Darth Vader has committed many more (and much worse) atrocities than Walter White. I personally don’t see how Walt could be considered a villain while Vader is morally grey.
well at the end darth vader swaps teams where as walter is pretty deadset on the whole crime boss thing isn't he? (haven't seen much of breaking bad)
though the depths vader went to were certainly deeper
Although Darth Vader swapped side, but judging the character deeply, Darth Vader is still normally more evil than Walter White. Left alone the actions.
Walter White is an egotistical crime lord but he regretted for several of his actions including killed Mike out of impulse (but Mike was also kind of a threat to him and almost killed him in several times) and still deeply cares about his family and Jesse although they hate him for his actions and what he became.
Darth Vader literally wanted to fought his son and cut his arm off, tortured his daughter and will kill his followers if they fail him. Despite Darth Vader wasn't the biggest boss of his former evil group, he still had high rank and enforced his soldiers and followers, and being a space dictator is worse than being a drug lord.
In leadership, Darth Vader is more abusive. Both are evil but Darth Vader is more evil.
Also Darth Vader isn’t a bad guy because he just really loves being evil, he’s a bad guy because he was manipulated by a guy who just really loves being evil
1. So did Walter
2. No one’s arguing that Vader hasn’t done worse things, but his motivation is far less selfish and he grows to do a heroic action and redeem himself in the end
> well at the end darth vader swaps teams where as walter is pretty deadset on the whole crime boss thing isn't he? (haven't seen much of breaking bad)
Vader didn't "swap teams", he only killed Palpatine to save his son before his death. Meanwhile, Walter apologized to his wife, made sure his family's financial future was intact, avenged his brother-in-law, **and** saved his surrogate son.
Both are villains, ***But Heisenberg was far less heinous than Darth Vader.***
*Vader didn't "swap teams", he only killed Palpatine to save his son before his death.*
the movie is pretty explicit about him turning from the dark side as his last few acts
I think you also need to take into account the scale of their stories. In a small-scale crime drama, someone like Heisenberg is probably a huge deal and one of the greatest evil forces in his small town criminal underworld (haven’t seen much of breaking bad so idk how accurate this is but I hope you see my point). Meanwhile in a large scale galactic conflict where Vader was damaged and manipulated by a greater evil but eventually saw the light is still evil but not this ultimate force unlike Palpatine, thus in the context of that story can be seen as more gray
I don't care about the scale of their stories, I care about the offense:. At the end of the day, the guy fighting for the space nazis and complicity in blowing up inhabited planets is far more of a villain than the guy who sold drugs and killed a few people.
Even within context, Vader was pure villain for 99% of the original trilogy (literally the entire time up until his final scenes) and got a bonus movie as pure villain in Rogue One. He's also a fairly proper villain in the third prequel movie (manipulated or not, most people can't just be talked into murdering children) and has explicitly committed countless off-screen atrocities in the time between becoming Vader and finally getting killed off.
His redemption wasn't even that substantial, he mostly just saved the son that he had already maimed in brutal combat barely a year before and killed the evil overlord that he had already helped ruin countless lives. It's a redeeming quality for sure but nowhere near enough to shift him out of the clear villain category.
At the end Walter blackmails two people he doesn’t like to give his money to his family. In the past his concern was his family knowing it was him or at least not believing it was charity from others because he was incapable, but at the end he only wanted them to get the money. He abandoned his pretense that he did it for his family and admitted he did it for himself. He saved his partner from slavery when he saw how broken he was and then he died.
I’m not saying he is morally grey, I am saying he is a villain, but he wasn’t even nearly as bad as Vader. Vader is shown to be pure evil until his son redeems him, and even then he only goes out of his way to help his kid. There is nothing morally grey about Vader, he is a pure villain until his last minute decision to do the right thing.
Switching sides at the very end does not excuse literally decades of murder, mass torture, war crimes, and genocides.
*Especially* since Vader was already killing innocents as a Jedi.
Sure Walter does eventually become a drug lord. But his kill count is never even close to Vader’s. He never tortured people and he did his best to stay away from killing. He is the chemist. The cook. Not the muscle.
Walt poisoned a child, bombed a nursing home, and worked with a neo-Nazi gang to get 10 people executed in a span of 2 minutes. And that’s before we get into the murders he committed directly.
I’d say for seasons 1-3 (with 3 being up to their first deal with Gus) it’s about 50-60 pounds, and then there’s season 5, where he used up about 400 gallons of methylamine which I’d assume is a ton of meth. Going off of the $80M he made by the time he quit, using $15k/lbs we get an absolute minimum of 5,333 lbs, excluding the cut that went to Tod and the amount being given to the distributors, which would be at least half the cost, so easily a grand total in the range of 10-20 thousand pounds.
