Hero Antagonist / Video Games

• In the Ace Attorney series, this is the role that non-Amoral Attorney prosecutors, such as Miles Edgeworth (post-character development), Franziska von Karma (post-character development), and Klavier Gavin play. They're just normal people doing their jobs and trying to get criminals off the streets, and they'll only prosecute a case they have legitimate reason to support- and if the defense can convince them that the defendant is innocent, they don't hold grudges and may even help investigate the real culprit.
• The freeware indie game Akuji the Demon has the final boss being the hero who defeated and banished you into the dungeon.
• Astra Hunter Zosma: The bosses of the Crescent Moon Tower fight Zosma for the sake of testing him, but they want him to succeed in escaping the tower so that he can carry on their legacies and so that he can be revived from his untimely death.
• Ash from Atelier Iris 3 simply wants to use the Escalario to stop Uroborus from awakening. To do this, he tries to kill Edge and Nell, and kidnap Iris, the only person able to use the Escalario.
• Balthazar from Baldur's Gate II: Throne of Bhaal, who, unlike most of the Bhaalspawn who are trying to seize the former God of Murder's power, is actually trying to rid the world of Bhaal's taint by destroying all other Bhaalspawn and then committing ritual suicide. If you're playing an evil character, he's got a good point. Sadly, if you're good, you can't persuade him that you can handle Bhaal's power without turning evil and he attacks you anyway. (One of the design directors for Throne of Bhaal did a mod, Ascension, where this becomes a possibility. You can even turn him into an ally for the final battle.)
• Battle for Wesnoth:
  • The people of Parthyn and later Tath from Descent Into Darkness. The protagonist Malin Keshar originally only use necromancy (which got him outcasted from his town, Parthyn) to fight the orcs who have been attacking Parthyn. But midway through the campaign, he choose to attack Parthyn's guard Drogan for refusing his help, which cause everybody in Parthyn to actively antagonize Malin. Then Malin must also deals with soldiers from Tath because he helped Darken Volk raid the place.
  • Many antagonists of the scenario in Secrets of the Ancients are people minding their lawful business until they cross path with the necromancer protagonist Ardonna who is on her quest to gain immortality.
• Hakumen from BlazBlue, one of the Six Legendary Heroes who saved the world from the attack of The Black Beast. He wants to prevent a rebirth of The Black Beast by killing Ragna. He is not open to alternative solutions. However, in quite a few character's stories — Taokaka's and Bang's, for example — he pretty much attacks them because he can, and he doesn't hold back at all; in Bang's case, if the player loses the "boss fight" against Hakumen, Bang actually dies of the injuries Hakumen inflicts on him, even though at their power levels, Bang is practically no threat to him at all. Also, like the actual Samurai, Hakumen possesses a bizarre and at times quite brutal view of "justice" that makes sense only to him, which justifies many of his clashes with other good characters. Hakumen is a textbook example of Good Is Not Nice at his best, and an actual villain at his worst.
• Bloodborne: Not everyone is attacking you because they're evil, were heroic but have since gone nuts, or just have a grudge against hunters in general. Some examples:
  • Retired Hunter Djura only wants to protect the beasts of Old Yharnam, and he warns you several times to turn back. If you can manage to approach him and talk to him, he's pretty easy to befriend. If not, he'll protect his turf with a gatling gun.
  • Gherman, the First Hunter, is actually on your side. He wants to kill you because doing so will free you from the Hunt. And he muses before the fight that you are likely fighting him rather than accepting his gift of freedom because you have gone mad from your time within the Dream.
  • The DLC's penultimate Boss, Lady Maria of the Astral Clocktower, isn't really villainous (and the Research Hall patients seem to see her in a good light). She fights you in a desperate attempt to warn you away from the Fishing Hamlet, so you don't accidentally uncover the horrible things sleeping there.
• Dee in BLUE REVOLVER is the leader of the eponymous magic-regulation organization and the Final Boss. All she really wants is for Mae to stop building dangerous Devices, but Mae won't take "stop" for an answer and attacks her.
• Both Colonel Zarpedon and the Lost Legion (later including Moxxi and the original Vault Hunters) from Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel! can be considered these when they try to kill the Generation 1.5 Vault Hunters and Jack, why? They're actually trying to prevent the events in Borderlands 2 from happening by preventing Jack from discovering the secret of the Vault on/that is Elpis and rising to power in Hyperion, they only end up causing the events of Borderlands 2 by breaking and betraying the well-meaning anti-hero Jack until he's driven mad by paranoia and provoking him into purging Pandora of what he now deems the Bandits. Most of the characters listed here are perfectly sympathetic characters if not Heroes of other stories. That said, the main characters in Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel can be considered this, (at least) only by the fact that is Zarpedon is trying to blow up the entire moon of Elpis with thousands of Innocent Bystanders living on it to stop the main cast. Most of the playable characters can be found on Sliding Scale of Anti-Villains at varying points, from being forcibly programmed to help Jack, to being bored while holidaying.
• In what is possibly the most controversial application of this trope, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 has your player character, a US Army Ranger in disguise as a Russian terrorist, shooting at Russian Federal Security Bureau agents towards the end of the level No Russian. It's hard to blame them for shooting at you, given that they're trying to stop you and your terrorist cell from killing any more civilians.
• Celestial Hearts: The party attacks the first boss, Gail, for being an intruder in Livia Woods. He's actually a ninja on a mission to investigate the Graveharts for kidnapping. Later, he frees the party from the Gravehart Dungeon and joins them.
