10 Open-World Games Where You Play as the Villain

When most people picture open-world games, they'll probably picture games like Minecraft, The Witcher 3, or even Marvel's Spider-Man, which all feature fairly heroic protagonists.

While many open-world games are RPGs that allow players to commit evil acts just as easily as good ones, there are several open-world titles out there that lean heavily towards people becoming or partially playing as outright villains, with many starting out with players embodying the villains of heroes' stories.

Here are 10 open-world games that allow people to play as villains either in large portions of a game's runtime, via optional actions, or by simply having people play as some of pop culture's most villainous creatures and characters right from the start of the game.

10 Mafia II

Vito Scaletta's Fall to Organized Crime

Villains aren't born but are rather molded by their experiences in life, and one open-world game that allows players to witness the fall of a person to a leader of organized crime is Mafia II.

Set during the 1940s and 50s, Mafia II is centered around the life of Vito Scaletta, who repeatedly gets caught up in criminal dealings with crime families, mobs, and local mafia, resulting in him repeatedly getting imprisoned and indebted to numerous criminal organizations.

These choices ultimately lead to Scaletta becoming strained with his family and friends, but also to him assassinating several people, including Tommy Angelo, the protagonist of the first Mafia game.

9 Dead Rising 3

Psychopathic Pasts

The majority of Dead Rising 3 is spent playing as the young mechanic Nick Ramos, probably the most heroic protagonist in the entire Dead Rising series, as he strives to save his friends and any survivors of the Los Perdidos zombie outbreak and evacuate anyone he can from the city.

However, if players purchase the Untold Stories Operation Broken Eagle and Chaos Rising DLCs, they'll be able to play as Special Forces Commander Adam Kane and neo-Confederate biker Hunter Thibodeaux, two violent psychopaths that Ramos actually kills in Dead Rising 3's main campaign.

Both of these DLCs depict Kane and Thibodeaux's life leading up to their encounter with Ramos, with Kane's story showing how he kidnapped and eliminated the President of the United States, while Thibodeaux's story shows how he took control of the biker gang "The Kings of Chaos".

8 Ultimate Spider-Man

Ultimate Eddie Brock's Forgotten Tale

Brian Michael Bendis and Mark Bagley's Ultimate Spider-Man run is one of the most critically acclaimed and celebrated Spider-Man comic series of all time, but if people wanted to understand Earth-1610 Peter Parker's life in its entirety, they'd have to play Treyarch's Ultimate Spider-Man.

Set after Ultimate Spider-Man issue #38, the Ultimate Spider-Man game has people play as both Spider-Man and Eddie Brock Venom, with both characters trying to live their lives in New York before being hunted down by Silver Sable and Trask Industries mercenaries.

While the Venom gameplay here isn't as grotesque or bombastic as it is in Marvel's Spider-Man 2, Ultimate Spider-Man allows people to play as Venom a lot longer than the former, as the game is more or less split between Venom and Spider-Man, with Venom being able to swing around the city and even eat people.

7 Middle-earth: Shadow of War

The Rise of a Nazgul

Some open-world games don't actually reveal to the player that they're playing as a villain until past the halfway point of the game, with a perfect example of which being Middle-earth: Shadow of War, set before The Lord of the Rings trilogy.

Shadow of War has players once again embody the possessed ranger Talion and the spirit of the Elven smith Celebrimbor from Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor, as the pair forge a new Ring of Power to dominate the armies of Mordor and defeat the Dark Lord Sauron once and for all.

However, it's eventually revealed that Celebrimbor simply planned to replace Sauron as a new oppressive Bright Lord, forcing the two to abandon one another and cause Talion to become a Nazgul in order to curtail Celebrimbor's plans, but become doomed to serve Sauron until his defeat during The Return of the King.

6 Fallout: New Vegas

Siding With Caesar's Legion

Most of Bethesda's RPGs allow people to freely interact with worlds in any way they want, such as being selfless heroes, maniacal warlords, or even greedy guns for hire, but I'd argue that the one Bethesda game that lets people be true villains is Fallout: New Vegas.

