What Makes a Villain?

If you didn't know by now, Murf is hosting a Screenshot Safari competition during the Newbie Blogger Initiative.

I'm behind on entries, so there will be two this week, I'm sure. This one is based on the topic: Heroes or Villains.

It was kind of a tough topic for me to come up with, quite honestly. In WildStar, who are the real villains? The big bad? The factions we fight against? It didn't feel quite so clear-cut. Because the premise of the game is that we are discovering what the Eldan have left on Nexus. So does that make the Eldan the big bads, or their creation(s)? Lots of questions to mull over, for sure, and not so cut-and-dry that I felt confident taking some shots in WildStar, because, honestly, I couldn't answer any of those questions.

So I thought about Star Wars, because we just picked it back up to play with some WildStar guildies in their off-time. Again, there's no real clear-cut definition of who is bad, and who is not. Granted, I'm not very far in (I just passed the starter zone), but based on what everyone knows of the movies, the Republic are the "heroes" and the Empire are the "villains". Again, this is a little more like real-life where things aren't so cut-and-dry and we're all sort of doing bad and good things. Especially with the Light and Dark points in play, you can have a Light-leaning Sith and a Dark-leaning Jedi. It's all convoluted.

Obviously the next thought was FFXIV. And I had a winner. Based upon where I am in the storyline (level 29), there is a clear-cut bad guy that is doing bad things that the entirety of Eorzea is currently trying to combat together. There is no question whatsoever on whom is the bad guy. None. The man in the black mask is bad. Convincing people to do bad things. Doing bad things to others. Now, don't get me wrong, there are other bad-folks. But at this point in time, it seems they are working... not in conjunction, per se, but seem to be following the path that the Masked Man has laid out, whether they are cognizant of such or not.

So without further ado, I present to you my Villain picture of the Masked Man's first cronie.

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NBI Think
A topic for folks that may be interested: How does one define who is a hero or villan in a game? Is it story-based? Is it personal preference? What about MMOs versus single-player games?