• Children of Zodiarcs: Lord Argon is the captain of the guard and one of the only honest guards on the otherwise corrupt force. Meanwhile, the protagonist's boss Zirchhoff is a sociopathic Eat the Rich rebel who wants to bathe the streets in blood (of all classes), and Argon is doing everything he can to stop the madness, including helping rebel defectors. Unfortunately, this usually means trying to kill you.
• In one Rikti War Zone/Vanguard arc of City of Heroes, rival organization Longbow becomes full-on Hero Antagonists. In sister game City of Villains Longbow is only one of many such organizations, thanks to the Villain Protagonist nature of that game's characters.
• Cyberpunk 2077 Given his past as an anti-corporate gang leader, his loathing of late-stage capitalism in general and Saburo Arasaka in particular and his clear affection for Evelyn, it is quite easy to envision a scenario where Yorinobu Arasaka was an ally of V and Jackie. However, someone had to take the fall for Saburo's death, and pinning that on the two sneak thieves was just too good to pass up.
  • Sandayu Oda, Hanako's bodyguard, is a grade-A asshole, sure, but he's ultimately just trying to do his job and keep Hanako safe. He is willing to hear V and Takemura out and give them a chance to run, instead of just killing them outright (which Takemura readily admits he would have done if their roles were reversed). If you believe he knew the true identity of Saburo's killer at this point, his actions could even be treated as an attempt to keep V and Takemura away from Arasaka wihile saving face.
• In the three main Danganronpa games, any student who acts as an antagonist but isn't a Big Bad, perpetually insane or one of the Warriors of Hope is a hero antagonist, as they otherwise would not have become an antagonist had they not been turned into one by circumstance. The exception to this rule where the character is part of the main cast, is an antagonist, is not a Big Bad, but is still not "heroic" is Korekiyo Shinguji, being a Serial Killer who was planning a kill from the start from Killing Harmony, and the exception for the character being Ax-Crazy but still counting as heroic is Nagito Komaeda, who is a Well-Intentioned Extremist that takes his belief in hope incredibly far in the second game.
• Darkest Dungeon gives us the Fanatic in the Crimson Court DLC, a Vampire Hunter who has a chance to spawn in any given dungeon if one of your heroes has the Crimson Curse effect. The game makes it clear that despite the noble cause of killing off the bloodsuckers, He Who Fights Monsters is in full effect as he makes no hesitation in murdering your other party members even if they don't have the status. To say nothing of the background changing to a field of burning people and corpses.
• In Dark Watch's evil ending, Cassidy becomes this if you decide to steal the Big Bad's power for yourself and she turns on you to stop the Curse of the West from spreading. During the whole game she serves as a disembodied voice that guides you, but she turns into an angel of light as the final boss in that ending.
• Dawn of War:
  • The Eldar in the vanilla campaign are trying to stop a powerful daemon from being unsealed. Being Eldar however they never actually tell anyone this is their plan, and the Blood Ravens kill them in order to progress in their mission. Similarly in Dawn of War II the Eldar are trying to stop the Tyranid swarm just as the Blood Ravens are; unfortunately their plan involves luring them onto the planets and then blowing them up, while the Blood Ravens are trying to save the planets.
  • Winter Assault allows the player the option to play as Orks and Chaos fighting Imperial Guard and Eldar.
  • Dark Crusade, depending on which faction the player picks, can have them go against the Eldar (fighting to stop the Necrons from being unsealed and stopping anyone who would unseal them, even accidentally), the Imperial Guard (liberating the humans of the world from alien oppression), and/or the Tau (defending their colony world from alien invaders). Space Marines Vs Imperial Guard plays this for maximum tragedy, as they're both Just Following Orders and cannot back down. The Space Marines themselves however are not an example, as they're only fighting to conceal incriminating secrets from their Chapter's past.
  • Soulstorm has the same "Risk"-Style Map as Dark Crusade, with the Imperial Guard, Tau and Eldar making reappearances, and the Space Marines are actually heroic (if incompetent) this time. The Sisters of Battle are a blurry case; they're fighting to rid the Kaurava of all Chaos and alien taint, but their solution is to kill them all and let the Emperor sort them out.
  • Retribution bizarrely only has this for the tutorial mission for the evil factions (Orks against Eldar, Chaos against Space Marines, Tyranids against Imperial Guard), and one mission where the player fights a bunch of Eldar trying to stop the Exterminatus (which the player only learns after the fact). For every other mission the player fights against evil aliens or Chaos-corrupted renegades no matter which faction is picked.
• In Deus Ex, after you defect from UNATCO, any cop or U.S. or UNATCO soldier that truly believes he is fighting for the greater good and is not flat out sadistic or part of the conspiracy, fits this trope.
• A smaller example in Deus Ex: Human Revolution for the police station level. If you don't talk your way in and either sneak in through the back, or shoot your way through, the Detroit police serve as this. They are not aware of the conspiracy surrounding the dead hacker; they're just following orders.
• Devil May Cry 4:
  • For the first half of the game, Dante is presented as the protagonist Nero's main enemy, culminating in their duel in Mission 10. But after said mission, the identity and objective of the real villain Sanctus are revealed, along with Dante's true reasons for opposing Nero.
  • Credo genuinely wants to protect the citizens of Fortuna and believed that the Ascension Ceremony was a good idea. He was also very reluctant in fighting Nero, but couldn't actually disobey Sanctus at first as he's Just Following Orders. However, he sides with the heroes when Kyrie has been hostaged, an act that would lead to his death.
