5 Video Game Villain Archetypes (That We're Really Bored Of)

2. Terrorists/Mercenaries/Foreign Armies

Notable examples: Almost every first or third person shooter set in the past 70 years It was really hard for me to pick which order to put the last two entries on this list. In many ways, both are creatively bankrupt and uninspired. And ultimately, I picked the order based on which was more reasonable, had potential for new ideas/better execution, and was less exhausting to contemplate. That said, I hate the current crop of shooter bad guys. There's nothing really wrong with them, per se. Their looks and functions are reasonable, and they do their job of shooting at the player character well. They just have very little character and distinguishing features. While games like Uncharted give mercenary leaders a bit more time in the spotlight thanks to a bigger focus on story than the average shooter, it's hard to deny that shooter enemies have the depth of a piece of paper. For me, it's really hard to care about or even remember bad guys if all they do is fight and die. And in a way, that might be the idea for the likes of Call of Duty, Battlefield, and the rest of the modern military shooter games. The lackluster villains might be there to encourage players to jump into multiplayer to get a more entertaining experience. But as a single-player kind of guy, that really doesn't do anything for me and even though sandbox shooters do offer a bit more gameplay flexibility to offset the generic enemies, generic enemies make the entire genre feel stale and uninteresting.