Always Chaotic Evil / Video Games

Always Chaotic Evil in Video Games.

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• In general, in most old action video games (Metroid, Mega Man, The Legend of Zelda...), the enemy races rarely ever have any good counterparts, at least none that you ever see. In fact, for many of these old games anyone (and anything) visible aside from the player is (likely) evil, at least aggressive, and harmful to the touch if not. This trend continues into more modern games, often enough.
  • Even in those games, there are subversions: Metroid featured the baby Metroid of the second and third games, Mega Man 3 eventually had Proto Man, and the very first game in The Legend of Zelda series had a few Moblins go AWOL and ask Link to leave them alone in exchange for a few Rupees. IT'S A SECRET TO EVERYBODY.
  • In the Mega Man X series, most/all of the enemies were originally good; it is the Zero Virus/Sigma Virus that rewrites their programming, causing them to go maverick (though, since the Reploids do — at least those uninfected — have free will, it's possible that some did choose to be evil). Ironically, one of the few good robots that actually gets screen time apart from X is Zero, and he was originally programmed to be evil.
  • Also subverted in The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, where the lesson was that not everything that looks evil necessarily is; the Bulblins certain seem to all be annoying little goblins who attempt to kill you just for the heck of it, but you eventually find out that King Bulblin, the Recurring Boss, is actually quite intelligent. After you beat him at Hyrule Castle, he defers to you as a Worthy Opponent.
    King Bulblin: Enough. I follow the strongest side!... That is all I have ever known.
    Midna: Link... He... he spoke.
  • Also subverted in the original The Legend of Zelda. In many secret areas you'll find moblins — normally evil-doing creatures — who will bribe Link with rupees in exchange for leaving them alone.
  • In the The Legend of Zelda as a whole, whether monsters are Always Chaotic Evil or just creatures that Link gets in the way is very much Depending on the Writer.
• Armello the Banes are non-Anthromophic Ravens in a world filled with Civilized Animal mammals, functioning as embodiments of the Dark corruption plaguing the kingdom. They express no intelligence other than bringing destruction to townspeople and corrupting the heroes they defeat. You can use magic to try and "Uncorrupt" them but they'll grow more evil each night faster than you can cleanse them and will be annihilated by holy circles.
• The residents of Xylvania in Battalion Wars take this to such extremes that they're practically a parody. They're Naziesque Vampires who live in a Mordor-like wastleland and are descended from Steampunk orcs.
• Betrayal at Krondor features the Moredhel, which humanity assumes to be this trope, although by the end of the game it is subverted rather hard, the game itself named after a Moredhel who betrays his race's "messiah" to save the world. Played straight with the pantathians, who do not appear in the game except as enemies. Justified as they are genetically hardwired to single-mindedly work towards the purpose of restoring their master and creator, the Valheru Alma-Lodaka, to power.
• The bandits in Borderlands, as they live solely to fight, eat, and cause all kinds of ruckus. Many of them are abandoned personnel from various corporations and have been rendered violently insane as a result. More dignified characters, heroic and villainous alike, tend to think little of them as cannon fodder and/or target practice. They take a sinister turn in Borderlands 3, being united under a single banner and serving the more ambitious Calypso Twins.
• Subverted in Chrono Trigger, where the Mystics seem to be evil at first, but it's later shown that without Ozzie's influence, they can live at peace with the humans. Though it could be argued that they were never evil, they just weren't on the side of the humans. It wasn't good vs evil, just one side vs another, even if they did use the undead and other "evil" things.
• Clive Barker's Undying: The Trsanti, a sort of pirate/gypsy hybrid. Patrick's journals show that he relishes slaughtering as many of them as he can. To be fair, they seem to be more a collection of like-minded individuals than an ethnic group.
• Tediz in Conker series. Especially in the remake where they are biological beings instead of robots and are more free thinking.
• The demons in Dark Souls are this, naturally. Undead that have lost their senses are this as well if they aren't huddled into a corner somewhere, crying.
• Subverted in Disgaea. Although the demons in this series are Card Carrying Villains who openly claim that they're Always Chaotic Evil, Dark Is Not Evil and Poke the Poodle come to mind. They're closer to Noble Demons than anything else.
• The Legions of Hell in Doom since they're The Legions of Hell. Why do they want to inflict unending suffering, pain, misery, torment, etc on the human race (and everyone else)? Because they're demons, they are hatred incarnate, and that's just what they do.
  • There is no love lost between other demon species in the games either. If one demon manages to piss off another, they will fight to the death and the survivor will go right back to fighting you like nothing happened.
• The Darkspawn of Dragon Age: Origins.
  • Demons in Dragon Age also fulfill this trope, being dream spirits that prey upon mortals. These creatures are shaped by the darkest impulses of mortals and are generally murderous and violent. They're also one of the few sources of knowledge in Thedas about blood magic.
    • Demons are merely a sub-set of spirits, many of whom are shaped by Valour, Justice, Faith, and the like. It's just that the benevolent ones mind their own business instead of attempting leave the Spirit World, minus a few exceptions; those that do can end up becoming demons anyway, like how Justice was twisted into Vengeance by his host's anger.
  • Played with in the case of the darkspawn, according to the Architect. He states that the darkspawn are evil because the Song of the Old Gods forces them to be, and that if they are "freed" using Grey Warden blood, they attain sapience and free will. While the Architect is morally gray, with a darker past, a reckless disregard for consequences, and a very poor understanding of humans, you do meet at least one of his Disciples who proves to be downright heroic — though being a darkspawn, he still spreads the Taint accidentally.)
    • The darkspawn mostly have animal level intelligence driven by a Hive Mind, with only a few having more intelligence and even those having limited free will. They are more like a Horde of Alien Locusts then anything else. The sole exceptions are the seven Magisters who became the original Darkspawn, who retain their human intelligence and motives, and any Darkspawn the Architect (himself heavily implied to be one of them) awakens. Of course, having their own will means they're now free to choose to be even more evil than before...
  • The qunari in Dragon Age II are made out to be this because of their reputation as militant conquerers. In reality, they're more like a race of Lawful Blue Well Intentioned Extremists, and as Sten and later Iron Bull show, they can get along perfectly well with humans in the right circumstances. Unfortunately, they suffer from major communication problems and mutual antipathy with humans, something that the more rabid of Kirkwall's leadership exploit to provoke them.
  • It seems that almost all mages from the Tevinter Imperium are Evil Sorcerers who freely practice blood magic and slavery. Fenris from the second game mentions that any mage principled enough to reject blood magic would quickly become the thrall of another mage with fewer qualms. However, the third game includes Dorian, a Tevinter mage who is a Defector from Decadence who wants to reform his country and states that he's not exactly alone in his beliefs. Apparently some Tevinters are sick and tired of being the reason mages can't have nice things. In one of the endings of Trespasser, he returns to Tevinter and starts a reform movement- one that seems to be actually working.