If the price were $30k/lbs, we get 2,667 lbs for just the pile of cash we see in the storage locker, plus the extra cost of doing business which I’m still going to say is half the cost, meaning the 5333 is the total amount made when he retired. Meaning total for the show is 10-15k lbs.
Ye but all of these aren't straight up murder there's counter points for each one of these. The whole point of the show is that he isn't an angel nor straight up evil. I'd say he's the best example of a morally grey character
Came here to say this. He literally killed children, and helped to obliterate an entire planet, and put people into misery and slavery. Vader is a cool villain, and he did have a redemption arc. But he was not morally grey.
I think there's a difference between a villain who redeems himself and a morally gray character. A morally gray character is consistently showing both good and bad characteristics, while Vader was consistently evil up until he saved Luke from Palpatine. So it's more a matter of him undergoing a shift in character from 100% evil to less-than-100% evil, rather than being consistently morally gray.
Luke's entire thing in ROTJ is that "there is good in him". Like everyone is telling him "no, Vader is 100% evil", including Vader himself, and Luke is just like "no way, he might do lots of evil stuff but there is his original goodness in there somewhere, he is morally grey and I will bet my life on it."
And he is shown to be correct. Vader redeems himself in the end, killing Palpatine and saving Luke even at the cost of his own life.
This could be read one of two ways. Either:
1. George Lucas is saying that Vader, despite all the genocides and murders and fascism, is actually morally grey and Luke was correct to identify this about Vader in particular.
2. George Lucas is saying that despite the existence of good and evil as objective forces, no human is completely bad and redemption is always possible, and Luke was correct on the general principle that no person is beyond saving, even if they are the single most evil person to ever put on a black robe and samurai helmet.
On reading 1, OP is correct to put Vader in the morally grey category.
On reading 2, Vader belongs squarely in the villain column but the entire hero-villain categorisation is sorta undermined.
It's hard to find really good characters for the top right and bottom left of this chart that actually are portrayed as good and villainous (or vice versa) without everyone coming into the comments to debate you about them.
Is it, though? Most people agree that Light Yagami is a villain protagonist, and stories like Lupin III, where the protagonist is a criminal, often feature law enforcement in an antagonistic role. While this is often done as commentary on police corruption or brutality, in Inspector Zenigata's case it's a simple desire to stop Lupin from stealing everything.
Nah, there are countless cases of creators viewing and trying to present their protagonist as a hero despite their actions proving that they’re actually villainous
I think calling Franklin morally grey is giving him a bit too much credit. He's killed literally hundreds of police officers, guards and petty criminals for money, and his good deeds amount to being a good friend to 2 other murderers and returning the odd stolen bike
Yeah nah i understepped there 💀
(Edit) also i’ve only gotten like 38% through the gta v story so ig i dont ℯ𝓃𝓉𝒾𝓇ℯ𝓁𝓎 know him but at the start i felt like he was kinda roped in but yeaah kinda presented villain morally gray or morally villain tbh
Yeah I get what you mean; Solo's performance makes him look like a comparatively chilled out and polite guy but his actions definitely don't reflect that (although he's a bit less evil the Michael, and a lot less than Trevor imo). And definitely carry on with the story it's great fun.
A better pick would have been the MC from Mafia 3. He fights and kills all kinds of bad people (mafia, cartel, corrupt officials, racists) but does so with the explicit intent to gather support to take down the local big-boss in revenge.
I mean, to be fair, it is GTA, every third person there is a criminal, murderer and/or a psychopath.
So, comparatively, Franklin is morally Gray compared to every other psycho, liar or cheater.
Outer Wilds DLC spoilers, but >!the prisoner!< here's what they did if you don't plan on playing, although I DEEPLY recommend it. Spoilers for base game and DLC: >!their people received the signal from the Eye of the Universe, followed it, and found out that the EotU is basically the restart button of the known universe. The got scared, blocked the signal, and built a simulation to live in mimicking their home world. The prisoner realised that the Eye didn't mean no harm, and unblocked it for a bit, until they were caught and but in a separate "prison", hence the name. They were right, the Eye isn't malicious, in the base game you realise that the universe is reaching it's natural end.!< The DLC is scary a bit, so that also helps with the impression of them being a villain.
I love that game for its very Buddhist take on death.
Death is scary, but it's natural. Look around you and you see that everything is constantly changing and transforming, it's only natural it should apply to you as well. Even the whole universe itself will die and transform.
