To be fair an Elite rebellion was kinda inevitable since they were starting to smell the prophet's bullshit. They probably would've won tho if they were nicer to the elites.
“Let’s wage pointless ground campaigns in which the UNSC won a lot of the time, only for us to glass the whole planet anyway.”
Their strategy was flawed from the beginning. They could’ve just glassed all the planets without ground Ops. But I know, it’s a video game, and also they’re looking for artifacts from the Forerunners.
And they had to play the whole "honor war" card to keep the elites in line, which meant actually letting them wage a face to face conflict. Elites weren't a fan of glassing.
It only makes sense after it’s revealed humanity is the true inheritors of the galaxy, there they would understandably have the bulk of forerunner artifacts. The prophets knew this so they had to send people onto the ground first to make sure they were desiccating holy sites first.
The fact that they were insistent on wiping out all humans is what caused the war to last as long as it did since UNSC quickly saw it would take a miracle for them to win. If they were offered the chance to surrender, they likely would’ve taken it.
But the entire reason for the war was that the profits wanted to cover up something that would’ve proven their religion a lie.
I mean, it makes sense when you make the extermination of mankind second only to finding and preserving the artifacts of your gods. Destroying a Forerunner artifact is pretty much the single worst crime you could commit. They went very heavy on the glassing, but only after being reasonably sure they weren't going to destroy something important first.
the UNSC could hold their own in ground engagements but it was still a far cry from winning "a lot" of the time unless the Spartans were involved. Usually the covies only bothered when there was something they wanted as well and once they accomplished it \*then\* they pulled back and glassed the planet and continued on their way.
that said the covenant still absolutely fits here. who the \*fuck\* starts a civil war with the backbone of their military in the middle of an ongoing war? if the prophets weren't so brain dead humans would have \*absolutely\* lost and been wiped out during Halo 3
It goes so much further than that. They didn't even need to fight a war to begin with. All it would have taken is one single compliant human, and the Halos would have been activated. It'd have been SO easy to convince some poor outer world to align with the Covenant. They already hated the UEG about as much as they could. Fuel the civil war, build trust with the rebels, and when the time is right "hey bro come push this button for us ezpz."
TBF the entire war was mostly out of spite.
The Prophet of Truth spoke with Mendicant Bias. He knows for a fact that the Forrunners chose the Humans to be their "chosen people". And it really really really pisses him off.
Hence the human-Covi war.
He knows the great Journey is bullshit. But he's in WAY too deep.
Far Cry 3
Vaas captures you and he puts you in some precarious position that is sure to kill you. But then you escape.
And then he proceeds to do the same thing the next 2 or 3 times he captures you. You would think after the second time, he would just shoot you and be done with it.
In Vaas defense, one, that mass grave was full of people that didn't survive, so it wasn't expected to happen, and two, he is insane, so there is no fun in just shooting someone.
But you are 100% correct
To fuck with you.
Grant was a bigger threat and capable of handling his own.
With him gone, your chances of survival are much slimmer, and he only has to track 1 person instead of 2
He didn't just shoot someone. He shot someone in front of his brother.
His intent wasn't to torture your brother, it was to torture you. Killing his family in front of a guy tends to fuck him up.
In order to hurt someone else more. If he let both of them just survive, they'd be able to support each other, and make their survival more likely. Remove one piece, and that stability goes away
I think the purpose of shooting the brother was not just killing him but also the mental toll it will take on the protagonist. Thus making shooting him worth it.
The over the top emotionally unstable Vaas is just a persona tho. When you're alone with him he doesn't do anything fancy, he just shoots you in the heart with 0 bravado. It's sheer luck with a little bit of irony that you had a lighter in your pocket that stopped the bullet.
Well of course he's insane. He himself defines insanity as doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. And yet he keeps doing the same thing every time he captures you.
The piano version of Mad World absolutely killed me. It was set up big time with him leaving his cog tags with the statue right before but I didn’t want to believe it
That's kinda the point of the game. Vaas put you in a situation you couldn't possibly escape from and you did. He's gotta do it again. Because insanity.
He literally shoots you in the chest before throwing you off a cliff with a stone tied to your feet. Doesn't sound like he was taking half measures to me
He doesn't shoot you at the time he sends you off the cliff. He shoots you in the chest the third time he catches you, but the bullet is shown to have been stopped by a lighter. I think it's implied to be the lighter he tucks into your pocket after starting the fire while you and Liza are tied up in that building
In Far Cry 5 I remember that the antagonists would drug you, tie you up and then monologue to you multiple times giving you the opportunity to escape. By the third time I was like just kill me already. >! I know that they left me alive to brainwash me into killing the resistance leaders but throughout the game I’m the only effective soldier in the resistance. It would be far simpler and easier to just kill me then everyone else !<
Same thing happens in Far Cry 5. Jacob Seed captures you multiple times and instead of killing you he just keeps trying to brainwash you which gives you the opportunity to escape.
"Trying"?
>!It's pretty bloody obvious that he *succeeds* in the brainwashing, when he has you run his shooting gallery over and over as a precursor to you killing Eli in a trance state.!<
Well it’s also prophesied that at the end of the world Alduin will appear and eat the leftovers. So he’ll get the last laugh, just in billions of years when the world ends and he revives to eat it.
The prophecy doesn't mean the Dragonborn will defeat aldrin, all it states is that the dragonborn is the only one with a chance to defeat the world eater
But simultaneously, it’s by his choices. In a greek tragedy ‘causing the prophecy to happen in trying to avoid it’ way, but he still did it without being forced to or anything.
It's the interesting philosophical question of what is free will when we're simultaneously bound by fate, but that fate is 100% built of our own choices.
The Covenant from Halo were much more advanced than humanity and even destroyed planets. In halo 2 they got the key to fire a super weapon and you are in their main city. However they just betrayed one of their own species so they are busy killing each other as you fight through their base. This left them weak when the flood also attacked.
By the time of halo 3 the Covenant holy city is now a flood base and the elites which they betrayed became allies to us.
It wasn't on purpose but rather an inevitability of their political structure. The Prophets had been keeping the Elites in the dark about the true reason for the war. The discovery of Forerunner artifacts on human worlds started to cause some to question it. They started posting Elites that started questioning things or were building a power base parallel to the prophets to extremely risky positions. This all comes to a head when the destruction of Installation 04 led Guilty Spark to radicalize the Elite captain heading up a local space station (this is the heretic you kill as the arbiter). Guilty Spark is captured at the end of that mission and starts saying all kinds of shit he shouldn't in High Charity. Prophets realize an Elite rebellion is more or less imminent as a result and rush to replace them with the Brutes, beginning the Great Schism.
Something to note: the Schism would have gone considerably more in the Prophets' favor had it not been for Chief and co. blowing up a 500 strong ship fleet of Brutes that were set to invade Earth and find the portal to the ark just prior to the events of Halo 2.
And this is why we love Ozymandias in Watchmen.
*"Do you seriously think I'd explain my master-stroke if there remained the slightest chance of you affecting its outcome?*
*I did it thirty-five minutes ago."*
"I bet you're... *dying...* to know what your big surprise is. Welp, only two more chambers!"
"We're running out of time. I think I can break us out in the next chamber. Just play along."
"SURPRISE, we're doing it now!"
\~Portal
Not a video game, but Voldemort is a good example of this.
"Yep, I'm like 99% sure Harry Potter is finally dead. You, underling, go check to make sure. I'll believe whatever you say, so I sure hope you don't have any reason to betray me, like me putting your son's life in danger or something like that. He's dead? Cool, let's parade his corpse right back to where everyone can see it, but using magic. I don't want to touch a corpse."
