Final Fantasy X

9. Paxton Fettel

You know what? If F.E.A.R. was serious about psychopathic cannibal supersoldier Paxton Fettel being such a terrible guy, F.E.A.R. wouldn’t send the guy’s own brother to liquidate him. That’s just asking for complications. If Mario went rogue tomorrow, we would not send Luigi to bring him in. Doesn’t make sense.

Above: Oh right, like you wouldn’t play the hell out of this

Yeah, and you know what else? If Paxton Fettel was the deadly renegade he’s made out to be, his ultimate motivation would turn out to be a little more malevolent than looking out for his hard-done-by momma. Did anyone truly, irredeemably evil ever do their dastardly work out of love for their dear old Mom? For the sake of argument, we’re saying no.

Shut up.

10.Yggdrasill

While Machiavellian half-elf Yggdrasill causes no shortage of problems for Tales of Symphonia’s Ragtag Band of Heroes, it’s revealed midway through the game that his secret identity is actually that of (spoiler, obviously) Mithos, the legendary hero of the game’s world. This is kind of like if the guy who kept stealing your parking spot at the mall turned out to be Abraham Lincoln.

Above: A Reasonable Comparison 

Even without this somewhat crucial factor in place, Yggdrasill’s most dire misdeeds – which are hardly up there with repeated carpark-stealing anyway – are done in the name of resurrecting his martyred sister and/or combating the systematic racism that continues to plague the game’s worlds. So the guy saved the union between realms and is a tireless fighter of racial intolerance. And it’s your job to kill him. Nice one, champ.

Above: An image that summarizes the plot of Tales of Symphonia as well as anyone has ever done

11. Kane

The Command & Conquer series’ designated personification of war, Kane seems bent on blowing shit up all the livelong day. We could take the easy option here and point out that that one of his first recognised gigs was as adviser to Joe Stalin – any enemy of Hitler’s is a friend of ours, right? – but we’ll give you more credit than that.

Above: Apparently developer Westwood thinks Stalin was a Klingon 

After all, Kane’s entire schtick is the betterment of mankind. Whether it’s a newly-discovered element or a salvaged alien technology, Kane and his chums in the Brotherhood of Nod are all about finding out long-term ways to make human life better. They just happen to have plans that invariably involve making a lot of human lives an awful lot worse, at least in the short term.

The very immediate short term, in some cases.

12. Meta Knight

In the surprisingly intricate continuity of the Kirby series, Meta Knight is a recurring character often presumed to have the same basic aims as Kirby. This is not quite fair to either party: Meta Knight actually has aims, which usually involve saving the world, defeating evil, opposing injustice - you know, the standard good-guy folderol. BOOOO-RING.

This would be fairly unremarkable, except that Meta Knight is invariably the bad guy, whereas the figure the games focus on – the character played by you, the guy tasked with taking down the heroic Meta Knight – is an animated marshmallow whose entire mission statement boils down to “eat things; spit them out to make room for more eating.” It’s like if Batman picked a fight with a morbidly obese shut-in, and you were supposed to root for the shut-in.

Oct 1, 2009

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