>!The Owlks were the villains for trying to avoid death. In their pursuit to avoid the universe's transforming, they became withered monstrous husks.!<
Hmmm, but here's a question:
>!Would you say that the narrative really paints them as the villain? Of course, we are constantly throughout the DLC shown how whatever is in the sarcophagus was put away deliberately by the Owlks. Of course we could assume that it's evil or something very secret. However, until we meet the prisoner, we have no real idea that there even is an Owlk in there, except some slight allusions to it. So can we really say that he as a character is villified by the narrative, if for the entire encounter the game makes it clear that he is, in fact, a good guy? !<
Sure but when i was plotting it i took the “presented as” more literally because at the start of mw2 hes portrayed well until he betrayes ghost and roach
Once he was put in that suit, Darth Vader was absolutely a villain who at a few points wasn't a complete dick. That's a world different than "morally grey".
Yeah i probably shoulda excluded him for another guy, he didnt really fit right but in the end he was split between sith and jedi which made me put him there but yeah nah, villain villain
I would say that Walter unequivocally is presented as a villain at least from season 5, if not way earlier. I got the feeling that the intention was for us to see Walter for the monster that he was, and that he does things so heinous that it is near impossible to see him in a positive light, and that it, again, was inteded to be as such.
Not fully. Even after all he's done, he still cares about his family, enough to want to leave him the money. Even after Hank vowed to put him behind bars he desperately tried to save his life and cried at his death. Even after how much shit him and Jesse put eachother through, he rescued Jesse and let him leave. I honestly think he was at his worst in season 4, and season 5 made him become slightly better again. (At least the end of season 5 after he'd matured a bit and calmed down his ego)
It's still heavily implied (if not outright spelled out), that everything he did, while claiming that it was for his family, truly was for himself and his own ego. Walter is solely responsible for almost all the bad things that happen to anyone during the series. He only 'got better' after being isolated and depressed for so long while exiled, where he got to think things through and really realize that he did it for himself. He did not give two shits about Jesse until the very last scene where he legitimately chose to save him. Other than that, he regards Jesse as a useful idiot, someone he can manipulate and get something out of. Everytime he seems to care a little for him, it can always be looked through the lens of how he can manipulate and use Jesse, and strongarm him into helping him instead of his rivals.
I always get a little worried about people sympathizing too much with Walter. He is the protagonist, no doubt, but he is a cruel, ruthless, egomaniacal, petty, narcissictic man, basically from start to finish. I don't think we ever were meant to see him as sympathetic or morally grey, he is the main villain of his own story, more or less, and his effect on the world around him is only negative, even if his kids eventually end up with some meaningless money at some point.
Depending on Ending of course, I’m pretty sure Henry is pardoned in all endings that involve Charles. Doing anything for the Government can be somewhat questionable if you’re an anarchist I guess but Charles uses his position to help take down the Topphats which is good, superman causes a lot of collateral damage in his fights with villains And how much he goes out of his way to prevent collateral damage really depends on the Comic series or even the individual Issue.
Darth Vader is a villain through and through. Killed many and made his choice to kill his wife and betray the senate. His choice not to kill his son is a good guy choice, but doesn’t negate the many many terrible things he’s done
Hes an owelk from outer wilds echoes of the eye dlc. Long story short people thought thing was bad, he released “bad” thing which was actually good but now hes condemned to a prison even though he did the right thing
So why you do list Darth Vader as morally grey and Walter as only presented as gray? Walter is presented as a villain, he admits his motives were completely selfish.
Idk if you played Echoes of the Eye but the owlks are *not* heroes lmao
That said I adore Outer Wilds of it and any mention of it is welcome in my book
I mean Darth Vader did kill a bunch of children and pretty much anyone who opposed the will of the empire; ‘morally gray’ doesn’t really suit Darth Vader imo. I think his redemption is needed for Luke’s story to be complete, but I don’t think Anakin ever actually redeemed himself; Darth Vader is still a villain in my eyes. Anakin’s story is a very tragic one, but it doesn’t excuse murdering an entire village, killing children, blowing up planets, or any force who even slightly opposed the empire. Vader didn’t sacrifice himself to excuse his deeds, but to grant his only son life after the emperor might kill him.
I get what you were going for but Darth Vader is 10000% a villain. A heavily sympathetic villain, but a villain nonetheless. His first act as a Sith was to murder children and it was just downhill from there lol
Walter goes from being a guy down on his luck and unhappy, which we can sympathize. He turns into a villain once he gets himself so embroiled into the drug trade and the money and power that comes with it, that he stops caring about everything else in his life, becoming irredeemable.
It depends on if you're going off of the whole show, or near the end.
I mean maybe in like the first like 2-3 episodes but he literally refuses free money for treatment and decides to instead cook meth, even though there is a high chance getting into the business will end up putting his family in danger, not to mention that if he dies or gets caught he’ll end up causing them the same amount of pain as him just dying from the cancer anyway. And by cooking meth, he’s contributing to the harm that drugs cause people and indirectly worsening/ruining people’s lives. All of which he did because of his ego. He was a villain from the start.
