Intro
A while back we talked about the mechanics villain and the narrative villain, but since we just recently talked about heroes again
I figured I'd use that as an excuse to talk about a particular type of villain that I've wanted to talk about for a long time:
The Force of Nature
The Force of Nature is akin to the narrative villain in the fact that its primary purpose is to enhance the narrative
But how the force of nature goes about it is radically different.
Where the narrative villain is a person,
a character with their own needs and desires and motivations, the force of nature is the embodiment of some primal aspect of reality
They're more a representation than a character. They allow us as creators to confront the hero with some aspect of themselves,
or of society and through doing so either learn more about the hero themselves or explore concepts through the lens of that hero.
The Joker is a perfect example of this, a lot of the time he isn't really a character in a standard sense
He's not even really a person
He's the embodiment of chaos, as such he serves as a perfect foil to Batman. He doesn't need rational motivations,
he doesn't require standard human emotions. He is simply a force of nature, chaos personified.
He serves as a contrast to Batman, as a way to test and push the limits of a character built around control and order, to make the hero
examine his code in the face of its extreme opposite.
He forces Batman to face the question of whether he's really bringing order to society or whether as a vigilante operating outside the law
He really serves the law at all.
As a force of nature Joker allows the Author's to examine these questions subtly through his very
interactions with Batman rather than bludgening the reader with these questions through exposition
Sauron is of course another such villain. He isn't the character in a standard sense either
And he's certainly not a relatable human being in any way,
instead he serves to let tolkien address questions of the use of power for its own sake,
militarism and fascism and the value of hope, he stands as the
opposing force for the main characters in order to make their virtues and their flaws have greater meaning;
Kefka, Pyramid Head,
Sin, all of these are force of nature type villains and in many ways
force of nature villains are easier to deliver on in games than your standard narrative kind because this type of villain is primarily created by
how they act rather than what they say,
So how does one go about creating this type of villain?
Well first you have to decide on what primal force they represent
This is actually the easy part as it simply depends on what type of story you want to tell, the hard part is
specificity. These characters only work if you have a clear idea of exactly what they represent. They can't just represent evil; they can represent chaos,
insecurity, the dangers of the military industrial complex.
Drill down as much as you can and then make sure they stick to what they are throughout your story.
There will be moments where you feel like you should make them narrative villains,
but you actually may not have to worry about that at all, so long as they serve to represent a way to explore questions and
your chosen themes and show more of the character of your protagonists,
they won't fall into the trap of simply being the big bad. If you do decide to walk down the difficult road of trying to
add character and humanity to a force of nature villain though, the only times I've seen it done
successfully is in the context of them wrestling with the very fact that they are a force of nature and by definition
can't deviate from their single focused worldview.
This has been done with the Joker a few times too. The killing joke probably being one of the most notable and best examples.
But whatever you do, while you're searching for the specificity you need to really deliver on one of these characters,
understand that to get it
you really have to know your world and the rest of your characters. Which means these villains are often a late
creation in the cycle of your work. If you look at Sauron the form of him we know from the lord of the rings, comes
after more than a decade of Tolkien playing around with the world of Middle-earth, and the Joker evolved into the primal force
we know him as today through years and years of
stories and iterative work. That doesn't mean you can't put one in your story on the first go by any means, you just have to
understand that force of nature villains finds their value entirely in what they let us say about the other
characters and the rest of the world. So we'd better have those figured out first so we can understand how our villain relates to them
Okay,
two other quick things. First the obvious
Force of Nature Villains can be a literal force of nature or not, either way, you'll notice that many of these types of villains actually
end up being
beasts or gods, which removes the necessity for us as players to understand them on any human level.This is an easy narrative device and
you'll see it all the time in classic literature.
These tend to deny you some of the subtleties you get with the human force of nature. And it also denies you the
possibility of creating the kind of quirky and interesting
antagonists who the player might even root for just because the logical extremes of an ideology can be so interesting.
But these bigger
monster godlike force of nature villains will save you a lot of time and effort in trying to explain
them or make them seem reasonable. As we're kind of trained to just accept monsters and gods as forces of nature.
Lastly if you do choose to make your force of nature villain a human, that doesn't mean that they can't have
character. To be a human force of nature,
you almost by definition have to be mad or obsessed to the point of insanity, which can create some fantastic
characters. The more that you can explore that, the more that you can play with how their particular brand of force of nature-ishness interact
with the world the more opportunity you'll have to let them be colorful characters as well.
Just stick to your guns and no matter how crazy
they're inflexibility makes a situation, run with that and see where it leads you. See you next week!
Outro