There are a lot of factors that go into declaring the best games of all time – great gameplay, great narratives, and great characters are all important things to consider. But the story-based games that truly leave an impact are the ones that have believable and terrifying villains.
Sci-Fi as a genre allows for infinite storytelling motifs. It’s all-encompassing, galactic even, which allows for some incredibly well-developed villain motivations and personas too. Villains whose ambitions rival the forces of the universe themselves don’t care for morality or justice. These villains have their eyes on something bigger than petty worries about being good.
10 GLaDOS (Portal)
GLaDOS is one of the most recognizable video game villains of all time. Valve’s Portal and Portal 2 are among the most renowned puzzle games of all time, in part for their innovative gameplay mechanics, but mostly for the inclusion of the sarcastic malevolent AI GlaDOS.
While GLaDOS is technically a robot and incapable of emotion, her actions speak louder than her programming. The worst part? She never gives the player their promised cake…
9 Simone (NieR Automata)
Simone from NieR Automata is not the main villain, as the game’s “true” villain is harder to identify due to so many routes available for players to take. Simone is a boss and main antagonist through the Amusement Park section of the game.
She is not to be taken lightly, though. Simone is, by all means, a cannibal of other machines, constantly consuming them to beautify herself. Her music and ambiance are nothing if not unsettling, too.
8 Dr. Breen (Half-Life 2)
Dr. Wallace Breen from Half-Life 2 is as self-serving as they come. Originally the Administrator of Black Mesa, he became Earth’s Administrator under the control of the Combine. He negotiated with the Combine to secure humanity’s survival with the condition that humanity submits completely to the will of the Combine.
He, however, was unaffected by these rules. He traveled as he liked, was favored by the Combine, and did everything in his power to ensure his own survival, not the survival of humanity.
7 Caesar (Fallout: New Vegas)
Fallout: New Vegas is filled to the brim with interesting characters and unique villains all across the Mojave wastelands. The evilest, though, must be Caesar. Caesar pictures himself as a modern version of the ancient Roman ruler – complete with historically accurate slavery, crucifixion, and other prehistoric evils.
Many fans take to Caesar for his grandiose speeches and charismatic ability to sway anybody to his way of thinking. Peer behind the words he says, though, to discover a psychopath taking advantage of the post-apocalypse.
6 The Flood (Halo)
The Flood are less of an individual villain and more of a villainous entity. The Flood is the primary driving narrative force in the Halo franchise and is interconnected with the creation of the Halo rings at their core. They are a sentient hive-mind race that seeks to consume the world and destroy all life in the universe: pretty standard evil stuff.
They don’t have a “conscious” desire to destroy, which raises the question of whether they are truly evil or just a force of nature. Nevertheless, the devastation they incur throughout the Halo series is as destructive as any conscious being could muster.
5 Sephiroth (Final Fantasy VII)
Sephiroth is one of the most iconic Final Fantasy villains, and perhaps one of the most recognizable characters from any JRPG of all time. Sephiroth was the primary antagonist of Final Fantasy VII, who showed his true evil at the end of the first Playstation 1 disc by killing a party member.
Sephiroth is so well-beloved as a villain that he was added to Super Smash Bros Ultimate in 2020 to match with Cloud. His terror-inspiring theme is enough to warrant him a place on any greatest gaming villains list.
4 SHODAN (System Shock 2)
SHODAN from System Shock 2 stands for Sentient Hyper-Optimized Data Access Network. She is a villain similar to SKYNET from the Terminator franchise or HAL9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey. SHODAN is an AI that turned evil through corruption.
SHODAN was also the primary antagonist in the original System Shock game and was thought to be destroyed. In fact, SHODAN landed on a faraway planet, biding her time and enslaving local species under a hive mind called The Many.
3 Handsome Jack (Borderlands)
Handsome Jack is simultaneously one of the evilest characters in gaming history and one of the most charismatic. He is the main antagonist of the Borderlands series, save for Borderlands 3, where he either appears as a person, a voice, or a holographic visage of his consciousness.
Handsome Jack is the embodiment of selfishness. He has doubles to protect himself, used his company to hunt for vaults, and has no regard for morality when it comes to those standing in his way. He’s egotistical and pure evil but has perhaps the funniest quotes of any character in the game. It’s no wonder they keep finding ways to bring him back for recent entries in the series.
2 The Reapers (Mass Effect)
The Reapers of Mass Effect are similar to The Flood in that they seek to annihilate the universe and wipe out all life without necessarily a conscious thought behind their actions. The Reapers are semi-sentient starship-like creatures that leave Dark Space every few millennia to purge the galaxy, part of a cycle of harvesting and rebirth that has occurred since the beginning of time.
Like the flood, these beings are not necessarily evil for having malevolent intentions, but they are evil for what they do to innocent beings. They are a recurring antagonist in the Mass Effect series, and perhaps one of the grandest evils ever represented in a sci-fi game.
1 Giygas (Earthbound/Mother)
Giygas from Earthbound is, simply, the embodiment of evil. The Universal Cosmic Destroyer is difficult for mortals to comprehend and is represented as a twisting, screaming face with an unnervingly blood-soaked color scheme. It seeks to remove the powers of PSI from humanity and create nightmarish realities for all those under its control.
This is why so many enemies in Earthbound seem innocent and out of place – Giygas made them violent by corrupting their minds, and seeks to corrupt all life that came after the original creations of the universe.
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