Adaptational Sympathy in Video Games.
- Black Mesa:
- In the original Half-Life, the Vortigaunt were implied to be slaves to the Nihilanth, but this is mostly conveyed by the fact they appear to be shackled and do not try to harm Gordon when he encounters them late in the game. Since the sequel Half-Life 2 confirmed this to be canon, the Fan Remake adds in additional scenes and gameplay mechanics that emphasize this angle — the Vortigaunts are shown being bullied by Alien Grunts, being processed into Alien Grints via some kind of factory, and in sequences where Vortigaunts are fought alongside Alien Controllers, killing the Controllers causes the Vortigaunts to become docile.
- The Gonarch in the original is something of a Giant Space Flea from Nowhere that just shows up and starts attacking you. In the remake, while it still spends quite a bit of time trying to kill Gordon, this is because Gordon is forced to demolish parts of its lair to reach the Nihilanth's tower, making the creature's aggression come off as being in defense of its home. During the final confrontation with it, the Gonarch even attempts to flee after the floor falls out from under it, but ultimately collapses from exhaustion before going into one last fight with Gordon, forcing him to kill it.
- Cadence of Hyrule: Though Ganon is the Final Boss of the game (as always despite Octavo being the primary villain), his backstory is a lot more sympathetic here. According to Fate, Ganondorf was corrupted into Ganon and turned into a slave by the Golden Lute, a stark contrast to his main counterpart who was always evil-hearted and willingly transforms into Ganon. You can actually find Ganondorf as a young Gerudo boy and despite being a prick, he comes across as more ignorant than malicious, implying he might have turned out good for once had he not found the Golden Lute left by Octavo.
- Dynasty Warriors: Ever since he became a playable character, Liu Shan's portrayal in the games is more sympathetic and tragic instead of being a cowardly idiot in most media. In sharp contrast to Cao Pi's and Sun Quan's positions as leaders, Liu Shan believes he doesn't have the confidence to be a leader and is Lonely at the Top as he doesn't have many friends with Xingcai being the only person who understands him. While he does want to fulfill his father's dream, the situation at hand made it difficult for him, particularly after Zhuge Liang's death. His surrender to Wei is more a desperate measure to save his people after seeing many of his officers dying. He is one of the few characters who get a sad ending in 9 where his people reject his choice to surrender by throwing stones at his carriage and calling him to never return.
- The Final Fantasy III 3D remake does this with Xande. In the original, it is established that Xande is Doga and Unei's Evil Former Friend who went over the edge after his master gave him the gift of mortality, but is not really elaborated on beyond that. The remake re-contextualizes Xande's actions as stemming from a desire to not die rather than revenge, Doga and Unei speak of Xande more and in a more favorable light than the original script, and Xande's trap in the Crystal Tower stops simply at freezing the party in place rather than freezing them in place and feeding them to wyrms.
- Friday Night Funkin': Corruption:
- Canonically, Girlfriend's parents are bastards who only care about themselves and their daughter. While still true within the mod, Corruption forces them to deal with the consequences of their actions in the most horrific way possible, losing everything in the process. In particular, Daddy Dearest is genuinely distraught over how hellish the situation is, trying everything to stop Boyfriend and is so devastated over his wife's corruption he rapidly corrupts after being forced to fight her.
- Within Friday Night Funkin', Senpai is a vulgar Sore Loser and Spirit, while understandable, is still trying to steal the body of an innocent person. In Corruption, Senpai's fear and Spirit's anger over the situation are highlighted as Boyfriend destroys the game from the inside out and neither of them can do anything to stop it.
- Vs Cassandra: In Pico's School, Cassandra was the Penillian leader of a group of school shooters, who got fed up with the American education system and killed all of Pico's classmate. In the Friday Night Funkin' Game Mod, Cassandra is Girlfriend's sister who was treated as The Unfavorite and ran away. Soon, she was possessed by a Penillian and was forced to shoot up the school.
- The Great Ace Attorney takes three of the most evil and infamous Sherlock Holmes villains and turns them into Sympathetic Murderers.
- In the original Adventure of the Speckled Band, Grimseby Roylott is a violent, short-tempered, horrible human being who had killed one of his stepdaughters and intended to kill another to obtain their parts of his dead wife's inheritance; in here, Nikolina is a meek ballet dancer seeking asylum in America who befriends a man in the neighboring cabin, but accidentally injures him following a misunderstanding.