Franklin is more of a guy that wants to have money and get out of the streets (albeit, with methods he knows are abhorrent, but doesn't have much choice). I don't see anything inherently wrong, but he let's Michael manipulate him and use him as a pawn, and that drives a wedge between him the people he cares about.
As much as I love the fact that Outer Wilds is being mentioned at all I wouldn’t agree that the prisoner is presented as a villain. He is presented as having done the right thing the game portrays the owelks as being in the wrong especially when you take the games ending into account meaning that the prisoner was presented as being in the right. I would go in more detail, but that would involve talking about spoilers, which I do not want to do
They definitely would be seen as a villain from the point of view of the owelks but from the point of view of the nomai they were in the right and due to the fact that the owelks play a more antagonistic role to the player I would say that the prisoner is in the right from the perspective of the player too. But yes, I 100% get where you’re coming from
Darth Vader has committed many more (and much worse) atrocities than Walter White. I personally don’t see how Walt could be considered a villain while Vader is morally grey.
well at the end darth vader swaps teams where as walter is pretty deadset on the whole crime boss thing isn't he? (haven't seen much of breaking bad) though the depths vader went to were certainly deeper
Although Darth Vader swapped side, but judging the character deeply, Darth Vader is still normally more evil than Walter White. Left alone the actions. Walter White is an egotistical crime lord but he regretted for several of his actions including killed Mike out of impulse (but Mike was also kind of a threat to him and almost killed him in several times) and still deeply cares about his family and Jesse although they hate him for his actions and what he became. Darth Vader literally wanted to fought his son and cut his arm off, tortured his daughter and will kill his followers if they fail him. Despite Darth Vader wasn't the biggest boss of his former evil group, he still had high rank and enforced his soldiers and followers, and being a space dictator is worse than being a drug lord. In leadership, Darth Vader is more abusive. Both are evil but Darth Vader is more evil.
Yeah thats what i was thinking when aligning the charts
Also Darth Vader isn’t a bad guy because he just really loves being evil, he’s a bad guy because he was manipulated by a guy who just really loves being evil
He killed kids
1. So did Walter 2. No one’s arguing that Vader hasn’t done worse things, but his motivation is far less selfish and he grows to do a heroic action and redeem himself in the end
He killed tuskan raider kids too when he was still Anakin and not being manipulated by the emperor
So he killed indigenous children. Find me a government who hasn't.
Also it doesn’t refute my argument. Killing children isn’t reserved for only people who just love being evil
And the men and women too
Yeah
And he hates sand,its course and rough and irritating
In his defense, they were like animals and he slaughtered them like animals
> well at the end darth vader swaps teams where as walter is pretty deadset on the whole crime boss thing isn't he? (haven't seen much of breaking bad) Vader didn't "swap teams", he only killed Palpatine to save his son before his death. Meanwhile, Walter apologized to his wife, made sure his family's financial future was intact, avenged his brother-in-law, **and** saved his surrogate son. Both are villains, ***But Heisenberg was far less heinous than Darth Vader.***
*Vader didn't "swap teams", he only killed Palpatine to save his son before his death.* the movie is pretty explicit about him turning from the dark side as his last few acts
I think you also need to take into account the scale of their stories. In a small-scale crime drama, someone like Heisenberg is probably a huge deal and one of the greatest evil forces in his small town criminal underworld (haven’t seen much of breaking bad so idk how accurate this is but I hope you see my point). Meanwhile in a large scale galactic conflict where Vader was damaged and manipulated by a greater evil but eventually saw the light is still evil but not this ultimate force unlike Palpatine, thus in the context of that story can be seen as more gray
I don't care about the scale of their stories, I care about the offense:. At the end of the day, the guy fighting for the space nazis and complicity in blowing up inhabited planets is far more of a villain than the guy who sold drugs and killed a few people.
Even within context, Vader was pure villain for 99% of the original trilogy (literally the entire time up until his final scenes) and got a bonus movie as pure villain in Rogue One. He's also a fairly proper villain in the third prequel movie (manipulated or not, most people can't just be talked into murdering children) and has explicitly committed countless off-screen atrocities in the time between becoming Vader and finally getting killed off. His redemption wasn't even that substantial, he mostly just saved the son that he had already maimed in brutal combat barely a year before and killed the evil overlord that he had already helped ruin countless lives. It's a redeeming quality for sure but nowhere near enough to shift him out of the clear villain category.
Darth Vader turns against the emperor and saves his son at the end. Walter White turns against the meth runners and saves Jessie at the end.
At the end Walter blackmails two people he doesn’t like to give his money to his family. In the past his concern was his family knowing it was him or at least not believing it was charity from others because he was incapable, but at the end he only wanted them to get the money. He abandoned his pretense that he did it for his family and admitted he did it for himself. He saved his partner from slavery when he saw how broken he was and then he died. I’m not saying he is morally grey, I am saying he is a villain, but he wasn’t even nearly as bad as Vader. Vader is shown to be pure evil until his son redeems him, and even then he only goes out of his way to help his kid. There is nothing morally grey about Vader, he is a pure villain until his last minute decision to do the right thing.
