10 Awful Villains That Ruined Amazing Video Games
Kai Leng is STILL the worst.
Video games are such dynamic works of art, often lasting dozens if not hundreds of hours, and the integrity of that experience hinges on the storytelling, gameplay, and aesthetics all coming together in perfect synchronicity.
No game is perfect of course, yet sometimes an otherwise fantastic title ends up let down by one lacking element, which in the case of these 10 video games is unquestionably their main villain.
Given that the villain serves as the primary motivation for players to stick it out to the end of any video game - beyond the sheer fun of the gameplay loop, that is - it's important that they make a major impact while being interesting and entertaining.
Sadly all these games, though quite brilliant in their own right otherwise, fumbled it big time where the Big Bad was concerned, as irrevocably tainted the rest of the experience.
There's a good chance you have a lot of fond memories from playing these 10 games, but it's impossible to disentangle them from these aggressively terrible, low-effort antagonists who weren't worthy of the game surrounding them.
Each of them serve as shining examples of what not to do when creating a villain for a hotly anticipated AAA game...
10. The Didact - Halo 4
While Halo 4's campaign certainly wasn't among the series' strongest, it's tough to argue with the sequel's well-honed, ludicrously entertaining combat mechanics regardless, which of course spilled over into the game's lush multiplayer suite.
Yet Halo 4's big sour note is its introduction of an arguable series-worst villain in the Didact.
It didn't provide a particularly encouraging start for new developer 343 Industries, that their first attempt at a Big Bad was a lousy charisma vacuum who offered up little in the way of palpable threat.
It didn't help that players were deprived of a proper final battle with him also, having to settle instead for a glorified QTE sequence, ensuring Halo 4's campaign wrapped up with a total damp squib.
There's just very little character to the Didact's, well, character - for as much as the Forerunners were built up to be ultra-intelligent beings, the Didact gives little impression of that.
From his physical design and voice onwards he's just a nothing character in the game, despite getting a far more worthwhile treatment in some of the Halo novels.
It's a shame as 343 certainly got the Halo fundamentals down pat in this game, yet couldn't deliver the goods where its major antagonist was concerned.