A Great Gaming Villains Whose Plans Make No Sense

Posted On Mar 8, 2020 By admin With Comments Off

What’s a Batman without his Joker? Same to a riddle without a punchline: unsatisfying.

With no colorful Rogue’s Gallery, Bruce Wayne would just be a billionaire in rubber pajamas hammering the crap out of low-level murderers night after night. Entertaining, but not super necessary. What would young surmount Link do with no Ganondorf to kick around? Fish and hang-glide, probably? Where would Tupac and Biggie be today without their notorious antagonism? Bad example.

The takeaway is, incredible and fascinating bad chaps are at the heart of almost every good adventure story, especially in the realm of video games. A genuinely iconic Final Boss can stir your dealership, and if your baddie is awesome enough, we’re even willing to overlook things like “logic” and “reality.” Who attentions if their scheme prepares “sense? ” As long as by the end of it all we’re shaking with a hard-earned dopamine release while lunging our antagonist into space, or locking them up, or shooting them down, you’ve likely got yourself an formidable scoundrel, a well-defined hero, and a enjoyable game.

So it is in no way to detract from their dour legacies that we lovingly profile the gape defects in the maniacal machinations of these three ominou psychopaths.

Liquid Snake | Metal Gear Solid Sure, hey, get comfy, dad that top off, whatever’s good .[/ caption]

As is revealed in Metal Gear Solid, both Liquid and Solid are clones of the notorious Big Boss, the greatest soldier of the 20 th century and famed cardboard box innovator. Liquid acquired all of Boss’ recessive genes, while Solid got the dominant ones. Liquid has felt “less than” his whole life as a result, despite extending a clique of child soldiers and becoming the youngest person ever to serve in the British Special Air Service. He dislikes his clone-daddy for spawning him, detests his clone-bro for killing Big Boss before he got a chance to, and would do anything to prove his worth to his dead dad and the whole Snake Family at large.

Which is odd, because that’s not how genes work. In actuality, prevailing genes aren’t inherently “better” or “worse” than recessive genes; they’re time the genes more likely to manifest. The gene for Healing Factor could be recessive, while the gene for Adult Onset Diabetes could be dominant. In fact, Liquid Snake is ultimately found to have the “best fighting genes of all” between himself, Solid, Solidus and Big Boss. “Fighting genes” likewise not being a real thing. Although genes are indeed the blueprint for life, that doesn’t move them a Dragonball-style Power Level dictating whose genes would earn in a fight.

All of which is information you’d conclude Liquid would know, given the fact that his plan for world power involves genes, cloning, genetic manipulation, DN-Ahoused superviruses, and repeated soldiers. Even if Big Boss said he was inferior as a kid, he should have figured out it was a lie by this object in their own lives. News flash: if you’re going to mutate a clone legion to do your dictation, you’ll need to know what an allele is and why chocolate-brown “hairs-breadth” is more prevalent than blonde hair.

Dr. Ivo Robotnik | Sonic Adventure Honestly, if he could just harness the dominance of that ‘stache …[/ caption]

Dr. Ivo “Eggman” Robotnik’s goal throughout the new-canon Sonic activities is to found a robot utopia by any means necessary…those represents inevitably involving recovering the Chaos Emeralds so he can harness their powers to superpower a series of ur-devices and super-weapons. Unfortunately for Ivo, the sorcery artilleries he requires almost always seem to be implanted right around where Sonic’s chillin’, and Sonic doesn’t take kindly to you ending his chillin’ by roboticizing all his furry homies. But what about that Death Egg? You know, the Eggman’s-face-shaped Death Star that’s not to be confused with the Space Colony ARK, which is the HALF-Death Star mold like the face of Eggman’s granddad Gerald.

Without getting too deep into the history of the Robotnik line, let’s just say that the Death Egg appears in a multitude of Sonic games, and consequently slams down, sounds to Earth, or otherwise disappoints when Dr. Robotnik can’t get the Chaos Emeralds together and Sonic or an affiliate wrecks up the place. It’s easily the dimensions of the a mountain, and potentially the size of a small moon or large-scale asteroid. It’s likewise fitted with incredible robotic engineerings, and in Sonic Battle we find out it has a Final Egg Blaster weapon that’s capable of wiping out whole star clusters even without the Emeralds to bill it up.

