Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-5085906-20130627191357/@comment-1672596-20150725000715

0nighthawk0 wrote: Weedle, you're acting like charismatic villains don't exist, that they all must follow the line of "I'm fully evil and there's shit you can do about it.", and I agree with Bluerock there, that is a very simplistic way of viewing it. A villian should be more then just evil, pure evil villians are so cliche that it isn't even funny anymore because practically every movie/game/comic/book containing heroes has one and it's always the same thing "herpy derp I'm evil, look how evil I am, have I shown you how evil I am?" which, IMO, is just plain stupid.

And even the Metal Gear universe knows charismatic villains, people whom were the bad guys but you actually could still feel sorry for them. Right back in Metal Gear 2 we were shown Villians that cared, Black Ninja, Gray Fox, Big Boss were all bad guys, and yet they weren't outright evil. MGS as well, Psycho Mantis was f'd up, but there was a reason behind it, he even had a form of redemption in the end, Sniper Wolf too. This trend continues with every following game, MGS2 with Olga and Fortune, MGS3 with The Boss, MGS4's BB unit all had reasons why they were what they were. They weren't outright evil, a villain doesn't need to be outright evil to be a villian.

The best example is still with Portable Ops IMO, Gene was a charismatic villain, he was a bad guy but he wasn't downright evil, he had a vision, one that Big Boss basically ended up sharing.

And MGS4 didn't really paint Big Boss to be a good guy, I certainly never considered him that, the man wanted constant conflict, a never ending war so that soldiers would always be used and orphans would be trained into capable soldiers. That's not something a good guy would do, but within it there was still a motion of freedom for everyone, unlike the strict control Zero wanted...hence Big Boss was simply the lesser of two evils, but evil nonetheless. Actually, that's not what I implied at all. There are plenty of villains who were charismatic yet knew full well and embraced the fact that they were evil villains: There's Palpatine, for example: He actually was charismatic, charismatic enough to actually have the Empire bent to his will and even get himself elected in the first place. There's also Albert Wesker, who managed to recruit the likes of Jack Krauser and Excella Gionne to his side. Even Colonel Volgin was charismatic enough for the GRU forces to actually continue to pursue Snake and EVA to stop him despite Volgin being dead. Maleficent and Ursula were also very charismatic, yet they knew full well that they WERE pure evil and embraced it.