Your most memorable Dragon (or other big boss) ?

[halfeye]

They've got a thread about Dragons in the DnD forum, and I keep wanting to say half a dozen from video games, I think for me it's actually the wingless one from Dungeon Master on the Atari ST (also on the Amiga and the PC, but at that time an ST was what I had), it was big and red, and could kill the party if you weren't careful, there have definitely been some other goodies though.

So which one do you remember and why?

[Man_Over_Game]

In Dragon's Dogma, there was this supermassive undead dragon thing you fought in this underground dimensional whatever.

Anyway, the thing was like the quarter of a football field, and it had these warts on it that you had to destroy all over its body. After you did some damage to it, it'd fly off.

Well, Dragon's Dogma is weirdly both online and solo, and so the Dragon flew off to go fight someone else who happened to be online at that time, carrying over your damage. Essentially we were all fighting the same raid boss at different times.

[KillianHawkeye]

I gotta give props to the O.G. dragon boss, the Dragon in the Swamp Cave in the original Dragon Warrior game for the NES. Here we got a classic dragon in a cave holding the princess as his prisoner like he's friggin' King Koopa. What a badass! You better hope you leveled up punching slimes and drackys or you're gonna have a real bad time!

[veti]

On the road north from Balmora there is a bridge.

Now, you and I and everyone knows there are no dragons in Morrowind, but it just so happened that I was playing the game in parallel with reading a book, I think it was 'Howl's Moving Castle', for the first time. In the book, there is a character who talks to an invisible dragon who lives in a river. I became convinced that if only I could figure out how to talk to the river, it would answer me.

Real dragons? Most memorable is the Water Dragon, who is the McGuffin of Jade Empire. Although you don't have to defeat her.

Obviously I've killed hundreds of the brutes in many other games, but none of them stick in my mind nearly as much as those two.

[Rater202]

The Ruined Dragon/Lord of Lightning from Super Mario Odyssey.

Just for how out of place it is.

Every other enemy in the game fits the Mario aesthetic to a greater or lesser degree but then here's this guy who wouldn't be out of place in Dark Souls


It literally looks like the model was made for a completly different game. Gives it a freaky, otherworldly vibe.

[Lord Raziere]

I've played Dark Souls 3, Seath the Scaleless and Darkeater Midir are particularly memorable.

Xeno'jiiva is basically an alien dragon blasting laser beams that I killed repeatedly for its stuff in MHW

Hooktail from TTYD is memorable simply for being the first chapter boss of TTYD and having a weakness to cricket chirps of all things.

[halfeye]

There were others of course, there's the one in the Quake expansion pack, there's

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Martin

in Oblivion, there are a bunch of wyverns in Skyrim, I thought I had more than four, but those are all I'm remembering now.

[InvisibleBison]

there are a bunch of wyverns in Skyrim

No there aren't. "Dragon" isn't a word with a fixed definition; in a given fictional universe, it means whatever the creator(s) of that universe use it to mean. Any attempt to impose a consistent taxonomy on fictional creatures is an exercise in futility.

[halfeye]

Any attempt to impose a consistent taxonomy on fictional creatures is an exercise in futility.

Back at you.

[Rater202]

Wyvern is term for a dracomorphic body plan resembling a bird or bat—two legs and two wings.

As opposed to a Wyrm, which usually refers to a feline like body plan with the addition of two wings, a Lindworm body plan which is a serpent with two forelimbs, or a Long body plan(most eastern dragons) which is a serpent with the addition of four limbs but no wings.

Not to mention the variety of dragons like the Learnean Hydra or Yamamta-no-Orochi which are literally just really big snakes that may or may not have extra heads.

The dragons in Skyrim are wyverns. That doesn't mean that they're not dragons. Don't act like wyrms are the only dragons, but at the same time don't criticize people for calling a wyvern, lindworm, long, or giant serpent "dragons."

[Razade]

My favorite dragon fight is probably Kalemeet. It's the first dragon in a video game that made me feel like I was actually fighting a dragon and not just a statblock with some cool dragon art.

[InvisibleBison]

Wyvern is term for a dracomorphic body plan resembling a bird or bat—two legs and two wings.

As opposed to a Wyrm, which usually refers to a feline like body plan with the addition of two wings, a Lindworm body plan which is a serpent with two forelimbs, or a Long body plan(most eastern dragons) which is a serpent with the addition of four limbs but no wings.

Not to mention the variety of dragons like the Learnean Hydra or Yamamta-no-Orochi which are literally just really big snakes that may or may not have extra heads.