• Devil May Cry 5: In the Special Edition, Dante is the Final Boss of Vergil's campaign.
• Disgaea:
  • Subverted in Disgaea 3. Mao is a Villain Protagonist (Noble Demon type), and Super Hero Aurum is originally portrayed as some legendary super hero. The subversion occurs around Chapter 8, when the player discovers that Aurum is nothing but a big phony who's so foul that even demons scorn him (especially his transformation).
  • Played straight in the original Disgaea, as the Recurring Boss is a Stealth Mentor to the Villain Protagonist, and the final battle is essentially the Big Good Guile Hero performing a Secret Test of Character on said Villain Protagonist. The main antagonist (who, oddly enough, is the penultimate boss rather than the final boss) is definitely evil, however.
  • The Krichevskoy group from Disgaea Dimensions 2 oppose Laharl repeatedly to make him see how villainous he is, a trait not shared with his late father. While they do some sketchy stuff, by Disgaea demon standards they're fairly noble as they are trying to remove a corrupt king who threatens to ruin the Netherworld for all demons.
• Loghain from Dragon Age: Origins is a bona-fide hero of Ferelden, fighting only to keep the realm independent of any foreign influence, particularly Orlais (which had ruled Ferelden with an iron fist for quite some time). He was a faithful right hand to king Maric, and thought up most of the winning strategies in the king's war of independence. The only problem is that he does not understand (nor wants to understand, apparently) the threat of the Blight nor the importance of the Grey Wardens, and therefore every action he takes inadvertently weakens his beloved kingdom, which is why the player's team must stop him.
• One from Drakengard 3. She overthrew the despotic rulers of her world, who had oppressed the people to create a new, peaceful world while ruling in their place. She therefore despises Zero who wants to kill her along with her sisters. Except Zero is trying to save the world, not destroy it. from the flower that has infected her as well as all her sisters.
• In both Dungeon Keeper games, aside from when you fight other Keepers, your opponents are mainly stock fantasy heroes.
• In The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, the Vigil of Stendarr is a Church Militant order dedicated to hunting down and destroying supernatural threats to mortal life, including Daedra, Daedra worshipers, vampires, lycanthropes, and others. While generally benevolent and good, including healing travelers for free, they display some Knight Templar tendencies, such as not bothering to discriminate between actual malevolent threats and those who mean no harm (like the worshipers of the more benevolent Daedric Princes and Friendly Neighborhood Vampires). This can lead to trouble with the Dragonborn if, say, the Dragonborn is carrying a Daedric artifact. The Vigilants will be very insistent that you hand it over, and will start reaching for their maces if you refuse. This can extend to the artifacts of the more benevolent Daedra, like Meridia or Azura.
• Fallout:
  • In Fallout 3 the Brotherhood of Steel becomes one if you destroy the Citadel. The Regulators will hunt down the player if s/he has Evil Karma.
  • Both the NCR and Mr. House in Fallout: New Vegas if you support Caesar's Legion.
  • The Minutemen in Fallout 4, should you join the raiders of Nuka-World in taking over settlements in the rest of the Commonwealth.
• Final Fantasy VI gives General Leo the description of "the guy with principles." Sabin even notes "he could be my friend, if he weren't my enemy." Leo is the most anti of Anti-Villains in the whole Final Fantasy franchise, as A Father to His Men who minimizes casualties on both sides, and always acts polite, even to his enemies. When Kefka starts killing people at random, Leo has enough of Kefka's dishonorable tactics and fights him. Too bad for Leo that Kefka fights dirty, killing Leo with a literal backstab. Leo proved so popular that, to this day, there's still speculation that he can be returned to the party.
• Final Fantasy Tactics:
  • Milleuda Folles actually has very good reasons to fight the nobility of Ivalice, she's just too stubborn in opposing Ramza and is killed for it.
  • Wiegraf is one of these during the prologue and remains so to a lesser extent, later in the story. He starts out as a Holy Knight fighting against the aristocracy for very justifiable reasons. His only really even vaguely selfish or villainous actions are his attempts to take revenge on Ramza for killing his sister, but Wiegraf also doesn't know that Ramza tried to avoid killing her. Wiegraf later becomes a Fallen Hero, however, as revenge drives him off the slippery slope.
  • Zalmour Lucianada also goes after Ramza because he really thinks he's guilty of murdering Cardinal Delacroix.
  • We have Isilud and Meliadoul Tengille too, who oppose Ramza not knowing the truth about his intentions.
• Many of the Sanctum officials, such as Yaag Rosch and Cid Raines, from Final Fantasy XIII count. They hunt down the protagonists and seek to eliminate them, but they do all this to protect Cocoon, whom the protagonists are destined to destroy.
• In the Fire Emblem series:
  • In Fire Emblem Fates, the Hoshidan characters are this on the Conquest route since you're fighting in the name of a megalomaniacal tyrant. Sakura in particular never antagonizes you directly unless you are an immediate threat to her homeland or loved ones.
  • In Fire Emblem: Three Houses and, by extension, Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes:
    • Claude is this on the Crimson Flower route and briefly on the Azure Moon route of Three Houses. In the former, he's just trying to protect his territorial sovereignty from The Empire. In the latter, he only opposes you because The Empire has goaded his army into a Mêlée à Trois, and he knows he gains nothing from fighting your forces directly.
