Most games hand you a sword and tell you that you’re the hero, a champion of the downtrodden, or chosen by destiny. You slay monsters, save the world, and when the credits roll, you feel pretty good about yourself. But some stories aren’t that simple. Sometimes, heroes do the right thing but for the wrong reasons or choose to help the few over the many. Although their intentions may have been good, in the end, these seven heroes turned out to be the real villains of the story.

Undertale

Despite everything, it's still you

Undertale begins as a charming, pixel-style indie RPG where the player explores a magical underground world. There are many ways you can play the game, but if you follow the infamous Genocide Route, if you choose to kill every monster you encounter, the game slowly changes and NPC start to react differently towards you.

While it is common practice to fight the enemies you encounter in most RPGs, Undertale has an underhanded way of dealing with players that just want to brute-force the game. The in-game text makes it very clear that “the monsters you have slain were mostly innocent,” making players responsible for every atrocity committed along their violent path. By the end of such a playthrough, even the narrator (Sans) warns you that you're in for “a bad time.”

Star Wars: Knights Of The Old Republic

You must choose your path

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic starts like every great Star Wars adventure. You’re a Republic soldier with amnesia, chosen by fate to wield a lightsaber and take down the evil Sith Lord, Darth Malak. You gather companions, save planets, and embody the Jedi code.

In one of gaming’s greatest twists, you discover that you are Darth Revan. The Jedi didn’t save you; they wiped your memory and turned you into their weapon. All those hours of righteous decisions and heartfelt conversations now feel hollow. In the end, you are left with a choice: will you continue on the path to the light, or will you return to the dark from whence you came.

Silent Hill 2

The real monsters come from within

In Silent Hill 2, you play James Sunderland as he ventures into the foggy town of Silent Hill after receiving a mysterious letter from his dead wife. Upon entering the town where he and his wife met, James encounters a host of monsters and mysterious residents fighting for their lives. The truth is, James Sunderland is not the innocent hero he believes himself to be.

As the story unfolds, it becomes clear that James killed his wife, Mary, telling himself that it would end her suffering. The monsters he meets are the manifestations of his guilt and inner turmoil. By the end, the game forces players to recognize that James is on a journey of self-punishment. James becomes the villain of his own story, as long as you don’t count the Shiba Inu secret ending.

Prototype

Everything is your fault

Prototype puts players in the shoes of Alex Mercer, who wakes up in a military morgue with amnesia. After discovering he now has powers, he escapes the facility and tries to figure out what happened. Alex is quickly hunted down by the military and discovers a strange new virus infecting civilians.

While he is being hunted, he starts “consuming” people who had any information on him and slowly begins to remember his life before. It turns out that he was the geneticist who created the Blacklight virus in the first place. By the final chapters, Alex discovers he has effectively become “something less than human” and has been causing the very outbreak he has been fighting.

The Last of Us

The ultimate Trolley Problem

The Last of Us is built on moral ambiguity rather than clear-cut good vs. evil. You play as Joel, a hardened survivor who’s seen the world fall apart and lost his daughter in the process. When he’s tasked with escorting a teenage girl, Ellie, across a ruined America. Their relationship quickly becomes the emotional core of the story. Ellie is immune to the fungal infection that wiped out civilization, and delivering her to the Fireflies could mean a cure for humanity.

But when Joel learns the cure would require Ellie’s death, everything changes. In a single mission, he slaughters doctors, soldiers, and Fireflies alike to save her. After massacring everyone at the facility, Joel leaves, protecting Ellie but dooming the rest of humanity. While Joel may be the hero to the player or Ellie, he is definitely the villain to everyone else.

Shadow Of The Colossus

Destroy the monsters and save the princess

In Shadow of the Colossus, you play Wander, a young man desperate to bring a girl named Mono back to life. The only way, according to the mysterious god Dormin, is to slay sixteen towering colossi scattered across a vast, empty landscape. The game starts off like a traditional hero’s quest, hunting down monsters to save the life of a fair maiden.

But something feels off from the start. The colossi don’t attack until provoked, their cries sound more mournful than menacing, and each victory drains the color from the world. Soon, Wander himself begins to physically decay, his skin darkening and his eyes growing hollow. By the end, it’s revealed that the colossi were guardians containing Dormin’s power. After releasing this evil onto the world, Wander transforms into a horned shadow demon, finally sealing his fate.

Spec Ops: The Line

War never changes

Spec Ops: The Line started out like every other generic FPS game of the time. As Captain Walker, you descend into a war-torn Dubai in the hopes of finding and rescuing Colonel John Konrad, a once-respected officer who’s now gone rogue. Delving deeper into the city, each firefight becomes more brutal than the last, and every choice a little less justifiable.

Walker becomes increasingly obsessed with completing his mission, convinced that Konrad is the villain behind the city’s chaos. The game’s most infamous scene, the white phosphorus strike, marks the irreversible turning point. Believing he’s targeting enemy forces, Walker rains down chemical fire on a group of civilians. When he walks through the ashes afterward, he’s confronted by the charred remains of innocent civilians, and he loses what little sanity he had left.

By the end, the horrifying truth surfaces that there was no villain to stop. The supposed villain had died long ago. The voice of Konrad that Walker’s been hearing? A hallucination, a way for his mind to justify the atrocities he’s committed. There was no one left to blame but himself.

Not all villains wear masks

The hero becoming a villain in their quest to do good might not be the most innovative narrative premise, but these games did an excellent job at lulling you into a false sense of righteousness.

They make you believe that they are doing things for the greater good and that the end justifies the means. But as their stories unravel, so does that illusion. That is why these seven games have some of the greatest hero-to-villain plot twists in gaming history.