Edit: holy shit I turn my head around for one second and I got 40 replies? THANK YOU ALL :D <3
I just rewatched Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight trilogy and following Bane’s and Miranda’s story made me realize that I’m a bit saturated in regards to playing as the hero, the protagonist, the “good guy” in PC games. While I love saving the world as much as the next person, I’d love to play as some perhaps self-righteous villain, or antagonist, or simply somebody portrayed in a way that’s meant to make the player sympathize with questionable morality or, at the very least, be conflicted about why you suddenly find yourself rooting for them.
I’m mostly looking for story driven open world single player games, but any recommendations are welcome. :)
Hmmm a day later and no one mentioned braid.
Dungeon Keeper.
Destroy all humans.
Spec ops the line.
Braid.
Manhunt.
Oh, Spec Ops was great. I totally thought it was going to be a COD-like game all pew pew go America let’s shoot up a burger king and teabag the enemy, but holy shit.
It’s one of those things where I want to forget everything so I can experience it again.
Same, I think that’s why it never was big, everyone just saw it as another 3rd person COD shooter. I played the game like 5 years after it was released and was totally blown away by the story. It’s mediocre gameplay but the story is so damn good.
Destroy all humans is so good, and they did a great job on the remaster!
oh Braid is so fucked up once you realize the story. At the end I was like “why the hell did I help this little prick?”
At the end I was like “why the hell did I help this little prick?”
Am… I this little prick? oh fuck…
One of the books really stuck with me though.
Our world, with its rules of causality, has trained us to be miserly with forgiveness. By forgiving too readily, we can be badly hurt. But if we’ve learned from a mistake and become better for it, shouldn’t we be rewarded for the learning, rather than punished for the mistake?
Dungeon Keeper 2 was just great.
The first 2 you are absolutely unequivocally the bad guy, those were going to be my suggestions. I think the second 2 it’s a little spoilery to tell people you’re the bad guy
I don’t think Spec ops is spoilers to reveal you’re a bad guy, not in 2026: you play the US, in the Gulf. You play the US doing US imperialism, it doesn’t hide that from you. It’s just later in the game it confronts you with what that really means.
Braid absolutely, but it’s 17yo at this point, any reasonable spoiler policy* has worn off. Meets the criteria, gets you all empathetic for the little shit, Tim, then makes you question it all. I think a first play through is impactful even knowing he’s a villain… It’s not that he’s a villain that is cool, it’s how you find out he’s a villain.
*Except for Outer Wilds the spoiler policy on that is eternal.
Eh, compare Spec Ops to its contemporaries and it’s definitely an outlier for treating you like a bad guy. Call of Duty, Battlefield, and Medal of Honor were definitely treating you like a hero. Still Spec Ops is much better than those games so if the discussion gets people to play it then I’m on board
The GTA series might be a good example. All of the protagonists of the games commit exceedingly worse crimes as the game progresses but they’re made to be sympathetic since they just want success in a world with not much other opportunities.
Games with karma systems may work as well if the bad option isn’t overtly evil. I’m thinking games like Dishonored, Fable 3, Undertale, or any Bethesda game.
Anti-hero protagonists like Kratos from God of War, Arthur Morgan from Red Dead 2, and V from Cyberpunk could also somewhat fit the bill.
The Witcher is quite famously morally grey, with no “good” choice to many of the major decisions.
Overlord, the first game
Had to scroll too far to find this one.
The 2nd one is better in some minor ways, but the OG is a classic
Some of the better RPGs allow you to play as an evil guy (equally fleshed out as the good guy playthrough), e.g. Baldur’s Gate 3 (it even has a special evil background storyline called The Dark Urge) or (some of?) the Mass Effect titles.
Cult of the Lamb is also a great game where you play a cult leader. Although the game’s design is strong on the entertaining/funny side, it’s kind of dark also.
Stellaris is a grand strategy game where you can play anything, from a ruthless ruler trying to destroy the whole galaxy to a pacifist trader.