So what’s he waiting for? Instead of always annoying a hedgehog who tends to hang out on one particular humid island, perhaps he should go live in the revolve robot utopia he’s ALREADY BUILT. Take your clod and go home, Ivo! You did it! Go build as countless robots as you miss on your big robo-moon that looks like your head! In the wise oaths of Emerl the Gizoid in Sonic Battle: “If you’re smart-alecky enough to build a huge battleship like this I’m sure you can find other things to do.”

The Forerunners | Halo: Combat Evolved

[ caption id= “attachment_2 299053 ” align= “aligncenter” width= “7 20 “] Time was your ally, human. But now it has abandoned you .[/ caption]

Before there were Ghosts making sure we never died no matter what, there was a Forerunner Monitor referred 343 Guilty Spark, performing sure of the opposite. Obviously the Covenant and Flood are the true villains of the Halo storyline, but I reflect a good deal of us felt quite deluded in Combat Evolved when 343 calmly and unexpectedly tried to get us to wipe all sentient life from the galaxy. No wonder you’re guilty, 343! We woke you up and established “youve got to” our virtual lover and now you’re gonna blow up the quadrant? Punk move.

But a move that meets ability, since 343 Guilty Spark was left behind by The Forerunners, the ancient hasten who improved the Halos in an attempt to keep the galaxy free of the insidious Flood , no matter how many times they return. What sees somewhat less sense is WHY the Forerunners did that, from their own perspective. Now, Halo is fraught with lore, but bear with me as I split my consciousness into two halves and cavity them against one another.

We’ll call them “RED” and “BLUE, ” for obvious reasons.

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RED: So…if you’re The Forerunners, and you build a complex of superweapons, shielded macrocosms, and containment expanses for studying The Flood, then decided they were such a threat that the only choice was to wipe out all advanced sentient life in the galaxy, why leave a few Flood contained safely ON the Halo? It’s like igniting your restaurant down for the insurance money with the insurance policy still inside.

BLUE: Whoa, slow down Red! I already hate you, and here’s why: The Forerunner prevented a few Flood in containment in the hopes that someday a great thinker might find a way to subjugate or destroy them without resetting the galaxy. It’s out of hope for the future.

RED: But why would you need to discover a “safe” way to sweep away The Flood if the Halo Complex can wipe out ALL The Flood by starving them of their meat source? If I cleared all food out of my house and waited in a space-ark outside until the many rats that infest my walls died of starvation, I wouldn’t keep one rat alive as a baby to gain a better understanding of rats. It’s moot! Strangle that one rat and you’re done dealing with this.

BLUE: Because The Flood are insidious, you moron. If you missed even one tiny province of Flood in the whole galaxy, when you tried to re-populate it you’d eventually end up re-Flooded and you bet your ass you’ll wish you had more data on those chumps when the time comes.

RED: But if they’re such an unstoppable threat, why merely grant entities deemed to be Reclaimers to fire the Halos? Why not give 343 Guilty Spark shell that thing all by himself? No need to convince Master Chief , no need to explain, exactly an immortal AI standing ready to do what needs to be done whenever it needs to be done.

BLUE: Because, you insufferable asshat, AIs are fallible. They fragment over term and give way to rampancy and other mistakes. The ancient hasten called the Precursors, who passed humans the Mantle of Responsibility of caring for lesser life-forms, and the Precursor who caught it, killed the Precursors and devolved humanity, are at least all mortal beings who have some bark in video games and might think twice before wiping out all complex life in the whole galaxy. It’s the same reason we build nukes but by and large try not to drop them if we were able avoided it, and don’t give a computer decide when to launch.

RED: But not only would they think twice, almost any sentient being would never pull the trigger. Why build a super-duper-mega-weapon and trust the decision of whether to fire it to organic life kinds? You know, their imaginations can scrap extremely. It’s announced “emotion” and “mental illness, ” and I feel like we’re exhibiting both right now.

