Changing culture, one gamerscore at a time.

I’m sensing a massive wave of cowardice and issue-avoidance from the US IGN offices this week. They recently published a list of the most over-rated characters in video games, with obvious choices like Lara Croft and Sonic the Hedgehog, and seemingly inflammatory choices like Master Chief, who resides at the number one spot.

In all honesty, that choice for number one was pretty poorly thought out. Yes, he’s a genetically-enhanced space marine, and yes, it’s been done fifty thousand times before. But he had a history, a background, in the form of books: fiction released simply because Bungie wanted to communicate that he was more than just another super-human male in big armour, and especially as the female marines were just as strong, enduring, and dangerous as he was. He had a personality, but sadly the games didn’t do it enough justice, and it seems in this day and age, where every game is accompanied by at least one book of fiction to bulk up the back-story, journalists still ignore the extra character depth in favour of slagging him off for hits.

They claim he rarely talks, and to be honest, that made him more realistic than any space marine game character I’ve ever seen in my life. If I was a superhuman bred for combat, I wouldn’t fly around the levels in a Warthog, pulling off headshots while spinning on one wheel and saying things like “and that’s for dessert.” It’s childish, but seemingly, that’s what the majority of people want, according to some VG journos. They claim he could be replaced with “Gordon Freeman” and no one would know the difference. Well, they would, as his hands look different, he never talks, and he can’t jump ten feet into the god-damn air. What is wrong with these people? Why do we live in a world where the people who are better informed on character backgrounds and game narrative aren’t the ones writing about it for a living?

I won’t lie, I was tempted to call this “Mario is Boring” and be done with it, but that’s a lie, for the same reason that putting Sonic on that list was a fairly stupid thing to do. Sonic is original, and it seems the author has confused familiarity with originality. Just because he’s been there since you were drinking from a Tommy Tippee, doesn’t mean he’s unoriginal. Master Chief was (is, hopefully) a great protagonist, but he was a space marine, not a blue hedgehog. Yes, I’m aware he’s talking about characters being over-rated and not original, but let’s be honest, the only reason most characters happen to gain decades-long fanboy/girl cults is because they’re original, then someone gets annoyed because their favourite generic idiot isn’t “new” enough, and decides to aim at the biggest bandwagons to let off journalistic steam.

I am also aware it was a user-generated poll, but the opinions weren’t written by the users. The article was pointless because there was no clear criteria as to why any characters were over-rated.

Most of all, I think it’s amusing how much hype IGN US put on Bioshock 2, then had a journalist state on their site that the Big Daddy was a seriously boring character, and the period of the game spent (SPOILER WARNING) inside his suit (IT’S SAFE NOW) were the most mundane. I’m all for different opinions, but it made me giggle, as that’s going to confuse readers when the game comes out and the review raves on and on about it.

Protagonists are getting seriously generic, from the hideously pseudo-pornographic offerings of X-Blades and Bayonetta, to the grunt-grunt-shoot-shoot design of every FPS character currently residing in a warzone. What happened to the age of game design where someone would populate a world with angry turtles and toadstools, then pit them against a pair of Italian plumbers?

I’m also a bit baffled by the current trend in steroids and bench-pressing since Gears of War was released. They are scary, scary men and I was already very aware of my skinny stature before those fellas graced my screen and boy, did I feel weak. However, they’ve got a fair bit of personality to them, which I like. Chris Redfield? Not a single trace of braincells, and not because he’s full of muscles, it’s because he’s firearm-trained, been killing zombies for years and still cannot fire and run at the same time. Evidently, his arms can double in size, but not his multi-tasking skills. I could harp on about the female character looking weedy as hell but for once she actually looks more aggressive than the male, which was an interesting decision, but I expect all the other gaming publications were too distracted by the wild goose-chase for racist content to notice.

The problem is that more and more games developers seem to be targeting this new, scary emerging market that I’ll call “teener-weeners”. Boys around the age of thirteen who want nothing but female nudity, violence, and hyper-masculine protagonists to tear their attention away from their everlasting suppression of their anima, male insecurity and their lust for whiney, whiney blood. Gears of War was made by older gamers, for older gamers. That game, and its sequel, were solid, and I’d happily give them over 90% simply because they made no bones about what kind of game it was. The characters were butch, but simply because the warzone they inhabited was so violent that conveying emotions wasted time that could be spent pushing back the tide of alien forces who, ultimately, killed various members of the main cast in one way or the other.

But there are bad examples, like Redfield, that show all this new generation of gamers want is macho-idiots with guns that they can have run around and shoot things and never consider intimidatingly deep parts of the game’s experience like narrative, or exploration not motivated by 50G achievements. Alternatively, they’ll also happily indulge in titles where the backside of the female protagonist is on display so often they’ve managed to circumvent the family firewall on the computer by finding softcore pornography somewhere else. The number of developers coming up with original, engaging characters is lessening, with even more going in the direction of sandbox games and simply removing the protagonist’s personality altogether because it hinders the player spraying poo over people in Saints Row 2.

Oh, and by the way? Gordon Freeman has shedloads of personality. Stop looking for dialogue and look at the responses to him given by other characters. He generates response through his lack of speech, his emotions conveyed by the reactions of his supporting cast. If you can’t appreciate the subtlety of acting in the Source engine, then please kindly stop claiming he’s a blank slate and go back to watching Oscar winning performances (by your definition) in Mean Girls.

If you’re feeling like reading another wall of text, I recently finished a five-page (don’t worry, our pages are small) feature on EVE Online for GamerNode. It’s here and I’m fairly proud of it as it’s my longest body of continuous journalistic work to date.