The dragons in Skyrim are wyverns. That doesn't mean that they're not dragons. Don't act like wyrms are the only dragons, but at the same time don't criticize people for calling a wyvern, lindworm, long, or giant serpent "dragons."

This is exactly the sort of thing I meant when I said "Any attempt to impose a consistent taxonomy on fictional creatures is an exercise in futility". There are plenty of creatures that don't conform to this description - for instance, in D&D 'landworm' (a clear variant of 'lindworm') refers to four-legged, wingless, serpentine dragons, one kind of two-legged, winged dragons is known as 'wyverns', and another is called drakes; Skyrim uses the term 'dragon' to refer exclusively to what you call 'wyverns'; and in the Safehold series, 'dragon' refers to a variety of six-legged, wingless reptiles, while 'wyvern' refers to various species of reptiles with two legs and four wings. None of these authors are doing anything wrong, the way someone who referred to a chicken as a horse would be, because dragon, wyrm, wyvern, etc are all made-up terms without any real-world creature to anchor them on.

[Rater202]

uses the term 'dragon' to refer exclusively to what you call 'wyverns';

This is a correct use of the world 'dragon.'

Wyverns are a specific type of dracomorph, a means of categorizing dragons by shape. A wyvern is a dragon and anyone who tells you otherwise is being a pedantic asshat who is gatekeeping what "dragon" means to refer to only what they think a dragon should be.

Your other examples, other than the drakes(which in most cases is used interchangeably with dragon, by the by) are cases of... Sort of like how the Monster Rancher series has a monster called "Tiger" that is actually a wolf.

Or how a great number of dragons in the mosnter hunter series... Are not dragons at all.

The terminologies I've laid out are general trends in naming, if you see them used for something else in a work of fiction it is either a mistake or someone deliberately using the terms to mean something else.

[Razade]

This is a correct use of the world 'dragon.'

Dragons aren't real. There is no correct use of the word dragon as it extends over a vast number of cultures and contexts.

Wyverns are a specific type of dracomorph, a means of categorizing dragons by shape. A wyvern is a dragon and anyone who tells you otherwise is being a pedantic asshat who is gatekeeping what "dragon" means to refer to only what they think a dragon should be.

According to you and a limited number of nerds. This isn't canon across every culture with dragons. This is, honestly, an insanely Western European take and I'd risk broaching that this verges on an attempt to reduce non-European definitions of very specific iconography of dragons as either lesser or less true. That only this one particular type of depiction is the real dragon and all the others aren't actually dragons, they're "dragon-like".

What's the point of being pedantic here even? Why does everything have to conform with your incredibly narrow usage? What's the point of being pedantic over a term when we all know what people are talking about other than trying to score points for being "right". There are no points to win here.

[Rater202]

According to you and a limited number of nerds. This isn't canon across every culture with dragons. This is, honestly, an insanely Western European take and I'd risk broaching that this verges on an attempt to reduce non-European definitions of very specific iconography of dragons as either lesser or less true. That only this one particular type of depiction is the real dragon and all the others aren't actually dragons, they're "dragon-like".

This is literally the opposite of what I just said.

I said that someone who says that a certain kind of dragon isn't a real dragon becuase of arbitrary reasons is wrong.

I legitimately don't understand how you...

There are different terms for dragons that tend to be used for different types of draconic body plan. That is literally all I said.

[Razade]

I said that someone who says that a certain kind of dragon isn't a real dragon becuase of arbitrary reasons is wrong.

Or how a great number of dragons in the mosnter hunter series... Are not dragons at all.

This you? Saying that your usage of dragon is the correct one, chiding people for being pedantic, and then being pedantic about other usages that don't align with you tanks your argument. You are, in the same breath as calling people out for gate keeping, gate keeping.

[Rater202]

This you? Saying that your usage of dragon is the correct one, chiding people for being pedantic, and then being pedantic about other usages that don't align with you tanks your argument. You are, in the same breath as calling people out for gate keeping, gate keeping.

You're taking that out of context.

There's a common trope of "name this one monster after a different monster."

Monster Hunter does that, using the term "Elder Dragon" to refer to "anything big and strong that we can't pigeonhole into some other category," which is stated explicitly in Monster Hunter: World.

The Toeastra is more accurately a manticore or perhaps a Chimera while Behemoth is a cross between canine and bovine features. Nobody would reasonably look at them and say "dragon" but they're classified as Elder Dragons because no one has any idea what they are.

