Did you see the villain posts that floated around a month or so ago? I did one, Craig Perko did one, as did Duncan I think, and perhaps GregT as well?

There was also a thread on the IGDA boards on villains in games.

I'm curious about the email list you're on. Think I could get a hook up?
 

I haven't seen the villain posts, no. And here I was thinking I was being all original and stuff!

The email list is actually our multiplayer gaming group (+ friends & relatives), so most of the discussion is on who's meeting at who's house on a certain night, or how many people we have playing D&D Online on Monday night, or who needs help moving on Saturday.
 

My favorite enemy (perhaps not a villain?) would be the Looming Menace or Unseen Force of Nature (or whatever it's most properly called). It's often experienced only through the actions of its subordinates (the Shadows, initially), or through an invisible hand (Killdozer from Sturgeon's short).

When the Looming Menace is unmasked, it's often a letdown, going from "unfathomable and unreachable" to "bleeds like the rest of us." I thought that the Teacher from the Da Vinci Code (I admit to having read it) was much more interesting before he was discovered, than after.
 

I disagree with listing Marshal Gerard as a villian. He stood in the way of the Hero, but he was never the villian, unless you define a villian as anyone that keeps the hero from moving forward towards his goal. Gerrard was a man trying to do HIS job to the best of his ability. The villian was the company that was misbehaving and the man that actually did the killing. Gerard was a hero in his own way, even if he was a complication to Ford's character, who's name I can't remember, which says something to me about which character caught my attention more.

:P

~J
 

I don't know if anyone will see this, as it's responding to an archived post, but I've often thought about what makes a good villain, and I've found that one of the things that really makes a villain powerful is the question of will and choice. My friends and I are huge Final Fantasy fans, and we love disecting and discussing the games from all sorts of angles, so naturally, the conversation of villains inevitably turns to the best villains of the series.

Needless to say, SPOILERS oncoming.

If you look at the mid-to-late-generation Final Fantasies, you have quite a few standout choices. There's the fantastically entertaining Kefka of VI and the legendary Sephiroth of VII. We can probably ignore Ultimecia/Edea of VIII, as the former lacks presence and the latter gets de-villainized pretty early. Then you have a couple lesser known villains, Kuja of XI and Seymour of X. In my opinion, despite the fact that Kefka and Sephiroth are more popular, Kuja and Seymour are actually the better villains. Here's the difference:

-Kefka is completely insane. The experiment that made him a MagiTek Knight snapped his mind. His insanity makes him both highly entertaining and at the same time terrifyingly unpredictable, but it also takes away complete responsibility for his actions (pleading insanity).
-Sephiroth believes himself entitled and completely justified. He has been deluded into the belief that he is an Ancient, a member of a lost race that faced destruction because humanity wouldn't help them. He's also got a bit of a god-complex... which takes away from his humanity score a bit.
-Seymour of X is actually somewhat similar. The difference is that he was the victim of racial prejudice, half Guado and half Human, living as both but fitting in with neither. The pain that growing up with this mixed heritage gave him ultimately led to his nefarious ways. He's also pretty manipulative in the subtle, social sense, rather than Sephiroth's overt mind-control, which makes him nastier, in a sense. More on this in a minute
-But the crown, to me, for best Final Fantasy villain goes to Kuja. Now, he has an understandable motivation: he's angry because he was going to be replaced by Zidane. He was going to be made obsolete. His natural survival instinct dictates that he should do something about this, but it's HOW he does it that makes him truly evil. Unlike the other villains of the series, Kuja has a profession (granted, one that serves his ultimate goals): he's a weapons dealer. It's his job to give countries the tools they need to destroy each other. He has his reasons for doing what he's doing, but what makes him REALLY bad is that he KNOWS what he's doing is wrong... HE JUST DOESN'T CARE. It is this cold cruelty that really makes Kuja shine as a villain. Plus, he recites poetry before destroying a city. That's just classy.

My friends and I are also gamers in the more classical sense, playing pen and paper games fairly regularly. In the campaign I'm currently running (Earthdawn, if any of you out there remember FASA's sleeper hit), one of the players' most reviled foes is actually one that was intended as a minor recurring character. He is a manipulative illusionist whom they've only ever encountered twice... but in those two encounters, he's managed to rub the players the wrong way something fierce, to the point where any hint that he may be involved in any current plot is enough to make the players boo and hiss (with anticipation, of course... they just can't wait for the final showdown with this guy). I must admit that I'm hard pressed to figure out exactly WHY they hate him so much. I think part of it has to do with the fact that he's so manipulative. He has both overt powers of mind control, like Sephiroth, but also manages to work his way into positions of trust with people the characters need to deal with... the more subtle brand that Seymour demonstrates. The fact that he's so hard to overcome because he's so socially ingrained, and because he's VERY good and slipping away at the end, makes this villain the kind that the heroes just love to hate.

Anyway, I hope I've articulated my 2 cents well enough. Mr. Coyote, big fan of the blog, keep up the good fight!