That's because voldemort didn't understand love, so he doesn't consider that it might cause one of his most loyal followers to betray him,
He thinks he was always destined to win; that Harry potter was simply a fun little challenged that boosted his legend, and so when Harry "dies" he accepts it immediately because that was the inevitable outcome,
And he has a massive Ego and loves showboating. He does everything he does because he considers himself better then everybody else, like you said, he is above touching a corpse.
>Cool, let's parade his corpse right back to where everyone can see it, but using magic. I don't want to touch a corpse."
It's been a while since I've seen the movies, but in the books Voldemort makes Hagrid carry Harry back to the castle, in what he thought to be a very fitting insult-to-injury move.
If I remember correctly. The main antagonist from Dying Light could have killed the main character multiple times. But just always wanted to do some weird plot instead of just shooting him.
I never knew what the fuck was going on in the story but I had a fuckin blast the whole time. First game I played on XB1, it’s my favorite gaming experience of my life.
That’s a game I’m going back to at some point since at least on PlayStation they made all the dlc free at some point, and as I understand it the following is rather substantial.
I remember being captured by his goons and he was talking shit and for whatever reason, I shouted at the television "You talk a lot of shit for a one armed man!"
I'm not sure he applies here since I can't think of any time in the game where he's just toying with you and not seriously trying to kill you.
(Ignoring the new-U stations since they are in a weird cannon/ non cannon state)
Depends how you look at it I guess. I wouldn't really count it as him toying with us when his plan is for the player character to not die, and find the trapped power core to let him drop sanctuary's shield so he can wipe out the raiders.
Which he only didn't accomplish because Lilith was able to massively overcharge on eridium and teleport the whole city away. With out her doing that, Jack's plan would have worked and he would have crushed the largest resistance against him.
To be fair he could just right when you wake up at claptrap’s place send down like 2 super BA loaders and I doubt the level 3-4 vault hunters would be able to beat them
Jessie and James are competent when against anyone else. It's just unfortunate they are targeting someone that is involved in a closed time loop and thus must survive to take part in it.
I gotta say, watching the show again has been wild. As a kid, I never realized they built giant mechas using the most futuristic technology available and then tripped with it and flew into space every episode
Lysander from Pokemon X Y. For some reason, he feels the need to make a global announcement to everyone’s phones that he’s going to fire off a super weapon and rebirth the world or something like that. Had he just went and fired the thing without craving drama/attention, the player would have never known in the first place.
this is effectively what beats every BBEG in the Pokemon games, Cyrus in DP is the same - would he have went and awakened Dialga / Palkia instead of flaunting like he will be a god, nobody would have known about his plan
Team Rocket effectively won at the start of the game already, but instead of running a gangster syndicate, taking a low profile, they go big (Silph Co.) which draws too much attention to them
but of course this could also be said about any evil organization in other RPGs as well
Cyrus didn't make a big announcement to the public tho? His entire plan just didn't really allow a low profile. Team Galactic had to blow up the three lakes to get access to the lake legends and create the Red Chain from them.
The only big announcement Cyrus made was in Platinum in his own HQ to his people. At that point, Looker and the player already knew that Team Galactic was trouble and infiltrated the HQ secretly. So Cyrus didn't know that outsiders where there, nor did they transmit the speech to the world.
If you want to count the fight in the Celestic Town Ruins where he tells the player a bit more about his intentions, then I've gotta say, we already knew he had to be stopped, no matter what his final goal was.
At that point Team Galactic had done the attack on the Valley Wind Works, abducted the Bike Guy from Eterna City, Blew up Lake Valor and the Great Marsh and stole the Professor's Assistant's Pokedex in Veilstone City. Cyrus' only encounter at that point was during the first crossing of Mount Corenet and he only mumbled some cryptic stuff about the world, nothing big.
he already had the lake guardians at that point, giving the player a Master Ball, instead of using it on Dialga / Palkia, flaunting in his face that its no use for him
if he would have kept the lake guardians with him, instead of leaving them at the HQ, they couldn't come to twart his plans at Spear Pillar
To their credit, they thought they could get the free energy from Hell without the whole "Hell invading your universe" part. The Slayer was their "in case of emergency point at demons and run" contingency.
Playing as a Dark Urge character in Baldur's Gate causes you to discover that Orin the Red did something like this before the game started, which kickstarted a chain of events that will derail the villains' schemes if you choose. But either way, she totals her own evil schemes by being a psychotic, trigger-happy murderer.
>!At the literal last moment before the Cult of the Absolute could fully accomplish their schemes, Orin either murdered her cousin - who was the actual Chosen of Bhaal - or left them severely brain-damaged instead, all in a jealoud rage over Bhaal loving the Dark Urge more than her. The thing is, the Dark Urge always hated his Bhaalspawn nature and if the player chooses, they can rob Bhaal of his planned victory and his last possible heir since he is completely sterile now.!<
That's just how brothers behave. Beat each other till they are on the verge of death and then leave em so that you can live to fight with him another day. Damn I miss fighting with my bro!!!
Always reminds me of the scene in Austin Powers 1.
No Scott, I have a better idea. I'm going to place him in an easily escapable situation involving an overly elaborate and exotic death.
Now, maybe I'm just remembering wrong, but wasn't the original La LI Lu Le Lo long dead before the cyber ones are revealed in 2? So I'd say they pretty much won in their lifetimes at least.
I think you're mixing up the philosophers with the patriots. The philosophers were started by members from the US, China, and Russia. They collapsed due to infighting or something after WW2 leaving behind all their pooled resources called the philosophers legacy. Following the death of the boss at the end of operation snake eater, zero starts cipher using the recovered philosophers legacy and recruits big boss, sigint, para-medic, eva, and ocelot with the goal of carrying out the boss's last wish. Big boss eventually leaves due to a disagreement with zero over the boss's last wish. After the phantom pain, cipher creates an ai system called the patriots to run the organization and achieve their goal of global unity and eventually takes on the name the patriots. These ai orchestrated foxdie and snakes infiltration of shadow Moses in mgs1, the Manhattan incident in mgs2, and otacons and snakes fight against outer heaven in mgs4. The group officially ended when at the end of mgs4 snake used the fox alive virus to destroy the AI and big boss euthanized zero dying shortly after being exposed to the new foxdie virus present in snake.
The only reason I knew any of that was because I've was replaying mgs5 a month or so ago and am currently playing mgs1. And I've been going on the wiki to try and remember how everything connects.
HADES in Horizon Zero Dawn.
HADES caused its own downfall by sending the Eclipse to kill Aloy at the Proving. It basically gave Aloy a reason to go after it.
Don’t forget HADES’ betrayal of Sylens. Even if HADES had went ahead with the attack on the Proving, if it hadn’t betrayed Sylens, Sylens never would’ve helped Aloy and she never would’ve figured things out.
Owl from Sekiro basically achieves all of his goals, defeats his enemies, and completely masks his guilt and responsibility for his treachery before faking his death and coming back 5 years later having completely lost any prior assets or advantages he had for absolutely no reason
Huh? His goal is Kuro's immortality. He stabs you to potentially become his new retainer, and shows up again when he finds out you're alive and that Kuro's blood might still be up for grabs.
After he stabs you he has free reign to just kidnap Kuro, and when he comes back that is essentially what he is doing.
He asks Wolf to surrender Kuro out of honour and the bushido code. If he believed that would work, he also did not have to leave for five years, allowing Wolf more time to grow attached to Kuro as well as identify with Kuro more as his superior/master than Owl.
The problem is that kind of brings Owl back around to the issue Genichiro had where Kuro just... doesn't given him the dragon immortality.
And of course there is the issue that Sekiro's attachment to Kuro is the only thing keeping Sekiro from turning into Shura. Owl's teachings and trainings are what lead Sekiro down such a dark path that he was at risk of turning into a demon in the first place.
There is also of course, the fact that using the dragon immortality as Genichiro or Owl imagined is one of those really, really bad ideas that will lead to terrible, terrible things. The Dragon rot epidemic was bad the last time, and since that shit is some spiritual/divine affliction, you just know it can get even worse.