Well, I may as well keep plugging my current obsession, Warhammer 40k: Rogue Trader. It’s a CRPG somewhere between BG3 and XCOM in gameplay, with a grimdark-flavored splash of Mass Effect.
You have 3 “convictions” that many lot of your decisions fall under. Iconoclast is kind of your standard good guy, but maybe somewhat naive trying to be that good guy in the Warhammer verse. But more relevant to you are Dogmatic and Heretic.
Heretic is pretty much evil as far as I can tell. Chaos worship and slaughter for power. Dogmatic is more like Judge Dredd, maybe? You make some harsh fucking decisions as dogmatic, like liquefying a few thousand people to power a computer you need to use, but you are doing it for what your character truly believes is the greater good of the Imperium.
Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous, Owlcat’s previous game, has some baddie paths too. You’re still fighting demons, but it’s more of an evil vs evil in some cases. Especially Lich or Swarm.
I ran Lich path on my first run of WOTR and it might be my favorite CRPG experience I’ve ever played. You’re evil, but you’re lawful evil, and the game gives you the opportunity to lean more lawful which I did. Excellent example of being smart evil instead of stupid evil which is exactly how I think a proper lich should be portrayed.
Any strategy game while you are evil laughing nefariously.
Becoming the crisis in stellaris and cracking planets
Dungeon Keeper comes to mind
Dark Souls 3. NO ONE can convince me you’re the good guy in that situation. It’s a shit world that ISN’T worth saving and the people who all realize this are the only ones that can save it and refuse to. so your job is to force them to save it.
All you have to do is read the lore on Yorm and then tell me you’re the good guy.
The endings confirm the Lords were completely right to abandon their duties.
Tap for spoiler
If you take their souls and Link the Fire (as was done in every previous cycle), the First Flame sputters and barely reacts, completely spent after countless eons prolonging Gwyn’s false Age of Fire.
The (IMO) best ending has you reveal the truth of the world to your Firekeeper, who then helps you end the Flame and usher in a new Age.
The secret ending where you take the First Flame into yourself and reunite it with the Dark Soul (presumably ascending to godhood while simultaneously returning the Flame to balance) is a close second, but it’s doubtful anyone other than you gets the benefits.
Life and Suffering of Sir Brante (and the upcoming sequel, of Prince Jerian) sees you play a character who is generally morally neutral - you choose your own path and can absolutely “evil max” and it has benefits sometimes.
Entropy Zero 2. It’s a mod of Half-Life 2 where you play as a combine soldier and it’s actually very well made for a mod.
This needs more updoots.
It is a seriously fantastic mod, has a great soundtrack, just all around awesome.
Mouthwashing.
You could do a durge run in Baldur’s Gate 3. Maybe also Hitman, but I think that’s more anti-hero.
Not even one mention of Prototype. What have the world become.
I somehow only remember that like a fever dream.
Prototype. Man. What a fucking BLAST that was. The super powers you had by the end of the game combined with the techniques you could use.
Surfing corpses, eating people alive to clone their appearance. Slicing, smashing, or just tearing apart tanks. Throwing cars. It was just absolute mayhem and I doubt we will see another game quite so unhinged.
Yeah, when Activision still make good and innovative game. Prototype is a rare gem that escape a lot of people’s radar somehow, despite that game selling quite well back then. I blame the name.
The Dark Queen of Mortholme. You play as the boss, repeatedly killing the hero who comes back stronger and more skilled.
This might produce some arguments, but The Last of Us. Joel is far from a good guy. This is established in the first few minutes of the game and you get enough “hints” about that throughout.
There’s actually a pretty new video about that on Second Wind: https://youtu.be/fY1FsMK_cos
Other more obvious games are many many Star Wars games where you can either choose or outright start as the bad guy, like TIE Fighter, the Jedi Knight series, Knights of the Old Republic 1+2 + The Old Republic, Squadrons, those Battlefield games and the Age of Empires clones (can’t remember the names) and Force Commander as well I think. Oooh and Rebellion.
