True, although Stalin would be a late leader pick for me if I was looking for a cultural win. You can also-- quite successfully-- have a National-Socialist fundamentalist police state, greased with the blood of slaves. One of the things I had to overcome when moving up skill levels in Civ IV was the mindset that I should revolt to civics like Emancipation as soon as possible and keep them for the rest of the game.
To be fair, he had COMPLETE retrograde amnesia seven years prior, and not in the way amnesia usually works, he even forgot how to eat properly. So at the start of the game he’s basically a seven year old in an older teenager/adult body.
Actually, the GTA protagonists aren’t that bad per se:
GTA III: “Claude Fido” never says a word through the whole game although it’s suggested in SA that he doesn’t have a tongue. So perhaps he was an asshole before.
GTA Vice City: Tommy Vercetti can be an asshole from time to time but is very nice to some people (like Avery, the Texan real estate developer) and doesn’t give too much shit to Lance for his increasingly paranoid phone calls.
GTA San Andreas: Carl Johnson is actually a nice kid. He moved out of the hood to get away from the gang violence that claimed his brother and only comes back when the same violence claims his mom. Though the game most of his friends betray him, the cops harass him mercilessly and he has to put up with Catalina for way too long. CJ deserves a medal for his class and patience considering some of the shit he goes through. Mind you, he does avenge all the betrayals by killing his opponents so he’s not entirely a model citizen.
GTA IV: Nico Bellic is an asshole, straight up. But so is everyone else in that game.
And just for fun, the Boss in the Saints Row series is definitely an asshole in SR2. He melts a man’s face off with radioactive goo, makes a man crush his girlfriend’s car (with her stuck in the trunk), buries a man alive, sets random civilians on fire, blows up several apartment buildings, etc, etc, etc.
Cole Phelps in LA Noire is kind of a dick. All the flashbacks to WWII suggest he was a terrible commander for his squad, he’s a snotty dick to most of the people he interacts with in the game, plus there are various things that happen in the game that prove he’s an dickhead that I would put into spoiler boxes if I knew how to do so.
I am somewhat conflicted by Niko Bellic from GTA IV. He starts off being a good guy who is drawn (back? though obviously in a new place) into the underworld against his will. By the end of it though, you seem to get the impression that he’s a dick too, with the added problem that he knows that this is basically the only life he has the tools to thrive in. I think Rockstar only really got this story arc right when they retooled it for John Marston in Red Dead Redemption.
what about Lara Craft?
blowing up archaeological sites with dynamite, slaughtering endangered species
girl power indeed!
[s.poiler]text you want to hide[/s.poiler]
Remove the dots, and you’re good to go.
The protagonists of Fallout III & Fallout: New Vegas and Dragon Age: Origins can be pretty dickish depending on the choices you make. Blowing up a town for profit, selling people into slavery, handing over a little girl to a demon for profit…
I realize we’re trending away from the OP, but if you want to talk about dickheaded choices, it’s hard to beat the Dominion series, where you can choose to be a god who manifests as a fountain of blood, whose magic relies on sacrificing innocents who are captured by your followers, and who commands an army of aquatic mind-controlling aliens bent on conquering the planet.
(Generally speaking, it doesn’t work to play the fountain of blood with the army of undead that spontaneously sprout from every country where your power holds sway, because there aren’t usually enough living victims to power your blood magic. So Rl’Yeh is a reasonable second choice in terms of evil followers.)
Riiiight
Main chars of ffxiii I really do not care about any of your own cack, just going for the fights now
Pacman, stop running from pigments of your pill fuelled psychosis, damn you
ffx, Wakka, though you were voiced by Bender (dimaggio) you are one complete tool
Aeries - MEE MEE MEE - See also Rinoa
The black guy from The Force Unleashed - If its that easy, you get down here and kill it rather than tell me what to do constantly
Master and commander of Starfox in Lylat wars - Of course it is a hefty bill to pay but you gave me a ship with infinite ammo
Chucky from Chucky Egg (commodore 64) Just ring the ducks neck when it comes after you and kick the odd chicken out of the way.
… And breathe
?! Dominions in the house ! Never thought I’d meet another soul who plays those games outside of the official forums :).
Also, they’re not innocents, they’re virgins. Big difference. You know wimminfolk, always up to some original sin or other. Better to use them to summon hordes of good, wholesome, moral demons from Hell, I say. And if you say otherwise you’re next on the blood sacrifice list, buddy.
That being said, I always found it even more dickish to be a martyr, which is to say cast the spell called Well of Misery. When you cast this spell, you make the suffering, disease and pain of the entire world coalesce into your own self, which does three things: a) you feel it all. All of it. All the time. That’s the martyr part. b) Everyone alive but you is happier than they’ve ever been, live longer etc… which translates into a worldwide bonus to income as people work harder and c) all this evil pain you transform into magical gems made of pure death, which you keep for yourself.
This last part is important, because those gems will be the fuel you’ll use to raise hundreds of undead monstrosities, up to and including dead (former) gods. Which leads us to the real dickish part: another player is going to want to dispel the Well ASAP, because it gives whoever cast it a huge power boost in the long run. Which means that this player (or rather, this god) is going to have to spend a lot of time, effort and resources to bring *misery *back to the world, including to his followers of course.