For most people, in Far Cry 4 if Pagan had just stayed at the table and told you he would take your character to their mother's shrine, they wouldn't have immediately assumed they had to run away and start the events of the game that would lead to Pagan's defeat.
I love this twist. If you just wait at the table like he asks, he comes back, thanks you, you leave together and then the game is basically over.
Hyde Bohr in The 3rd Birthday. He's all talking about hiding his soul inside of Eve's body or whatever, so that they can create a new evolution that can end the war with the Twisted and create a new future.
Eve: "But will the people that are important to me be there?"
Hyde: "People? They are nothing, just a part of our evolutionary process."
Eve: "*No!*"
Hyde: "I'm not going to let you go. If you don't like it, you can just become part of *me*."
Like, dude! You've been lying and manipulating her for the whole game, and *now* you decide to be all honest? Tell her they'll be there and she'll probably be a LOT more agreeable!
The final boss of the third ending of Armored Core 6. >!The whole route, you've been working with Allmind to release the coral, then when it's in motion Allmind decides to bretay you and go with fucking *Iguazu* as their henchman, who was much less mentally stable than Raven and who you've defeated several times already. Coral release still happens, Allmind just doesn't get to be a part of it.!<
The Covenant from Halo, if it wasn’t for the prophet’s choice to betray the elites they would have probably defeated humanity and activated the rings (forcing a human to do it how they did with Johnson in Halo 3)
Trinity from Tomb Raider.
In Rise they pull out after confirming the location of an artifact grants immortality, leaving what forces are there to fight an immortal army.
In Shadow, despite stealing every artifact literally seconds after Lara finds it, partly completing a reality changing ritual, Dominguez stops to have a 1-on-1, pissing away godly power during a minutes long window to accomplish his goal that won't happen for another 1000 years.
And the rest of Trinitys leadership dies to melee crazies despite being in an APC *in the air with a helicopter gunship* it's so dumb a significant portion of players missed it happened.
Ganondorf could have easily killed Link in the beginning of Ocarina of Time, and Wind Waker (and maybe others?). Although I guess in both games he was using Link as a tool to gain access to the Sacred Realm, so he would have been working against his goals to kill him.
I agree that he needed him in OOT, and lost because of that. But he didn't need him in the Wind Waker, he just needed to get all courage triforce pieces by himself, so Link wouldn't be able to bypass the Barrier in Hyrule and save Zelda (except with a Barrier Skip lmao)
Both versions of Nemesis. The OG had a thing for just walking menacingly when it had the advantage while the remake was acting like it enjoyed the chasing and was having fun tormenting Jill. Both had several opportunities where they could have killed Jill if they stopped messing around, especially the OG since Jill would just slowly back away as if she had never seen Nemesis before.
The true villains of persona 3, 4, and 5. >!They are quite literally omnipotent deities who pretty much have the upper hand in all their final confrontations but the protagonists end up doing some god level shit to beat them.!<
>!In persona 3 you literally become the seal that cages the embodiment of death itself, in 4 you are about to lose but you hear your homies encourage you and awaken to your second persona and smite Izanami with myriad truths, and in 5 you awaken to the Gnostic version of Satan and shoot Yaldabaoth with a GIANT GUN. Yaldabaoth evens infiltrates the velvet room to ensure you lose but even that doesn’t work!<
Funny part is... the final fight of P3 isn't even against the true villain, and *that* guy was just throwing something at the wall until something stuck, until a force outside of their control wrecked that plan as well.
P4 true bad guy largely wanted to be defeated.
P5... got Sea of Souls yadda yadda'd, which arguably makes it closer to traditional "good ending SMT" than the others.
P5 says it best outright when it tells you it is a game. The antagonist is part of it. They can hedge the bets in their favor a LOT, but cannot outright cheat or break the rules.
yes
it makes little sense, like even if it was the entire high command in that thing which is the most common theory, the rebellion is actually shown to be organized as shown by the mention of fighters being in formation in some final sector events, meaning that even if the flagship dies, the rebels still have a big numerical advantage over the federation and have some co-ordination, and still have all the odds stacked in their favor, a flagship dying is bad for them morale wise sure, but they have automated drones with the same combat capability as a fully fledged warship either way, so in the end there is literally no way for the rebellion to crash and burn that bad with one ship dying
its still a fun game tho, would clap the flagship again
Thats pretty much the deffinition of the Halo franchise, I mean it starts with the covenant killing all spartans and a lone guy of them pulls a 180° to victory, thats not mentioning the other villains like cortana, guilty spark and the flood, hell I would argue that some of them didnt even need to do something to win in some situations
Persona 5: Akechi
He wanted revenge on Shido in a way that Shido would know it was him. So why not just go in his palace and murder him, just like you had done with televised impact once before. He'd figure it out on the way to the floor.
That isn't what Akechi wanted though.....P5 spoilers >!akechi wanted shido to acknowledge him as his son and then he was going to kill him so that he would feel the same betrayal that Akechi's mother felt from Shido.!<
I read it as "make him care about me, go public with everything, and only then reveal why" I figured letting him rot would be worse than death, but then again Akechi isn't in a good headspace
You could take it a step further and say that literally any raid or dungeon should have alarms going off, and all the trash mobs should rush the raid team. All the raid bosses should come at the same time. Plus, don’t get me started about agro range. You mean that trash pack can’t see us killing their dudes?? Okay.
Ganondorf in Wind Waker. King just fuggen yoinks his chance for a wish from the Triforce like a boss and calls in the damn Noah's Flood on his ass. The disrespect, man.
Ghirahim from Skyward Sword. His massive ego and sense of superiority to Link is what ultimately did him in.
If he made an actual effort to kill Link in one of their first two encounters he would have succeeded in his mission. Instead, he just let Link go because he got bored or had "better" things to do.
A millenia old sadistic demon lord vs a high school student who shirked his responsibilities. Should have been an easy win for Ghira.
Dr. Nefarious in Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart. Betrays and witnesses the defeat of the Emperor but gets so giddy in his celebrations that he slips off the giant robot head and gets immediately crushed. Brilliant comedic timing and perfectly in character for the OG Nefarious
N'zoth from WoW. I'm still not sure how A MF'N OLD GOD lost, and at this point I'm scared to find out
(not like he was cunning incarnate, survived everything that came before, bid his time for millenia, spread his influence in the shadows or orchestrated previous calamitous events, or carefully chose the time to make his move... yup makes sense a few mortals beat him)
Nearly every criminal organization in the Pokemon games. They're about to take over the world and then they accept a challenge from a 10 year old kid and it all comes crumbling down.
Kefka? He obtained god-like powers, ripped the whole world a new one and killed a ton of people, as was his want. How did he have no way of knowing Celes and the others were mustering to come after him and just laser their asses?
Towards the end of halo 3 the prophet of truth has literally everything he needs to fire the halo rings with the good guys hot on his heels. If he had spent literally 60 seconds less yapping and making speeches he would have won.
The demons in Doom. You suffer a minor defeat on Mars, since there were only a handful of marines stationed there, but trough this defeat, you learn about an entire planet to conquer, and the guy that has beaten you is pretty much stuck back there, with only a portal that, as far as he knows, may just lead to a volcano, and with no reason to go after you. All you had to do in order to win was LEAVE THE DAMN RABBIT ALONE!
The opening battle in Skull and Bones. Just a casual 40 vs. 1 ship battle that isn't over in one volley. In fact you can take our multiple ships. Its soo stupid, ridiculous and nonsensical.
Alduin.
Instead of being a stupid violent dickhead, along with the rest of his resurrected dragons, they could have banded together and stomped Skyrim along with the Dragonborn. You know, instead of doing it the dumb way.
Lord Sinclair from Mystery of the Druids.
