A hero’s journey toward becoming a villain is a popular trope across all forms of media, so it’s hardly surprising that video games have been exploring the concept for decades. Such stories are particularly well suited to RPGs, where player agency, choices, and consequences can make them far more impactful than in books or movies. It’s your story, after all. Whether you can switch sides as the protagonist or discover that a trusted companion who stood beside you throughout the entire journey was someone else all along, such moments tend to stay with you.
Video games offer countless ways to frame this intriguing concept, further enhanced by their interactive and often cyclical nature. A protagonist can be corrupted by power or broken by trauma. An apparent hero may deliberately conceal their true intentions until the end. Two characters can simply fail to find common ground during the finale. Some games even connect separate entries or New Game Plus cycles by turning yesterday’s playable hero into tomorrow’s greatest threat.
Each of the RPGs below puts its own spin on that transformation.
For this list, we are focusing on different executions of the basic idea. It isn’t limited to games where the main playable protagonist becomes the final villain, although those examples are naturally included as well.
Warning: Heavy story spoilers below!
My issue with BioWare’s later games having weak main villains, from Dragon Age: Inquisition’s Corypheus to Mass Effect: Andromeda’s Archon and Anthem’s Monitor, was finally addressed through the Inquisition and The Veilguard combo, where Solas, or the Dread Wolf, takes the spotlight. It might be too simple to call Solas either a hero or a villain, since he is far more complex than that, but his arc across both games fits nicely here. Initially introduced as a trustworthy, if suspiciously wise, elven companion, Solas is eventually revealed as Fen’Harel, an ancient elven god seeking to restore his once-great civilization, even if doing so means destroying Thedas as it currently exists.
No matter one’s stance on the quite divisive The Veilguard, the game stays true to its promise of making Solas a key figure and wraps up his arc beautifully. From the intense prologue framing the Dread Wolf as the main villain who must be stopped at all costs, to his later role as an untrustworthy ally and prisoner with hidden motives, Solas remains one of the best Dragon Age characters. Players can also influence his fate in several ways, including fighting him directly, tricking him, or convincing him to make the necessary sacrifice willingly.
For quite some time, the Torchlight series stood as a true successor to Diablo 2, so it’s especially interesting that the sequel borrows a similar hero-villain trope from its legendary influence and gives it its own spin. Just as a reminder, Diablo 2 sees players face Diablo within the body of the Warrior from the original game, who previously defeated the demon and tried to contain it within himself. In Torchlight 2, the twist is largely similar: the Alchemist, one of the three playable heroes from the original game, becomes the sequel’s central villain, driving the entire story even if he isn’t technically its final boss.
سەرچاوەی فەرمی بە زمانی ئینگلیزی: https://gamerant.com/rpgs-hero-becomes-final-villain-game/
