Okay let me start with two heavy hitters right from the get go and don't forget these are only personal oppinions and I absolute understand if you like those games. Good for you!
Zelda: Breath of the Wild -
Not a bad game per se, but I don't get the hype behind it. Sure the dungeons are fun but the world is so lifeless, the story non existent, the combat pretty shallow, the tower climbing is very much like FarCry but for some reasons it's okay here while Ubisoft gets the blame...like I said I dont get why the game is so beloved. Never finished it after the 20 hour mark and probably never will.
Red Dead Redemption 2 -
Just like Zelda not a bad game, but imho highly overrated. Graphics and and atmosphere are amazing but the controls are clunky and overloaded, nearly everybody is an unlikable douchebag who I would love to shoot myself at the first opportunity (maybe except Jack and Abigail) but I have to root and care for them. The game is just so long and feels very stretched, you already know that you won't get Dutch because it's a prequel and for an open world game you often get handholded in your weapon selection or things you can do because you have to wait for them to be unlocked by the game. I'm now nearly done with the game, playing the epilogue at the moment and I would say the last chapters are more entertaining than the rest of the game, but I still can't understand why this game was on so many game of the year lists and I really wanted to put the controller down a dozen times.
So there they are, two highly controversial oppinions by me and now I'm really curios what your takes are and how highly I get downvoted into oblivion π
I've played Vice City, 4 and 5 and every one of them started out with the main character(s) being a bad guy who is just a little less evil than the people around them, but still willing to kill to get what they want.
4: Niko grew up as a child soldier and has basically been under the thumb of mob bosses his whole life. It's also the ONLY game where you actually have choices in many cases to not kill someone as part of his revenge story (he wants to find and kill the man who sold out his unit in some war and got all his friends killed).
5: Franklin used to be a car thief, and has since gone straight as a repo man. His dumbass friends, along with Micheal and Trevor, get him caught up in all sorts of bullshit he doesn't necessarily want to do, but doesn't really have much choice. Micheal is also an ex-criminal trying to go straight, but having a much harder time at it than Franklin. His hot headedness is what got them into major trouble prior to Trevor's arrival. Trevor is not only a bad guy and a psychopath, he could be considered the main villain of the game. Most of the plot revolves around Micheal trying to hide the truth from Trevor, because he knows Trevor is a fucking maniac and will possibly kill him and his entire family because he sold him out to the cops when they were bank robbers and Micheal wanted out of that life.
San Andreas: CJ is an ex-gang member who comes home to attend the funeral of his mother who was recently murdered. Things start out with him simply wanting to bring the killer to justice, and gets swept up in more gang violence, police corruption and even government conspiracies.
They're as much bad guys as John Wick or John McClane or Arnold Schwartznegger in pretty much any of his 80's and 90's action films.
Being an ex criminal who is trying to reform after armed robberies, but still committing new crimes, is still being a bad guy. Choosing not to kill people doesn't make someone not a bad guy when they still continue to commit crimes as part of the game.
Painting the targets of their crimes as worse doesn't make them not bad people.