There are plenty of games out there that let players make dialogue choices to become good or evil characters. The Karma system in Fallout: New Vegas is a good example, which gives players a reason to replay the game. There are also games where players knowingly play a villain character in their origin story before they turn evil.
Best Games That Let You Be The Hero Or The Villain
Whether they want to be the world-saving hero, or tear the world apart ass the terrifying villain, these games give players the option to do both.
Then there are even wilder and rarer games where players think they are the hero, but a dark twist toward the end reveals the opposite. The following games strain this idea a bit, but the twists are indeed plentiful, and some may not know about them decades later.
There will be spoilers for all of the games in these brief wrap-ups.
Braid
Let Her Go
Braid is perhaps the easiest example to explain, as the game itself is a simple puzzle platformer that lets players rewind time if they mess up. That mechanic is actually a clue because the entire time the protagonist, Tim, is working backwards. He’s looking for a princess who is being held captive by a knight, and when he gets there, players find out about the role reversal.
In actuality, Tim’s obsessive behavior over the princess forced a knight to step in to protect her and not the other way around, which was a wild revelation for a platformer in the late 2000s.
BioShock Infinite
Will The Circle Be Unbroken?
BioShock Infinite
10/10
- Released
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March 26, 2013
- ESRB
-
M for Mature: Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Language, Mild Sexual Themes, Use of Alcohol and Tobacco
- Engine
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Unreal Engine 3
BioShock Infinite’s main plot concerns a detective, Booker, going into the sky to discover a floating utopia, Columbia, wherein he thinks he was sent there to rescue a girl named Elizabeth from a tyrannical ruler named Comstock. In actuality, Booker is another version of Comstock, and Elizabeth is another version of Booker’s daughter, Anna.
It’s a very complex story to summarize, but to get the “good” ending, players basically have to make Booker choose to die instead of accepting baptism. By doing this, he will not turn into Comstock, and thus the cycle of violence will be broken. The BioShock games overall have divisive endings like this.
Stranger Of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin
A Prequel All Along
Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin was marketed as a reimagining of the first Final Fantasy game, but as a Soulslike. As Jack, he would lead the chosen Warriors of Light, but throughout the game, players would notice something wasn’t right. At the beginning of the first Final Fantasy, the Warriors of Light have to face Garland, who was once a chosen hero as well, which then leads players to find out about the time loop and an entity known as Chaos.
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That’s what Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin goes over in greater detail. Jack turns into Garland and sacrifices himself, along with his fellow party members, to act as villains so that real heroes can one day truly break the cycle. When it comes to time travel in games, things can get complex, but either way, the revelation in this secret prequel was stunning.
Castlevania: Lords Of Shadow
A Villain’s Origin Story
Castlevania: Lords of Shadow was set up as the earliest entry in the Castlevania series at this time. It was about Gabriel Belmont, who was pursuing the titular Lords of Shadow, bosses that controlled monsters across the land. By killing these bosses, Gabriel had to accept darkness into his heart, which then led him to become Dracula.
Beyond pop culture, Dracula is the overarching villain in the Castlevania series, with the Belmont clan being the chosen warriors to face him. Castlevania: Lords of Shadow was an interesting take on the lore to have the Belmont clan be both the cause and cure for the curse.
Heavy Rain
Riddle Me This, Detective
Heavy Rain is a thrilling adventure game wherein players can control four characters, and the actions presented in each chapter will affect the story. Ethan is ultimately the main character as the father of a kidnapped boy named Shaun, who is tasked with going through Saw-like puzzles to get him back from the kidnapper known as the Origami Killer.
Norman is an FBI Agent looking into the case, Madison is a journalist, and Scott is a private detective. Scott turns out to be the Origami Killer, making the actions players commit in his chapters take on a whole other meaning, but in the good ending, Scott gets his comeuppance with Ethan and Shaun reuniting.
Shadow Of The Colossus (2018)
They Did Nothing Wrong
Shadow of the Colossus is an action-adventure game wherein the hero, Wander, has good intentions. To revive a girl named Mono, Wander steals an ancient sword to kill Colossi in a forbidden land, as told by the gods.
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These Colossi were actually good, as menacing as they looked, because they contained parts of an evil spirit, Dormin, that this god tricked Wander into reviving, thus leading to his possession. Thankfully, a group of warriors manages to reseal Dormin, Mono reawakens, and she finds Wander has been reborn as a baby.
Spec Ops: The Line
War Crimes
Spec Ops: The Line is set in Dubai, following the actions of Captain Walker and his two men, First Lt. Adams and Staff Sgt. Lugo. The squad’s goal is to go after an AWOL commander named Konrad, who speaks to Walker throughout the game, which is actually all in his head.
Konrad died a long time ago, and the actions Walker commits in the game are through his delusions about Konrad. This is why Walker’s crew acts strangely toward him at times, who all die in the game, whereas the fate of Walker is up to players based on several endings from his death to his survival as a deranged hero.
A Way Out
An Antihero Betrayed
A Way Out is a co-op game wherein Leo and Vincent, who meet in prison, agree to escape, which is actually a very small part of the game. The rest is them escaping police and going through other misadventures, all leading to the two men going after a gang boss named Harvey, who set up Leo to be killed in prison.
After taking Harvey’s compound down and retrieving an artifact, Vincent reveals he was an undercover FBI Agent the whole time, who convinced Leo to help get revenge against Harvey because he killed his brother. In a climactic showdown, both players will have to kill the other, so whoever is playing Vincent turns out to sort of be the bad guy in this story about antiheroes.
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