- Ashley Milverton is the single most sympathetic interpretation of Milverton to date. Instead of a vile blackmailer out for himself and one of Holmes' most hated foes, Ashley was a struggling street urchin who sold government secrets to support his poor family, and murdered Magnus McGilded to avenge his father's murder at the hands of Magnus. He also did not mean to kill Pop Windibank and feels remorse for doing so, and loves the Skulkin brothers- his childhood friends- like family. If anything, Magnus himself acts more like the traditional Milverton, being a wicked rich man who blackmails people like Gina Lestrade into covering for him.
- In The Hound of the Baskervilles, Jack Stapleton/Rodger Baskerville is the single most evil character in the original mythos, being a Serial Killer who uses an abused hound to conjure up a scary legend or his own gain. "The Professor", the duology's equivalent, is initially built up as a similar character. The last case, however, reveals that Klint Van Zieks originally sought to kill an Asshole Victim of a noble, and was actually being blackmailed by Mael Stronghart (the Moriarty equivalent) into committing the other murders, something that left him wracked with guilt. In the end, he let himself be killed by Genshin Asogi as repentance.
- Pokémon:
- Maxie and Archie in the original Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire had plans that even someone fresh out of the 3rd grade would call monumentally stupid. In Ruby, Maxie wants to expand the amount of land on the planet because he really likes land-based Pokemon and thinks all the Sea-based Pokemon in 7.8/10 Too Much Water Hoenn can shove it. In Sapphire, Archie wants to do the opposite: increase the size of the oceans to make things better for sea-based Pokemon at the expense of land-based Pokemon. In Pokémon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire, while their plans remain fundamentally the same, their motives for doing so are changed so that one could see why their plans make sense to them. Maxie sees the land as the stage upon which all human development takes place, but it is becoming overpopulated, so he aims to increase the Earth's landmass. He believes that by doing this, humanity will enter a new golden age marked by scientific discoveries and technological wonders people in the Pokemon World could previously only dream of. Archie lost his partner Pokemon at the hands of selfish humans, and it broke him emotionally. He believes that by increasing the size of the oceans, he can return the world to a primal state where Pokemon will be free from the influence of humans like the ones who caused the death of his precious partner Pokemon
- Pokémon Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon: In the original games, Lusamine cruelly disowned her children and it was mentioned that Mohn (her husband) went missing, but it wasn't an aspect that was bought to the forefront. In this game, however, Lusamine is given more sympathetic qualities. When she disowns Lillie and Gladion, she looks disappointed and hurt that they would steal Type: Null and Cosmog, and it's made clear that she's very distraught about the disappearance of her husband. Additionally, she does get to see Mohn again, but he no longer remembers her. She is sad, but she decides to let him go so that he will be happy.
- Spider-Man (PS4) does this to quite a few characters:
- Norman Osborn is best known as the Green Goblin—ruthless Corrupt Corporate Executive on a good day, and an insane, megalomaniacal pumpkin bomb thrower whenever he loses his already fragile grip on sanity—and media adaptations usually depict him as neglectful to his son Harry at best and outright abusive at worst. This Osborn, a mayor of New York City who's ultimately made into a Trumplica and is still corrupt, is a decent man at heart when you learn why he became the way he is: his wife Emily and later Harry both were afflicted with a genetic disorder that was killing them from the inside-out. Everything that Norman did, from making backroom deals with the Kingpin, to rushing the experiment that created Martin Li's alter ego Mr. Negative, to having Harry strapped up to VENOM while he pretends he's on business in Europe, and even making an accidental biochemical weapon, is to cure his dying son before it's too late. It doesn't excuse anything he did, but this is far from the Green Goblin fans are familiar with. It also helps that he isn't Gobby in this series... at least not yet... By the time of Marvel's Spider-Man 2, his efforts to cure Harry wind up causing his son to truly become Venom for real, and the Spider Men's attempts to save him result in Harry ending up in a coma. While he does misdirect his anger towards them when he's completely at fault for what happened, his plans to use the "G-Serum" and presumably lead towards him becoming the Goblin is at least more sympathetic than his comics self turning that way because of his lust for power.
