Seriously, I don’t know how ideas like this pop into my head sometimes. But I got to thinking about video game bad guys, and wondering simply who was the most ambitious? Most of the time, video game antagonists really aren’t that ambitious if you were to stop and think about it; often times, they want to “take over the world,” or “kill Chris Redfield,” or something unoriginal like that. And in the end, I’ve deduced my comparison down to two evil entities, who are similar, but not quite the same in their motives – Chaos (or Garland) from the original NES Final Fantasy, and The Reapers from Mass Effect.
I will disclaim that my argument is based off of the knowledge gained about the Reapers from Mass Effect 1, as I have yet to complete Mass Effect 2 yet.
Both villains are similar in the fact that they do their destruction in cycles. However, where as Chaos does it by having himself sent back in time 2,000 years to terrorize Final Fantasy humanity repeatedly, the Reapers simply go into hibernation mode for 50,000 years, and basically waits for life of any kind(s) to spring again, develop, rise, and flourish before coming back onto the scene to burn the motherfucker up back down to zero, before going back into hibernation for 50,000 more years to wait to do it again. Chaos’s MO is he that starts 2,000 years in the past, sends the four elemental fiends 2,000 years in the future to terrorize the world while he terrorizes the world in his present time and when he catches up to the time in which he sent the four elemental fiends, tired, weakened and now the tiny evil knight, Garland, the fiends send him back in time 2,000 years for the cycle to repeat itself.
There is something to be said about how much more destructive the Reapers have to be, in their non-discriminative way that they want to obliterate all lifeforms, but the truth of the matter is that the age factor cannot be taken away from Chaos’s pursuits. However, taking into consideration of the age/era difference, I would have to give the Reapers the point in this aspect, simply because they’re more open minded, and willing to try new things, when it comes to societies they’re putting into extinction; I mean, if I were Chaos, I think I’d get bored decimating the same civilizations over and over and over again. Point – Reapers
When it comes to teamwork, Chaos had no choice but to rely on others, as he was all by himself. The Reapers were many, and despite their strength in numbers, as individuals, were still more than a match for large fleets of opponents. So with no necessity to rely on anyone else, the Reapers became kind of xenophobic, and in a way a little bigoted; after all, at the end of their cycles of doom, they were the only ones left alive; genocide of everything aside from them is just a tad big racist, if you ask me. Chaos required the aid of the four elemental fiends; he scratched their backs by sending them to a time in which they could destroy the world at their leisure, and simply only asking in return for them to send his weak and useless self back to his own time when they got there. It was essentially a win-win for both parties, which epitomizes good teamwork. Point – Chaos
Okay, I’m running out of ideas to categorize and compare the two, so I’m going to let this one be the deciding factor here – sadism. Chaos arrives at his Temple of Fiends 2,000 years in the past, and pretty much goes to town on civilization. He’s very much the type to destroy anything and everyone he can on any given day. Those who attempt to collaborate and rise to take him on, he’s the type to snuff them out before they can get started. Chaos does not strike me as the type who is willing to wait for anything, especially if it is going to potentially put an end to his mission to cause chaos. The Reapers are very much different in that respect. Not only do they wait, they wait 50,000 years. This isn’t 25 times longer than Chaos waits, because Chaos doesn’t actually wait – he sends himself back in time 2,000 years, and pretty much is expected to get back to work as soon as he turns back into Chaos. But the Reapers wait; they wait for life to sprout, life to grow, life to develop, and most importantly, life to become capable (or believe to be) of defending themselves, and to fight back. And then the Reapers emerge from dark space and decimate all life as we know it. They don’t snuff anything; they want life to attempt to put up a fight. The Reapers are confident and have it in their intelligence that they’re probably already going to win, so why not let them mobilize? So that factor is going to decide this little debate – the fact that the Reapers actually give their lambs a chance to fight back before ultimately overrunning them anyway is definitely more sadistic than Chaos’s well, chaos. Point – Reapers
Chaos deserves a lot of credit for laying down the groundwork for being a multi-era badass. And he did it more or less as a one-man show. But if villainy didn’t evolve in twenty years, then villainy is headed in a bad direction, and it’s safe to say that thanks to the Reapers, that video game antagonists are at least headed in the right direction, at least once in a while. It’s funny too, because I had in my mind prior to sitting down to write this that a lot of weight should be taken into account for Chaos’s age and era, and that he would be the eventual winner of this comparison, but upon thinking on the fly while writing this nonsense, things changed. Funny how things work out sometimes.