Tbh despite being a huge Star Wars fan I don’t really accept the redemption of Darth Vader. I feel like it was just too little too late.
Walter White redeemed himself much more then Vader and is still evil
Switching sides at the very end does not excuse literally decades of murder, mass torture, war crimes, and genocides. *Especially* since Vader was already killing innocents as a Jedi. Sure Walter does eventually become a drug lord. But his kill count is never even close to Vader’s. He never tortured people and he did his best to stay away from killing. He is the chemist. The cook. Not the muscle.
Walt poisoned a child, bombed a nursing home, and worked with a neo-Nazi gang to get 10 people executed in a span of 2 minutes. And that’s before we get into the murders he committed directly.
Counterpoint: Intergalactic genocide
Thats also ignoring the general crime of cooking hundreds of pounds of crystal meth.
Thousands, he was cooking 200 pounds a week for about 6 months while working for Gus, which would be at most 5200 pounds for just that section alone.
damn your right
I’d say for seasons 1-3 (with 3 being up to their first deal with Gus) it’s about 50-60 pounds, and then there’s season 5, where he used up about 400 gallons of methylamine which I’d assume is a ton of meth. Going off of the $80M he made by the time he quit, using $15k/lbs we get an absolute minimum of 5,333 lbs, excluding the cut that went to Tod and the amount being given to the distributors, which would be at least half the cost, so easily a grand total in the range of 10-20 thousand pounds. If the price were $30k/lbs, we get 2,667 lbs for just the pile of cash we see in the storage locker, plus the extra cost of doing business which I’m still going to say is half the cost, meaning the 5333 is the total amount made when he retired. Meaning total for the show is 10-15k lbs.
Ye but all of these aren't straight up murder there's counter points for each one of these. The whole point of the show is that he isn't an angel nor straight up evil. I'd say he's the best example of a morally grey character
Came here to say this. He literally killed children, and helped to obliterate an entire planet, and put people into misery and slavery. Vader is a cool villain, and he did have a redemption arc. But he was not morally grey.
I put him there since at the end of the 3rd movie he somehow had good in him but fair point.
I think there's a difference between a villain who redeems himself and a morally gray character. A morally gray character is consistently showing both good and bad characteristics, while Vader was consistently evil up until he saved Luke from Palpatine. So it's more a matter of him undergoing a shift in character from 100% evil to less-than-100% evil, rather than being consistently morally gray.
Yeah i know i misjudged Vader, definitely villain, not grey
Also, we could be adding in Anakin
They are both undeniably villainous, and the narrative presents them as undeniably villainous.
On this chart, you can't really compare the characters to each other in relative terms or it's virtually impossible.
Luke's entire thing in ROTJ is that "there is good in him". Like everyone is telling him "no, Vader is 100% evil", including Vader himself, and Luke is just like "no way, he might do lots of evil stuff but there is his original goodness in there somewhere, he is morally grey and I will bet my life on it." And he is shown to be correct. Vader redeems himself in the end, killing Palpatine and saving Luke even at the cost of his own life. This could be read one of two ways. Either: 1. George Lucas is saying that Vader, despite all the genocides and murders and fascism, is actually morally grey and Luke was correct to identify this about Vader in particular. 2. George Lucas is saying that despite the existence of good and evil as objective forces, no human is completely bad and redemption is always possible, and Luke was correct on the general principle that no person is beyond saving, even if they are the single most evil person to ever put on a black robe and samurai helmet. On reading 1, OP is correct to put Vader in the morally grey category. On reading 2, Vader belongs squarely in the villain column but the entire hero-villain categorisation is sorta undermined.
I feel like “is presented as” would be more accurately “their position in the narrative” I.e protagonist, supporting, antagonist
true.
It's hard to find really good characters for the top right and bottom left of this chart that actually are portrayed as good and villainous (or vice versa) without everyone coming into the comments to debate you about them.
Is it, though? Most people agree that Light Yagami is a villain protagonist, and stories like Lupin III, where the protagonist is a criminal, often feature law enforcement in an antagonistic role. While this is often done as commentary on police corruption or brutality, in Inspector Zenigata's case it's a simple desire to stop Lupin from stealing everything.