    • Dimitri on the Crimson Flower route of Three Houses and the Scarlet Blaze route of Three Hopes, as he is stated by the developers to be a righteous king. Dimitri only counts as an antagonist due to defending his homeland from The Empire, which happens to be controlled by the player in this route due to an earlier Hazy-Feel Turn on their (read: your) part.
    • Rhea on the Scarlet Blaze and Golden Wildfire routes of Three Hopes, having not undergone Sanity Slippage, is arguably this. She's a good person who genuinely wants what's best for the people of Fódlan, but because she plays her cards so close to the chest, Edelgard and Claude never realize she isn't trying to support the failing status quo for its own sake, and they assume she will oppose their attempts to make meaningful social change. Their assumptions more or less become a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy as a result.
• In Golden Sun, Felix, though this is not revealed until Golden Sun: The Lost Age, where a Perspective Flip occurs and Felix becomes the protagonist and Isaac becomes the Hero Antagonist.
• In the first Gravity Rush, Raven takes this role. She is incredibly hostile towards Kat from the moment they meet, fighting her at very turn and refusing to explain anything about her actions when pressed. Despite this, Gade assures her that Raven is a good person and that the two are probably on the same side, even if Raven seems adamant about stopping Kat from repairing the city. It eventually turns out that Raven has been attacking Kat because mayoral candidate D'nelica promised that he will send a search team to rescue the children down in Boutoume if she kept the missing cities apart. Raven also assumes that Kat already knows about the situation and is heartlessly opposing her on orders from the current mayor, dismissing Kat's confusion as her playing dumb. It isn't until Kat accidentally stumbles upon the problem herself and selflessly helps solve it that the other woman finally backs off and realizes that D'nelica was merely manipulating her in his quest for power.
• Gordon Freeman and Cpl Adrian Shepherd are the protagonists of different Half-Life games, working to opposing ends. Shep wants to catch Freeman, for starters, and Freeman has fragged a number of soldiers.
• In Halo 2, your first two missions as the Arbiter involve wiping a group of Covenant "heretics". As it turns out, said heretics were actually trying to save all life in the galaxy by revealing the truth about what the Halos actually do.
• Hextech Mayhem: Heimerdinger is the game's main antagonist, but his motivation is to stop Player Character Ziggs from causing destruction with his bombs.
• The Knights Templar in Immortal Souls are definitely good guys, as the only group actually devoted to actively fighting the "shadow creatures", which are almost all malevolent and/or mindless and devoted to harming humanity. But since they have a hard time accepting the "almost" in the "almost all" — and their leader is a major Good Is Not Nice jerkass to boot — that brings them into constant conflict with the two good vampires that are the main protagonists.
• Kingdom Hearts:
  • In Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep, Captain Gantu and Master Eraqus.
  • Riku serves as one in Days, where the story is told from the perspective of a Punch-Clock Villain working for the bad guys.
• Ash Crimson from The King of Fighters series is an inversion. His actions make him a villain, but in the end, it's for the sake of stopping an even greater evil, who happens to be the final boss of KOF XIII. The POV of the "Tales of Ash" saga makes Ash appear like a Villain Protagonist, thus painting the former protagonists (Kyo, Iori, Chizuru, and even K') as this trope. But, as XIII attests to, Ash was Good All Along. A Guile Anti-Hero unmistakably, but his actions were for a greater good.
• Kingdom Rush: Vengeance puts you in the shoes of Ves'nan's general in charge of Dark Army in the quest to retake Linirea and other realms. Naturally, this means your opponents are those defending these realms.
  • Dwarven Kingdom has technologically armed Dwarves, led by Bolgur, their King.
  • Frozen North has Northeners, a barbaric tribe led by Arkuz, King of the North.
  • Kingdom of Linirea has an expanded army of Linireans, consisting of units from the first game, as well as new ones. Of note are Alleria Swiftwind, Magnus Spellbane and Gerald Lightseeker, who were heroes in first game, but come as mini-boss, background boss and a more proper mini-boss. King Denas, ruler of the realm and leader of the army, is of course the Big Good of the game and so is the main person opposing Dark Army. Unlike previous rulers, King Denas is The Unfought, with the Final Boss being his Paragons.
  • Post-game campaign mostly avert this, instead piting your forces against other evil forces who has awakened for one reason or another. However, Rise Of The Dragon has Linireans return to fight Vez'nan while allied with Dragon King's own troops. Primal Ravage, meanwhile, sees Dwarves team-up with their primal counterparts to rebel against Vez'nan, playing it straight.
  • Hammerhold DLC features forces of Hammerhold, consisting of units seen in Frontiers such as Assasins and Legionnaires, accompanied by magic wielders and new warriors. Leading them are Mirage, Sha'tra and Alric, heroes from the same game, while the Big Good is Malik Hammerfury.
• Saladin, the captain of the guard at the Castle of the Crown in King's Quest VI, is perhaps the noblest of all the characters in the game. He has an antagonistic role only because he has been deceived by Alhazred and has a strong sense of duty regarding his job, and he does eventually wise up.
• Kirby:
  • Meta Knight, who usually only fights the pink puffball to stop him from inadvertently unleashing the sealed evil of the week.
  • King Dedede in Kirby's Adventure, whose bid to seal the evil of the week by removing the Star Rod from the Fountain of Dreams was misinterpreted as villainous by Kirby.