- Martin Li, aka Mr. Negative, was an identity thief in the comics that was used in a twisted experiment to give him his powers. This Li, operating as the public head of the charity organization F.E.A.S.T. (which Peter's Aunt May works for) is motivated to bring down Norman Osborn because the businessman rushed a desperate attempt to save his dying wife, as mentioned above, by testing a cure on Martin that caused him to develop his powers and kill his parents in the process. Like with Norman, no one excuses his actions, especially since they result in the death of Officer Jefferson Davis, the father of Miles Morales, but he has a much more tragic backstory this time. When he returns in the sequel, he comes to understand the pain he's caused and works to atone for it after a fateful encounter with Miles, though he understands he'll never be forgiven for his actions.
- Doctor Otto Octavius, thanks to not becoming Dr. Octopus until later in the game. This version, unlike his megalomaniacal comics counterpart who had to deal with Abusive Parents and has a very bloated ego, was a genuinely good man who gave into revenge. Here, he was friends and business partners with Norman until the experiment that turned Martin Li into Mr. Negative caused him to walk away. Envious that all the effort he put into helping people got him nothing while Osborn and his more morally dubious tactics have left him in the lap of luxury, especially as Osborn nearly got his work shut down. Thanks to Doc pushing his luck with an unstable neural controller, he winds up giving into revenge and unleashing a deadly bio-weapon on New York to get revenge on Osborn.
- Peter Parker, the wall-crawler himself. This version has already gone through the motions of losing his parents and Uncle Ben like usual, as well as having to deal with J. Jonah Jameson slandering him all the time and fighting against the usual cavalcade of villains like his comics iteration. But this version has multiple problems that really put him through the wringer; Mary Jane broke up with him because he was getting too overprotective with her, his typical Parker luck is constantly making him late to work, he gets evicted from his apartment, and he has to deal with the rise of The Demons gang in New York following Wilson Fisk's downfall. And it gets even worse for him when both Martin Li and Otto Octavius, both men he openly admired, both turn out to be heartless villains driven to revenge—and the latter knew his secret identity and openly used that against him. And then his Aunt May dies thanks to those two unleashing a bioweapon. And then he learns his best friend is dying from a deadly disease, which is why said bioweapon was made in the first place. And then an old flame manipulates him and apparently dies. And then his Friend on the Force goes off the deep end and becomes a dangerous vigilante amidst a deadly gang war. Peter usually gets put through the wringer, but not to this level of tragedy. It gets worse in the sequel: Harry is cured, but the resulting symbiote bonded to him hitches onto Peter when he's fatally wounded by Kraven the Hunter, causing Peter to become a massive jerk as the symbiote takes control. Miles is able to get it off him, but it returns to Harry and turns him into Venom, forcing Peter to fight his best friend. And even though he's able to destroy Venom and save Harry, his friend falls into a coma he may never recover from.
- Rhino, who in most versions is a Card-Carrying Villain who willingly subjected himself to the experiment that gave him his moniker in the comics, willingly joins forces with Doc Ock's Sinister Six so he can be free of the suit he's trapped in.
- Spider-Man: Miles Morales: In the comics, Tinkerer is just a Grumpy Old Man and a Gadgeteer Genius without much background information on why he became the premier budget-supervillain repairman, but is not without a heart and takes good care of his family. In this game, Phin Mason, the teenaged friend of Miles Morales, takes on the identity of the Tinkerer to take down Roxxon for killing her brother when he tried to expose their corruption.
- Marvel's Spider-Man 2:
- The villains Sandman, Tombstone, and Mysterio are all treated a lot more sympathetically in the game than in most media adaptations. For the most part, they're Card Carrying Villains who would never consider going straight, and even if they did, it was either a Falsely Reformed Villain scheme or it would be short lived. They're all treated here as genuinely getting out of the criminal life so they can be their for their kids (Sandman), make an honest living (Tombstone) or provide genuine entertainment to people (Mysterio). The latter in particular is noteworthy since his colleagues in his new endeavor were framing him just to steal a boatload of cash and let him take the fall.
- Harry Osborn wound up becoming a villain in the comics to avenge his (seemingly) dead father. He's transformed into Venom because the symbiote was being used to cure his condition, but it takes complete control of him and uses him as a means to terraform Earth into a symbiote paradise under the idea that it's "healing the world", taking advantage of Harry's pain and self-doubts in the process.
- Spyro the Dragon: Downplayed with Gnasty Gnorc. In both the original game and its remake, he attacks the dragons for insulting him on TV. The remake shows that they actually hurt Gnasty's feelings—he almost cries when called "ugly"—and adds new details of motivational posters and self-written love letters strewn throughout his home. All told, Reignited makes him more pathetic than the brutish take of the first game.