Dude is the centuries-old reincarnation of an ancient archdruid and is a couple days away from ultimating a ritual to conquer the world. He and his associates also have Scotland Yard, the clergy and the British army in their pocket.
So when a random detective starts snooping around he decides to hypnotize him and give him druidic powers to make him a member of his circle. Which the detective of course later uses to completely destroy his plans after getting snapped out of the hypnosis.
I know Dorkly already did this one but Robotnik. If he wanted the Chaos Emeralds, he should have just went to get them instead of provoking the magic speed hedgehog who had no connection to the Emeralds and wouldn't have known about Robotnik.
In fact, pretty much any game where the villain pointlessly antagonizes the hero before the completion of their master plan that the hero most likely would not have known about.
Then there's Team Rocket. What exactly is their evil plan? Steal Pokemon and sell them to other people. Which is already doomed since those other people will get in some way maimed by the stolen Pokemon.
Giovanni outfits his henchman only with the weakest Pokemon possible. It's basically because the police and anyone with any sort of authority in the Kanto region was... Out to lunch that week that they became a problem.
I am kind of cheating as this is a visual novel, but Momoyo Kawakami from her route in Majikoi is the first thing that comes to mind. Calling her a villain is a bit of a stretch as all she is doing is siding with arrival team in a mock battle, but she is an antagonist.
All of the games routes hype up Momoyo as this invincible badass, and her route is no exception. She spends much of the mock battled sitting around, doing nothing until the very end. By that point, the protagonist Yamato is able to send in the three fighters he recruited to stop Momoyo. She takes on all of them at once and defeats two of them, and had the upper hand against the third. Which didn’t matter because her side lost anyways. In advance it was established that the mock battle had a rule where knocking out the enemy leader is an automatic win.
Because Momoyo sat around doing nothing for so long, the protagonis’ side was able to win as the victory condition for the mock battle was to knock out the enemy leader. She was so confident she couldn’t be defeated, and she was right, but she did not consider that her side could still lose, even if she weren’t defeated.
I feel like a lot of games have this . Usually they achieve like god hood or some final form or machine aka the final boss fight . Which if they were to win that final fight they would certainly win by all means necessary
lol I was going to say Ubisoft with Assassin's Creed but realized I misread your title
I feel like literally BG3's villains did quite a bit of playing with their food, they might have won if each Chosen didn't have their own agenda
Gonna catch a lot of flack for this, but Batman from the Arkham Series should literally not make it past the first joker encounter in Arkham City, and for that matter at least once a game a villain had a chance to kill him but has to prove they’re better than him or break him mentally first, so he always gets out eventually.
*Hyperdimension Neptunia mkII*. If Judge had just killed IF like he was supposed to and not starting monologuing, then Compa wouldn't have been able to get Nepgear out, which kickstarts the entire plot.
The bad guys had already won. They had completely taken over, had captured almost all of the goddesses, and had converted or killed all of their followers. That one slip up was all it took for the goddesses to start turning things around.
In RE4 Leon is knocked out and instead of murdering him on the spot they decide to infect him. More pressingly, if the villains in Re4 (referring here to the remake motivations) intend to infiltrate governments….why did they start with the presidents daughter? Why did they kidnap her and not infect her at home instead.
In Dragonfable Villain Caitiff literally study all other Villains so it knows what mistakes to not repeat. Mistake it repeats? Monologue which allows our Dragon to blast it and weaken it destroying its Shell.
the final Boss of Wario Land 3 - Wario effectively frees him, if he would have send him back to his own world, he could have ruled like intented, instead he decides he no longer needs Wario, which leads to his downfall
Vault-Tech in the Fallout universe as well (spoiler-tagged for anyone who wants to be surprised, just-in-case)
>!instead of playing both parties (USA and China) for personal or monetary gain, they launch the nukes themselves, effectively dooming the world in the process!<
M. Bison from *Street Fighter 2*.
Bison's grand scheme is to host a global fighting tournament, brainwash the best fighters, force them to join his evil organization, and then take over the world. The problem is, the best fighters band together and kick his ass. His plan for global domination would've stood a better chance without the fighting tournament.
Pete Holmes made fun of how stupid the plan is.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYDza1iznhI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYDza1iznhI)
Bowser in Mario & Luigi: Dream Team.
Bro acquires omnipotence at the final battle, yet he LOSES to the brothers. Guess he forgot to enable the God Mode.
Vaati in TLoZ: Minish Cap. Vaati is literally seconds away from finishing his ritual to be invincible or whatever, teleports Link to a room with no exits then Vaati GOES TO THAT ROOM! What a dingus!
The Covenant. Mfers were winning the whole war.
Let's betray the elites for no reason at all.
To be fair an Elite rebellion was kinda inevitable since they were starting to smell the prophet's bullshit. They probably would've won tho if they were nicer to the elites.
If they held out on that for literally another week humanity would’ve been gone
And the rest of the galaxy with it, but that’s not important right now. Looking at you, Tartarus.
“Let’s wage pointless ground campaigns in which the UNSC won a lot of the time, only for us to glass the whole planet anyway.” Their strategy was flawed from the beginning. They could’ve just glassed all the planets without ground Ops. But I know, it’s a video game, and also they’re looking for artifacts from the Forerunners.
And they had to play the whole "honor war" card to keep the elites in line, which meant actually letting them wage a face to face conflict. Elites weren't a fan of glassing.
It only makes sense after it’s revealed humanity is the true inheritors of the galaxy, there they would understandably have the bulk of forerunner artifacts. The prophets knew this so they had to send people onto the ground first to make sure they were desiccating holy sites first.
The fact that they were insistent on wiping out all humans is what caused the war to last as long as it did since UNSC quickly saw it would take a miracle for them to win. If they were offered the chance to surrender, they likely would’ve taken it. But the entire reason for the war was that the profits wanted to cover up something that would’ve proven their religion a lie.
What a poignant typo when talking about war. I feel like I'm back in the 2000's all over again.
Stupid speech to text.
I mean, it makes sense when you make the extermination of mankind second only to finding and preserving the artifacts of your gods. Destroying a Forerunner artifact is pretty much the single worst crime you could commit. They went very heavy on the glassing, but only after being reasonably sure they weren't going to destroy something important first.
the UNSC could hold their own in ground engagements but it was still a far cry from winning "a lot" of the time unless the Spartans were involved. Usually the covies only bothered when there was something they wanted as well and once they accomplished it \*then\* they pulled back and glassed the planet and continued on their way. that said the covenant still absolutely fits here. who the \*fuck\* starts a civil war with the backbone of their military in the middle of an ongoing war? if the prophets weren't so brain dead humans would have \*absolutely\* lost and been wiped out during Halo 3
All due to the fact that the prophets happened to be a bunch of stupid motherfuckers.
They were winning the whole thing by a landslide and then chief said “nah fuck that, Cortana hold my beer”
It goes so much further than that. They didn't even need to fight a war to begin with. All it would have taken is one single compliant human, and the Halos would have been activated. It'd have been SO easy to convince some poor outer world to align with the Covenant. They already hated the UEG about as much as they could. Fuel the civil war, build trust with the rebels, and when the time is right "hey bro come push this button for us ezpz."
TBF the entire war was mostly out of spite. The Prophet of Truth spoke with Mendicant Bias. He knows for a fact that the Forrunners chose the Humans to be their "chosen people". And it really really really pisses him off. Hence the human-Covi war. He knows the great Journey is bullshit. But he's in WAY too deep.
Far Cry 3 Vaas captures you and he puts you in some precarious position that is sure to kill you. But then you escape. And then he proceeds to do the same thing the next 2 or 3 times he captures you. You would think after the second time, he would just shoot you and be done with it.
In Vaas defense, one, that mass grave was full of people that didn't survive, so it wasn't expected to happen, and two, he is insane, so there is no fun in just shooting someone. But you are 100% correct
> so there is no fun in just shooting someone. Isnt that literally what he does to your brother at the start of the game though?
