Improvements in graphics technology and the evolution of games as a narrative medium allows developers to create increasingly intricate and dynamic worlds...and developers can't craft an authentic environment without sticking some assholes in there. Forthwith, here are three instances of video game characters -- whether through ignorance or malice -- just being spectacular dicks.

Saints Row -- Bomb Bait

Being the protagonist of an open-world game is a pretty thankless job. People are always telling you where to go and what to do -- which usually involves leaving the mission-giver's cushy fortress of a mansion to go kill 20 guys with whom the hero has no personal beef. But sometimes the quest is to go beat up a guy who is dressed as a hot dog, so maybe it all balances out in the end.

The agreement between an open-world protagonist and his Employer of the Week is that the relationship will end in one of two ways: Either the boss's enemies will ultimately kill the boss or the hero will. That's how it was way back in 2006, anyway, before Red Dead Redemption showed up to confuse everyone with its humanity.

So at the end of Saints Row, after the protagonist has spent all this time murdering two whole street gangs worth of guys to consolidate power for the Saints, it's more than a little dickish when your gangster buddies use you to lure a hostile mayoral candidate into a meeting so that they can blow up his yacht. Without telling the hero that they were going to do that. Or letting him get off of the yacht first.

You learn why the betrayal was necessary at the end of Saints Row 2, but the exact reasons provide no comfort considering the character's hours of service in the first game, ridding Stilwater of legions of horrifying Hot Dog Men.

Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty -- Otacon Says Goodbye

Hal "Otacon" Emmerich is some kind of genius -- although exactly what kind of genius isn't entirely clear, considering he has the bladder control of a rat and purposefully built a weak point into Metal Gear Rex to bestow it with some kind of anthropomorphic whimsy. But in Metal Gear Solid 2, we learn that there's some real tragedy behind his eccentric, slightly damp exterior.

Otacon reveals that he had an affair with his stepmother, the discovery of which drove his father to drag Otacon's stepsister Emma into the family pool in an attempt to drown them both. Emma survived, possibly because the elder Emmerich decided that "failing at murder" would make for a charming character flaw, and Hal missed the whole thing because he was busy "uploading some code" with his dad's wife. Or maybe he was "hacking her mainframe." Whatever you choose to call it, they were busy.

With sex.

Anyway, Hal and Emma became estranged. They reunited 12 years later, just in time for Emma to tell Hal how much she hates him and also to get stabbed. As the life pours out of her, so do her feelings, and she reveals that everything she's accomplished over the past two-thirds of her life, every line of code and act of l33t haxx0rism, has been so that Hal might think of her as a woman, because in fact she loves him for reasons unknown to man or science.

With maybe her second- or third-to-last breath, Emma requests that Hal ditch "E.E.," her childhood nickname, and just call her Emma so she can feel like an adult for once in her sorry, short-ass life. Despite the unwritten rule that a person who will be dead in less time than it takes to watch an episode of Three's Company can have anything they fucking ask for, Hal blubbers, "What's wrong with E.E.?" This sentence is the last thing Emma hears before she dies.

Except for maybe the sound of her internal monologue going, "Dooooooooouche."

Duke Nukem Forever -- Duke Can't Stop Being Duke for One God Damn Level

Early in Duke Nukem Forever, Duke enters "The Duke Dome" to discover that it has been converted into an alien hive, the purpose of which is to impregnate abducted human women with annoying octopus babies.

It's handled even less tastefully than you'd expect from a Duke Nukem game, by which I mean that I expected it to rate "zero taste" and it actually busted through the bottom of the graph into the realm of the brazenly offensive. And Duke doesn't help at all.

When Duke happens across his twin bimbo girlfriends, who are moments away from giving birth to dual clutches of nuisance enemies, he sums up the violent assault upon them thusly: "Looks like you're...fucked." That is an exceedingly tacky pun, and as far as comedy is concerned, puns are the first refuge of the scoundrel.

As Duke makes his way through the Hive, he continues to crack lame jokes. After slapping some giant breasts inexplicably sprouting from a wall: "Strange silicone-based life form." Walking through a door: "Talk about a tight fit." Stomping on octopods: "You've just been aborted."

The jokes in Duke Nukem Forever are usually awkward and often uncomfortable -- but listening to Duke stack one appalling quip on top of another in The Hive elevates him to almost psychopathic levels of dickery.

Got another example of video-game dickery? Prove it in the comments section.