A lot of the cited examples of the terms I gave being used for something else also fall under the trope of "use one term to refer to something else."

It does not contradict the fact that, in general, certain terms refer to certain dracomorphic bodyplans.

[halfeye]

This you? Saying that your usage of dragon is the correct one, chiding people for being pedantic, and then being pedantic about other usages that don't align with you tanks your argument. You are, in the same breath as calling people out for gate keeping, gate keeping.

Nope, that wasn't me.

I personally like words that mean one thing at a time. It's hard, in English. If everyone has their own meanings for the words they use, with no meanings in common, there can be no communication. There was a time when billion meant million squared, now it doesn't mean that any more, try to make sense of old documents using the old definition while you're thinking of the new definition and your arithmetic won't work.

[MCerberus]

On the non-dragon side, anyone remember Mass Effect 2, where the bad guys' goal was to amalgamate millions of humans into a techno-organic c'thulu modeled after previously created gargantuan mechanical space squids?

Well you fight a 100 foot tall Terminator.
It was... memorable

[Razade]

Nope, that wasn't me.

And I didn't quote you as if it were so, you're golden?

I personally like words that mean one thing at a time. It's hard, in English. If everyone has their own meanings for the words they use, with no meanings in common, there can be no communication. There was a time when billion meant million squared, now it doesn't mean that any more, try to make sense of old documents using the old definition while you're thinking of the new definition and your arithmetic won't work.

Yeah. That's not how language worked in the past. That's not how language works now and it's not how language is going to work in the future if the past and present models are any indication. Words have usages, generally a number of commonly accepted ones with outliers for slang and colloquialisms. Language is a living thing and like all living things, evolve.

Dragons would evolve too, if they were real. And if we didn't keep killing them in awesome boss fights.

On the non-dragon side, anyone remember Mass Effect 2, where the bad guys' goal was to amalgamate millions of humans into a techno-organic c'thulu modeled after previously created gargantuan mechanical space squids?

Well you fight a 100 foot tall Terminator.
It was... memorable

As far as end boss fights in Mass Effect is concerned it at least felt suitably cool. Better than 1 and way better than the non-end boss from 3. Oh boy! More humanoid enemies like I've been fighting for the last 60 hours! At least giant Amalgam of Human Suffering in Robot Shell was interesting. Totally dumb. But interesting.

[halfeye]

Yeah. That's not how language worked in the past. That's not how language works now and it's not how language is going to work in the future if the past and present models are any indication. Words have usages, generally a number of commonly accepted ones with outliers for slang and colloquialisms. Language is a living thing and like all living things, evolve.

Language is not technically alive I think. It almost certainly has no conciousness. A thing is that time seems to speed up as you get older, weeks took years when I was a kid. The rate of change of language also seems to be speeding up, that could be a function of time speeding up, but it seems to me to be changing faster than that. We're all more connected than we were, and there are more people we can be connected to via the net, and to a lesser extent elsewhere, it will be a problem when the average word changes meaning in every month and nobody knows what anybody else is saying.

[MCerberus]

As far as end boss fights in Mass Effect is concerned it at least felt suitably cool. Better than 1 and way better than the non-end boss from 3. Oh boy! More humanoid enemies like I've been fighting for the last 60 hours! At least giant Amalgam of Human Suffering in Robot Shell was interesting. Totally dumb. But interesting.

Hey, Marauder Shields was a hero and a martyr. It tried to save us from the ending.

[Razade]

Language is not technically alive I think. It almost certainly has no conciousness. A thing is that time seems to speed up as you get older, weeks took years when I was a kid. The rate of change of language also seems to be speeding up, that could be a function of time speeding up, but it seems to me to be changing faster than that. We're all more connected than we were, and there are more people we can be connected to via the net, and to a lesser extent elsewhere, it will be a problem when the average word changes meaning in every month and nobody knows what anybody else is saying.

Consciousness is not a hallmark of life. Plants do not have consciousness, neither do jellyfish. They are both most certainly alive. I am also not using living in the biological sense. I am using it in the sense that is continuously updated, edited and plastic to the environment that it is part of.

To the topic, I think it's really interesting that there's this discussion at all when the OP's title uses the word Boss in a non-standard way. So much for words having one meaning. Only when it suits, I suppose.

Hey, Marauder Shields was a hero and a martyr. It tried to save us from the ending.

He died so we could walk. Walk to the store we bought the game and get a refund.

[halfeye]

I am also not using living in the biological sense. I am using it in the sense that is continuously updated, edited and plastic to the environment that it is part of.