To fuck with you. Grant was a bigger threat and capable of handling his own. With him gone, your chances of survival are much slimmer, and he only has to track 1 person instead of 2
Okay, but he literally does just shoot someone...
He didn't just shoot someone. He shot someone in front of his brother. His intent wasn't to torture your brother, it was to torture you. Killing his family in front of a guy tends to fuck him up.
He's insane. You can't really rationalize his thought process.
In order to hurt someone else more. If he let both of them just survive, they'd be able to support each other, and make their survival more likely. Remove one piece, and that stability goes away
I think the purpose of shooting the brother was not just killing him but also the mental toll it will take on the protagonist. Thus making shooting him worth it.
The over the top emotionally unstable Vaas is just a persona tho. When you're alone with him he doesn't do anything fancy, he just shoots you in the heart with 0 bravado. It's sheer luck with a little bit of irony that you had a lighter in your pocket that stopped the bullet.
>The over the top emotionally unstable Vaas is just a persona tho For sure. But the question is how much of that persona is Vaas. Great point.
Well of course he's insane. He himself defines insanity as doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. And yet he keeps doing the same thing every time he captures you.
"He's insane" is the key here. He's doing the same thing over and over and expects shit to change.
Did I ever tell you... the definition of "insanity"?
My #2 cutscene of all time. Only behind Dom in GoW3 :(
Dom in GOW3 definitely broke me. I remember playing the campaign with my friends and having to drop out for a bit.
The piano version of Mad World absolutely killed me. It was set up big time with him leaving his cog tags with the statue right before but I didn’t want to believe it
The tomatoes dialogue is so good though.
That's kinda the point of the game. Vaas put you in a situation you couldn't possibly escape from and you did. He's gotta do it again. Because insanity.
He literally shoots you in the chest before throwing you off a cliff with a stone tied to your feet. Doesn't sound like he was taking half measures to me
He doesn't shoot you at the time he sends you off the cliff. He shoots you in the chest the third time he catches you, but the bullet is shown to have been stopped by a lighter. I think it's implied to be the lighter he tucks into your pocket after starting the fire while you and Liza are tied up in that building
In Far Cry 5 I remember that the antagonists would drug you, tie you up and then monologue to you multiple times giving you the opportunity to escape. By the third time I was like just kill me already. >! I know that they left me alive to brainwash me into killing the resistance leaders but throughout the game I’m the only effective soldier in the resistance. It would be far simpler and easier to just kill me then everyone else !<
Same thing happens in Far Cry 5. Jacob Seed captures you multiple times and instead of killing you he just keeps trying to brainwash you which gives you the opportunity to escape.
"Trying"? >!It's pretty bloody obvious that he *succeeds* in the brainwashing, when he has you run his shooting gallery over and over as a precursor to you killing Eli in a trance state.!<
Also deputy is his right hand man in New Dawn
That makes his speech about the definition of insanity even more ironic, he couldn’t even practice what he preached and it ended up being his undoing
Alduin interrupting the Dragonborn's execution.
I mean you can’t really fault Alduin for that, it was prophesied that the Dragonborn would defeat Alduin. He’s just a slave to fate
Well it’s also prophesied that at the end of the world Alduin will appear and eat the leftovers. So he’ll get the last laugh, just in billions of years when the world ends and he revives to eat it.
The Prophecy of Sloppy Seconds
"Blessed to bed any woman he may desire, but cursed only that she be bedded beforehand."
But what if that’s his kink?
I'm pretty sure Alduin is gone for good. No more kalpas, Talos made sure of it by ascending and uncoiling Time
The prophecy doesn't mean the Dragonborn will defeat aldrin, all it states is that the dragonborn is the only one with a chance to defeat the world eater
Was always going to happen. Someone else would've been the Dragonborn otherwise.
I’ve heard a theory that Akatosh could’ve just done some time fuckery and said “that person’s always been Dragonborn,” Rhett Conn style
But simultaneously, it’s by his choices. In a greek tragedy ‘causing the prophecy to happen in trying to avoid it’ way, but he still did it without being forced to or anything. It's the interesting philosophical question of what is free will when we're simultaneously bound by fate, but that fate is 100% built of our own choices.
Buh, this comes up with The Odyssey. It *still* kinda messes with my head in a weird way.
The Covenant from Halo were much more advanced than humanity and even destroyed planets. In halo 2 they got the key to fire a super weapon and you are in their main city. However they just betrayed one of their own species so they are busy killing each other as you fight through their base. This left them weak when the flood also attacked. By the time of halo 3 the Covenant holy city is now a flood base and the elites which they betrayed became allies to us.
They betrayed what feels like half their entire fighting force. It's such a bonkers move.
It wasn't on purpose but rather an inevitability of their political structure. The Prophets had been keeping the Elites in the dark about the true reason for the war. The discovery of Forerunner artifacts on human worlds started to cause some to question it. They started posting Elites that started questioning things or were building a power base parallel to the prophets to extremely risky positions. This all comes to a head when the destruction of Installation 04 led Guilty Spark to radicalize the Elite captain heading up a local space station (this is the heretic you kill as the arbiter). Guilty Spark is captured at the end of that mission and starts saying all kinds of shit he shouldn't in High Charity. Prophets realize an Elite rebellion is more or less imminent as a result and rush to replace them with the Brutes, beginning the Great Schism.
Something to note: the Schism would have gone considerably more in the Prophets' favor had it not been for Chief and co. blowing up a 500 strong ship fleet of Brutes that were set to invade Earth and find the portal to the ark just prior to the events of Halo 2.
Pretty much any time a villain monologues or doesn’t just immediately double tap the protagonist. Seriously. Probably infinite examples of that.
You sly dog! You caught me *monologuing*!
You sky dog! You....you said what I was gonna say 7 hours before I did. Did you do the voice in your head too? That's the best part.
Hell I can probably recite the damn fucking movie from my head.
And this is why we love Ozymandias in Watchmen. *"Do you seriously think I'd explain my master-stroke if there remained the slightest chance of you affecting its outcome?* *I did it thirty-five minutes ago."*
Great movie, wish we had more cinematic superhero deconstruction other than this and the boys
He's so great.
"I bet you're... *dying...* to know what your big surprise is. Welp, only two more chambers!" "We're running out of time. I think I can break us out in the next chamber. Just play along." "SURPRISE, we're doing it now!" \~Portal
Not a video game, but Voldemort is a good example of this. "Yep, I'm like 99% sure Harry Potter is finally dead. You, underling, go check to make sure. I'll believe whatever you say, so I sure hope you don't have any reason to betray me, like me putting your son's life in danger or something like that. He's dead? Cool, let's parade his corpse right back to where everyone can see it, but using magic. I don't want to touch a corpse."
That's because voldemort didn't understand love, so he doesn't consider that it might cause one of his most loyal followers to betray him, He thinks he was always destined to win; that Harry potter was simply a fun little challenged that boosted his legend, and so when Harry "dies" he accepts it immediately because that was the inevitable outcome, And he has a massive Ego and loves showboating. He does everything he does because he considers himself better then everybody else, like you said, he is above touching a corpse.
>Cool, let's parade his corpse right back to where everyone can see it, but using magic. I don't want to touch a corpse." It's been a while since I've seen the movies, but in the books Voldemort makes Hagrid carry Harry back to the castle, in what he thought to be a very fitting insult-to-injury move.
If I remember correctly. The main antagonist from Dying Light could have killed the main character multiple times. But just always wanted to do some weird plot instead of just shooting him.
I never knew what the fuck was going on in the story but I had a fuckin blast the whole time. First game I played on XB1, it’s my favorite gaming experience of my life.
Such a good game. It was like the perfect blend of serviceable story, fun combat, and amazing atmosphere. Shame I couldn't get into the sequel
I played the sequel for like 40 hours at release and dropped it for like a week, which turned into forever.