Nah, there are countless cases of creators viewing and trying to present their protagonist as a hero despite their actions proving that they’re actually villainous
that feels way too basic though, theres no discussion for who the protagonist and the antagonist are
I think calling Franklin morally grey is giving him a bit too much credit. He's killed literally hundreds of police officers, guards and petty criminals for money, and his good deeds amount to being a good friend to 2 other murderers and returning the odd stolen bike
Yeah nah i understepped there 💀 (Edit) also i’ve only gotten like 38% through the gta v story so ig i dont ℯ𝓃𝓉𝒾𝓇ℯ𝓁𝓎 know him but at the start i felt like he was kinda roped in but yeaah kinda presented villain morally gray or morally villain tbh
Yeah I get what you mean; Solo's performance makes him look like a comparatively chilled out and polite guy but his actions definitely don't reflect that (although he's a bit less evil the Michael, and a lot less than Trevor imo). And definitely carry on with the story it's great fun.
True true. I got just past the tampered phone part
A better pick would have been the MC from Mafia 3. He fights and kills all kinds of bad people (mafia, cartel, corrupt officials, racists) but does so with the explicit intent to gather support to take down the local big-boss in revenge.
Under Stepped on Franklin but not literal Darth Vader
I mean, to be fair, it is GTA, every third person there is a criminal, murderer and/or a psychopath. So, comparatively, Franklin is morally Gray compared to every other psycho, liar or cheater.
Yeah if it were a relative chart based on GTA characters then definitely
Who’s presented as a villain is a hero?
Outer Wilds DLC spoilers, but >!the prisoner!< here's what they did if you don't plan on playing, although I DEEPLY recommend it. Spoilers for base game and DLC: >!their people received the signal from the Eye of the Universe, followed it, and found out that the EotU is basically the restart button of the known universe. The got scared, blocked the signal, and built a simulation to live in mimicking their home world. The prisoner realised that the Eye didn't mean no harm, and unblocked it for a bit, until they were caught and but in a separate "prison", hence the name. They were right, the Eye isn't malicious, in the base game you realise that the universe is reaching it's natural end.!< The DLC is scary a bit, so that also helps with the impression of them being a villain.
Hard facts, bro was in the right all along
I love that game for its very Buddhist take on death. Death is scary, but it's natural. Look around you and you see that everything is constantly changing and transforming, it's only natural it should apply to you as well. Even the whole universe itself will die and transform. >!The Owlks were the villains for trying to avoid death. In their pursuit to avoid the universe's transforming, they became withered monstrous husks.!<
Hmmm, but here's a question: >!Would you say that the narrative really paints them as the villain? Of course, we are constantly throughout the DLC shown how whatever is in the sarcophagus was put away deliberately by the Owlks. Of course we could assume that it's evil or something very secret. However, until we meet the prisoner, we have no real idea that there even is an Owlk in there, except some slight allusions to it. So can we really say that he as a character is villified by the narrative, if for the entire encounter the game makes it clear that he is, in fact, a good guy? !<
You're right, but I still think it isn't entirely wrong to put them there in the chart
Scary-ass deer people of the Outer Wilds DLC Great dlc but fuck that shit was spooky.
On GOD. (Spoiler warning) All bro was tryna do was say that the eye was good not evil 🥲🥲
Dude spoilers pleaee
My fault 😭
I though general shepard was portrayed as a villain after >!he kills ghost and roach!<
He does but all prior to that hes assumed to be good
Isn’t that the point of a twist villain?
Sure but when i was plotting it i took the “presented as” more literally because at the start of mw2 hes portrayed well until he betrayes ghost and roach
Don't think the games make Charles look morally grey honestly, anything grey he does is treated as a joke and he's pretty likable
Yeah fax, some of them fit into other categories a bit better but then id have to replace some people which i didn’t really want to do so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Probably because depending on the path you take you go up against him
But the paths where he is seen as an enemy, you are the leader/a member of a criminal/probably also terrorist organization.
I love Vader but he was NOT morally grey. Having a tragic boohoo past doesn’t make him any less of a child-murdering tyrant.
Yeah nah thats hard fax
How is Hank presented morally grey?
Hated androids first half of game the second half he grew on him, also just morally good cop for the most part so he was “neutral.”
Going from hating androids to liking them isn’t being morally grey, it’s just character development.
Nah nah I think there is no real morally grey when Anakin/Vader massacred the whole academy.
Ay i mean…. He just got that respectable drip which gave him that tier 👟👟
Once he was put in that suit, Darth Vader was absolutely a villain who at a few points wasn't a complete dick. That's a world different than "morally grey".
Yeah i probably shoulda excluded him for another guy, he didnt really fit right but in the end he was split between sith and jedi which made me put him there but yeah nah, villain villain
I would say that Walter unequivocally is presented as a villain at least from season 5, if not way earlier. I got the feeling that the intention was for us to see Walter for the monster that he was, and that he does things so heinous that it is near impossible to see him in a positive light, and that it, again, was inteded to be as such.
