Dervish said
I strongly considered Saren, but then I realized he only makesa handful of appearances in the game and you fight him twice. I honestly thought the Illusive Man was a far more captivating antagonist.

Sovereign got one scene of dialogue and still managed to make for a more compelling antagonist than Saren IMO.

Dervish said
I strongly considered Saren, but then I realized he only makesa handful of appearances in the game and you fight him twice. I honestly thought the Illusive Man was a far more captivating antagonist.

But despite the few appearances you do spend the entirety of the game chasing after him and trying to stop him, seeing the results of his actions along the way. You don't need to see much of a villain for them to be captivating. The more I think about it, the more I realise that in many games you don't see much of the main bad guys/bosses.

Dervish said
I strongly considered Saren, but then I realized he only makesa handful of appearances in the game and you fight him twice. I honestly thought the Illusive Man was a far more captivating antagonist.

A good villain is not one who makes allot of appearances, kills tons of people, or has a fleshed out story. Those help, but a villain needs to make sense to me, they just need to fit the story the same way the protagonist does. Saren is the ultimate anti-Shepard, he is a person, Illusive is a symbol for Cerberus .

I also just have a thing for fallen-paladins.

1.

I have no idea what you are taking about, although I would like to.

Fat Boy Kyle said
But despite the few appearances you do spend the entirety of the game chasing after him and trying to stop him, seeing the results of his actions along the way. You don't need to see much of a villain for them to be captivating. The more I think about it, the more I realise that in many games you don't see much of the main bad guys/bosses.

While you're busy tracking him down, there's not a lot to him that makes him particularly noteworthy outside of his indoctrination, other than he's anti-human and completely ruthless even before he's indoctrinated. Throw in that one book and comic and he gets fleshed out considerably more, even so far as to show you what happened on Anderson's mission with him. Good stuff.

Blitzkrieg said
A good villain is not one who makes allot of appearances, kills tons of people, or has a fleshed out story. Those help, but a villain needs to make sense to me, they just need to fit the story the same way the protagonist does. Saren is the ultimate anti-Shepard, he is a person, Illusive is a symbol for Cerberus .I also just have a thing for fallen-paladins.

I wouldn't exactly call him a fallen paladin, despite his reputation as a Spectre. As I mentioned, he's an established human hater and that mission with Anderson ended up with Saren killing hundreds of innocent people to get to his target. His motivation and goals were always pretty clear, even though the specifics as to why weren't readily apparent until your encounter on Virmire. Don't get me wrong, he's a great character and he certainly set the standard going into the other two games, but I suppose I thought Harbinger was a bit more meaningful to the trilogy and his presence is undeniable. TIM is also good for other reasons, and I am pretty pleased with myself for calling him being indoctrinated right after I finished ME2. The BioWare forums didn't seem to think that theory made sense, which makes me wish I could have bumped my thread there after ME3 came out with a Nelson laugh.

1) Magneto
2) Major (Hellsing Ultimate)
3) The Joker
4) The Illusive man (mass effect)
5) Plankton

I don't have a top 5, but here are some notable ones I loved.

Sephiroth (Final Fantasy VII)
Naraku, Sessahomaru, the Shikon Jewel (Inuyasha)
Kishin Asura (Soul Eater)
Death (Castlevania)
Virgil (Devil May Cry (Old games))
Venom (Spiderman)
Pyramid Head, Butcher (Silent Hill series)
Albert Wesker (Resident Evil games)
Demise, Girahim, Ganondorf (Legend of Zelda)
Jetsream Sam (Metal Gear Rising)

Don't you fuckers read?

idlehands said
Don't you fuckers read?

These symbols.... they mean something, but.....

1) Patrick Bateman (American Psycho)
2) Francis Urquhart (House of Cards)
3) Tyler Durden (Fight Club)
4) Dorian Gray (The Picture of Dorian Gray)
5) Mustapha Mond (Brave New World)

K-97 said 4) Dorian Gray (The Picture of Dorian Gray)

i.e.: Hank

1) Wheatley (Portal 2)
2) Doopliss (Paper Mario TTYD)
3) Pegasus (Yu-Gi-Oh, first season)
4) Cartman (South park)
5) Derek Simmons and Carla Ramades (Resident Evil 6)

Honorable Mentions:

Calypso (Twisted Metal)
Oogie Boogie (Nightmare before Christmas)
M. Bison (Street Fighter series)
Mitochondria Eve (Parasite Eve)
GLaDOS (Portal)
Mr. Dark (Ray Man)
Veigar (League of Legends)

GreatSalmon said
Cartman (South park)

Oh! Good shout!

I've been thinking some more and it's criminal (get it?) that Keyser Söze hasn't come into play yet.

K-97 said 5) Mustapha Mond (Brave New World)

YES.

Incidentally, also my favorite character in the whole of that book. Watson is also fairly endearing.

My top 5, not in any particular order, except by medium (literature, TV, games, respectively):
Mustapha Mond (Brave New World)
O'Brien (Nineteen Eighty-Four)

Gustavo Fring (Breaking Bad)
Benjamin Linus (Lost)

Gravemind (Halo 2 and Halo 3)

(No particular order - 5 villains I could think of off the top of my head)
Megatron (Transformers)
Scar (Lion King)
Hitler (real life)
Herobrine (Satan for minecraft-ers)
Emperor Palpatine (Star Wars)

In no particular order:

Vaas
Andrew Ryan
Glados
Zombies in general
Sophia Lamb