What propels them to do the things they do? Motivation – A great villain has to have great motivations.But what makes a great villain? Specifically: the best video game villain? I’ve narrowed it down to four key features: Each of those villains hails from critically acclaimed games. Think about your favorite video game villains for a moment: Andrew Ryan, Sephiroth, Pyramid Head, and Handsome Jack are probably just a few that came to your mind. What Makes a Good Villain?Īlfred Hitchcock once said, “The more successful the villain, the more successful the picture.” I believe we can apply this mindset to video games as well. SPOILER WARNING: The following article contains major spoilers for Portal and Portal 2. So in honor of Portal 2’s 10th anniversary, we’ll be diving into the maniacal mechanical mind of gaming’s greatest villain-GLaDOS. And no one takes the cake (get it?) like GLaDOS. But only the best video game villains live forever in our hearts and minds. And there is no better place for villains to thrive than within video games, in which you-the player-are the hero. Villains provide the heroes with a challenge: to defeat them. From the dawn of time, villains have been a fundamental part of storytelling.