  • Landia in Kirby's Return to Dream Land initially seems like nothing but a destructive beast, but it is actually the guardian of the Master Crown, an Artifact of Doom that possesses infinite power, and the heroes are being manipulated by Magolor into defeating it so he can claim the crown for himself.
• Towards the end of The Last of Us Marlene and the Fireflies count. Their goal? To cure the zombie infection. Unfortunately, that means vivisecting Ellie's brain to get the benign strain of zombie fungus, and Joel has come to care for Ellie as a daughter. Cue Roaring Rampage of Revenge.
• Rando from LISA: The Painful. In a post-apocalyptic wasteland without women, Brad is raising his adopted daughter Buddy, the last female on Earth; when the warlord Rando kidnaps Buddy, Brad sets out on a bloody rampage to find her. However, it's later revealed that Buddy went with Rando willingly — Brad was an abusive drug addict who locked her in a basement for most of her childhood, and when she realized that she could work with the warlords ruling Olathe to help save the world, she Jumped at the Call. Rando legitimately wants to help Buddy, and by trying to lock her away again, Brad is essentially trying to doom the entire human race, something everyone in the game (even his own party members) thinks is atrocious.
• Donkey Kong is presented this way in the Mario vs. Donkey Kong games (as by then DK had been established as heroic by his own series of adventures). Mario knows DK's a decent guy, he just has poor impulse control.
• Harpuia from Mega Man Zero. He even prefers to be destroyed than to be possessed by a manifestation of evil in the second game. By extension, Harpuia's fellow Guardians, Leviathan, Fefnir and Phantom, as well as all of the Bosses prior to Zero 3. They were only following orders for the sake of protecting humanity. No longer really applies as of Zero 3, at least for Leviathan, Fefnir, and Phantom, as all three are stated to have stopped caring about anything other than their obsession with defeating Zero.
• The Metal Gear series is so full of lies and deceptions (and lots of Retcons very well disguised as such) that you can never really tell who is on which side, or even which sides there are. The prime example would be The Boss in MGS 3 whose heroic identity is only revealed after being killed by the protagonist.
• In Metroid Prime: Hunters, two of your six rivals, Noxus and Spire, are good guys. Samus wants to secure the "ultimate power" in the area for The Federation, or destroy it if that's not possible. Noxus is trying to destroy it to keep it out of the hands of anyone who would abuse it (and considering the events of Metroid Fusion, he may not be wrong in including the Federation). Spire hopes that by finding it, he can learn more about why he's the Last of His Kind. Despite them all having good intentions for what to do with it, they end up fighting each other anyway.
• The police in any illegal street racing game, such as Need for Speed, are just trying to stop the reckless player characters from putting them and others in needless danger. Of course, they can still be Lawful Evil, depending on your perspective.
• Araman from Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of the Betrayer. From his point of view, unless the protagonist can be stopped somehow, the world will end. And, Okku, for pretty much the same reason. However, if you decide to spare him after the final fight against him, he'll decide to help you.
• In The New Order Last Days Of Europe, an Alternate-History Nazi Victory mod for Hearts of Iron IV, Albert Speer's Germany has Willy Brandt, a German dissident who leads the slave revolt against the oppressive institutions of Nazi Germany and its exploitative policies in Eastern Europe and represents the greatest domestic challenge to Speer during the late 60s.
• Velvet from Odin Sphere, against both Ragnanival and Ringford. Given Gwendolyn and Mercedes are guilty of most of the incidents of Nice Job Breaking It, Hero in the story (Velvet causes very few herself), she's rather justified.
• The Queen Fay and the Elves of the Everlight Sanctuary in Overlord II, even though the Elves are, for the most part, whiny hippies concerned mostly with protecting cute and furry creatures. Eventually, while sacrificing her energy to help the Overlord defeat The Empire, she is corrupted by his magic and becomes a Fallen Hero who decides that Evil Feels Good.
• Persona:
  • Persona 4 has Taro Namatame, who started kidnapping people after the death of Saki Konishi due to being tricked into believing that TV World was a shelter from the true killer, not knowing that everyone he threw into the TV was saved due to the efforts of the main character and his friends. The player, at the behest of the party who are convinced he's the real killer, can either punish him by tossing him into the TV and letting him get slaughtered by Shadows (leading to the worst ending), or hear him out, where they will learn his side of the story and he, in turn, will understand what he's done and willingly accepting the consequences.
  • Persona 5
    • Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department, along with celebrity teenage detective Goro Akechi and prosecutor Sae Niijima, opposing our Anti-Hero Team of Phantom Thieves. While Akechi can act irritatingly smug and Sae is shown to sometimes be rather aggressive, their motives are still sympathetic, and, even if it's for the greater good, the Phantom Thieves are still committing crimes — it's the police force's job to stop them. This ends up subverted with the first two accounts. The government and police are corrupt to the extreme, and Akechi is a fraud murderer in the pocket of said corrupt government. Sae, meanwhile, does a Heel–Face Turn after the main character appeals to her in the interrogation that serves as the story's framing device.
    • The 4th Palace arc has Shadow Futaba. Unlike the Shadow Selves of the other Palace rulers, or those in Persona 4, Shadow Futaba's host is a self-loathing, suicidal young girl, and so her Shadow represents her repressed survival instinct and faith in herself. She genuinely wants the Phantom Thieves to save her real-world self, but her defense mechanisms are in overdrive due to her trauma so she sometimes leads them into danger. She drops the "antagonist" part once Futaba enters her own Palace and accepts her, and helps fight the Palace's true antagonist: Futaba's exaggerated perception of her mother as an Abusive Parent. (she wasn't one, but Futaba hasn't been thinking clearly for years)
    • The Third Semester in Royal has Takuto Maruki, your former school counselor, who upon gaining the power of the Holy Grail uses it to create a world without suffering. Ultimately, the conflict between him and the Thieves is one of methodology and philosophy, rather than morality.
