8 Villains Who Made Good On Their Second Chance

Who among us doesn't love a good redemption story? There are few things more satisfying than seeing a villainous character get a second chance to change their ways and then actually follow through on it.

While many villains ultimately can't be lured away from the Bad Side and might return there after a brief flirtation with virtue, every so often a story gamely proves the capacity for people to change.

And that's just as true in the world of video games as it is in any other type of media, with these eight former gaming villains serving as towering testaments for the potential for antagonistic characters to become allies over time.

These characters all took the second chance that was presented to them and made the best of it, renouncing their colourful pasts, doing the heroic thing, and putting in the work to make it stick.

While we wouldn't want all villains to got his route - because, let's be honest, sometimes an unrepentant antagonist is exactly what the doctor ordered - it can be rewarding when sufficient thought is put into the face turn...

Cait Sith is undeniably one of Final Fantasy VII's most polarising characters - a robotic talking cat who is soon enough revealed to be secretly acting as a Shinra spy under the control of Reeve. 

His goal? To infiltrate the heroes' resistance group Avalanche and sabotage their plans.

However, once his duplicity is revealed Cait Sith has a change of heart and joins Cloud and his party on their journey in earnest.

Hell, he ultimately sacrifices a version of himself to extract the Black Materia from the Temple of the Ancients, the very materia which Sephiroth needs to summon the devastating spell Meteor.

Even accepting that Cait's destroyed body is swiftly replaced by a duplicate unit, his sacrifice is still a moment that unequivocally proves his loyalty to his new friends. 

This in turn allows him to both atone for his prior status as a Shinra agent and become a reliable mainstay for the rest of the story.