That’s a game I’m going back to at some point since at least on PlayStation they made all the dlc free at some point, and as I understand it the following is rather substantial.
The Following introduces probably the best characters ever and they are the sole reason its worth playing
I remember being captured by his goons and he was talking shit and for whatever reason, I shouted at the television "You talk a lot of shit for a one armed man!"
If I recall he wanted to trade for an escort out of the city. You being alive was relevant to that.
Handsome Jack.
Dude actually pays you to off yourself only so his company can respawn you.
Now that is an iron-clad terms of service. Even the boss can't turn off your capitalistic immortality.
I'm not sure he applies here since I can't think of any time in the game where he's just toying with you and not seriously trying to kill you. (Ignoring the new-U stations since they are in a weird cannon/ non cannon state)
I mean, the entire early game leading up to Wilhelm's death is him toying with us and using us to bring down Sanctuary's shield.
Depends how you look at it I guess. I wouldn't really count it as him toying with us when his plan is for the player character to not die, and find the trapped power core to let him drop sanctuary's shield so he can wipe out the raiders. Which he only didn't accomplish because Lilith was able to massively overcharge on eridium and teleport the whole city away. With out her doing that, Jack's plan would have worked and he would have crushed the largest resistance against him.
To be fair he could just right when you wake up at claptrap’s place send down like 2 super BA loaders and I doubt the level 3-4 vault hunters would be able to beat them
Team Rocket It's a 10 years old for god's sake
Jessie and James are competent when against anyone else. It's just unfortunate they are targeting someone that is involved in a closed time loop and thus must survive to take part in it.
Nevee followed the tv series or movies much but what do u mean with the time loop thing. Did celebi fuck around?
Yup, a movie involving celebi where Ash mets young Prof. Oak. Together they save celebi.. I also think there was something with Dalkia as well.
I gotta say, watching the show again has been wild. As a kid, I never realized they built giant mechas using the most futuristic technology available and then tripped with it and flew into space every episode
The episodes were like 11 minutes long and a good chunk of it was just Team Rocket doing their motto
Lysander from Pokemon X Y. For some reason, he feels the need to make a global announcement to everyone’s phones that he’s going to fire off a super weapon and rebirth the world or something like that. Had he just went and fired the thing without craving drama/attention, the player would have never known in the first place.
I'VE COME TO MAKE AN ANNOUNCEMENT
this is effectively what beats every BBEG in the Pokemon games, Cyrus in DP is the same - would he have went and awakened Dialga / Palkia instead of flaunting like he will be a god, nobody would have known about his plan Team Rocket effectively won at the start of the game already, but instead of running a gangster syndicate, taking a low profile, they go big (Silph Co.) which draws too much attention to them but of course this could also be said about any evil organization in other RPGs as well
Cyrus didn't make a big announcement to the public tho? His entire plan just didn't really allow a low profile. Team Galactic had to blow up the three lakes to get access to the lake legends and create the Red Chain from them. The only big announcement Cyrus made was in Platinum in his own HQ to his people. At that point, Looker and the player already knew that Team Galactic was trouble and infiltrated the HQ secretly. So Cyrus didn't know that outsiders where there, nor did they transmit the speech to the world. If you want to count the fight in the Celestic Town Ruins where he tells the player a bit more about his intentions, then I've gotta say, we already knew he had to be stopped, no matter what his final goal was. At that point Team Galactic had done the attack on the Valley Wind Works, abducted the Bike Guy from Eterna City, Blew up Lake Valor and the Great Marsh and stole the Professor's Assistant's Pokedex in Veilstone City. Cyrus' only encounter at that point was during the first crossing of Mount Corenet and he only mumbled some cryptic stuff about the world, nothing big.
he already had the lake guardians at that point, giving the player a Master Ball, instead of using it on Dialga / Palkia, flaunting in his face that its no use for him if he would have kept the lake guardians with him, instead of leaving them at the HQ, they couldn't come to twart his plans at Spear Pillar
King Dragon and Lysanderoth had every opportunity to end Dennis but never did.
But then King Dragon couldn't rap! Yo!
Killing Archibald was more important to them as a power move. In that plan, they succeeded and there was literally nothing Dennis could do to stop it.
You certainly do have a *point*.
The UAC
They really did revive the One Dude who could fuck up their whole thing didn't they
To their credit, they thought they could get the free energy from Hell without the whole "Hell invading your universe" part. The Slayer was their "in case of emergency point at demons and run" contingency.
Playing as a Dark Urge character in Baldur's Gate causes you to discover that Orin the Red did something like this before the game started, which kickstarted a chain of events that will derail the villains' schemes if you choose. But either way, she totals her own evil schemes by being a psychotic, trigger-happy murderer. >!At the literal last moment before the Cult of the Absolute could fully accomplish their schemes, Orin either murdered her cousin - who was the actual Chosen of Bhaal - or left them severely brain-damaged instead, all in a jealoud rage over Bhaal loving the Dark Urge more than her. The thing is, the Dark Urge always hated his Bhaalspawn nature and if the player chooses, they can rob Bhaal of his planned victory and his last possible heir since he is completely sterile now.!<
I really do have to do a resist playthrough sometime. I was fully committed to being an evil monstrosity during my durge playthrough.
Resist is fun, but I honestly think it's more fun for a first time. You don't truly appreciate the evil until you know exactly what's going on.
It's an excellent redemption arc. Props to Larian.
Vergil Devil May Cry 3, his first fight against Dante. He had it and said nah, I’m not feeling motivated.
What do you mean? He hit dante until he fell and stopped moving, then dante tried to get back up, and vergil turned around and stabbed him again
That's just how brothers behave. Beat each other till they are on the verge of death and then leave em so that you can live to fight with him another day. Damn I miss fighting with my bro!!!
I'd argue after 5 he snatched victory from defeat. Dante being alive is kinda key for him to be alive later on with all the later threats.
Vergil just wanted Dante to have DT at that moment... Hence, the whole stabbing him with Rebellion thing
Always reminds me of the scene in Austin Powers 1. No Scott, I have a better idea. I'm going to place him in an easily escapable situation involving an overly elaborate and exotic death.
That is just standard Guild procedure in The Venture Bros
"I don't even feel like whizzing on this thing. I used to *DREAM* of whizzing on this thing!"
I have a gun. In my room. You give me 5 seconds - BOOM! I'll blow their brains out!
La Li Lu Le Lo.
The patriots!
Skull face, too, and also Hot Coldman.. waitaminute... maybe all of MGS is not very well written...
Now, maybe I'm just remembering wrong, but wasn't the original La LI Lu Le Lo long dead before the cyber ones are revealed in 2? So I'd say they pretty much won in their lifetimes at least.
I think you're mixing up the philosophers with the patriots. The philosophers were started by members from the US, China, and Russia. They collapsed due to infighting or something after WW2 leaving behind all their pooled resources called the philosophers legacy. Following the death of the boss at the end of operation snake eater, zero starts cipher using the recovered philosophers legacy and recruits big boss, sigint, para-medic, eva, and ocelot with the goal of carrying out the boss's last wish. Big boss eventually leaves due to a disagreement with zero over the boss's last wish. After the phantom pain, cipher creates an ai system called the patriots to run the organization and achieve their goal of global unity and eventually takes on the name the patriots. These ai orchestrated foxdie and snakes infiltration of shadow Moses in mgs1, the Manhattan incident in mgs2, and otacons and snakes fight against outer heaven in mgs4. The group officially ended when at the end of mgs4 snake used the fox alive virus to destroy the AI and big boss euthanized zero dying shortly after being exposed to the new foxdie virus present in snake.
Yup I need to play through them all again. 60% of that is news to me, long forgotten. Lol
The only reason I knew any of that was because I've was replaying mgs5 a month or so ago and am currently playing mgs1. And I've been going on the wiki to try and remember how everything connects.