Developed by Obsidian Entertainment, Fallout: New Vegas is set in the Mojave wasteland of 2281 and has players embody an amnesiac courier who sets off to get revenge on a man who left them for dead, but inevitably gets caught up in a three-pronged conflict over the region between the New California Republic, Mr. House, and Caesar's Legion.

If players wanted to be truly villainous, they should side with Caesar's Legion, a dictatorial faction built upon ancient Roman military values, with its armies being primarily made of conscripted slaves that violently conquer any town or tribe that comes in their path, often resulting in people being brutally slain, enslaved, or crucified.

5 Shadow of the Colossus

Wander's Misguided Quest

As suggested previously in this article, some villains in games begin their journeys with good intentions but ultimately wind up creating more harm than good, with a perfect example of which being seen in Wander's quest in Shadow of the Colossus.

Shadow of the Colossus begins like many medieval tales, with a seemingly heroic young man striving to save a damsel with his trusty horse by slaying several monstrous colossi, but as Wander slays more and more of the titanic creatures, it is slowly hinted that killing the colossi might not be a good thing.

By the end of the game, it's revealed that Wander was actually manipulated by the entity Dormin to kill the colossi, which would in turn free his spirit and allow Dormin to possess Wander in exchange for reviving the deceased damsel.

4 Vampyr

Jonathan Reid's Fall to Vampirism

Vampires are some of fiction's most popular creatures, as they can be sympathetic characters doomed to live eternally with a dominating thirst for human blood, or they can be deceptive villains striving to torment and control people in order to stay "alive."

Players can experience both versions of living a vampire life in Dontnod Entertainment's Vampyr, which has people play as early 20th-century Doctor Jonathan Reid, who mysteriously wakes up as a vampire and strives to discover the origins of a vampiric epidemic in London.

If players attempt to hold Reid's blood thirst back and attack as few people as possible, they'll get a good ending for the game, but if players bite over 10 people throughout Vampyr, Reid will become a merciless, unloved vampire who kills any and all humans that stumble on his path.

3 Prototype

The Origins of a True Villain

One open-world game that allows people to play as an outright violent and scheming villain right from the start of the game is Radical Entertainment's Manhattan-based Prototype.

Here, people play as Alex Mercer, an amnesiac man who finds himself in a morgue with deadly shapeshifting abilities, who sets out to learn more about his past while slicing and dicing Blackwatch soldiers, mutated civilians, and even regular people along the way.

Once Mercer discovers his past as one of the lead Gentek scientists who created the mutating Blacklight virus, he doesn't strive to wipe out the virus as most gaming protagonists would, but instead plans to upgrade the virus and infect all of humanity with it, becoming the main antagonist of Prototype 2.

2 Jaws Unleashed

A Great White Shark Rampage

There aren't many open-world games out there that are directly based on films, let alone open-world movie games that have people play as the antagonist, but Appaloosa Interactive strove to make one such game based on the hit blockbuster franchise Jaws, with that game being Jaws Unleashed.

Set 30 years after the first Jaws movie, Jaws Unleashed has players embody a new 35-foot-long great white shark that swims over to Amity Island and promptly begins attacking and eating any poor soul that wanders into the water.

While many of the island's residents attempt to capture or eliminate the shark, such as marine biologist Michael Brody, who appeared in all four Jaws films, their efforts are revealed to be pointless as it manages to avoid capture multiple times, survives encounters with explosives, boats, other sharks, and even an orca.

1 V Rising

The Wrath of an Ancient Vampire

Unlike Vampyr, which allows people to play as either a well-intentioned vampire or one who freely feeds on anyone they desire, V Rising has players embody a villainous ancient vampire right from the get-go as they strive to reclaim dominion over Vardoran after an 800-year-long absence.

After customizing the vampire and subsequently being awakened, players can get straight into fighting monsters, animals, and humans with craftable weapons and various vampiric abilities, with more craft recipes and spells being unlocked as people play the game, such as Raging Tempest and Ward of the Damned.

Players can even build a living, six-story-tall castle which people can use to store items, gardens, furnaces, libraries, and even a dungeon filled with humans and animals awaiting to be drained of their enriching blood.