• Notably subverted with Freeza's species in Dragon Ball Xenoverse. Unlike the anime, it shows heroic members of the species, some of which want to atone for the bad name Freeza's clan gave their kind.
• Dragon Quest games often subvert this by having friendly NPCs of the same species of randomly encountered monsters, such as Guest-Star Party Member Healie in Dragon Quest IV and a town in Dragon Quest VIII.
• Most of the creatures you can recruit without resorting to torture in Dungeon Keeper are like this. Oddly enough, there is a hero-aligned Horned Reaper in the final mission of the first game, a creature who is often depicted as being the granddaddy of ALL the evil creatures in the game.
• The Elder Scrolls:
  • The series plays it straight in general with various Lesser Daedra, but a great number of other species subvert it or play with it in some other way.
  • Molag Bal, the Daedric Prince of Domination and King of Rape is completely evil, with no redeeming qualities. Since he's essentially corruption, enslavement, and domination incarnate, redeeming traits are a bit much to hope for.
  • Goblins subvert it. While they are indeed very war-like and frequently come into conflict with any other intelligent races they cross paths with, their interactions with Orcs and the researcher in the book Sacred Rites of the Stonechewers show they can see other species as something besides an opportunity to pillage.
  • Rieklings, a race of diminutive, blue-skinned humanoids native to Solstheim who somewhat resemble Goblins, subvert it as well. Like Goblins, they have a reputation for being this toward most of the other races they come into contact with, especially the Nords. Some of this treatment is justified as Rieklings are frequently aggressive, attacking travelers and raiding the settlements of other races. However, there have been examples of Rieklings able to get along with non-Rieklings, following them as leaders and bringing them into their tribes.
  • Minotaurs also subvert it. According to the beliefs of most Tamriellic citizens, they play it straight. However, while they are very territorial and aggressive in attacking intruders, it is subverted in that Minotaurs mostly prefer to be left alone and that they once acted as strong supporters of the First Empire.
  • The Sload, an Absolute Xenophobe race of "slugmen" native to the archipelago of Thras to the southwest of Tamriel, are considered this by the other denizens of Tamriel. While they operate more on their own scale of Blue-and-Orange Morality, attempting a Final Solution on every other race in Tamriel using a Mystical Plague that wiped out half the continent's population tends to get you labeled as "evil" pretty damn quickly. To this day, Sload are typically killed on sight if they are found anywhere in Tamriel.
  • The Dark Brotherhood, at least as they are seen by outsiders. They are indeed an illegal organization of assassins, most of their members take a sadistic glee in killing, and they practice a Religion of Evil. However, they Subvert it within the organization, with strict rules over who and how they kill, while exemplifying Evil Is One Big, Happy Family toward one another.
  • Morrowind Plays with it in-universe in terms of Vampires. The Tribunal Temple's stance is that because it is easy to tell when you are becoming one, and because the condition is very easily cured within the first three days of the transformation, the only people who allow themselves to become night-stalking parasites are people who are already Chaotic Evil. Therefore, the policy of killing all vampires on sight is justified to them. As Galur Rithari's Papers (not to speak of a few incidents in later games) indicate, it's not always that simple...
  • Skyrim:
    • Discussed with Paarthunax, a dragon who chose to rebel against Alduin and aid the humans fighting his rule. He explains that dragons have an innate nature to dominate and destroy, and that he has overcome his own nature through thousands of years of constant meditation, but he still struggles with his own drive to fly down among the humans and start eating and ruling over them. When confronted for his past crimes, he replies thusly: "What is better? To be born good, or to overcome your evil nature through great effort?"
    • He also points out that as one of their kin, the Dragonborn also has the same urge to destroy and conquer.
    • The Falmer weren't originally like this, but they have become twisted monsters after suffering for centuries under the rule of the Dwemer. Dawnguard reveals that there is at least one sane Snow Elf left, who has hopes that there are others like him. He also notes that the Falmer are showing signs of rudimentary intelligence, giving him hope they might one day regain their lost sapience and return to civilization.
    • Like the vampire example above, this is played with when it comes to werewolves. In the opinion of most denizens of Tamriel, werewolves are irredeemable evil and monstrous. Known were-creatures are ostracized and frequently hunted down as monsters. Played with in different instances, as many were-creatures do give into their bestial urges and kill indiscriminately, sometimes going completely insane (even in their mortal forms). Others, like the Circle within the Companions, avert it outright. (It likely helps that their particular form of the disease allows for voluntary transformations.)
  • The series' spin-off Action-Adventure game Redguard has the dragon Nafaalilargus (aka Nahfahlaar). Like Paarthurnax above, he managed to overcome his draconic nature and would ally with worthy mortals. According to ancient documents in Skyrim, he was spared by the Blades for this reason.
• Endless Space has the Cravers; a race of cybernetically augmented oversized insects. Engineered by the Virtual Endless as a biological weapon, the Endless did a pretty shoddy job killing them off when they accomplished their task, leading to the Horde of Alien Locusts to infest the galaxy. The Cravers can never be at peace; their only diplomatic actions are "Declare War". They must continuously expand lest they consume their own civilization. Most Cravers are not intelligent, being a race of Bee People. However, Cravers can become augmented by contact with Dust, which significantly boosts their intelligence, and morality; rejected by their hives, they offer themselves as commanders and governors to other races or hives. Endless Legend has the functionally similar Necrophages.
• EXTRAPOWER: Dark Force and everyone in the Dark Force Army, the series Big Bad with ambitions to conquer the universe. They are only ever full antagonists. Even the demon world has a full spectrum of morality.
• Fable has Hobbes, who are rather genial to people who join up with them...and happen to reproduce by transmogrifying children.
• The Super Mutants were portrayed as this in the first Fallout, mainly because their creator was the Big Bad. But a rare few examples since then are portrayed as just as capable of good as any other race.
  • On the other hand, the Master really and truly thought he was doing what was right.
  • Also somewhat justified, as most Super Mutants suffer severe brain damage during their conversion that leaves them without the mental capacity to be much more than The Usual Adversaries — reasoning more complex than "hit or shoot at that thing until it stops moving, then take its stuff or drag it off to be turned into another Super Mutant" is a bit beyond them. The good ones tend to be the ones that don't suffer this sort of damage.
    • This tends to be zigzagged depending on location. Super Mutants in the Southwest (Fallout 2 and New Vegas) seem to run the full alignment spectrum pretty regularly, even without someone like Marcus influencing them. This appears to be the result of The Master selecting for highly intelligent individuals to be made into Super Mutants. In the Capital Wastelands and the Commonwealth, Super Mutants appear to have been created much more haphazardly and are thus far more prone to playing this trope straight.
  • Nightkin, or Super Mutants that constantly use an invisibility field have all been driven insane as a side effect, and very very few are rational enough to not shoot everything that isn't them on sight.

• Deconstructed by the Udam tribe in Far Cry Primal. They're first introduced as an evil, murderous Cannibal Tribe of brutes. Sayla, the first Wenja Takkar meets, states that they burnt the Wenja village to the ground, and she can still hear the screams of her loved ones they killed. The first Udam the player meets is likely to be cutting up a dead Wenja and two others are impaling more of them for dinner. They fill their outposts with bodies, they're constantly wet with blood, a few of them wear bones on their clothes, and they don't look that human. But later in the game, we find out that the Udam are dying from a plague called "skull fire", and they don't know why: the most their primitive beliefs can come up with is that their goddess has abandoned them, and they think that eating uninfected Wenja will cure them somehow.^note Modern viewers will recognize the "skull fire" as an analogue for kuru, an infection caused by cannibalism, which means that the Udam are undergoing Death by Irony. Takkar, feeling sympathetic towards them, spares the life of one Udam, called Dah, and brings him to the village, ostensibly so that they can use his talents in crafting Poisoned Weapons to gain an advantage in the war. Over the course of the game, Takkar saves Dah's life when the other Wenja, accusing Takkar of being a Category Traitor, try subjecting him to a Vigilante Execution, and eventually Dah, having come to respect Takkar as a Worthy Opponent, asks the Beast Master to kill him to prevent his death from "skull fire" from being slow and torturous. The transition is completed when Ull, the Udam warchief and one half of the Big Bad Ensemble, asks Takkar to raise and defend his children before he dies. Takkar grants Ull's request.
• In contrast to the above-mentioned Udam, the Rakshasa in Far Cry 4 play this straight. They eagerly rampage through The Shangri-La killing wildlife and murdering the seekers sent there. In a series filled with Black-and-Grey Morality, the Rakshasa are a breath of fresh air. That said, Kalinag, the latest Seeker to arrive at Shangri-La, speculates that the Rakshasa were brought there by some accident, and they're lashing out in confused fear to defend themselves.
• Fate/Grand Order introduces the Evils of Humanity, otherwise known as the Beast class servants. Each of these beings is an Embodiment of Vice, and is fundamentally opposed to mankind, albeit for Blue-and-Orange Morality reasons. Their own servant profiles explicitly state that they are Chaotic Evil, for crying out loud! Even the summonable and thus playable Beasts still have this alignment.
• Final Fantasy:
  • Final Fantasy XII has the Baknamy and the Urutan-Yensa.
    • The Baknamy are basically Ivalice's equivalent to goblins. The bestiary indicates that the vast majority of them live in poverty, and their frequent association with criminal activities has led to much prejudice and hatred from the other races in the setting. All Baknamy encountered are enemies with the sole exception being a merchant hidden in the Necrohol of Nabudis.
    • The Urutan-Yensa are a race of humanoid crustaceans that live in the sandseas. They are shown to be relentlessly territorial, attacking anything that comes to their lands with reckless abandon. Worth noting that at some point there were some attempts to integrate them to human society. All of them invariably "ended in tragedy".
  • Final Fantasy XI has the player start off thinking that all beastmen are scum, but then has you find out that most of them, but not all of them, are fighting the player races for various reasons. The Quadav are only in conflict with Bastok because Bastok kinda tried to take over the Quadav's homelands, and have since been in constant combat with them over land and resources. Then, there are the Goblins, who are less evil and more willing to do anything to make a buck.
  • Final Fantasy XIV:
    • Similar to XI, the game zig-zags this with the various beast races. Many, like the lizardlike Amalj'aa of Thanalan, the avian Ixali of the Black Shroud, and the fishlike Sahagin of La Noscea, are perpetually antagonistic against the Spoken races (small outlying factions notwithstanding) while others, like the Sylphs, Moogles, and Goblins co-exist amicably with the Spoken races. This trend also extends towards the primals they summon. Some are antagonistic, but have a method to their madness: Ifrit desires dominion over all, Titan seeks to protect his kobold followers, and Ravana is a Blood Knight seeking worthy rivals. Others lean fully into chaotic evil, Garuda being the most prominent example, being obsessed with little more than massacre and destruction. Others still avert this completely: Ramuh is a sage who wishes to protect the sylphs, but holds no animosity towards others and recognizes that his very existence places the world at peril; Shiva is an avatar of a Well-Intentioned Extremist who hopes to bring an end to the Forever War between Ishgard and the dragons; and Susano'o is a Big Fun primal who views combat as good sport.
    • Ultimately, however, this is subverted: almost all of the Beast Tribes became aggressive to the nations of the Spoken for material and social reasons rather than some inherent hatred, for example the Kobolds are only aggressive towards the city-state of Limsa Lominsa because of territorial disputes, and because Limsa frequently broke any pact or treatments to limit their territorial expansion. Desperation, as well as manipulation from the Ascians, leads them to summon Primals that in turn "Temper" them into mindless zealots who cannot be reasoned with, which is the real reason why no peace can be mantained. Once a cure for Tempering is discovered, and the leaders of the City-States vow for better treatment of the tribes, relations are slowly mended, and the Amalj'aa, Kobolds and Sahagin are admitted as official allies of the City States in patch 5.5.
    • Duskwight characters are, more often than not, some flavor of villain—whether they are generic bandits, bounty hunters, or the Arc Villain of a questline. In Gridania specifically, some Duskwights have decided Then Let Me Be Evil thanks to the Fantastic Racism they deal with in spite of the Shroud being their homeland, but meeting friendly Duskwights is a weirdly rare occurance compared to the other races the Player Character can be part of.
    • Played straight with the Voidsent; the demonic denizens of the Void who yearn to invade the Source and consume its aether.
• In Fire Emblem: Three Houses, the number of "those who slither in the dark" members/Agarthans you meet who aren't trying to kill you and wipe out humanity can be counted on one hand, if you make a fist.
• In the 4X game, Galactic Civilizations, roughly half the playable civilizations are always evil. Humans, interestingly, are labelled as "neutral" on the Good/Evil spectrum, though they are obviously the heroes of the story mode.
• In the Galaxy Angel trilogy, the Valfask at first come across as a race of ruthlesss Galactic Conquerors bent on enslaving or destroying anyone who opposes them, claiming that they have no need for hearts or emotions such as love and friendship, and were even responsible for the first Chrono Quake that caused the collapse of the civilization six centuries ago. However, in Eternal Lovers, because of Wein pulling a Heroic Sacrifice for Lushati's sake, Tact and his girlfriend come to believe that they may be able to turn around if their emperor, Gern is taken out of the picture. The Galaxy Angel II sequel trilogy seems to prove they were right, as many of them have joined the Transbaal militia to atone for their previous actions.
• The Locust and the Lambent from Gears of War, since both are trying to exterminate the human race, with the latter trying to exterminate both.
• The Brutes and Prophets from Halo are mostly portrayed in this in the main games; however, it's subverted in the Expanded Universe and elsewhere:
  • The Brutes are shown to have legitimate grievances against the Elites, and to be fully capable of co-existing with other species in relatively sincere good faith under the right circumstances. Even some in-game fight dialogue points out that Brutes do genuinely care about their comrades and believe in the righteousness of what they are fighting for.
  • The Expanded Universe also shows that there have been relatively decent Prophets, even though Truth and the other High Prophets are not among them. And even then, Halo: Contact Harvest shows that Truth and co. started the genocide against humanity, despite publicly justifying it with nothing but deliberate lies, in part to prevent the Covenant from falling into potential anarchy (and themselves and the other Prophets losing their dominant political position in the process).
  • Drones are a straight example even in the EU, with no sympathetic characters. They're solely evil mooks. In their defense, they are mostly Out of Focus and have had only two named characters in the entire canon- one of those being an offhand mention in flavour text, the other being considered too evil even for the rest of the Drones and consigned to a penal colony.
• Subverted and played straight with different races in Jak and Daxter. The Lurkers were only primitive mooks in the first game, but are revealed as fully sapient and potentially peaceful creatures in Jak II: Renegade, where they join the good guys of La Résistance due to evil humans enslaving them. Jak 3: Wastelander would introduce the Dark Makers, who seek to destroy entire worlds; normally they'd be a straight example, but it's revealed that they're actually Precursors (who are not this trope) corrupted by dark eco, making them less of a race and more of a virus. However, it's fully played straight throughout the series with the Metal Heads, who have no excuse for their actions and are devoted to the extermination of everyone else without negotiation. The bulk of their troops appear to be non sapient animals, and their sapient leadership are all bastards.
• The Heartless in Kingdom Hearts are a sort of "soulless evil" who seem to attack everyone on sight and have no personality.
  • Averted with Mushrooms, except for the Black Fungus. White Mushrooms will reward Sora with prizes if he casts the correct spell, the Rare Truffles like to play "bounce", and the Mushroom XIII give Donald and Goofy good weapons should a challenge be completed with a high score. The Flantastic Seven are also friendly Heartless who play games with Sora and reward him if he does well enough.
    • Ditto the Nobodies, though this is disputed out-of- and in-universe. Kingdom Hearts 3D [Dream Drop Distance] confirms that they're Not Always Evil; Xemnas and Xigbar manipulated both the lesser and humanoid Nobodies into his bidding to stop them from regrowing their hearts.
    • We've also got the Unversed and the Nightmare Dream Eaters, the former being Made of Evil like their master, Vanitas.
• Knights of the Old Republic:
  • The game provides a bit of background on the Tusken Raiders of Star Wars that presents their side of the story: as survivors of a pre-historic Apocalypse How involving orbital bombardment and the resulting scorched earth, their taboo against most machinery — and particularly air/spacecraft — causes them to regard all races that use such devices as blasphemous heretics. They still fit the Always Chaotic Evil trope as far as their behavior goes, but their motivations now make them Scary Dogmatic Aliens (of the religious sort).
  • The Rakata were an ancient race of savage Force sensitives who developed technology fueled by the Dark Side and used it to enslave multiple planets. They were brutal masters and developed their Force affinity by killing and devouring other members of their own race. Eventually a virus wracked their empire, rendering almost all Rakata Force-deaf; between slave uprisings and their own infighting, they were reduced to barbarism amidst the ruins of their homeworld.
• Zig-zagged in The Last Story. There are two enemy humanoid races, the Gurak and the Reptids. Both of them are intelligent beings, but the Gurak are revealed to have the classic orc's Freudian Excuse of being a formerly peaceful race who were persecuted and driven to barbarism by the mean old humans, and eventually reconcile and form a truce with them. The Reptids, however, are never portrayed as anything but chaotic evil XP fodder.
• In League of Legends, most of the residents of Noxus are not what you would call a nice group of people: being bloodthirsty assassins, hemomancers, and the occasional cultists (one of whom, Swain, leads the entire city state.) However, their rival, Demacia, is almost just as bad, being a tyrannical city state that punishes all crimes with death.
  • Zaun, a city closely aligned with Noxus, is dedicated fully to (mad) science. They consider almost anything acceptable if it results in interesting science, and have been known to produce chemical weapons so dreadful that even Noxians were disturbed to see them put to use. However, they are far more devoted to science than outright malice, and even granted full citizenship and rights to Blitzcrank, a steam-powered golem, upon realizing that he was sentient.
  • The faction that fits this trope best, however, is the Void. An other-worldly plane full of Eldritch Horrors, the entire faction has one goal: eat. Of the Four champions from the Void, they are all ruthless creatures that wish nothing but to devour everything they can or perform morbid experiments out of sheer curiosity. Two people have successfully walked away from contact with a portal to the void, and of the two, both were cursed with its power, one of the two coming away from the experience entirely insane.
  • Shadow Isles have upped the ante in terms of evil champions, everyone who resides in the island is a sinister agent of death out to make mortals suffer in the worst ways possible.
• The Mass Effect series subverts this a lot; even the Reapers are subversions since they were constructed by a Well-Intentioned Extremist AI.
  • Ardat-Yakshi are asari who blow out their mates' nervous systems. They grow stronger with each meld and the power is addictive. Since it can't be cured, asari who become Ardat-Yakshi are either executed or sent to isolated convents. One of the Ardat-Yakshi appearing in-game is a psychopathic predator with no regard for the lives of others. The other two are substantially more rational, with one sacrificing herself to try to stop the spread of Reaper-controlled Ardat-Yakshi.
  • The rachni were viewed as a vicious enemy, responsible for plunging the Citadel into a near-pangalactic war, but they're much more peaceful in reality, and were brainwashed by something into warring against the galaxy.
  • The most prominent subversion is the geth. They were the robotic mooks that served Saren Arterius in the first game, acting as your main opponents at the time, returning in the second game as less prevalent, but still recurring adversaries. In the first game, the geth worship Saren's ship, Sovereign, as a god — the pinnacle of synthetic evolution — and were responsible for driving their creators out of their homeworld. As it turns out, the geth were starting to discover their place in the universe at large, but the quarians essentially jumped the gun out of fear of their robotic "slaves" turning on them. Furthermore, the geth you faced in the first and second games are from a splinter group that believe their future should be guided by more advanced pseudo-lifeforms. The main hub of geth just want to be left alone to build their Dyson Sphere and achieve true unity; they even take care of the quarian homeworld in the absence of their creators. If given the chance, they'll agree to share the homeworld with their creators, and enthusiastically help them rebuild and readjust their immune systems to their old planet.
  • The vorcha are universally seen as aggressive, unpleasant, and vermin-like murderers, salvagers, and graverobbers; the only ones you encounter are Blood Pack mercenaries, as well as a group that created and distributed a plague on a station filled with millions. However, like Tolkien's orcs, the vorcha are more a product of their environment than anything else; they only live twenty years, use combat as their main form of communication, are beaten into serving as cannon fodder for their mercenary ringleaders, and tend to grow up in a world where the slightest ounce of water is treated as treasure. Some background Codex-like trivia paint the vorcha as miners, settlers, and brewers, and there is also mention of vorcha trying to colonise a high-gravity world. Plus, there was the actor who played the Vorcha ambassador in Blasto 6, and you yourself can play a Vorcha in multiplayer, so if you're a team player and try to revive your teammates all the time...
    • One Vorcha Blood-Pack Lieutenant encountered in the third game, performs a coup to remove the new Vorcha Blood-Pack Leader, simply because he is too blood-thirsty and it's ruining business. He's also sane enough to realise that when Aria requests your help, you do not say no.
  • Zig-zagged with the yahg, who have a vicious pack mentality that's utterly alien to everyone but themselves and a brutal nature even worse than that of the krogan. They consider others to be either their superiors or their inferiors, and when a Council diplomatic convoy made first contact with them, they were enraged by the fact that the Council ambassadors considered themselves to be their equals rather than their underlings, and had them all slaughtered. Since this led to their homeworld being declared off limits, we only get to meet one of them, in a DLC, no less. That one happens to be a Diabolical Mastermind and the main antagonist of the DLC.
  • Played absolutely straight with the Collectors, though. According to Mordin, they have "no soul" and "must be destroyed". Again, this one fits the "artificially created" part, as they've been twisted by the Reapers and are mind-controlled by them. Furthering this point, in the From Ashes DLC for Mass Effect 3, Collectors are seen as nothing more than husks. It is possible that all communication is done by the Eldritch Abomination Harbinger.
  • The batarians are seen as this by humans since they're most known for being pirates and slavers with a strong hatred for humanity. However, it should be noted that the batarian government heavily regulates space travel, and only allows the worst of the worst out of its borders, so these guys do not represent the average batarian. When the player does meet batarian civilians in the third game (who have fled their home territory en masse to escape the Reaper advance), they are no more good or evil than any other random person, and there are a few that have formed friendships with humans.
  • The kett of Mass Effect: Andromeda are a comparatively, for the franchise, less subtle take on this, though ultimately Played With. They're rather blatant Scary Dogmatic Aliens who have an obsession with racial/genetic purity reminiscent of the Nazis and worship a genetic assimilation process implied to be their method of reproduction which turns non-kett into kett. Their main goal in the game is to turn non-kett they deem worthy into kett and kill the rest . While they do keep vassal races for undisclosed reasons, are individually self-aware and occasionally question orders, there has yet to be shown a non-evil kett, just one who is Affably Evil and keeps their word and another who turns on the Archon because he's betraying the kett's eugenics and assimilation ideology.
• Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor mostly plays this straight. You might be brainwashing sentient people with real motives and wills into murdering each other by the boatload, but every single one that you fight or torture has the intent to do one of the following: murder, enslave, torture, backstab, revel in decadence, hide their fears as they subject them on their minions, blight the earth, burn bridges, extinction of various species, did we forget mass murder, etc. The sequel however, shows that not only can orcs be friends with each other, they can be friends with you (separate from your Mind Control powers).
• Minecraft: Story Mode: The Griefers of Boom Town are essentially Ax-Crazy bomb junkies. They turn their explosive tendencies on each other (even when it would be more beneficial to work together), they take glee in destroying everything and everyone they come across, and they're absurdly selfish and greedy, with Magnus mentioning that the only reason he managed to stay alive and as King as long as he did was by not trusting any of them.
• Whilst Mortal Kombat has species that are rather monstrous though many also exhibit Proud Warrior Race Guy traits, the one species that plays this straight is the Kytinn. As shown in D'Vorah's bio, insightfulness and loyalty are traits unusual for the Kytinn, indicating that the species are this.
• Moshi Monsters has a group of evil creatures called Glumps. Justified in that they're created to serve the villains.
• Nocturne: Rebirth has the Devil class of monsters, which seem to be obsessed with destroying any human settlements they can find to the point of considering it a mission. This is because the Abusive Precursors of the setting mentally programmed them to act as an army against an opposing country. Unfortunately, the Devils can't distinguish between sides and just target humans on instinct, resulting in the destruction of both countries. The only exceptions are the three vampiric Ancestors, who start as Blank Slates.
• Oddworld is a brilliant example of this. Species like Glukkons, Sligs, and Vykkers are all evil species, and on the same side too. They form the industrial evil to contrast the protagonists' nomadic, natural species.
• Odin Sphere has the Goblins, former Pooka who became Goblins because they were Evil. They make their lives either by stealing or mugging. When King Valentine returns from the Netherworld, they go back to serving him.
• Onimusha: The Genma race is a race of ravenous demons that delight in committing evil acts, either directly or by manipulating other humans for it. They take extreme pride in their evil acts, and every last one of them is alien to the concept of good and compassion. It fits very well with the Black-and-White Morality setting of the game.
• The Minions of Overlord are all of the Laughably Evil type. They follow the will of any current Evil Overlords and will happily pillage and slaughter in his name.
• The Skedar from Perfect Dark. Their only goal seems to be the extermination of the Maian race and they don't seem to care how many humans they have to kill to do it.
• Pico: The Penilians are a race of hyperviolent conquerors bent on destroying as much as they can. The game that focuses on them, U.F.A., is entirely about individual members killing and violating humans for their own amusement. The sole exception is Cassandra, the antagonist of Pico's School, and even then the game that showed she was capable of good was an alternate timeline from her debut game, where she murdered her classmates in a rage.
• The zombies in Plants vs. Zombies are capable of nothing more than trying to wreak havoc and eat your brain alive. Knowing that they are fully sentient (intelligent is the wrong word) beings makes the thought of them even more terrifying.
• Subverted by Dark (Or Evil, as they're called in Japan) type Pokémon. While they're commonly used by villains or as villains (In the spin-offs that lack humans) on top of their Pokedex entries often making them out to be several types of nasty, they show up being used by/as good or neutral characters nearly as often, and their negative characteristics are largely an Informed Attribute. The only thing that could be considered consistently dark/evil about them is their style of combat, which revolves largely around underhanded tactics.
• The Cragmites of Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction are shown to be this. Emperor Perceval Tachyon (the only one we see in the game before he found the dimension that they were banished to and brought them back) wants to take over and destroy the galaxy, and REALLY wants to pop Ratchet's head because the Lombaxes banished the Cragmites, raised Tachyon as one of them regardless of his origins, and because Ratchet's father was the guardian of the Dimensionator (the machine which teleported the Cragmites away); but still, there are no lifeforms who are neutral to Ratchet in the universe...
  • The Drophyds show no emotion other than sadism, and have gleefully sided with Tachyon when he gives them raritanium. The race ends up extinct after the Battle of Fastoon.
  • Subverted with the Blarg from the first game. They're the main foes, indeed, but they have sympathetic motives and are apparently being manipulated by their leader, Chairman Drek.
• For Return to Krondor...Demons, Shadows, Goblins, Trolls, Ghouls, Vampires, Nighthawks, Zombies, Sidi's Necromancers, Izmali Assassins, and Bear's Mercenaries. Does that cover it? Oh, and at least two of these groups will form into alliances against you and James will wonder how that could be.
• Romancing SaGa 3 portraits dragons this way. Two examples in particular:
  • Dorra was a female dragon that the Matriarch befriended several centuries prior to the events of the game. Together, they fought and defeated Buné, the Sinistral of the Wind. At some point, Dorra began to attack human settlements. When the Matriarch demanded an explanation, Dorra simply mentioned that it's in her nature as a dragon to crave death and destruction. Seeing how Dorra would not stop her rampages, the Matriarch had no other option than to strike her down.
  • Dorra's son Gwayne can aid the heroes in the fight against a returning Buné. At some point the heroes can learn that a dragon destroyed Tinyville, killing everyone. If they go to Gwayne's den, he will tell them more or less the same that Dorra did, in addition of claiming that dragons and men are natural enemies. With no other option, the heroes then fight and kill Gwayne.
• The Bydo from R-Type are this trope taken to its logical extreme: they are composed of all the most evil and base instincts of mankind, utterly incapable of feeling anything Good whatsoever.
• In RuneScape, vampyres, werewolves, and demons all qualify as this. One of the novels has an important character, Garth, who is a werewolf and doesn't want to be chaotic evil. He uses a potion to repress his killing instincts, until eventually having them exorcised. In the sequel novel, this trope is played straight with Garth: his mother was a werewolf (in the Runescape universe, lycanthropy is not contagious at all, and is only hereditary), and his father was high ranking vampyre, the Black Prince. Since vampirism is not hereditary in this universe, that leaves Garth half werewolf, half human.
  • In the game there are or have been two examples of non-evil werewolves. Shanty Claws was a werewolf sailor who asked for the player's help in rescuing some kidnapped children from gublinches (who may also be this trope), although Shanty Claws might not be canon as he only appeared during a holiday event and also once in the Fourth-Wall Mail Slot. Scrambles the werewolf is a Harmless Villain who has the player kidnapped in order to force them to play games for his amusement but does let them go after playing whether they win or lose and does reward them for winning. Additionally, if the player is wearing a magic ring that makes werewolves think the player is one of them, most of them seem to be Affably Evil, and some act this way even without the ring.
  • Most Vampyres were created from transformed humans and had their personalities overwritten to make them evil, and reward you if you cure them (restoring their original personalities), or kill them and help their souls pass on, and not all of them are intelligent and so do not count. Vanescula Draken, one of the few natural born vampyres is willing to work with human rebels to achieve her own goals and does seem care about helping her race, unlike her much worse siblings.
  • Demons are not all evil either. Many types of demons are just mindless animals or (such as imps) don't do anything worse than petty thievery. The player can hire a demon to be their butler. Avernic demons (which are the ones that look like Big Red Devils) are not pure evil, but are extremely warlike, and some have allied with the goddless faction because they no longer want to be enslaved by the contracts they made with the gods. Intelligent Cthonian demons (which are the ones that look like Eldritch Abominations) are not all evil either as they have Blue-and-Orange Morality and are capable of forming legitimate friendships (one Cthonian actually went insane with guilt after accidentally eating a human child he had befriended).
  • Chaos dwarves are evil dwarves corrupted by magic into serving Zamorak, the god of Chaos. You can actually confront Zamorak about this and he will claim that he was trying to grant them increased power in exchange for their devotion but the result wasn't what he had intended to do and he feels remorse for this.
  • The Dragonkin are evil because of a curse placed on them that makes them become more and more consumed with rage every time the Stone of Jas is used. Some became Omnicidal Maniacs while others who were able to resist the curse turned to evil science searching for a cure.
  • Goblins, trolls, ogres, and other races from Yu'biusk are mostly evil because they follow the teaching of a War God who encouraged them to be violent and anti-intellectual.
  • The Airut are an example this trope, having not displayed any sympathetic qualities. They're monstrous pig men who used an animalistic god as a super weapon for wrecking planets, before scavenging the remains and bullying the inhabitants.
  • The Scabarites initially seemed to be this as xenophobic worshipers of an evil god, but it turned out that they and their god normally are actually peaceful isolationists with a bad reputation, they were actually manipulated and driven insane by a different god who really is evil.
  • The void pests are actually intelligent but lack individuality, being controlled by an evil Hive Mind. They can develop free will if separated from the hive mind for long enough.
  • The Sea Slugs are intelligent and controlled by a Hive Mind, but unlike the Void Pests are apparently not redeemable.
• Subverted with the Salmonids in Splatoon. While Inklings themselves view Salmonids as this trope, seeing them as largely instinct-driven monsters who are more interested in supping on their delicious flesh than anything else, Word of God states that they're a Proud Warrior Race that has "their own thing going on." Supplemental material also makes it clear that they have a thriving trade economy with Octarian society, showing that they're more than capable of negotiations over combat depending on the circumstances. Come Splatoon 3, and the player character themselves gets a Smallfry companion that can assist them in fighting and the like during the single-player campaign.
• The Grox race from Spore are a race of cyborgs and almost always conduct raids on random races, making them being viewed as the galaxy's ultimate evil. This is actually a subversion, as the Grox are only reacting to the threat posed by oxygen-breathing life forms that gain the power of space flight, and inevitably use terraforming to spread their deadly (to Grox) oxygenated atmospheres to other planets. You can even ally with them, if you both prove yourself willing to spare Grox-inhabited worlds your terraforming AND prove your own race to be a powerful ally against other oxygen-breathing races, mostly by making a complete mockery of intergalactic law, blowing up their planets with wild abandon, and exhibiting the ability to survive in spite of the entire rest of the galaxy declaring war on you.
• Lampshade Hanging in Star Control II: the Ilwrath position themselves as supremely evil. If the player confronts them over this ("If your actions are judged by your society as correct, aren't you, in fact, good?"), they tie themselves into a logical knot before deciding to attack the player for being annoying. All of this in an effort to please their gods, Dogar and Kazon, which demand all this nastiness of them; it's later found (by you, not them) that (some of) Dogar and Kazon's commandments were a prank all along; see the Umgah below.
  • Subverted in the case of the Big Bad race(s) of the Ur-Quan. While the first game portrayed them as typical Evil Overlords, the second explained their origin and gave them more complexity. They were a race of slaves, and believed that to protect their own freedom, they must thus enslave everyone else. However, they never destroy unnecessarily, only conscript those races who volunteer as battle thralls, and will even accept your surrender no matter how many of them you have killed (though this still means Game Over). The Kohr-Ah subrace, however, plays this a bit straighter. They believe they should just kill everyone (though they aren't overly impolite about it, and will actually explain themselves when asked properly; they have a similar motivation to the regular Ur-Quan in never wanting to be enslaved again, and believe in cross-species reincarnation and thus think if they kill everyone else all souls will be back as Ur-Quan).
  • Also played straight with the Dnyarri, the former psychic slave-masters of the Ur-Quan and the Sentient Milieu, who are confirmed by anyone who knew of them to have been a race of monsters. They turned the entire Milieu into an enormous Gulag and casually exterminated those races that didn't perform up to their standards. They were so horrible that, even tens of thousands of years later, both Ur-Quan societies are still centered entirely and insanely around preventing ever being enslaved again. At one point, the Ur-Quan Kzer-Zah can tell you that dying a thousand times would be far preferable to living under Dnyarri control.
    Chenjesu: If there was ever a Devil, Captain, it was the Dnyarri.
  • The Umgah, while not as aggressively malevolent as the Ilwrath, are a race of rather cruel tricksters. Some of their "practical jokes" include tricking the cowardly Spathi into fighting for the Ur-Quan instead of being placed under a protective shield, tricking the Ilwrath into committing genocide on the Pkunk, and inadvertently reviving one of the aforementioned Dnyarri in an effort to start a war within the Hierarchy (this one backfires big time). They consider all the death and suffering they cause to be hilarious. Due to their greatest expertise being genetic/biological engineering and them being very eager themselves over time, it's implied all the self-engineering has scrambled their brains to hell and drove the race to collective insanity.
• StarCraft:
  • Played with regarding the Zerg; while they pretty much were subjects to what usually comes with this trope (a horde of mindless, hostile monsters serving as the main enemy that the heroic characters can slaughter without remorse), it was made clear in their campaign that while they came out as this to the other race, they are more a case of Blue-and-Orange Morality: from their perspective, everything non-Zerg is a threat, and as such must be eradicated to ensure their survival or assimilated to help them evolve. Much like the Warcraft Orcs, they ended up getting more fleshed out in StarCraft II and making a Heel–Race Turn.
  • Played straight with the Zerg-Protoss Hybrids, who are all depicted as destructive and malicious. Justified in that they were created by Amon as a corrupt equivalent of the Xel'Naga, and most likely lack any form of free will.
• In Star Ocean: The Last Hope, the Cardianon are this, they have no objective but conquest. It's revealed that the Cardianon were manipulated by the Grigori in order to evolve from lizard beasts to a space-faring race in 200 years, in order to further their agenda, so they didn't have time to develop empathy with other races.
• Star Wars: The Old Republic averts this for the Sith. Most are irredeemably evil and those who aren't often defect to the Jedi, but especially later on you meet several who wholeheartedly embrace the sith code but reject the more Ax-Crazy traits of their fellows (it helps that the more crazy or evil have by that point killed themselves off). A Light Side Inquisitor or Warrior in particular can enthusiastically quote sith dogma while still being the more heroic character in their story.
• Originally, the monsters that the title brothers of Super Mario Bros. fought were just, for simplicity's sake, 'generically evil'. (Indeed, Bowser's original title was Daimaou, or "Great Demon King".) However, the RPG spinoffs that would come later in the series have a variety of Monster Towns with friendly inhabitants of these species, along with the implication that not even the ones under Bowser's army are particularly bad, just Punch-Clock Villains. Bowser himself has gone through considerable Villain Decay, although in most of the RPGs, he's on your side for his own reasons (and let's not enter Go-Karting with Bowser...).
  • Even in the main games, you find exceptions. For example, in Super Mario 64, a Lakitu constantly helps Mario out by acting as the third person camera. You can also race friendly Koopas in 64 and in Super Mario Odyssey.
  • Played straight with the Shroobs from Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time. Their planet is dying, and they spot the Mushroom World. What do they do? Invade it without even attempting to negotiate merely immigrating to it, and engage in behavior that goes beyond simple military protocol, and into downright sadism.
• Set up, but then subverted in Ultima VI. The kingdom of Britannia is attacked by a race of demonic-looking Gargoyles, who have a lot of stereotypically "evil" trappings, and your character is sent out to stop them...only to eventually find out that they're not evil at all, and are simply trying to fulfill a prophecy that could save their dying civilization, which has been in peril ever since The Avatar broke into one of their temples, slaughtered a bunch of their citizens and stole their holy text. Ultima creator Richard Garriot even stated that subverting this trope was the entire point of the game.
• Kamal Re'x, the leader of the Hierarchy's invasion of Earth in Universe at War, gives this trope as an excuse for their actions — it's "their nature". Given that he's giving this excuse to a Hierarchy military commander who staged an ultimately unsuccessful rebellion after cynically tiring of its corruption and its constant senseless warfare, it doesn't exactly ring true.
• The first two Warcraft games used to have the monster races be more malicious, the main example being the Orcs. As the games progressed, the Orcs became likable protagonists with their own culture. The canceled game and resulting book, Lord of the Clans, explain how the Orcs redeemed themselves and became a Proud Warrior Race, while the Warcraft 3 manual states that they had been corrupted by the Burning Legion. The Scourge (and the Burning Legion) became the bad guys for the game, while the Horde and the Alliance even banded together to defeat them. By this point, the only things that started off evil are the demons and possibly the Old Gods. Even some of the demonic races have had some friendly members.
  • In another example, the Eredar were originally represented as an irredeemably evil race of demons who corrupted the mightiest warrior among the Titans into the Big Bad and enslaved the Orcs. Inexplicably, they became a race of honorable beings who were corrupted by the Big Bad's own festering corruption. This happened through a Retcon in the World of Warcraft Expansion Pack Burning Crusade, after the third game and its expansion as well as four books and a trilogy presented them as completely evil. The creator of Warcraft, Chris Metzen, has admitted this was something of a train wreck, but sticks by his decision.
  • However, many enemy races, particularly the Gnolls, the Harpies, the Troggs, nearly all demons, the Naga, and the Murlocs are (almost) Always Chaotic Evil. Most of them have individual exceptions or motivations, though.
  • The Black Dragonflight is this after Neltharion became corrupted by the Old Gods and changed his name to Deathwing. Now they enjoy killing and only follow orders from dragons strong enough to kill them. The other dragonflights consider them beyond redemption, with only two known black dragons being free of corruption due to Titan intervention. Subverted when Sabellian was able to cleanse the last black dragons of the corruption. While still more aggressive than the other flights, the restored Black Dragonflight has returned to the side of good.
  • Some demons like the Nathrezim (aka. the Dread Lords), Ered'ruin (Doomguard), Sayaad (Incubi), and Mo'arg (felguard) seem to have always been evil. The entire collection of races is so evil that their mere existence convinced Sargeras that the Titans' mission to bring order to creation was futile.
  • Mists of Pandaria introduces the Sha, who are the manifestations of negative emotions on Pandaria. The currently encountered ones are the Shas of Anger, Despair, Doubt, Fear, Hatred, and Violence — smaller "offshoot" Sha are under the umbrella ones. In other words, Sha aren't just invariably evil, they're a physical personification of it.
  • Subverted with the Sethrak Snake People from Battle for Azeroth. The promos and the player's early encounters with them imply that the entire race is antagonistic like the Naga (the game's other snake race), until the player meets one that's heroic. It turns out the race is divided between two factions: the Devoted (the good guys whose beliefs are more in line with the rest of Zandalar), and the Faithless (the bad guys who violently reject the Loa and and seek to conquer all of Zandalar).
• Warframe:
  • The Grineer are a justified example: a genetically engineered Slave Race with high strength, high obedience and low intelligence designed for hard labor (strong enough to do the job, obedient enough to stay in line and dumb enough to not question the status quo) repurposed into soldiers, whom, after some serious case of Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal, decided to takeover the solar system, became an army of degenerating clones, strong enough to use heavy armor and weapons, obedient enough to follow orders without and dumb enough not question why they're doing that, and what few were smart enough to question the status quo either got executed, or found a way to join the Steel Meridian, a group of Defector from Decadence who help the helpless.
  • The Orokin, the ones who originally created the Grineer, were rotten to the core. They ruined the Origin System, enslaved everyone else, regularly kidnapped children to gain immortality through Grand Theft Me, created the warframes through torture, created the Tenno through more torture, and used both to clean up their own messes. By the time of the games, the only Orokin alive are the Twin Queens of the Grineer, who demonstrate that they have learned absolutely nothing after centuries and multiple slave rebellions, and Ballas, the affable and personable scientific mind behind the Warframes, who sold out the Orokin Empire and the Tenno to the Sentients, twisted a veteran soldier into a Warframe and made him kill his own son, and stole the Lotus.
  • The Infested are even more purely antagonistic than the Grineer and Orokin. While other villainous factions still tend to have the occasional good egg that will ally with you, the Infested are hell-bent on creating a solar-system wide Zombie Apocalypse at any cost, meaning that other factions may even be willing to put aside their differences to stop them. Notably, while the Invasion system allows you to pull an Enemy Mine with the Grineer and Corpus, you're not allowed to side with the Infested during invasions.
• Just about every website and user on the deep web, according to Welcome to the Game.
• World of Warcraft:
  • The Sha, who are literally the manifestations of negative emotions on Pandaria. They're awakened after being dormant for thousands of years when the Horde and Alliance bring the war to the island.
  • The Burning Legion is an army of Omnicidal Maniacs whose goal is to destroy anything in their path.
• Deconstructed in Xenoblade Chronicles 1. Shulk swears revenge on the Mechon following their attack on his home. This isn't seen as a particularly bad thing as they're just soulless killing machines... then it turns out that the Faced Mechon actually have members of his own Homs species inside them. Metal Face, the first one we meet, is just an asshole Homs who happened to be converted into a cyborg, and he's Mechonis' Token Evil Teammate. Worse still is the fact that the Mechon aren't the native species of Mechonis... the Machina, who are just as human as the Homs and who built the Mechon, are. Upon realizing that his Roaring Rampage of Revenge against the inhabitants of the Mechonis would take sentient life, he ultimately swears off it and begins his Character Development.
• Subverted in Xenoblade Chronicles X regarding the Prone, who work under the Ganglion, who play this straight with many of its races, including the Marnucks and the Milsaadi. Firstly, they're divided into two clans: The Cavern Clan, who work for the Ganglion proper, and the Tree Clan, whom the former oppress and later join the humans in NLA. Then a batallion of Cavern Clan soldiers are left for dead, go rogue, and make a Heel–Face Turn. Almost played straight with the Definians, where all but one of their kin serve under their Evil Matriarch Fortun. Once Fortun is either killed or neutered, and the rest of their fanatical supporters are wiped out, one more of their kind either joins the first example, or becomes a reluctant Punch-Clock Villain under the neutered matriarch. Otherwise, the Definians follow this trope to a T.
• The Gnosis of the Xenosaga series appear at first glance to be a fairly typical all-evil, human slaying alien race. The truth turns out to be a bit different from that, but they're still all homicidal to the end.
• The X-Universe has Space Pirates, Yaki (yakuza IN SPACE!), Xenon, and Kha'ak. X3: Terran Conflict allows players to befriend the Pirates and the Yaki are generally neutral. However, because of how chaotic Pirate society is, one may still find themselves under occasional Pirate attacks even when they are accepted; it takes much more reputation to totally befriend the Pirates.
• Ys II: Ancient Ys Vanished – The Final Chapter has some fun with this. Monsters are Always Chaotic Evil, but it's directly stated that they should be pitied, due to living only to fight and kill, rather than having full lives — and it's stated that despite this, they have varied personalities just like people. The Telepathy Magic-based monster conversations confirm their diverse personalities, and can make them seem sympathetic or likable...until one says something that bluntly reminds you that they're a race of The Usual Adversaries that are incapable of interaction with humans more meaningful than killing and eating them or holding them captive.
• Zniw Adventure: All Troodon are carnivorous bullies who threaten to eat herbivorous dinosaurs, scaring them away. The closest thing to a good Troodon is a shopkeeper in Fungilla, but even she is a major jerk.

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