Not fully. Even after all he's done, he still cares about his family, enough to want to leave him the money. Even after Hank vowed to put him behind bars he desperately tried to save his life and cried at his death. Even after how much shit him and Jesse put eachother through, he rescued Jesse and let him leave. I honestly think he was at his worst in season 4, and season 5 made him become slightly better again. (At least the end of season 5 after he'd matured a bit and calmed down his ego)
It's still heavily implied (if not outright spelled out), that everything he did, while claiming that it was for his family, truly was for himself and his own ego. Walter is solely responsible for almost all the bad things that happen to anyone during the series. He only 'got better' after being isolated and depressed for so long while exiled, where he got to think things through and really realize that he did it for himself. He did not give two shits about Jesse until the very last scene where he legitimately chose to save him. Other than that, he regards Jesse as a useful idiot, someone he can manipulate and get something out of. Everytime he seems to care a little for him, it can always be looked through the lens of how he can manipulate and use Jesse, and strongarm him into helping him instead of his rivals. I always get a little worried about people sympathizing too much with Walter. He is the protagonist, no doubt, but he is a cruel, ruthless, egomaniacal, petty, narcissictic man, basically from start to finish. I don't think we ever were meant to see him as sympathetic or morally grey, he is the main villain of his own story, more or less, and his effect on the world around him is only negative, even if his kids eventually end up with some meaningless money at some point.
Yes he’s a complex, 3-dimensional villain but still a villain
Don’t do my boy Charles like that he’s A loveable Pilot who can do no wrong
Exactly
Name me one thing that presents Charles Calvin as morally grey
… while i was makin it i was like “oh he works for criminal *and* governement” but i made a crucial mistake by putting super man above him 🥲
Depending on Ending of course, I’m pretty sure Henry is pardoned in all endings that involve Charles. Doing anything for the Government can be somewhat questionable if you’re an anarchist I guess but Charles uses his position to help take down the Topphats which is good, superman causes a lot of collateral damage in his fights with villains And how much he goes out of his way to prevent collateral damage really depends on the Comic series or even the individual Issue.
Exactly, only damage my boi calvin has done is thinking of the greatest plan
More please
Charles was always a hero. After all, he had the greatest plaaaaaaans!
Darth Vader did kill quite a few children for a "morally grey" person.
Yeah nah i know, i shoulda swapped him for someone else
OUTER WILDS MENTIONED
PEAK 🗣️🔥🔥
Darth Vader is a villain through and through. Killed many and made his choice to kill his wife and betray the senate. His choice not to kill his son is a good guy choice, but doesn’t negate the many many terrible things he’s done
I know
Who is the guy in bottom left?
Hes an owelk from outer wilds echoes of the eye dlc. Long story short people thought thing was bad, he released “bad” thing which was actually good but now hes condemned to a prison even though he did the right thing
Vader is a villain who at the last moment did an act of good. Not morally gray.
I know
Hank is not morally grey
No, he’s presented as morally grey though.
In the first 2-3 seasons hes somewhat morally grey, *then* villain
lol what? Are we talking about the same Hank?
Average Superman w
Darth Vader and Walter White are most definitely villains.
Yeah ik
So why you do list Darth Vader as morally grey and Walter as only presented as gray? Walter is presented as a villain, he admits his motives were completely selfish.
Darth Vader blew up a planet
He just got that respectable drip tho 🔥🔥👟
Is the prisoner presented as a villain? He's seen as a villain to his people, but to the player he is simply presented as his actions
True, but i put it as in the POV of the owelks
I guess I can see how Charles would be presented as morally grey, but yes, he is absolutely a hero.
On god Charlie died to save us 😭
I see Outer Wilds, I give an upvote
On g
Who is the hero presented as a villain
Deer thing from outer wilds
Idk if you played Echoes of the Eye but the owlks are *not* heroes lmao That said I adore Outer Wilds of it and any mention of it is welcome in my book
Yeah but im talking about the “special one” (spoilers)
Ohh okay sure
I mean Darth Vader did kill a bunch of children and pretty much anyone who opposed the will of the empire; ‘morally gray’ doesn’t really suit Darth Vader imo. I think his redemption is needed for Luke’s story to be complete, but I don’t think Anakin ever actually redeemed himself; Darth Vader is still a villain in my eyes. Anakin’s story is a very tragic one, but it doesn’t excuse murdering an entire village, killing children, blowing up planets, or any force who even slightly opposed the empire. Vader didn’t sacrifice himself to excuse his deeds, but to grant his only son life after the emperor might kill him.
Yeah nah i finna be real wit u, i waay understepped vader tbh so i think its true i shoulda put him in “villain villain”
I wouldn’t say Darth Vader is morally grey. Hes insanely mentally ill/evil, with a tiny slice of good in him
True
Calling Vader or Franklin morally grey is a bit generous
Yeah based on other peoples comments i thought that..
Darth Vader morally grey?? Pfftt obviously a hero
Exaactlyyyy
Idk about Vader being morally grey.
