/ Cory Doctorow / 1:04 pm Fri May 15, 2009

Architecture of evil: the lairs of games villains

Geoff sez, "Games critic Jim Rossignol, from Rock Paper Shotgun and This Gaming Life, has guest-posted on BLDGBLOG about the design of 'evil lairs' in contemporary videogames - from World of Warcraft to System Shock to Shadow of the Colossus. It's a great post, actually - asking what evil is and why we insist on representing it in certain ways, architecturally."

...perhaps the most extraordinary and unearthly of evil videogame architectures are the wandering colossi of Shadow of the Colossus. Great, living structures, lonely behemoths, that stride magnificently across the game world. These sad, shaggy giants of stone and moss must be climbed and slain by the hero, often via use of the surrounding environment of ancient ruins and meticulously designed geological formations. Lairs within lairs.

Of course, monsters are presumably evil, but the reality of the colossi remains ambiguous for much of the game. When the game is up, the player-character suffers a terrible price for destroying these strange, animate monuments. It is one of the few videogames in which the protagonist dies â€" horribly and permanently â€" when the game is over. It is a game where destroying the evil lair might well have been the wrong thing to do. And yet it is all you can do.

Such is the inexorable, linear fate of the videogame avatar.

Evil Lair: On the Architecture of the Enemy in Videogame Worlds (Thanks, Geoff!)

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  1. I don’t know if it’s just me, but I can’t actually click on the link. It highlights, but doesn’t register as a clickable link. All the other links all over BoingBoing work just fine.

  5. Arg, maybe it’s my fault for being so slow to pick up on this game, but that was some serious Shadow of the Colossus spoiler there. >_< Note to self: Play games before they turn 4 years old.

  7. Not only was that a spoiler, that was a (SPOILER ALERT!) inaccurate spoiler. The hero doesn’t “die horribly and permanently” at the end of Shadow of the Colossus, he is “reborn” as a helpless infant who will presumably be raised by the dead chick he resurrected by defeating the colossi.

  9. Shadow of the Colossus is one of the best games ever made. I’m eagerly waiting for the creators to make another game.

    And I don’t think the person who wrote this completed it.

  10. Shadow of the Colossus is truly excellent. When (SPOILER) Argo falls off the cliff I said, out loud, to the screen, “you sly bastard, you made me care about that horse, and I’m sad now!”. But my wife forbade me to play it when she was around because she felt too bad for the Colossi and didn’t want me to kill them.

  11. From the article: “… I have seen the face of evil, and it is a caricature of gothic construction. There’s barely a necromancer in existence whose dark citadel doesn’t in some way reflect real-world Romanian landmarks …”

    Call me a traditionalist, but I think I’m not yet ready for a final showdown with the Boss of Bosses in something that looks like a model kitchen from an Ikea store, or a particularly cheery shopping mall.

    The lair of the Maximum Bad Guy needs to say: “I have power. I have means. I have minions. And I’m not worried about whether people like me or not.” You have to admit that ponderous, gloomy, Gothic architecture does get that message across pretty well. But then I suppose Mayan or Egyptian-style pyramids might also fit the bill, among others.

  12. #7 – If you want to find out what happens next, play Ico, also by Fumito Ueda and his team.

  13. @11 ANGUSM: You read the entire article, right? The author lists several games who break out of the cliche eeeeevil mold to create some really cool experiences. And none of them occur in a kitchen.

  14. If it were done right, a final showdown in a model kitchen from an Ikea store could be evil. A white kitchen (for the blood) with chirpy muzak playing in the background. It could work.

  15. I totally agree with Noen, any setting can work, so long as we have context and emotional investment.

    It’s all about the set up.

  16. I’m remembering the second boss encounter in “Stubbs the Zombie,” which happens in a shopping mall. Works beautifully. (Although some folks might not consider the people you’re up against in Stubbs to be “evil,” per se.)

  19. Thanks Jim, I love when people tell me the ending of the awesome über win game I’m playing and haven’t finished yet…

    *sigh*

    Okay yes there’s some snark in the air, but I was enjoying that game. Spoiler alert needed. Plzkthxbai.

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