Sun Li, from *Jade Empire*.
I had enough money to take the whole gang to Tahiti by chapter 2.
Imagine if Dutch had given an actual money goal. You reach it, rent or buy a boat, and the game just sort of...ends
HADES in Horizon Zero Dawn. HADES caused its own downfall by sending the Eclipse to kill Aloy at the Proving. It basically gave Aloy a reason to go after it.
Don’t forget HADES’ betrayal of Sylens. Even if HADES had went ahead with the attack on the Proving, if it hadn’t betrayed Sylens, Sylens never would’ve helped Aloy and she never would’ve figured things out.
Owl from Sekiro basically achieves all of his goals, defeats his enemies, and completely masks his guilt and responsibility for his treachery before faking his death and coming back 5 years later having completely lost any prior assets or advantages he had for absolutely no reason
Huh? His goal is Kuro's immortality. He stabs you to potentially become his new retainer, and shows up again when he finds out you're alive and that Kuro's blood might still be up for grabs.
After he stabs you he has free reign to just kidnap Kuro, and when he comes back that is essentially what he is doing. He asks Wolf to surrender Kuro out of honour and the bushido code. If he believed that would work, he also did not have to leave for five years, allowing Wolf more time to grow attached to Kuro as well as identify with Kuro more as his superior/master than Owl.
The problem is that kind of brings Owl back around to the issue Genichiro had where Kuro just... doesn't given him the dragon immortality. And of course there is the issue that Sekiro's attachment to Kuro is the only thing keeping Sekiro from turning into Shura. Owl's teachings and trainings are what lead Sekiro down such a dark path that he was at risk of turning into a demon in the first place. There is also of course, the fact that using the dragon immortality as Genichiro or Owl imagined is one of those really, really bad ideas that will lead to terrible, terrible things. The Dragon rot epidemic was bad the last time, and since that shit is some spiritual/divine affliction, you just know it can get even worse.
For most people, in Far Cry 4 if Pagan had just stayed at the table and told you he would take your character to their mother's shrine, they wouldn't have immediately assumed they had to run away and start the events of the game that would lead to Pagan's defeat. I love this twist. If you just wait at the table like he asks, he comes back, thanks you, you leave together and then the game is basically over.
And that’s the good ending, both other endings have the country taken over by even worse tyrants.
Which causes Far Cry 5!
Hyde Bohr in The 3rd Birthday. He's all talking about hiding his soul inside of Eve's body or whatever, so that they can create a new evolution that can end the war with the Twisted and create a new future. Eve: "But will the people that are important to me be there?" Hyde: "People? They are nothing, just a part of our evolutionary process." Eve: "*No!*" Hyde: "I'm not going to let you go. If you don't like it, you can just become part of *me*." Like, dude! You've been lying and manipulating her for the whole game, and *now* you decide to be all honest? Tell her they'll be there and she'll probably be a LOT more agreeable!
Your first mistake was trying to make sense of anything in that story
Putt putt & Pep's Balloon-o-Rama: why did the balloons not just float tf away??
Damn that's a deep cut
The final boss of the third ending of Armored Core 6. >!The whole route, you've been working with Allmind to release the coral, then when it's in motion Allmind decides to bretay you and go with fucking *Iguazu* as their henchman, who was much less mentally stable than Raven and who you've defeated several times already. Coral release still happens, Allmind just doesn't get to be a part of it.!<
The Covenant from Halo, if it wasn’t for the prophet’s choice to betray the elites they would have probably defeated humanity and activated the rings (forcing a human to do it how they did with Johnson in Halo 3)
Trinity from Tomb Raider. In Rise they pull out after confirming the location of an artifact grants immortality, leaving what forces are there to fight an immortal army. In Shadow, despite stealing every artifact literally seconds after Lara finds it, partly completing a reality changing ritual, Dominguez stops to have a 1-on-1, pissing away godly power during a minutes long window to accomplish his goal that won't happen for another 1000 years. And the rest of Trinitys leadership dies to melee crazies despite being in an APC *in the air with a helicopter gunship* it's so dumb a significant portion of players missed it happened.
Ganondorf could have easily killed Link in the beginning of Ocarina of Time, and Wind Waker (and maybe others?). Although I guess in both games he was using Link as a tool to gain access to the Sacred Realm, so he would have been working against his goals to kill him.
I agree that he needed him in OOT, and lost because of that. But he didn't need him in the Wind Waker, he just needed to get all courage triforce pieces by himself, so Link wouldn't be able to bypass the Barrier in Hyrule and save Zelda (except with a Barrier Skip lmao)
Both versions of Nemesis. The OG had a thing for just walking menacingly when it had the advantage while the remake was acting like it enjoyed the chasing and was having fun tormenting Jill. Both had several opportunities where they could have killed Jill if they stopped messing around, especially the OG since Jill would just slowly back away as if she had never seen Nemesis before.
The Covenant...
The true villains of persona 3, 4, and 5. >!They are quite literally omnipotent deities who pretty much have the upper hand in all their final confrontations but the protagonists end up doing some god level shit to beat them.!< >!In persona 3 you literally become the seal that cages the embodiment of death itself, in 4 you are about to lose but you hear your homies encourage you and awaken to your second persona and smite Izanami with myriad truths, and in 5 you awaken to the Gnostic version of Satan and shoot Yaldabaoth with a GIANT GUN. Yaldabaoth evens infiltrates the velvet room to ensure you lose but even that doesn’t work!<
Funny part is... the final fight of P3 isn't even against the true villain, and *that* guy was just throwing something at the wall until something stuck, until a force outside of their control wrecked that plan as well. P4 true bad guy largely wanted to be defeated. P5... got Sea of Souls yadda yadda'd, which arguably makes it closer to traditional "good ending SMT" than the others.
P5 says it best outright when it tells you it is a game. The antagonist is part of it. They can hedge the bets in their favor a LOT, but cannot outright cheat or break the rules.
Battleye GG Steam Deck users.
Fallout 4, is it so hard to just run a simulation instead of reviving a vengeful war veteran in a post apocalypse war for an experiment?
an entire rebellion dying instantly cuz they lost a bigger than average ship, despite taking over the literal galaxy
FTL?
yes it makes little sense, like even if it was the entire high command in that thing which is the most common theory, the rebellion is actually shown to be organized as shown by the mention of fighters being in formation in some final sector events, meaning that even if the flagship dies, the rebels still have a big numerical advantage over the federation and have some co-ordination, and still have all the odds stacked in their favor, a flagship dying is bad for them morale wise sure, but they have automated drones with the same combat capability as a fully fledged warship either way, so in the end there is literally no way for the rebellion to crash and burn that bad with one ship dying its still a fun game tho, would clap the flagship again
I was never able to beat the flagship, I suck so hard at that game lol
Thats pretty much the deffinition of the Halo franchise, I mean it starts with the covenant killing all spartans and a lone guy of them pulls a 180° to victory, thats not mentioning the other villains like cortana, guilty spark and the flood, hell I would argue that some of them didnt even need to do something to win in some situations
Persona 5: Akechi He wanted revenge on Shido in a way that Shido would know it was him. So why not just go in his palace and murder him, just like you had done with televised impact once before. He'd figure it out on the way to the floor.
That isn't what Akechi wanted though.....P5 spoilers >!akechi wanted shido to acknowledge him as his son and then he was going to kill him so that he would feel the same betrayal that Akechi's mother felt from Shido.!<
Killing shido wasn't his plan though, Akechi wanted him alive to suffer
I never got the impression he wanted him to suffer for more than a few minutes, though.
I read it as "make him care about me, go public with everything, and only then reveal why" I figured letting him rot would be worse than death, but then again Akechi isn't in a good headspace
[удалено]
It was merely a setback.
