No More Heroes
We discuss our perception of the game hero and their fallibility through the years
When choice is mostly taken out of the matter and we examine our hero they can still be silent, vigilant individuals like Freeman from Half-life. Without saying barely a word I found myself able to empathise with the character and this was due to other characters in the game and the fantastically imagined environment. With these things in mind I liked Freeman and wanted him to succeed.
There have been occasions when the protagonist has made me want to dive through the monitor and slap them for being whiney and annoying. One shining example was in Star Ocean: The Last Hope. The preposterously named Edge Maverick (who sounds like an 80’s B-movie action star) ends up obliterating a colony of people. Obviously this would put a dampener on your mood and a real man would shed a solitary tear then go back to slaughtering monsters. Instead this affected him so deeply that he nearly had a nervous breakdown in-game and began questioning whether he was a worthy leader. Obviously it was a good device to make him question himself but his constant whining about made want to slap him into manhood.
Enough about how it’s been done badly, I’ll mention a game that turned our expectations of a hero on its head. Metal Gear Solid 4 gave us Snake as we had never seen him before. The mullet and rough beard of the middle aged soldier was replaced with grey hair and a moustache. Snake, unlike Sam Fisher from Splinter Cell was portrayed as a fallible character that age had effected. We are told that Snake will die and watch his alienation as the game progresses. Notably from characters like Meryl and eventually from the world he is involved in. Snake’s business is war and this is his last battle.
This form of portrayal is risky as we think of our game heroes as figuratively and to an extent physically immortal but Kojima created a more fallible hero. Obviously this can be difficult due to the genre of the game and if the game requires that kind of character development. However I believe it does create a more enjoyable and rewarding experience. But then I’m a great advocate for character development and some people may just want to simply go mental with a chainsaw. It’d be nice if we can all meet somewhere in the middle. SNAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAKE!!
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