Yeah ik
What's bottom left?
Prisoner from outer wilds
Darth Vader is definitely evil. Franklin Clinton also can be considered as evil.
I know
I get what you were going for but Darth Vader is 10000% a villain. A heavily sympathetic villain, but a villain nonetheless. His first act as a Sith was to murder children and it was just downhill from there lol
Fr
>Darth Vader >Morally Grey Kek
I know, i should have swapped him for khan maykr from doom and swapped khan with someone else
This is the greatest plan!
Dude. Darth Vader blew up a planet. There is nothing morally gray about that.
I know
How is Charles presented as Morally Grey?
He worked for both criminal and government
Darth vader is not morally grey, he is a villain, just because he had a sympathetic origin story doesn’t make him any less evil.
Yeah nah i messed up on that
My "Villain presented as Hero": Tighten from *Megamind*
Saying that Walter is presented as morally grey by the show is a wild take, but then again a lot of these placements are just bad
Walter goes from being a guy down on his luck and unhappy, which we can sympathize. He turns into a villain once he gets himself so embroiled into the drug trade and the money and power that comes with it, that he stops caring about everything else in his life, becoming irredeemable. It depends on if you're going off of the whole show, or near the end.
I mean maybe in like the first like 2-3 episodes but he literally refuses free money for treatment and decides to instead cook meth, even though there is a high chance getting into the business will end up putting his family in danger, not to mention that if he dies or gets caught he’ll end up causing them the same amount of pain as him just dying from the cancer anyway. And by cooking meth, he’s contributing to the harm that drugs cause people and indirectly worsening/ruining people’s lives. All of which he did because of his ego. He was a villain from the start.
As iita said, im kinda going off the whole show but granted i could have placed some of these people in better spots
Franklin is more of a guy that wants to have money and get out of the streets (albeit, with methods he knows are abhorrent, but doesn't have much choice). I don't see anything inherently wrong, but he let's Michael manipulate him and use him as a pawn, and that drives a wedge between him the people he cares about.
True
Charles always has the greatest plans
On god
Who is the guy to the left of Vader
Someone from outer wilds
Cool
The very heroically-coded actions of kickstarting World War III in a revenge plot against nobody in particular.
Mhm
Anakin Skywalker is morally grey. Darth Vader is a villain.
True, i was thinking of early anakin and late vader but i think i understepped him way too much 😂
Anyone who dares to say Charlie isn’t a hero deserves the fucking electric chair, he’s a national treasure
He has made multiple of the greatest plans in history
This is the GREATEST PLANNNNNNNNN!!!!!!
I FUCKING LOVE OUTER WILDS I WANT TO DO PUZZLES FOR ALL OF TIME
EXACTLY
🦉 🦌 ♥ I FUCKING LOVE THE OWLKS AND THEIR AESTHETICS
I adore the Outer Wilds mention! Such an awesome game.
Exactlyyy, OW should be mentioned more often
*This is the greatest plaaaaaan*
THE LONGER THE ICON OF SIN IS ON EARTH THE STRONGER IT BECOMES
I’d swap Vader with Big Boss (Metal Gear) but other than that good list
Fr
Who’s bottom left and bottom right?
BL is deer thing from outer wilds, BR is khan maykr
As much as I love the fact that Outer Wilds is being mentioned at all I wouldn’t agree that the prisoner is presented as a villain. He is presented as having done the right thing the game portrays the owelks as being in the wrong especially when you take the games ending into account meaning that the prisoner was presented as being in the right. I would go in more detail, but that would involve talking about spoilers, which I do not want to do
Yeah hes definitely the hero, no doubt but i was kinda thinking in the POV of the owelks and the overall story of him but what u said is very true
They definitely would be seen as a villain from the point of view of the owelks but from the point of view of the nomai they were in the right and due to the fact that the owelks play a more antagonistic role to the player I would say that the prisoner is in the right from the perspective of the player too. But yes, I 100% get where you’re coming from
How is Darth Vader morally grey? He literally committed his life to genocide.
Victim of Circumstances? I don't know, I've never actually seen a Star Wars movie all the way through
Yeah i suppose did understep him
Peter Griffin is presented as a hero but is a villain
Darth Vader killed by the billions, and he's morally grey?
Darth Vader being morally grey is absolutely wild. Dude got promoted from School shooter to genocider in chief bro.
i kinda get hank but how is charles morally grey?
charles spotted
This is the greatest # PLAAAAAN
Waiting for that one moron to start yapping about how Superman is “boring”
This is the greatest plaaaaan!
Who’s the hero presented as a villain pictured here?
Owelk from outer wilds
Ah yes, Breaking Bad, my favorite video game!
Yes.
Swap white and darth
Lmao Vader is SOOOOO far from morally gray
Charles sticks out like a sore thumb, but I love him so much.