Delusion of the Cool Villain

by Cloudslash

In today's videogaming world, there is a growing respect for the villains of RPGs. RPGs allow for villains with detailed personalities, character development in the plot and actual motivations for their actions. Well, I'm not arguing with that. Sephiroth of FF7 and Ghaleon of the Lunar series are more detailed than many RPGs' protagonists are. And there are plenty of other prime examples: Kefka of FF6 has a hilarious personality; Krelian from Xenogears has a great deal of depth; etc., etc. And all of these villains and plenty of others that I've neglected to list are considered "cool". That is what I'm here to argue.

I feel that respect for these villains has been taken way too far of late. People are actually starting to think of these villains as "cool". I believe that this is just... wrong. Period.

I mean, why the hell are Sephiroth and various other villains considered cool? Honestly? I think it's the fact that they look cool. Really. Most villains are tall, handsome, and very well dressed people who can often claim to have spoken half of a game's best dialogue.

It's called "style". And, unfortunately, it works largely in their favor. Thanks to the fact that Sephiroth is well dressed and carries a badass sword, people love him. And they seem to forget or miss entirely the fact that he is, in reality, a mass-murderer with no conscience who kills a great deal of innocent people throughout the game. Tell me, if the FBI's most wanted mass murderer walked up and killed your mother or girlfriend, would you think he was cool?

And there are other examples as well. Ghaleon didn't do too much killing, but my GOD, that guy was one of the biggest jerks I've ever seen. Yet, people love him just because he looks awesome, has character development and is a badass in battle (to be honest, I could understand the badass in battle part if he were playable for more than 5 minutes). Virtually the same thing goes for Kuja and Golbez/Zeromus. Heck, Seifer is a total jerk and a torturer (which is about as low as you can go in my book) and yet people love him just because he has style in the way he fights and dresses. Tell me, if I tied you up and tortured you, would you respect ME?? Or ANYONE for that matter? Why should Seifer be judged any differently from the average jerk just because he has style?!

And then there's Krelian... who is in my opinion the dirtiest scumbag in videogame history. He kills millions of innocent people and shows no remorse for it whatsoever. And mind you I'm not talking a nuclear style explosion that vaporizes them in an instant. I'm talking millions of people dying horrible, agonizing deaths all just to realize this arrogant bastard's dream of going back to the wave existence. Tell me... does feeling sorry for it afterwards really make it better? Does having a ton of character development make it ok? Does being cool really justify mass genocide?!

Ok, I think I've made my point. People, these villains are scumbags no matter how much their badassedness makes you want to think otherwise. That's why I honestly hope that anyone who rebuts this editorial argues that these villains and the people and worlds they destroy are just pixels. But this is a free country, so if you want to defend your favorite villain to the death, and try to explain how to justify their deeds, then by all means, let your opinion be heard!