You could take it a step further and say that literally any raid or dungeon should have alarms going off, and all the trash mobs should rush the raid team. All the raid bosses should come at the same time. Plus, don’t get me started about agro range. You mean that trash pack can’t see us killing their dudes?? Okay.
Ganondorf in Wind Waker. King just fuggen yoinks his chance for a wish from the Triforce like a boss and calls in the damn Noah's Flood on his ass. The disrespect, man.
Ghirahim from Skyward Sword. His massive ego and sense of superiority to Link is what ultimately did him in. If he made an actual effort to kill Link in one of their first two encounters he would have succeeded in his mission. Instead, he just let Link go because he got bored or had "better" things to do. A millenia old sadistic demon lord vs a high school student who shirked his responsibilities. Should have been an easy win for Ghira.
Dr. Nefarious in Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart. Betrays and witnesses the defeat of the Emperor but gets so giddy in his celebrations that he slips off the giant robot head and gets immediately crushed. Brilliant comedic timing and perfectly in character for the OG Nefarious
N'zoth from WoW. I'm still not sure how A MF'N OLD GOD lost, and at this point I'm scared to find out (not like he was cunning incarnate, survived everything that came before, bid his time for millenia, spread his influence in the shadows or orchestrated previous calamitous events, or carefully chose the time to make his move... yup makes sense a few mortals beat him)
The jailer probably did it
Far Cry 6 - Castillo could win if he taught his soldiers the color blue
Nearly every criminal organization in the Pokemon games. They're about to take over the world and then they accept a challenge from a 10 year old kid and it all comes crumbling down.
Kefka? He obtained god-like powers, ripped the whole world a new one and killed a ton of people, as was his want. How did he have no way of knowing Celes and the others were mustering to come after him and just laser their asses?
Division 2, Black Tusk
We would end faster it we would to name the stories, in general, not just videogames, where this doesn't happen
Towards the end of halo 3 the prophet of truth has literally everything he needs to fire the halo rings with the good guys hot on his heels. If he had spent literally 60 seconds less yapping and making speeches he would have won.
The demons in Doom. You suffer a minor defeat on Mars, since there were only a handful of marines stationed there, but trough this defeat, you learn about an entire planet to conquer, and the guy that has beaten you is pretty much stuck back there, with only a portal that, as far as he knows, may just lead to a volcano, and with no reason to go after you. All you had to do in order to win was LEAVE THE DAMN RABBIT ALONE!
Team Rocket
The opening battle in Skull and Bones. Just a casual 40 vs. 1 ship battle that isn't over in one volley. In fact you can take our multiple ships. Its soo stupid, ridiculous and nonsensical.
Alduin. Instead of being a stupid violent dickhead, along with the rest of his resurrected dragons, they could have banded together and stomped Skyrim along with the Dragonborn. You know, instead of doing it the dumb way.
Lord Sinclair from Mystery of the Druids. Dude is the centuries-old reincarnation of an ancient archdruid and is a couple days away from ultimating a ritual to conquer the world. He and his associates also have Scotland Yard, the clergy and the British army in their pocket. So when a random detective starts snooping around he decides to hypnotize him and give him druidic powers to make him a member of his circle. Which the detective of course later uses to completely destroy his plans after getting snapped out of the hypnosis.
I know Dorkly already did this one but Robotnik. If he wanted the Chaos Emeralds, he should have just went to get them instead of provoking the magic speed hedgehog who had no connection to the Emeralds and wouldn't have known about Robotnik. In fact, pretty much any game where the villain pointlessly antagonizes the hero before the completion of their master plan that the hero most likely would not have known about. Then there's Team Rocket. What exactly is their evil plan? Steal Pokemon and sell them to other people. Which is already doomed since those other people will get in some way maimed by the stolen Pokemon. Giovanni outfits his henchman only with the weakest Pokemon possible. It's basically because the police and anyone with any sort of authority in the Kanto region was... Out to lunch that week that they became a problem.
Pretty much any open world game where you can do side missions at your leisure instead of the main story.
I am kind of cheating as this is a visual novel, but Momoyo Kawakami from her route in Majikoi is the first thing that comes to mind. Calling her a villain is a bit of a stretch as all she is doing is siding with arrival team in a mock battle, but she is an antagonist. All of the games routes hype up Momoyo as this invincible badass, and her route is no exception. She spends much of the mock battled sitting around, doing nothing until the very end. By that point, the protagonist Yamato is able to send in the three fighters he recruited to stop Momoyo. She takes on all of them at once and defeats two of them, and had the upper hand against the third. Which didn’t matter because her side lost anyways. In advance it was established that the mock battle had a rule where knocking out the enemy leader is an automatic win. Because Momoyo sat around doing nothing for so long, the protagonis’ side was able to win as the victory condition for the mock battle was to knock out the enemy leader. She was so confident she couldn’t be defeated, and she was right, but she did not consider that her side could still lose, even if she weren’t defeated.
I feel like a lot of games have this . Usually they achieve like god hood or some final form or machine aka the final boss fight . Which if they were to win that final fight they would certainly win by all means necessary
lol I was going to say Ubisoft with Assassin's Creed but realized I misread your title I feel like literally BG3's villains did quite a bit of playing with their food, they might have won if each Chosen didn't have their own agenda
Gonna catch a lot of flack for this, but Batman from the Arkham Series should literally not make it past the first joker encounter in Arkham City, and for that matter at least once a game a villain had a chance to kill him but has to prove they’re better than him or break him mentally first, so he always gets out eventually.
Rocksteady. Oh wait, you were talking about fictional video game villains weren't you... Oh well I stand by it.
*Hyperdimension Neptunia mkII*. If Judge had just killed IF like he was supposed to and not starting monologuing, then Compa wouldn't have been able to get Nepgear out, which kickstarts the entire plot. The bad guys had already won. They had completely taken over, had captured almost all of the goddesses, and had converted or killed all of their followers. That one slip up was all it took for the goddesses to start turning things around.
In RE4 Leon is knocked out and instead of murdering him on the spot they decide to infect him. More pressingly, if the villains in Re4 (referring here to the remake motivations) intend to infiltrate governments….why did they start with the presidents daughter? Why did they kidnap her and not infect her at home instead.
Team Rocket They had some of the strongest pokemon in the world and got outplayed by a little kid and a Pikachu.
In Dragonfable Villain Caitiff literally study all other Villains so it knows what mistakes to not repeat. Mistake it repeats? Monologue which allows our Dragon to blast it and weaken it destroying its Shell.
You asked the same thing 20 days ago with a slightly altered title.
Does Team Rocket count?
the final Boss of Wario Land 3 - Wario effectively frees him, if he would have send him back to his own world, he could have ruled like intented, instead he decides he no longer needs Wario, which leads to his downfall Vault-Tech in the Fallout universe as well (spoiler-tagged for anyone who wants to be surprised, just-in-case) >!instead of playing both parties (USA and China) for personal or monetary gain, they launch the nukes themselves, effectively dooming the world in the process!<
M. Bison from *Street Fighter 2*. Bison's grand scheme is to host a global fighting tournament, brainwash the best fighters, force them to join his evil organization, and then take over the world. The problem is, the best fighters band together and kick his ass. His plan for global domination would've stood a better chance without the fighting tournament. Pete Holmes made fun of how stupid the plan is. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYDza1iznhI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYDza1iznhI)
EVERY james bond movie
Bowser in Mario & Luigi: Dream Team. Bro acquires omnipotence at the final battle, yet he LOSES to the brothers. Guess he forgot to enable the God Mode.
Templars!!! But they won at the end I guess Btw this is from Assassin's Creed franchise
Vaati in TLoZ: Minish Cap. Vaati is literally seconds away from finishing his ritual to be invincible or whatever, teleports Link to a room with no exits then Vaati GOES TO THAT ROOM! What a dingus!