10 Most Disappointing Video Game Villains

The conflict between hero and villain is often what makes a good story work. In almost all fiction - especially genre fiction - the hero's motivation is to counter what the villain has done, is doing, or will do. Every step of the main character's journey is spurred on by the villain's scheming - the villain acts, the hero reacts, and the journey continues.

Batman has his ideological opposite in Joker, who leads their never ending dance in his attempts to break Batman's beliefs in objective morality and order. Magneto's extreme tactics motivate the X-Men to perform their heroics in order to show the world that not all mutants want to be enemies with humanity, who in turn spur Magneto.

Now, this is all a very simplified explanation of storytelling, but it demonstrates why these kinds of fundamentals are so important. Because without a good villain, everything else ends up being kind of a dud.

Sometimes a lame villain is just boring or predictable, thus causing the story to become boring and predictable. Other times they just turn out to be wimps, ruining what should be a climactic and satisfying victory.

These are the most disappointing video game villains.

As great as Rocksteady's Batman: Arkham series was, they always struggled with their villains. We all remember the bizarre and oddly cringe Joker-Bane monster at the end of Arkham Asylum. Arkham City course-corrected a bit by spreading out its major antagonist roles across a few characters. And finally they settled on an original villain in Arkham Knight.

Except he wasn't really original, as anyone with even a cursory knowledge of Batman lore knew it was Jason Todd, the second Robin who was thought killed by the Joker, only to return as the lethal vigilante, Red Hood.

And that's all the Arkhman Knight is - Red Hood with a different helmet and an entire mercenary army he got from somewhere. Oh and of course took the name of Arkham Asylum, which really made no sense in the context of the game's story and seemingly only happened to maintain the "Arkham" title used for the previous games.

Rocksteady should have just used Red Hood. The story would have been much better served having the dynamic between Batman and Jason from the beginning rather than saving it for an endgame twist everyone knew was coming.