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The Case for Villain Depth

NotaRobot1006·12/8/2019, 2:04:30 AM·10 votes·11,003 views

A character should exist as more than an obstacle for another character to destroy.

That's my TL;DR, I'm putting it at the top for convenience's sake. Now for the long essay part:

It's up to the good guys to stop the bad guys. But bad guys work best when they're actual people instead of people-shaped things. This requires them to have depth. They need a reason to be bad guys, otherwise you could swap 'em out with a fire and get the same story. Hero faces obstacle, hero struggles, hero wins. No one cares about the fire because the narrative gives us no reason to. It's just there and causing problems, so it's gotta be taken out.

That's what I'm worried about running into with characters like Rhaast and Thresh. Rhaast doesn't have a bio, and all we know of him pre-Kayn is "murder guy wants to murder because murder." And if he's just an obstacle for Kayn to destroy and not a person, that's all we're gonna get.

Thresh does have a bio, but all we've got from it was "jerk got job in magic basement, became Evil jerk, did Evil jerk things." Why was he a jerk in the first place? Was he given an opportunity to become less of a jerk or just shoved into the basement job? Why did the BI shove their problem under the proverbial rug instead of trying to solve it?

If he's just an obstacle in Lucian and Senna's stories, we're not likely to know more. Which I consider a bummer. With Rhaast, you could put forward the argument that he's not a real champion (even though he's got, you know, a full half of the gameplay and VO). Thresh doesn't even have that excuse. He just shows up as needed in stories about other people, does evil, gets thwarted sometimes. He's less a person and more a plot device. I think he and Rhaast would be more compelling characters if they get to be people in their own right instead of just things to kill.

And since I'm talking about personhood, I need to put this out here too: depth doesn't de-villainize or "woobify" a character. Look at Mordekaiser. He's got a beautiful bio that explains why he does what he does: He was denied the eternal paradise he was promised because that's the way the universe runs, and his only option was to accept it and fade away to seemingly nothing. Then he decided that the universe itself needed to be fixed and made a whole realm. Dude has a detailed backstory, and dare I say it, a somewhat sympathetic one. None of this makes him any less of a bad guy. He still warped souls to serve his own ends, created a murder empire, and generally screwed over everyone who's not him. But he's an amazing character because he's a person with motives, not just a Bad Thing Causer.

Sylas is another good example. He could have just been the Evil Demacian Mage, but he got background instead. He hates the Demacian approach toward magic because he's personally seen some of the most extreme examples of their approach. He hates the nobility because he knows they can get away with being mages in secret when he couldn't. We get all of this info about who he is as a person and why he believes the things he does thanks to his bio and stories. And he's still a reprehensible scoundrel. He still murders totally innocent people just because they had jobs working for nobles. He still goads on-the-fence mages toward murder and bloody revolution. He still played Lux like a fiddle because it benefited him.

So before you say Thresh and Rhaast don't "need" depth, we've seen what happens when a villain gets depth: They get way cooler.

22 Comments

TheMan29212/8/2019, 5:26:40 AM7 votes

I dont think every villain needs sympathy to be a good character though. and I mean I'm talking about Thresh here. maybe I'm wrong, but a reason many like Thresh is because just how evil he is

of course, let there be more to him. but does he HAVE to be a villain that you need to think "awe, only if his life was better" when you learn about him?

Yordle Gunner12/8/2019, 2:07:22 AM6 votes

Counterpoint. That's not realistic in every case.

I like vilaines with depth but that shouldn't mean that every guy who just wants to do "evil" stuff should be obsolete. Runeterra isn't a single story, it's a universe. And a universe has lots of elements in it.

HonestJohnTheCon12/8/2019, 4:21:58 AM2 votes

Thresh is still, for the most part, an entertaining, scary, and effective villain, but he could still definitely use some depth. Good post.

Velzard of Koz12/8/2019, 11:29:18 AM2 votes

And I don't like forced depth. There are sadists, psychopaths, sociopaths, serial killers and natural forces. There's nothing wrong with that.

I don't like they had to change Void into "Watchers have headache from our world" instead of keeping the Void merely a cosmic mold, consuming, a natural force that you try to resist. If tornado is ravaging some lands, there's no depth needed to it and you can still make a fine story of struggle for survival from it.

I don't like they had to give Annie a depth. She would work just fine as child born with big power due to heritage which would have the trade-off of her being mentally unstable. In fact, Riot could expand a lot of logic into it.

  • They could've established a child of two Mages naturally inherits greater power, explaining existence of champs like Annie or Syndra

  • To explain why nations like Noxus wouldn't experiment with that, it would be established that these children are naturally mentally unstable due to their brain not handling the power the way non-human supernatural beings would - this type of power with trade-off is good logic cover-up, for example witchers in Witcher, in order to avoid someone wanting to breed natural witchers which would be logical attempt but create straigthforward storytelling of witcher-breeding arms race, are sterile as effect of the mutations which makes sense - many unnaturally bred animals cannot reproduce

  • They could've made Syndra the story of her only truly being herself when she's danger to those around her (which it technically is or should be), further reinforcing that her mentor was trying to cure her, making hope that these children wouldn't need to be outcasts -> in fact, should Noxus learn about the possibility to tame them, could give additional reason for them to focus on conquering Ionia specifically, to get the knowledge of the mentor's progress

The Shadow Isles is malevolent force. There's nothing "deep" in that, it's like nuclear fallout, twisting things in its vicinity due to one accident. However, those who try to cleanse it need a figure as an antagonist so they wouldn't be fighting just some colored fog. Tresh and Karthus would be primary antagonists - Tresh a sadist who enjoys torturing people, Karthus a sociopath obssesed with spreading his "religion" like Victor or Malzahar. They work just fine as sick individuals.

