The Evolution of a Hero – Part I

By J.D. Richardson

“We don’t need another hero,” Tina Turner once said. Well, yes we do, but do we need another cookie-cutter, bland-as-your-arse hero? No, we don’t.

Guess what, Duke Nukem? You’re old hat, a dinosaur. Your services are no longer required as protector of the Earth. Why? Because we have a whole new breed of hero, a hero who comes from the very mind of the players themselves – and what can be more awesome than your own personal hero whose destiny you’re allowed to shape with your own hands?

//Is it me you’re looking for?
The brilliance of modern computing technology allows us to have loads more fun than we had ten years ago. Now, in expansive modern RPGs such as Oblivion, Fallout 3 and Mass Effect, we can literally mould an alter ego as if manipulating clay with our bare hands. We craft who we want to be, we decide what their personality is like and what their skills are. Frankly, I find it incredible, and absolutely love it when a game throws me into a screen with a generic head to shape and a ton of options. It’s a bit like that video for the Lionel Ritchie song Hello, where the blind girl sculpts his face and it looks nothing like him – only here, you can sculpt anything.

Although I guess you could try to make a Lionel Ritchie in space if you really wanted to.

Then there’s the clothes on your back, which also have an effect on how you perceive your own hero. Take Oblivion, for example. You could be a knight in shining armour, roaming the countryside doing good deeds; or a wizard in grand robes being all wizardly; or even a shadowy assassin, hooded in dark leather, stabbing people in the back.

Failing those, you could just mix and match to your heart’s content. Maybe you don’t want to be a shadowy assassin in dark leather; maybe you want to be a shadowy assassin dressed in jaunty, brightly coloured noble-wear with a big feather in your hat. Or a wizard in shining armour. All these choices are yours to make for your personal, heroic alter ego. It bridges the connection between player and game even further than ever before. I don’t really get as excited about games that don’t offer some kind of customisation of the main character. Prototype, while absolutely brilliant and awesome in equal measure, would be just that bit more awesome if we could customise the hero – even if it were just a change of clothes.

//Duke’s a hazard
It must be quite hard for a lot of developers to let go and let the player create the main character. They want us to love their hero. Take Prototype again: Alex Mercer just isn’t that interesting in either dialogue or appearance. I know for a fact if I had the tools at the start of the game to mess around and create my own version of the protagonist, it would be a hell of a lot better than the default.

To be quite frank, Mario and Sonic are two of the worst designed and uninteresting heroes I’ve ever come across in gaming. I just don’t get the appeal of them. Don’t get me wrong – the Mario games themselves I love to bits (not so much Sonic, though, I have to admit – but who honestly gives a fuck about Mario himself, the star of the show? I certainly don’t. It could be anything jumping on mushrooms and punching bricks.

[Continues...]

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