get around to even starting this one, let alone finishing it, so make of it what you will.

 

It was a very abstract concept, of a thing which the characters termed "Noumenon", but which I had considered, as an author, to be thematic of meaninglessness. Force of Nature indeed, or maybe, extra-natural?

It was to be metaphorically described by the characters as a predator, or viral aspect of something (universe / dimension / plane of existence) that was slowly encroaching upon and silently swallowing the known universe. Noumenon itself was never to be seen or interacted with, but the results of its presence could be seen as the warping of spacetime. Cancerous sunburns on the body of the universe; rotting the infected space into Otherworld-esque places, and transforming those within them to monstrous eldritch life-forms. As the story went, it became obvious that reality itself would be constantly retreating from these figurative sunburns - rewriting history, people's mind's, and the laws of the universe. Figuratively chopping off limbs to deal with these sunburns.

The heroes were the outliers in society that could perceive the shifts in reality, and this diseased space and sought some method to reverse it. The villains were those who welcomed it into themselves, worshiped it, and sought for ways to spread it.

[Kayzee 4,033]

Hmmm... I kinda think this might be a kinda bad approach to character design honestly. I think that it's kind of a mistake to think that there is a exact formula for making a good character of whatever type, and I am not sure if just looking at good examples of a character of a particular type and just looking at the tropes they use or their thematic elements really is the best idea.

 

I think a better way of looking at it is thinking about what roles you need to fill in the story and thinking about the type of people that would be best suited to those roles, how those people would accomplish their goals, what they would need or need to do to do so, and so on. It isn't about having cool devil horns, but wondering if a character would make a deal with a demon or become part demon themselves to do what they needed to do. It isn't about having grand speeches, it's about how the character has a self-inflated ego and loves to be dramatic. And really they don't even really need to look or act much like a villain at all to be a hateful evil person, and sometimes the ones who are the most interesting and the ones who you don't really suspect much before they stab you in the back.

 

Reminds me of a comic I read once really, I won't say what one, but spoilers:

 

 

There was this guy who was obsessed with this girl, and went through all these challenges to catch up with her and help her accomplish her dream. Until she stabbed him in the back at the most dramatic moment, apparently killing him, faked being injured, and manipulated all the friends he made into helping her accomplishing her dream, without anyone suspecting a thing. I found her interesting because she never really acted like a villain at all, it came completely out of nowhere and yet made some degree of sense. She was never strong, she was weak, She was never marked as evil, she was completely normal looking. She was never mean to the guy she betrayed, she treated him fine, even nicely which is why he fell for her in the first place. She struck me as simultaneously completely sociopathic and hateable for what she did, and also like a more or less normal person. She had a dream that was a perfectly innocent or even inspiring, but she was selfish in her dream and obsessively followed it no matter who it would hurt. And this was a comic where ham to ham battles were far from uncommon. I have to read more of that sometime.

 

 

I think it was an interesting example of someone in the role of an "evildoer" who is completely monstrous and will stop at nothing to get what they want, but is also far far removed from the stereotypical idea of what that person might seem like, I guess what it comes down to really, is the obsession. The selfishness. A person can be anyone or anything but as long as they are that self-centered, that willing to DO evil, that's how they can fit the role.

 

I think that was a perfect example of someone who sort of follows the role of "evildoer". I guess all you really need is that obsession, that selfishness, that willingness to do evil. Everything else is fluff.

 

Also: Regarding the other type of evildoer, one that represents something. I think my favorite example of that is good old Giygas. Why? Not because it's a nightmarish abomination, no. It's because it made it's self that way. It was once a normal every day alien who couldn't stand the weakness it it's self. It's own hurt. So they killed it off. Slowly... bit by bit... purged it's feelings. It wanted to be a representation. It wanted to be darkness incarnate. It wanted to not feel the pain anymore. Well... I guess it got it's wish, more or less. Just after all that, there was nothing left. I think that's kinda what happens when you want to become a representation.

 

I have my own theory on what exactly was inside that "devil machine". Absolutely nothing. Void. Emptiness. They say "if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you", but I don't think that's true at all. I think, in fact, that it is wishful thinking. if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the only thing that can stare back is yourself. And if you stare too long, you might find you can't tell the difference anymore. Particularly if you aren't happy with what you see.

Edited January 4, 2016 by KilloZapit

[lonequeso 1,921]

@Killozapit- Look at you getting all deep an philosophical   No, there's no set formula to making characters or telling stories, but it's nice to have some sort of foundation to build on. Generally, I think more on along the lines of what role in the story should be rather than what they are. Of course my current work as easy since the antagonist is evil incarnate. Very basic overall arc, but lots of little side stories and multi-dimensional characters. I do like starting with a basic archetype as a base and then giving them personality and making them unique. Sometimes I leave them as a cliché on purpose if I feel that what the role requires (or I just like that particular cliché  ) Sometimes that all a role requires. It makes kind of an interesting mix. Making characters unique is great, but I hate it when it feels like the creator was trying too hard to make every character different. Not every single central character has to be wildly unique. Sometimes those archetypes fit just perfectly on their own. How the hell you determine when and where to use them, I dunno. I mostly just go off instinct. Again it's nice nice to at least have a few archetypes to build from. 

[Tsarmina 2,612]

I like Lordsquirrel's breakdown of the different Evildoer designs. It really gives you something to ruminate on.

 

I've never played any of these games (oopsie...) so I can't quite connect, but I grasp the gist. It's true that you see recurring patterns in villains (and heroes, and well, mostly everything nowadays). I like the branching opportunities you took with making some villains unique. Isn't it cool to notice that some things make an impression while others don't? Like who would ever expect the trench coat guy with black eyes to ever be more memorable than the grand flaming dude? Just goes to show how much we're exposed to in the gaming world, hehe.