That’s right. By casting this spell, you’re essentially forcing someone else to become the biggest dick that ever (un)lived and betray the shit out of his own worshippers. It’s frickin’ sweet.
Yeah, there’s not much more to Claude or Tommy than to play them as psycho-for-hire, although Tommy went with more of a Tony Montana feel.
There’s one mission in San Fierro, Deconstruction, which pretty much defines disproportionate retribution. Some construction workers call CJ’s sister a whore, which isn’t nice admittedly. CJ’s response? Destroy the construction site, murder the workers and then pushes a porta-potty containing the foreman into a hole which he then dumps concrete into. Holy shit!
The main character in Privateer 2 is a bit of a dickhead, although he has his reasons. As evidence, there’s a clip in this youtube video. I couldn’t find a video of just the cutscene I was thinking of, but at 2:00 to 4:30 in that video he yells at a guy until he has a heart attack. Actually, doesn’t really yell at him, just talks at him angrily. Only yells at him after he’s dead.
The protagonist, Hawke, in Dragon Age II can be played all sorts of ways, but you get an infamous reputation in the epilogue, generally.
[spoiler]Pretty much whatever you do, you’re forced into siding either with the mages or the templars at the very end. Unfortunately both sides have become heavily corrupted, with most of the mages starting to use blood magic and turning into abominations, and the templars abusing the mages in terrible ways at the behest of their leader. The lead templar only got worse after she got a sword made out of some kind of corrupted lyrium, and turned into something horrible at the very end.
Regardless of who you side with, both the lead mage and templar end up dead at your hands. If you sided with the mages - and you don’t get the chance to say “never mind” after they all start turning into abominations - you’re seen as the inspiration to mages all over to rise up and rebel against the templars and the circles, while the mage who started the main revolt blew up the Chantry and killed untold innocents to do it, including the major hope for peace. Oh yeah, and this mage terrorist happens to be someone you know well and you get to decide whether or not to personally carry out an execution for that act, or to say “awesome, I <3 bombing buildings” and alienate other companions.
If you sided with the templars, again you don’t get the chance to switch, and your name is used as the symbol of the mages’ oppression, as they start to rebel anyway.
So things go to shit, you disappear soon after this all goes down, your friends (except maybe your lover, if you’re lucky) scatter to the winds, and you’re seen as responsible - one way or another - for the mages all beginning to revolt, while an arm of the Chantry hunts for you for one reason or another. Great.[/spoiler]
For that matter, the protagonist of Dragon Age:Origins can be a colossal asshole him/herself, if you roll that way. I’ve played most RPGs out there so the “good choice, evil choice” dichotomy that so often turns into “bleeding heart angel with empty pockets / stupid dick” was no new thang, but I still had a few “wait, they let you do that ?!” moments during the game.
My favourite such double-take:
[spoiler]When you go and try to contact the Baron who will hopefully help you unite the realm, you find out that he’s been sick, and moreover that ever since he’s taken ill the village that sits below his castle gets attacked by undead every day. They’re expecting a final wave of undead today that will wipe them out. Naturally, everyone (including most of your party) is already assuming you’re going to lend a hand, organize the defense and so forth.
But you can totally say “um, yeah, guys ? I’m here for the head honcho, really. Your whole village can burn for all I give a shit. I’m off to the castle. Have fun with the undead”. In which case the village is overrun, everybody dies, oh well life goes on.
I think it’s one of the few RPGs out there that actually allows simply declining such sidequests to save the world, instead of roping in “evil” players anyway in some fashion.[/spoiler]
Did you play the game all the way through? Because he changes quite a bit during the game. He’s quite deliberately an asshole at the start, and he has reasons that make sense to a 17 year old. And it’s important to remember that he IS a 17 year old boy who has had one parent leave before he was born, the other parent die, and then he gets raised in an orphanage and drafted into a military force before he can choose any career.
I couldn’t stand FFX’s characters, for the most part. Tidus-whiny little bitch. Yuna-pretentious little bitch. Riku or Rikku-annoying little sticky-fingered brat. Wakka-bad sports team leader, has commitment issues. Auron and Lulu and Kimhari (sp?) were OK. I wasn’t able to finish the game, but I did get through most of it.
Yeah, but he’s played by Clive Owen, so he’s still cool.
Good point - I know the aim of the thread is to not pick the instances where you get to choose to be a dick or not, but they do deserve some special notice for that particular plotline.
Can’t believe I forgot the overlord from Overlord. Pure dickish mayhem. I really need to play that again.
Eldred in Sacrifice. Over time you learn his backstory of basically destroying the world he just came from because the people were rebelling from his rule (they were rebelling because they viewed him as a tyrant and a usurper after he seized power when his king died).
He immediately upsets the delicate balance of the new world he has come to by taking missions from the five gods of the land. Including murdering several of them by his own hand.
You also get bonus dickhead points if you take most of your missions from Charnel the god of death and decay.
“Charnel death isn’t always the answer!” Eldred
“Yes, torture has its merits too.” Charnel
“Indeed” Eldred
(Final line from the Charnel path of the game as Eldred echoes a line from earlier in the game back to the god that first spoke it to him)
Oh god yes! Played it not too long ago, and I was completely unprepared for the “Doubt” button to actually be the “Intimidate and threaten whoever you’re talking to in a completely obnoxious and uncalled for manner” button.
Was very surprised when I started shouting and badgering a 15 year old rape victim 