Certain parts of the game haven’t aged well, but there’s no denying that Vaas was a wonderfully done villain. He’s a great test case for the “a good villain can’t be absent and mysterious” argument. Most of the memorable villains in gaming have been nearly omnipresent; Vaas, GladOS, Andrew Ryan, Handsome Jack, etc…
All of them are good villains because they are consistently present. They have enough screen time to actually develop into full fledged characters. They’re not just some dark and mysterious overlord, patiently waiting in the bottom of a dungeon for you to come fight them. They’re persistently in your face, interacting with you. Even if they’re not actively hindering your progress, the fact that they have a continued presence means their eventual downfall is that much more satisfying.
I mean, if that’s all you want in a villain, I guess, yeah - Vaas was constantly pestering the player. His dialogue and mannerisms were just awful though. Philosophy 101 freshman tweets level awful. I feel like putting him on the same level as GLaDOS should be criminal.
Hell, if philosophy is the driving factor for a good villain, then GladOS wouldn’t even be on your list. A villain doesn’t need to be morally grey to be a good villain. Plenty of good villains are evil just for the sake of being evil. Even GladOS would fall into that box.
The point was simply that players need an end goal to keep them focused, and having a consistently present villain acts as a moving end goal. The player is driven to chase that goal until the conclusion, because the villain is always just out of reach. If you see a goal waiting on the horizon, the march there feels like a slog. But if the goal is consistently at your fingertips as you chase it, you’ll chase it all the way to the horizon without even realizing.
Hell, if philosophy is the driving factor for a good villain
…I didn’t say it was? That’s just Vaas’ whole schtick - poorly understood philosophical quips that everyone eats up for some reason. Again, if all you need is a bad guy constantly needling you, then I suppose I see why you like Vaas. I just don’t think that’s enough to make him “museum worthy”.
If we wanna get into what I think makes a top tier video game villain, I’d say the critical characteristics would be menace, intelligence, and capability. In short, they need to be an obvious threat that know what they’re doing and are a challenge to best, both mentally and physically. To be honest, I can’t think of all that many villains in video games that I would consider that good. GLaDOS fits for sure. I think the Kingslayer in The Witcher 2 is also quite good. Fumbled ending aside, Mass Effect had a good run of baddies as well - Saren, The Illusive Man/The Collectors, The Reapers. There might be more, but that’s all I can think of atm.
Specifically for older titles, I’d definitely say a game like, if anyone could find the original first version to ever be released of the game and not one of the many rip-offs/clones, Tetris. It’s probably, as far as I’m aware, the most copied/cloned/ripped-off game in existence.
As for newer titles ( 2000 onwards ), I can’t think of any that I think should 100% be in museum. Most of the titles I can think of aren’t good enough, in my opinion, to go into a museum. I’m not an expert on judging what should go into a museum, but I couldn’t think of a single title that would fit in any exhibit.
Edit:
Tetris is already in the video game hall of fame. Should have figured. Definitely deserves its place there. Even so, someone with a floppy of the original or clone of the floppy or digital backup should definitely see if there are any museums willing to take a copy because the original is something I think would be a shame to completely lose.
Looking at it from a general perspective that has less to do with games themselves; I would say huge parts of the Assassins Creed games due to the accuracy they often have had with depicting historic architecture and such. Heck, they used the games model of the Notre Dame in its reconstruction. EDIT: [So I just looked this up and apparently it’s just a nice story that has stuck. But the actual model was never used.]
From a more game-focused perspective, there are some real gems in there too (especially the Ezio-Series). Tho that quality has sadly not kept.
I think 02 must be the sheep. Thank you for posting, I love your reviews! I’m taking a break from the alters currently because I ran into a bug and quit because I didn’t want to back track, only like 7-10 days but still I was bothered. I think I might try again this weekend. It is very interesting and emotionally provoking.
Ah! That makes sense! I wondered if there was going to be some twist in the plot where the original Jan was an alter himself (the actual #2) and the real original died with the rest of the crew. But I didn’t want to speculate and inadvertently spoil a good twist.
I’ve watched thousands of movies and TV shows and played a lot of games, and my wife gets mad at me because I’m pretty good at spotting a twist coming a mile away now. So I do my best not to speculate where the plot is going in these posts. But you’re right, it might just be as simple as counting how many clones have been made.
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Aktywne