What do you think about that? Would it work? Especially in RPG's, where the player spends a lot of time crafting and experiencing the story for the character, would it work for the pc being the villain in the sequel?

Worked for the Saw movies.


Oh and....spoiler alert. :P

spoilers

Well if you played an Alchemist in Torchlight this pretty much is what happened.

Same with Diablo. If you played a Warrior, again, pretty much what happened.

Can't think of any other games off hand but I think it's been done in others, too.

Well, if you watch the Star Wars movies in numerical order... :p

Metal Gear? - didnt play beyond "Snake Eater" though

It could work very well depending on how the character is written. I would love to play a character whose point of view is so warped that they believe that they are doing nothing wrong, but to everyone else they're a monster. I hate it when the evil path in games boils down to "I'm going to destroy everything because I feel like being a prick".

Infamous 2s evil path did a really good job, where you didn't care about how the consequences of your actions affected others and in the end you believe what you were doing was justified.

If it is justified then it might work. It might not work if its done like: "Hey you know that protagonist you came to like from the first game? Well plot twist! he/she is evil for no reason!"

It would totally work. And it would make the RPG, unique in a good way. Playing as the good guy all the time, gets boring. People need variety. But the RPG has to explain why the main character became the villain because it wouldn't make sense for the main character to one day wake up and decide to be a villain. People don't change that easily.

Depends. In general, sure, why not; if the protagonist is a somewhat pre-defined character and/or the actions that the player willingly takes part in can be viewed less favorable from a different angle. And if care is taken to make it all seem logical, and a complicated conflict of interests. On the other hand, it wouldn't work well if the game pretended the hero from the first game made a U-turn from goody two shoes to blackguard. And neither if the player was given a lot of freedom to shape their character in the first game and the sequel would then pretend that the protagonist of the first game had a fixed personality and made choices that don't coincide with the choices of all players.

I've never played through a single game in the Legacy of Kain series, so I can't be sure, but wasn't the transition from Blood Omen to Soul Reaver something like this? Although I suppose Kain is not the main villain in Soul Reaver? But in any case a former protagonist becomes a jealous rival in the sequel.

Tough sell for RPGs. Players might rebel at their character being taken in such a direction without their consent. Then again I'm surprised the Ultima series didn't end on that. The Avatar turning into the bad guy/gal seemed like a natural conclusion by the end of Ultima 8.

You make a good point. So it seems it is always best to let people choose to be the villain or the hero. So it is best to make the RPG's main mission, the kind of mission someone would do out of self interest or altruism.

In Lands of Lore 2 you play as Luther, the son of the evil witch and villainesse extraordinaire from the first game (what's a female villain, a villa?).
Thanks to such great social standing, you start out in prison and on top of that you're cursed. Allies from the first game are against you at first because they didn't like your mom. You can decide whether you want to be a good boy and please everyone or be a bad boy and live up to your mom's reputation.

U9 was meant to go in a different direction before it got EAized, but in any case, Ultima 6 had already covered the idea from a slightly different angle.

... and since I can't remember how to hide a spoiler, I've edited it out.

I like the idea. It's also the case in the legacy of kain games, isn't it ?

How the hell would anyone know!? That damn thing is WAAAAY TOOOO complicated! XD I love them all but I gave up trying to figure out who was good and bad and when and is this before the last one or after the next and huh?