It's also not. Chomsky has pointed out that human babies learn human languages at more or less the same speed whatever the language, so in that one sense, they are all probably the same thing. There's at least a plausible case that you have to be a human to learn a spoken human language, and that there are quite possibly languages that humans can't learn, it would be nice if someone could learn a whale or elephant language to find out whether it's impossible for us to learn them, or whether we just didn't get around to it yet.

[KillianHawkeye]

As is usually the case, the strictness of any word's definition tends to increase only as the scope of that definition decreases. The smaller the scope, the more rigidly you can define something.

In the broadest possible sense, you can call almost anything a dragon. For example, "the dragon" is a literary term sometimes used to describe any imposing or physically powerful enemy who is a villain's right-hand henchman. Think the Black Knight serving the Evil King, or the Sheriff of Nottingham who works for Prince John. Someone the hero must defeat in order to face the true villain.

But within a smaller context, particularly one that deals with literal creatures called dragons, it doesn't make sense to use the word in a metaphorical sense.

[danzibr]

This you?

Nope, me neither.

Back on topic...

Hmm, impressionable *big* baddies I've encountered in games. Definitely something from my younger years, too desensitized nowadays.

The first 2 RPGs I played were Phantasy Star IV and Final Fantasy VII, at ~10 years old. Played action games/platformers before then. But those RPGs, yeah, some real memorable big baddies.

Phantasy Star IV: all Dark Forces, and the Profound Darkness. Such a sinister air, foreshadowing, awesome music.

Final Fantasy VII: all the WEAPONs are really cool. Even Sapphire, got blasted right away. So big, and crikey as a kid I really struggled with Ruby and Emerald.

Also just learned FFXV has a couple such baddies (modeled after FFVII WEAPONs). The more I learn about that game, the more disappointed I become with what it could have been.

[Giggling Ghast]

Oh boy, the first time I killed the Ferelden Frostback in Dragon Age: Inquisition was a rush. It's a crushingly difficult fight when you're still learning the ropes. Initially you have to run through a valley as it strafes you with fireballs, and then you have to slash away at her for a half-hour while also fending off waves of dragonlings. The other high dragons just don't capture that same excitement.

Dragons aren't real. There is no correct use of the word dragon as it extends over a vast number of cultures and contexts.

Debatable, but also a moot point. Dragon in this context is meant to invoke the image of a giant flying reptilian creature with a breath weapon, be it fire, ice, lightning or otherwise. In fact, dragon is such a specific descriptor that further conditions or details were unnecessary. We all knew exactly what the OP meant.

[DBear]

Neriscrylas the dracolich from Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire -- Beast of Winter expansion. That is how a dragon fight should be, not like those so-called dragons in Skyrim. Priest throwing down Holy Fire, rogue sapping to keep dracolich from casting Contingency to heal, mage using every high-level spell and having to reload, paladin tanking with sword & shield, keeping the dragon from attacking the others. The titular Beast of Winter was weak in comparison and the endgame at Ukaizo was a cakewalk.

[Doctor Witch]

The red dragons in D&D Tower of Doom and Shadows Over Mystara were really cool. They were massive compared to any I'd encountered in the other D&D games around at the time and looked amazing. Now they're my baseline of what a dragon should look like.

[Eldan]

The specific definitions of "Dragon" and "Wyvern" nerds online tend to obsess over are from a very specific context of British Heraldry after the 17th century and not really applicable to anything else.

By Etymology, Drakon means "Serpent" and all the earliest we have of dragons are legless or two-legged. Wyvern means "Vyper" and originally meant a poisonous reptile.

By Tradition, artwork has dragons with anywhere from 0-8 legs, including the archetype of the dragon killed by a knight, the one slain by St. George. Also sometimes several heads and anywhere from 0-4 wings.

By Heraldry, Things get even more complicated. First of all, no one outside England cares. This is a dragon from Switzerland:

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These are dragons from Germany:

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This is the French Tarrasque, also a dragon:

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And of Course, Lindworms can also have two legs and wings.

Plus, Anglo-French heraldry is weird. A Lion is only a Lion if it is rampant (and a few other rare poses), if it Passant (Walking), it's a leopard. A Tyger is red, spotted, and has the head of a wolf, and a lion's mane. Only female Griffins have wings. A Seahorse has the head of a horse, the type of fish has to be called a "Hippocamp". A heraldic unicorn, of course, has the beard of a goat, or it doesn't count.

So really, anyone who uses British heraldry to argue what a dragon is outside that contextÂ… is just wrong.