BLUE: Calmer’n you are.

RED: Some would argue that an AI, however shortcoming, that’s able to maintain a space station as well as its own consciousness for a hundred thousand years, has knowledge simulating trillions of firings of the Halo, and was once a living, organic human specified Chakas before his consciousness was transferred into a Monitor body and his accumulations of information augmented tremendously, might actually be MORE TRUSTWORTHY than a skimpy soul whose fallible meat-brain is under intense stress and forcing them to stir broom galactic decisions moment-by-moment. And if you are able to kept peoples’ someones into little flying bots like 343 Guilty Spark, why didn’t the Forerunners just do that to their whole species before prompting the Halo? Since it simply changes organic life, you’d all be immortal robots and your opponents would all fucking dead and unable to eat you anymore.

BLUE: Then they’d all be AIs and wouldn’t have been able to trigger it! AIs can’t trigger the Halo. They aren’t Reclaimers, because they’re not a human “reclaiming” the Mantle from the Predecessor. That’s why the word is “Reclaimer.” That’s just the way it is.

RED: But exclusively because The Precursors chose to make it that way. They could have given the Mantle to multiple species, but they picked a favorite and triggered a galactic civil combat. Then in a last-ditch attempt to not get genocided they turned into space dust that eventually became infected and turned into The Flood. That’s why The Flood can access Precursor Tech. One of The Flood Graveminds even says it kind of considers itself still a Precursor, and “won’t cause their initiations rise up against them again.” I imply, for a God-like race they seemed to have lost a lot. I see the Mantle is just a code of faiths they founded , not something with objective actuality. Like the Constitution!

BLUE: First of all, the explanation of the Mantle The Forerunners practice is very different than the original organization of notions founded by The Precursors. They rewrote it to justify their carnage of The Precursors and try to maintain an endless galactic hegemony.

RED: Which implies the Mantle is something that can change over time.

BLUE: SHUT IT! AND, although the Precursors WERE formerly simply an immigrant hasten, you have to understand that they became so boosted that we can’t even assimilate the level at which they could warp world. Like Arthur C Clarke said, “any technology, sufficiently advanced, is indistinguishable from magic.”

RED: Especially fidget spinners.

BLUE: So in a very real way, YES, the Mantle has to go to humanity because The Precursors said so. They get to say so. Them and The Forerunner are out here advancing and devolving entire genus! Precursors were mostly Deity, from our point of view, and The Predecessor are messing with the natural dictate they put down by perverting the Mantle to suit their own species’ intents.

RED: Harmonizing to Precursor and Forerunner mythology, but that’s too fallible. We see throughout the series that all of these races are susceptible to in-fighting and differences. After all, if Precursors really had the ability to warp the fabric of reality, you’d think they’d have made some rules like “No existential threat to the galaxy will ever come to exist, and also free ice cream for everybody.” The happening that they couldn’t create a galactic Utopia with a snap of their Lovecraftian tentacles shows they were, although incredibly advanced, just super cool aliens. Hell, they got killed off by The Forerunners; how omnipotent could they have been? They were limited as opposed to infinite, and it’s therefore POSSIBLE for them to have had a bad impression. For all we know, the Halo Complex was a bad theme on their duty, and now we all act like it impels smell as a response to The Flood exactly because it’s been floating out there for a really really long time and old-time nonsense must be true, right? The ancients must be right about everything, right? Because they’re old and all dead bad guys?

BLUE: So what are you saying, you dislike Halo? You speculate I’m stupid because I like Halo?

RED: No, I simply —

BLUE: F *** you! F *** you dude!

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Wow, that got out of hand. Do you have any favorite rogues whose plans come apart if you think about’ em for too long? Or do you simply disagree with my interpreting of Halo lore? If so, then by definition you agree with the other version of me, so ha! Either way, make us know what you thought down in specific comments, and for road too much unpacking of all things gaming, keep it dialed to IGN!

Michael Swaim is Manager of Video Programming for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter.