EVERYONE loves a good villain. The rogue’s galleries in gaming contain some of the worst specimens of humanity (and nonhumanity, for that matter), which players have both faced and then spent hours debating over as to which are the worst of the worst. Some are simply despicable individuals. Others are power-mad psychopaths. But relatively few of them rise to the status of dictator – in that hey control a large chunk of real estate and stamp their personality on it through iron-fisted rule.
For the purposes of this list, we’ve picked out those villains who satisfy the above definition, and whose ruling of a fiefdom has a bearing on the game they contain. This means that the likes of M. Bison, Shao Kahn and any other dictator in a fighting game is excluded. We’ve also excluded any dictator whose presence was simply an end target for the player – the bland despots of the Just Cause series spring to mind. No, this is a list in which, in order to qualify, a dictator’s machinations need to dovetail into the world and its plot. Oh, and it goes without saying: HERE BE SPOILERS!