• An indirect example in Pikmin 3 has previous protagonist Captain Olimar find the cosmic key drive, a necessary item if the crew is to get off the planet. Most of the game focuses on finding him. A more direct example would be Louie, if he did anything more heroic than steal the crew's food supply.
• Most antagonist in the main Pokémon games are fellow trainers and their Pokemon who challenge you for fun and/or to test their skills. Same goes for the Gym Leaders, Elite Four, and the Champion, who are trying to see if you are worthy of becoming a Pokemon master. The only villainous antagonists are usually the evil team of each region.
  • Pokémon Mystery Dungeon:
    • Alakazam and his team in Red/Blue Rescue Team. When the protagonist and teammate end up being tossed into exile, Alakazam and his team are the leaders of the hunt for the protagonist's head.
    • Palkia in Explorers of Time and Darkness, who thinks that the hero is threatening to destroy the universe. It turns out that he was tricked: Darkrai was the one threatening to destroy everything, and he made it look like it was the hero's fault.
• The censors in Psychonauts are mental antibodies. They're supposed to stamp out foreign influences. Like normal antibodies, they can't really distinguish things except as "native" and "foreign", even if "foreign" is a friendly psychic like Razputin.
• Ratchet & Clank:
  • Ratchet & Clank: The extermibots were sent to eliminate the amoeboids and save Blackwater City, but they for some reason are also trying to kill Ratchet, possibly because of a curfew being in effect or them being unable to differentiate between amoeboids and civilians (the remake goes with the latter interpretation).
  • Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando: The extermibots in Allgon City were sent to destroy the protopets and save the city, but they were ordered to everything "small and fuzzy", a category Ratchet falls into.
• Agent Edgar Ross from Red Dead Redemption. At the core, he wants to bring law, order, and civilization as well as round up all those who seek to destroy it. Were he not the antagonist, we would likely think he's onto something, perhaps even root for him in secret. However, this is subverted at the end, when he chooses to forgo his deal with John and raids his farm, killing him anyway. When Jack hunts him down post-game, he shows no remorse, and blames John's death on John himself for even choosing to be an outlaw in the first place, despite his desire to change for the better.
  • Similarly, the sequel introduces Agent Milton, who is a detective for the Pinkertons who is just trying to stop an outlaw gang from wreaking havoc upon the whole American west.
• Retro City Rampage calls the police, army, security guards and assorted superheroes who try to stop the player the "Evil Good Guys".
• Cyrus Temple from Saints Row: The Third. His evil plot? To restore order by stopping gang wars. You are a member of a gang, and thus that makes him the antagonist. Subverted when you find out how far he's willing to go to achieve this goal.
• In Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, if you decide to forsake your lord Kuro and become a Shura, a demonic being who slaughters everything indiscriminately, then your allies Emma and Isshin will draw their swords against you in a desperate attempt to prevent your rampage from ravaging all of Ashina.
• In Shovel Knight, the titular character is a Hero Antagonist in the Plague of Shadows campaign, with the player controlling Villain Protagonist Plague Knight. Shovel Knight is fought twice, first as the boss of the Explodatorium and again after defeating the Order of No Quarter in the Tower of Fate. Although this is simply a Perspective Flip of the battles against Plague Knight in the Shovel of Hope campaign, Shovel Knight comes across as somewhat less heroic (by attacking Plague Knight from behind when his guard is down), but this may be due to Plague Knight being an Unreliable Narrator.
• In Sin and Punishment: Star Successor, The Nebulox are fighting against Isa and Kachi to help the humans of Earth-5. Also, from their perspective, Kachi is a major danger to their entire civilization — she was originally sent to Inner Space to recon Earth-4 for attack, but lost her memory.
• Carmelita Fox of Sly Cooper. This epileptic-accented cop can be a pain in the ass, but she still means well, and at times will even join up with the gang to face the various Big Bads of the series.
• Sonic the Hedgehog:
  • Knuckles in certain games, in particular those where he is tricked by Dr Eggman into stopping Sonic. He eventually realises he has been duped, and usually reverts to a side protagonist for the remainder of the story.
  • Silver in Sonic the Hedgehog (2006). He opposes Sonic due to erroneously believing that killing him will save his ruined future. Like with Knuckles, he wises up after realizing that he's been duped and quickly switches sides.
• A strange example is Colonel John Konrad in Spec Ops: The Line. When Dubai was destroyed and the civilians trapped during an apocalyptic sandstorm, Konrad leads his US Army group into that hell to try to save the city and its civilians. His attempted breakout ends in disaster despite the best of intentions. The protagonist, Captain Walker, sets off in a Whole-Plot Reference to Heart of Darkness or Apocalypse Now, thinking Konrad is the villain, only to end up the Villain Protagonist who makes things worse. Finally, in The Reveal, it turns out Konrad's failed rescue was too much for him, and he committed suicide before the game began, unable to handle his failure to save his men and the people of Dubai. Konrad was heroic until he was Driven to Suicide, and Walker has been fighting hallucinations of his own horrible guilt. Or stuck in an Ironic Hell or Dying Dream; the game is deliberately ambiguous.
