Most stories have a hero/villain relationship that culminates in a final showdown between the protagonist and antagonist.
After hours upon hours of fighting the villain’s minions,it’s time to defeat the big bad evil guy and beat the game.
But sometimes the story has other plans when we face the villain, becausethat boss fight never happens.We’re led to believe they’re a big threat, then they fall over the moment they face us.
Here are some games where you don’t even get to fight the boss to beat them.
Warning: Major story spoilers ahead!
10Mark Jefferson
Life Is Strange
Life is Strange
The firstLife is Strangegame revolves around an incoming storm and a mystery surrounding the disappearance of Rachel Amber. With sometime-traveling-assisted detective work,Max and Chloe find the missing girl’s decomposing corpse buried in a junkyard and are ambushed byBlackwell Academy’sphotography teacher, Mark Jefferson, who turns out to be the real killer.
Obsessed with taking morbid photos of tortured and dead women, Jefferson murdered dozens of women and has now made Max the subject of his next deadly photo shoot. While all hope seems lost and Max’s powers prevent her from escaping or fighting, who better to save the day than David, Chloe’s stepdad and Blackwell’s head of security.
10 Video Game Villains We Love To Hate
What is a hero without a villain?
Because Max is tied to a chair,all you can do is rewind, warn David, and help him beat Jefferson.Jefferson may be a murderer, but he’s not a trained fighter like David, and he goes down quite easily if you make the right choices.
Whether or not you tell David that Jefferson killed Chloe, Max will eventually go back in time and reveal all of this to David before everything goes sideways, leading the police to find Jefferson’s bunker and arrest him for good. He won’t be taking photos for a long, long time.
9The Deserter
Disco Elysium
In ZA/UM’sone-hit wonderDisco Elysium,you play as Harry DuBois,an amnesiac copwho’s tasked with solving a mysterious case regarding the lynching of a mercenary named Lely Kortenaer.With the help of your best partner, Lieutenant Kim Kitsuragi,you untangle a web of corporate espionage, cryptids, and a cover-up plotin Martinaise.
Through a series of investigations and uncovered secrets, you learn that the lynching was a cover-up to hide the fact that Lely was instead shot by a sniper. All that is clear is that nobody, not even the ones who claimed to have lynched Lely, knew who made that shot.
You and Kim pinpoint the source of the shot to a ruined fortress on a nearby island. There,you find and confront the shooter,a former soldier of the Revachol communist army named Iosef Lilianovich Dros, who survived the war decades ago. Apparently, Iosef shot Lely out of hatred for the capitalistic system he represented, and sexual envy for Klaasje.
Unlike the mercenary tribunal where you had to make impossibly high rolls to save everybody,Iosef willingly surrenders himself to the officers, clearly no longer of sound mind after decades of fanaticism and resentment stoked by the chemicals exuded by the Insulindian Phasmid,a stickbug-like cryptid that you may choose to investigate earlier in the story.
8Panther King
Conker’s Bad Fur Day
While Conker searches for a way back home after a terrible hangover, Panther King, the ruler of the land he’s lost in, has found that his throne’s side table is missing a leg. The Panther King orders his servant, Professor Von Kriplespac, to solve the problem, who suggests he can use a red squirrel as a replacement for the missing leg.
As Conker finds himself in wacky hijinksinvolving an opera-singing pile of poop named the Great Mighty Poo, and storming the beaches of Normandy in the style ofSaving Private Ryan, he eventually finds himself robbing a bank, which turns out to be a trap by the Panther King.
Just as Conker’s about to fight the Panther King for shooting his girlfriend Berri,the Panther King suddenly dies from a Xenomorph-like creature bursting out of his chest.We never get to fight the Panther King, but instead, engage in battle with the alien creature named “Heinrich” by the Professor.
While this type of subversion wouldn’t have worked in any other game, the insane adventure ofConker’s Bad Fur Dayis already filled with nonsensical plotlines and fourth-wall breaks, so what’s another bait and switch where the main villain is easily killed off by a xenomorph?
7Zachary Hale Comstock
Bioshock Infinite
BioShock Infinite
As the antagonist of the latest addition to theBioshockfranchise,Bioshock Infinite’sZachary Hale Comstock, also known as the Prophet and the leader of the floating city of Columbia, makes it his mission to stop the protagonist, Booker DeWitt, fromretrieving Elizabeth from her tower.
