Everybody loves being the hero, but sometimes it’s fun to be a little bad too. This is where anti-heroes come in. One flawed person in the right place can turn them into the hero of a narrative. The games below go a step further and include a whole team of them fighting against the odds.
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Some of these teams have redeeming qualities that show them as complicated characters doing their best in an evil world while grappling with their own personal demons. Other times they are just downright bad people who could just as easily be the villain of someone else’s story if the players were following someone else’s perspective.
7
The Suicide Squad
Task Force X Kills an Evil Justice League in Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League
- Released
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February 2, 2024
A lot of negativity is lobbed at Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League. Much of it is focused on the repetitive gameplay designed around a live-service model and the comparisons to the Arkham games with which it shares a continuity. It is a shame the game went this route, because nuggets of goodness are evident in some of the cutscenes.
Controlling the Suicide Squad while they take out members of the Justice League is a cool idea and a nice subversion of expectations as the next step for the Arkham universe. The team’s personality shines through in many of the cinematics. It is just a shame it is wrapped up in a live-service title.
There’s nothing wrong with live-service games, but it was not what most fans of the narrative-based single-player Arkham games wanted for a follow-up.
6
The 3rd Street Saints
The Gang of Saints Row Excel at Taking Over Cities and Toppling Alien Empires
- Released
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September 1, 2006
The Saints Row games evolved from a Grand Theft Auto-influenced open-world game into a zany spectacle that parodied games and pop culture with endearing low-brow humor. At the center of it all was the titular Saints, a gang that grew all the way from the dirty streets right into the White House.
In the first two games the Saints, along with the player-created protagonist, are more ruthless and unforgiving. Part three takes the series into an exaggerated reality and adds a lot more humor to the criminal entrepreneur, and take to the fourth game, where players are the literal U.S. President who kills aliens. Yeah, it’s safe to assume these are the good-ish guys.
5
Tav’s Party
Baldur’s Gate 3’s Tadpole-Infected Ragtag Adventurers
With as flexible a narrative as Baldur’s Gate 3, the party can go in an entirely heroic direction or become downright evil maniacs. This RPG is smarter than most games, though, and many choices fall into a narrative gray area that more often than not turns the leader of the party and the rest of the crew into antiheroes.
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Many of the characters individually have features common to antiheroes. Lae’zel is from a brutal race of disciplined and unflinching warriors, Astarion is an unwilling vampire with the urges typical of mythological beings, and Shadowheart worships a dark goddess.
Despite being the third game in a series, Baldur’s Gate 3 can be played as a standalone title without confusing newcomers.
4
Kane & Lynch
Grimey Killers of the Criminal Underworld for Two Dead Men in Dog Days
- Released
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November 13, 2007
- Publisher(s)
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Eidos Interactive
The titular characters of these two games are brutal criminals with zero redeeming qualities both morally and socially. They are the stars, though, and players control them as they shoot their way through the criminal underworld, indiscriminately leaving a trail of bodies in their wake.
Lynch is also clearly dealing with intense psychological issues. While the gameplay has aged, they are still interesting to play because of their unflinching dedication to the protagonist’s cruelty and unlikability. Both games are also fully playable in co-op.
The sequel, 2 Dog Days, plays as if an unseen camera crew films the two characters. There is a filter to make it look like a camcorder is recording and the audio sounds like a boom mic is picking it up. This adds to the game’s grimy aesthetic but also adds disorientation to the players.
3
Franklin, Trevor, And Michael
Grand Theft Auto 5’s Trio of Heisting Protagonists Have Good Days and Bad Days
- Released
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September 17, 2013
- Developer(s)
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Rockstar North
The fifth mainline game in this legendary series introduces the mechanic of having multiple protagonists. Each of them is engaged in criminal life, but for different reasons and at different stages. Franklin is looking for a better station in life, Michael is looking for meaning and purpose to escape his comfortable but boring life in the witness protection program, and Trevor is just a psychopath.
They deal with all manner of criminals during the course of the story. What separates the three from many of the other gangsters, both street and corporate, is their honestly. A character like Devin Weston is a greedy backstabber while the FIB stoops just as low as the protagonists but tries to justify it in the name of the greater good. The anti-hero protagonists are not trying to pretend they are better than everyone else.
2
The Vault Hunters
Borderlands’ Vault Hunters Do a Bit of Bad and a Bit of Good for Loot Galore
- Released
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October 14, 2014
Every group of mercs in the Borderlands games can be considered anti-heroes to some extent. Even by this standard, the playable characters in The Pre-Sequel stand out as particularly worthy of this list. The Vault Hunters here are sent to Pandora’s moon on orders from Jack, who eventually becomes known as Handsome Jack, the villain of Borderlands 2.
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Though greed is at the center of The Pre-Sequel’s story, the characters still do some heroic things, like preventing the moon from being blown to smithereens. There are six characters to choose from including the DLC, like the Atlas corporation assassin Athena and a doppelgänger of Jack.
1
The Van Der Linde Gang
Red Dead Redemption 2’s Gang of Outlaws Rob and Kill, Sometimes for Better or Worse
- Released
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October 26, 2018
This one is complicated because of how Red Dead Redemption 2’s story unfolds. The Van der Linde gang is a rag-tag group of bank robbers running away from modernity on the edge of society. During the story, certain characters emerge as outright villainous as the gang slowly falls apart.
However, some stay right by Arthur Morgan’s side right until the very end, so some semblance of an anti-hero gang remains until the epilogue. At the start, the Van der Linde gang feels like the romanticized outlaws so often depicted in media about the Wild West.
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