• Star Shift Origins: The Final Boss, Keldar, fights the party to determine if they're worthy of helping his Kryll faction save the universe from the Purge. Once they do so, he allows them to use the slipstream gate to join his comrades in Time's Eclipse in the Bad Future.
• General Warfield in StarCraft II, in stark contrast with his predecessor Edmund Duke. The literally only reason Warfield is featured as an antagonist in some missions is because he is working for Arcturus Mengsk. Other than that, he puts The Men First, is concerned about protecting the population of the Dominion and is remarkably brave. While he initially isn't happy when Prince Valerian asks him to collaborate with Jim Raynor, they get along quite well after getting to know each other. His death screams Alas, Poor Villain.
  • The Colonist Protoss from Heart of the Swarm are trying to start a new civilization, one that Kerrigan ultimately destroys. Sure their actions spell doom for our character so we have no choice, but considering Kerrigan's track record of genocide, it's a totally reasonable response.
• Imperial characters in Star Wars: The Old Republic face a number of these: good, honorable Republic forces and Jedi looking to protect the galaxy from the Empire. This is complicated by the fact you can play any character as Light (good) or Dark (bad). The Bounty Hunter in particular has Jedi Master Jun Seros as their primary antagonist, though he's a Holier Than Thou Knight Templar at best.
• Streets of Rage 4 has Estel Aguirre, the police chief determined to capture and arrest the main characters. She has no idea that the police have been compromised and is now corrupt because of the Commissioner selling out to the Y Syndicate. All she knows is the characters have been flagged as most wanted and she is doing her job. Later in the story mode, she discovers the truth and helps the characters defeat the Y Twins.
• Subway Surfers: The Inspector is the antagonist, but he's just doing his job catching graffiti artists, and the protagonists are vandalizing the subways.
• Jowy Atreides, from Suikoden II. A long time friend of the main hero, Riou, he is destined to come into conflict due to picking up opposing runes (Jowy picks up the Black Sword Rune and Riou the Bright Shield Rune). Jowy ends up betraying and murdering (although not willingly) the mayor of Muse, Anabelle. He ends up becoming king of Highland. He ends up as a Hero Antagonist because he helps bring down Luca Blight, as well as using his strength to keep the Beast Rune at bay. He ends up having the same goals as Riou, to end the war and to unify the land. The problem is that he and his friend, Riou, lead opposing forces. His love of the orphan Pilika truly drives Jowy in his goals for peace.
• Axel Almer of Super Robot Wars Advance becomes one in the Enhanced Remake of Super Robot Wars: Original Generation, as his greatest concern is defeating Beowulf, a villain responsible for numerous atrocities in his homeworld. This is even more apparent in The Anime of the Game, where one of Beowulf's first acts involves crossing the Moral Event Horizon. Then, in the opening credits, Axel fights the main character, Kyosuke Nanbu, hoping to prevent him from becoming another Beowulf (who is Kyosuke's Alternate Universe Evil Twin). By the time of Original Generation Gaiden, Axel is still fixated on stopping Beowulf, but eventually becomes more of an Anti-Hero.
• In Syberia a disillusioned office worker tells her husband and employers, over the telephone, that she is going into the arctic circle, unprepared, to look for a fairy tale. The private detective chasing her for most of the story is trying to save her life.
• Yuan from Tales of Symphonia, an Anti-Hero example.
• Touhou Project:
  • In Touhou Eiyashou ~ Imperishable Night the Stage 4 boss is either Reimu or Marisa, the two standard protagonists, who will blame you for the current incident and attempt to stop you.
  • In Touhou Fuujinroku ~ Mountain of Faith Sanae didn't know the Hakurei Shrine was key to Gensokyo's survival; she saw competition for the faith her gods needed to survive, from a Miko who wasn't even protecting humanity from the youkai. So she tried to shut down the Hakurei Shrine, and got her ass (and her gods') kicked.
  • In both Touhou Suimusou ~ Immaterial and Missing Power and Touhou Hisouten ~ Scarlet Weather Rhapsody, almost every character ends up fighting either Reimu or Marisa at some point in their story mode.
  • In Touhou Seirensen ~ Undefined Fantastic Object, the ancient mage the antagonists were trying to unseal turns out to be a Buddhist monk seeking to bring peace and harmony to Youkai. And she still fights you as the final boss.
  • The Watatsuki sisters, Toyohime and Yorihime, from the Spin-Off manga Silent Sinner in Blue. They're just trying to protect their home from invaders, with Reimu implicitly threatening to kill everyone on the moon at one point to make Yorihime take the fight seriously, and admits she will probably lose to Yorihime because the bad guys always lose, and they are the ones at fault in that incident. But because of the way the narrative is presented along with their Fantastic Racism, many readers came away thinking them as villains.
  • In Touhou Shinkirou ~ Hopeless Masquerade Kokoro is actually trying to stop the Hate Plague, because it's her Power Incontinence that's causing it. Meanwhile all the other characters are trying to exploit it for their own ends, be it to advance the power of their shrine, as an excuse to beat people up, or just to mess with people for giggles.
• Unlike the original film TRON, security programs in TRON 2.0 are not servants of the evil MCP. Here, they're simply doing their job of protecting the system from The Virus. Unfortunately, Kernel, the chief security program, thinks you are the cause of the infection and tries to hunt you down, forcing you to fight security programs.