Not only is he the leader of anultranationalistpolitical party that indoctrinates its citizens to subservience, but he also keeps his adopted daughter Elizabeth captive in the hopes of grooming her to become his successor, all the while siphoning her reality-bending powers.
Comstock initially tries to discourage Booker by communicating with him via radio but becomes more aggressive by sending wave upon wave of soldiers and then the terrifying Songbird to kill Booker and retrieve Elizabeth.
When Booker andElizabethfinally confront Comstock,we don’t fight the elderly villain, but Booker instead bashes Comstock’s head in and drowns him in a baptismal fontbefore he can reveal any truths about Elizabeth’s origins.
But secrets always have a way of revealing themselves, no matter how much people try to keep them hidden.In a shocking turn of events,we learn that Comstock is an alternate version of Booker, one who got baptized to atone for his participation in the Wounded Knee Massacre.
6Illusive Man
Mass Effect Series
Mass Effect Trilogy
While not entirely a villain,Mass Effect’sIllusive Man is nothing if not morally gray, who believes in the idea that the ends justify the means. Despite his occasional partnership with Commander Shepherd, his morally questionable acts often put him at odds with Commander Shepherd.
As the leader of Cerberus, a human-supremacist “terrorist” organization, the Illusive Man is extremely intelligent, operating with an agenda known only to him and his organization. With steely eye implants andan enigmatic origin, the Illusive Man serves as the “shadowy puppetmaster” of the second and thirdMass Effectgames.
10 Laughable Villains In Outstanding Games
Villains are the most important part of any good story and gaming requires them just as much as any other medium.
When the Illusive Man is unknowingly indoctrinated by the Reapers and becomes an antagonist who insists that controlling the Reapers is the only way to win,Commander Shepherd must face the Illusive Man in a battle of words, not strength.
Regardless of whether Shepherd convinces the Illusive Man, this “boss fight” is appropriate for the Illusive Man, considering his greatest weapon isn’t violence but knowledge and intelligence. According toan interview withMass Effect 2’sproducer Adrien Cho,the Illusive Man is “both the best and worst traits of humanity rolled into one person.”
Metal Gear Franchise
Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots
Known as Cipher or his real name David Oh, Zero is the overarching antagonist of the entireMetal Gearfranchise up toMetal Gear Solid 4.
As with most characters in the franchise, Zero’s morality isn’t black and white, but rather shades of gray that can best be described as “well-intentioned extremism turned accidental villainy”, as his goal was to unite the world through a common goal by means of world domination.
After the Boss’s death, Zero and Big Boss formed the Patriots, a hidden cabal that ruled the United States in secret. Zero and Big Boss later grew apart as they began to disagree with each other on their interpretations of the Boss’s will.
Zero eventually created the Les Enfants Terribles project and later an AI program that would carry on the Patriots' legacy by learning and adapting ways to best control humanity, essentially inadvertently creating his own version of Skynet.
Because Zero was reclusive and secretive throughout most of his life,we never get to fight him in any shape or form throughout the series.
By the time Big Boss found him again inMGS4, he was already in a vegetative state kept alive by life support equipment, which Big Boss turned off to euthanize the decrepit man. With that, the Patriots' legacy lives on as a memory, butmany fans aren’t so sure.
4Xivu Arath
One of the most prominent enemy factions in theDestinyfranchise is the Hive, an alien civilization whose religion revolves around the deadly Sword Logic, a philosophy of space magic that boils down to killing and proving your right to exist, which gives you paracausal power.
The Hive worship three gods who are the founding members of the Hive race: Oryx, the Taken King,Savathûn, the Witch Queen,andXivu Arath, the God of War.Hive godhood is complex, but in simpler terms, the Hive pantheon gains power whenever the concept they embody is being practiced.
As the Hive God of War, Xivu Arath gains power through any act of war, be it violence or plotting, and has wiped out many civilizations with relative ease.
Guardians have defeated her siblings,Oryxand Savathûn, inThe Taken KingandWitch Queen, respectively, buthow do we defeat the very essence of war? Simple: do not engage her in battle at alland subvert her plans by depriving her of any weapons and resources.