Should there be too many of those, that would be boring. But you have plenty of opportunities to bring depth for variety elsewhere. Hecarim is the only one who'd need depth, not being someone who represents mourning mist (Tresh literally caused it and Karthus embraces it while hecarim is trapped like others) but still being bad guy, and you'd need only something as simple as him holding grudge against Leandros and Kalista, trying to prove himself better like little kid, which he already partially has. All the others corrupted have reasons: Yorick has culture to restore, Maokai has spirits to restore, Kalista has vengence to commit etc. etc.

There's shitton of characters with motives and depth, having few who are just sick individuals or natural forces or representations of natural forces is okay.

Also you can have simple vilaing If they are not the focus but the story is. Avatar TLA worked just fine, too, because Ozai barely ever did something, he was just the gate that leads to an end, because the focus on the story was everywhere else. There were smaller antagonists with more focus and more depth, those obssesed with manipulation, those who hold grudge etc. Azula had one pulled-out-at-the-last-moment depth moment and was mostly a sociopath or sadist herself and worked well.

Korra on the other hand focused the story of the villains, their motives, the good in that and the extremist side, so it needed them to have more relevant motives. There was the Fanatical Equal Rights Activist, Fanatical Environmentalist Activist, Fanatical Anarchist and Fanatical Pragmatist. The last one was the only one who felt a little bit unnecesarily exaggerated for the sake of being eviler than neutral, which was kinda ironic since they tried to sway it into "I've learned what I did wrong" theme.

DemiMax12/9/2019, 10:30:30 AM2 votes

Yeah I agree. I would like to be able to understand my villains, not relate, but understand, even if it's morally wrong. I'm fine with a bad guy doing bad things but I need a reason, why are they doing this? Do they like it? How did they find out that they liked it? When did they crossed the line and how was that experience for them?

You can have a bad guy doing bad things, but I'd like to delve a little bit deeper. I don't need a tragic and relatable backstory all the time. Just one where I can be like: "Okay I can see why that character thinks this way, or how they got to that conclusion." Doesn't mean I agree with it.

However, what I think really is a problem is character assassinations and/or the dumbing down of villain and concept threats. Now THAT is something I'm really afraid of, since we got a slight taste of that with Senna and Kaisa . If your villains constantly loose, are always thwarted and straight up killed sometimes (even though they come back) I can not and will not take them seriously since they seem to be unable to perform the one thing they (as a character) need to perform, which is being an obstacle/threat. You can't have the ups without the downs, I won't care for your heroes victory if there never really was a chance of defeat, if they never got defeated/if they always win no matter how hard you try for me to care, i just won't.

There is also how characters sometimes contradict themselves and act illogcally which is my biggest problem I have with how Riot handled Thresh and their response as to whether Thresh needs a new VO.

ModRowanstar12/10/2019, 3:31:35 PM2 votes

I concur with this posting. Adding backstory is not about weakening the villain or making them sympathetic, but about helping us to understand why and how they became evil and what their personality and goals are. This is something I like about Dark Star Rhaast: he is pure evil, but he has this weird jokingly villainous sense of humor. I'd like to see Riot elaborate more on Rhaast.

ModKnightsKemplar12/8/2019, 3:00:07 AM2 votes

I can see your point on Thresh, but while it's valid, I feel he's the only character in the game that has this problem to quite the extent that he does. And, on top of that, he does have some background. The whole Shadow Isles region is a bit flat, though, and I feel that Thresh is just a reflection of that. It's sort of an interesting part of the lore, but the champions in it lack motivation.

With Rhaast, I think you're oversimplifying. He's locked in a struggle for control with Kayn. I feel it's realistic for his character to be somewhat wrapped up in that struggle for the present time. That was kind of the character concept. I wouldn't argue that Rhaast isn't a champion, but I do think it's valid to say he's half of a champion. Joker isn't that interesting without Batman, either, frankly, but that's ok. When I view him that way, I like him. Rhaast and Kayn are both a bit lacking individually; it's their entwined fates that make them different from the rest of the roster (ok, except Varus, but that's a whole other thing tbh).

Jaspers12/8/2019, 12:33:30 PM1 votes

Here's the think, your post is well made and I agree some villains in fiction need characterisation, development, all that. It helps understand them, their goals ideals. Look at Magneto or Red Skull, they both started off as comical "I'm the person you fight" but over the years, the way they have developed has turned them into superb characters and show different sides of similar tropes. Both want to prioritise their race over others but Magneto and Red Skull are nowhere near on the same scale. This depth helps their character and for readers to understand them.

BUT "But bad guys work best when they're actual people instead of people-shaped things."

That's just not true. Bad guys work best when they create an obstacle for the hero to overcome. Whether it is morals, strength or whatever.

The reason I say this is because of the MU's greatest villain ever created, The Fury.

The Fury is a thing that kills superhumans, that's it. It (in it's final form) could adapt to nearly anything thrown at it because of how it was designed. The Fury is a villain which you don't reason with, there's no convincing it to not do what it's designed to do. There's not moral goal to understand. It's design to kill.

In this, the hero has a goal to overcome, in this case it's an unstoppable being and their fear of it.

Rhaast (and the original Darkin lore) was like this, Rhaast is a nutter, manipulative and is out for killing things (including Kayn). Kayn is trying to purify the scythe, overcome Rhaast's essence and not lose himself to a manipulative nutter talking in his head. That's what he is overcoming and it fits well based on the idea that Rhaast doesn't have over-complicated charactisation.