• Twisted Metal: Black: While the morality of each playable character ranges from Anti-Hero to Villain Protagonist, the Final Boss, Warhawk, is just a police officer trying to stop the death and destruction caused by the titular competition and is unambiguously doing the right thing.
• The Vendrien Guard in Tyranny are Determined Defeatists, struggling to free their homeland from the oppression of Evil Overlord Kyros, or (more likely, to their mind) set an inspiring example for those in the future. The Player Character is an agent of Kyros, sent forth to crush their hopes of liberty.
• ULTRAKILL:
  • Archangel Gabriel is a darker example where he tries to stop V1's violent quest for blood out of the belief that his actions are right and just. At the end of Act 2, Gabriel begins playing this trope straight once he realizes the horrors of his crimes and liberates Heaven's masses from tyranny by slaughtering the corrupt Council before returning to Hell one last time to battle V1 and their kind.
  • the Super Boss of the first Prime Sanctum is Minos Prime, the Prime Soul of King Minos. After V1 frees him by destroying the Flesh Prison, Minos Prime expresses gratitude to V1 for his freedom, but after remembering the sins the machines have done against humankind, the king's soul battles the robot to not only punish them for their involvement in humanity's extinction, but also protect what's left of his people and avenge the human race.
• Undertale's No Mercy path has two major Hero Antagonists who put up a hell of a fight against the Omnicidal Maniac player, in contrast to everyone else. The first is Undyne, who's running off of Heroic Resolve and the prayers of everyone in the world. In-game text even refers to her as "the heroine" and her battle theme is named "Battle Against a True Hero." The second is Sans, the strongest monster in the Underground and the last thing standing between you and the world's destruction.
  • A lot of characters could be called Hero Antagonists, as the only reason you get attacked at all is Asgore's declaration of war on humanity. While he bears no ill will to humanity, the war is the only thing giving monsterkind hope that they can one day return to the surface. If they kill you and take your soul, then they can break the barrier and return.
    • Excluding Flowey, who is just plain malicious, and Chara, whose nature and character is… VERY ambiguous… Asgore is really the only villain in the story who admits that he knows what he is doing is wrong, but feels he has no other choice. He's realized how villainous his actions are, and deeply regrets it, but is too deep in to back out. Everyone else believes in Asgore's cause for the good of all monsters, no matter how violent they are.
• In the Capcom game Under the Skin, one of your enemies is Jill Valentine. Yup, that Jill Valentine. She's busy trying to survive Raccoon City, while you're a little blue alien whose mission is to drive her crazy by pulling near-lethal pranks on her and mugging her for coins.
• Grünfeld Bach from Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines. A deeply devout German vampire hunter, who has seen both his father and grandfather killed by the same vampire, has travelled across the world to eliminate that vampire, and is willing to do what it takes to do it. Granted, several of Bach's actions are questionable (above all the abduction of Ingvar Johannsen) but if your character wasn't one of said vampire's Elite Mooks, chances are good you'd be cheering for him.
• Since Wacky Races (1991) has you play as Muttley, the other Wacky Racers that Dastardly and Muttley often try unsuccessfully to stop in the show the game is based on all serve as the game's bosses who attempt to fight Muttley.
• Some parts of the campaign in Warcraft III and its expansion have the player control a villainous army, making the enemy army a Hero Antagonist. This is most blatantly during the Scourge campaign, though the Horde and Night Elf campaigns tend to paint heroes from other factions in this light as well.
• The World Is Your Weapon: In the secret ending, Demon Lord Dolhabach will leave his castle to personally defeat the player character Weaco, who is keeping the entire island's population as weapons.
• World of Warcraft: Depending what faction you play, certain NPCs will come off this way. For example, in Icecrown Citadel, the two factions fight each other aboard their respective airships, each one lead by a hero from each; Muradin Bronzebeard for the Alliance, and Varok Saurfang for the Horde. Both are well-respected and honorable figureheads within each faction and both seek to climb Icecrown to stop the Lich King, but tensions between the factions force them into combat with one another.
  • The raid Battle for Dazar'alor gives you the perspective of both factions consecutively. None of the raid bosses are truly evil. At worst, they are Punch-Clock Villains who just happened to be on the wrong side of the war (the Champion of Light, Conclave of the Chosen, the Jadefire Masters) or mindless monsters manipulated by one faction or the other (Grong, Opulence, Stormwall Blockade). King Rastakhan and Jaina Proudmoore are both deeply flawed characters, but ultimately well-meaning, while Gelbin Mekkatorque is a legitimate hero whom you have served if you are a gnome character.
• Yandere Simulator has several characters who would love to stop the Stalker with a Crush Villain Protagonist by any means necessary. For example, the Photography Club is normally silly and goofy up until you bring the School Atmosphere to a certain point. If it's too low, they will actively investigate the incidents at school and walk around with a camera in search of the killer. It even extends to fairly minor characters: if a teacher knows you are connected to a murder, they will pin you to the ground. Students with a "Heroic" persona will jump in to stop you if you kill someone in front of them. Even if they aren't Heroic, they can still spread rumors about what happened if left unchecked. The backstory also has the Journalist, who connected the protagonist's mother to her own crimes, only to be falsely accused of being a pervert who wanted a sensational headline. When he tried to bring her to justice years later, he had to flee the country because she found out.
• With the exception of Leon, the Imperial Army of Yggdra Union are actually honest and sometimes heroic characters who are simply fighting for their own beliefs.

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