ThroughoutDestiny 2’sstory up toThe Final Shape, we’ve thwarted Xivu Arath’s attempts to invade Earth several times:the Warmind Rasputin sacrificed himself in Season of the Seraph, we stopped a ritual to take a proto-wormgod inSeason of the Deep, and finally helping Eris Morn inSeason of the Witchbecome the new Hive God of Vengeance to banish Xivu Arath from her Throne World, rendering her mortal and weakened.
Now, Xivu Arath is on the run, and we’ve yet to directly face her in combat. But we won’t know for sure what will happen untilEpisode Heresyconcludes.
3Pagan Min
As the main antagonist ofFar Cry 4, Pagan Min is the autocratic dictator and self-proclaimed king of Kyrat. He’s ruthless, sadistic, and egomaniacal, but also a charismatic and deeply complex character whose motivations will make clear why he’s the way he is. Right next to Vaas, Pagan Min may bethe franchise’s most iconic villain.
He’s introduced early in the story, when Ajay crosses the Indian border to Kyrat and is intercepted by his soldiers. Angry that the commander of those soldiers made a mistake, we get a pretty good look at Pagan Min’s instability when he kills the commander by stabbing him repeatedly in the neck, and remarks with annoyance that he got blood on his shoes.
At the beginning of the story, Pagan “invites” Ajay to dinner and instructs him to wait for his return while he “interrogates” his “guest” and tells him to “enjoy the crab rangoon.” If you listen to Pagan and wait for 15 minutes, he’ll return and take Ajay to spread his mother’s ashes along with his late half-sister Laskmana, giving you an alternate, early end to the game.
Throughout the story, Pagan Min’s goal is to put a stop to the Golden Path rebellion, and he is shown to be ambivalent and perhaps even reluctant in killing Ajay through their interactions.You don’t get to fight Pagan. Instead,he invites you to sit downso you may talk, where you can shoot him or spread Ajay’s mother’s ashes with him.
2Father/Shaun
As the director of the underground Institute and main antagonist ofFallout 4, Father wages a war against the Railroad and Brotherhood of Steel for control of the Commonwealth, and believes that the humanity surviving on the surface is too far gone to be saved, asthe Institute is the only worthy faction.
Father is named as such for his contribution in providing the necessary DNA to create the third generation of synthetic human beings that look indistinguishable from real humans. He has little regard for the people on the surface and the synths he creates, only caring about advancing the Institute’s technology.
We later find out that Father’s real name is Shaun, the Sole Survivor’s long-lost son, and is no longer the baby we imagined we would reunite with. Shaun’s urgency to make the Sole Survivor his heir is made apparent when he explains that he is dying of a very aggressive form of cancer.
If you choose to oppose the Institute, the Sole Survivor can talk to Shaun on his deathbed, who remains convinced that destroying the Institute is a terrible mistake and is bitter at your decision to destroy his life’s work.Regardless of your actions, Shaun dies at the end of the story from his cancer.
1Professor Nakayama
Borderlands 2: Sir Hammerlock’s Big Game Hunt
Professor Nakayama is a Hyperion scientist and a Handsome Jack superfan, and perhaps one of the most patheticBorderlandsvillains in the franchise’s history.
When the Vault Hunters killed Handsome Jack during the events ofBorderlands 2, he became distraught and vowed revenge on the Vault Hunter, deciding that he could bring back his idol by cloning him by splicing Jack’s DNA with a Pandoran beast.
During the events of the DLCSir Hammerlock’s Big Game Hunt, Nakayama had been stuck in the jungles of Aegrus and finds out that the Vault Hunter has also arrived. He angrily makes threats to the Vault Hunter, and in true Hyperion egghead fashion, sends obstacles to stop the Vault Hunter instead of facing them directly.
Nakayama only reveals himself after the Vault Hunter defeats his Jackenstein creation, andas he hypes himself up to fight the Vault Hunter, he loses his balance and trips, falling down a flight of stairs. As he’s falling, you can see his health bar chipping away until he cracks his neck at the bottom, which kills him instantly.
Nakayama is perhaps one of the most ridiculous and unexpected boss deaths in gaming history, which is fitting for the wacky tone that theBorderlandsfranchise tries to set.
