Where have all the heroes gone?

Recently, Grand Theft Auto V was released. This is a big deal. It's a big game with a lot of fans, it sold really well and it's gotten rave reviews.

Plenty of people are playing and enjoying it right now. And that's awesome. Have fun folks.

However, there has been some talk about the morality of the protagonists. Or lack thereof. Several journalists have talked about how the actions of the thieving, murdering protagonists have hurt their enjoyment of the game. Others have gone on record saying that playing the villain can actually be more interesting then playing the hero. Some have said it's a breath of fresh air from playing as the hero constantly.

Now this last bit bugged me. If anything, the Villain Protagonist has been on the upswing since... Well, since Grand Theft Auto III. Stuff like God Of War, Prototype and Saints Row have banked on the player taking control of a total psychopath.

Out of curiosity I went through my current-gen Xbox 360 games library to check how many had legitimate heroes. That is, starred characters that make a conscious effort to take the moral high road. There where the following requirement:

• The protagonist must have a name, voice and personality. They can't be blank slates.
• The protagonist is pre-set and immutable. They are the ones that choose to be good, not the player.
• The protagonist cannot have a personal stake in the conflict. It's not a quest for revenge or to rescue someone they know. They must choose to put themselves in danger for the benefit of others.
• Doing what they do can't be the only real action available to them. Killing an alien space horror isn't really taking the high ground if not killing the alien space horror dooms the world, including you.

So I dug through my library of 360 games, fifty odd games amassed between my and my family's collective collections, which I can hesitantly call a "recent" crop as it's still current-gen and found...

Metal Gear Rising Revengeance.

That's it.

Transformers War For Cybertron gets half a point for letting you play Optimus Prime half the time, but it's split down the middle by the Decepticons.

Admittedly the requirements may have been a bit stringent, there are still plenty of games we own that have preset protagonists that I would most definitely call "Moral". But Metal Gear Rising Revengeance was the only modern game where the lead character takes a stand to do the right thing despite it not being the easy road. One out of more than fifty games showed a protagonist's struggle to help people for the sake of helping people.

Why don't more games do this? When we think Karma Meter our minds immediately go to something that counts the evil you do. And a lot of "Good" choices in the games that feature one simply revolve around not being an asshole. Why are there so few games that try and key in on the desire to actually do good?

EDIT: In order to clear up some misunderstandings; I'm not saying Metal Gear Rising Revengeance is the only game I checked that had a heroic protagonist. However, it was the only game that wouldn't have worked if the protagonist wasn't a hero.

I'm not saying I expect every game should have their hero have an arc similar to Raiden's, but the fact that it was the only one where he couldn't have been substituted for a Villain Protagonist and still largely follow the rails for the entire game I think is telling. MGR:R was the only game that explored the concept of morality and had someone that actually had something to lose by doing what was right.

I don't think it's really necessary to do a breakdown of recent releases that follow people on the grey and black end of the scale; I think the proliferation of violent and/or "Morally ambiguous" protagonists is pretty obvious. Whether or not they actually outnumber the heroic protagonists or not, they're certainly in the spotlight more and they arguably are getting more attention and effort put into them. I'm asking why.

edited 27th Sep '13 9:07:11 PM by ShirowShirow

I dunno, maybe devs just feel like it's getting tired to an audience that gets this concept. After all, I'm guessing you don't care much for watching anti-smoking commercials?

But wouldn't less of it help the few shine brighter? When everyone's a hero, no one is?

It's these two conditions that really get you.

This classic ideal of the wandering do-gooder who selflessly battles evil for no personal gain isn't really sustainable. People tend to have lives, goals, and motivations beyond, "be a champion of heroism". People who dedicate their lives to simply vanquishing evil often wind up actually on the villainous side of the coin, because that's what that kind of single-minded dedication does to a person, and people without that dedication find themselves having to decide what's more important, going off and dying for some asshole you don't know, or protecting your family that depends on you? Heroism is complicated. No one man can be everywhere and save everyone all the time.

About the closest you'll find to this ideal on the non-psychopath side is the hero with a paycheck. Soldiers, picky mercenaries, and the like, tapped by their superiors to go into a place where they ought not to be, dole out justice, and come home. Raiden of the one example you listed qualifies perfectly for this.

Basically, what it boils down to is that people need a reason to risk their lives slaying a dragon. Nobody just goes out and slays a dragon because there's a dragon that needs slaying, except adrenaline junkies and psychopaths, and those who are motivated to go, "If a dragon needs slaying, I think a good use of my life would be joining the cause to slay it," are more likely to sign on with a band of brothers to do that, rather than rise up and face the dragon alone. Or, at least, we hear the stories of those that joined the band of brothers more than the guy that grabbed his sword and rushed out the door, because nobody wants to play the game of Bob, The Guy Who Got Stupidly Eaten Five Minutes Into His Epic Quest.

edited 23rd Sep '13 2:18:08 PM by TobiasDrake

I wouldn't have counted Raiden if he just stayed as a mercenary, actually. The big turning point in the game is when he chooses to abandon that job to do the right thing for the sake of doing the right thing.

And "doing it for the money" is another personal stake, really.

To be honest, I doubt you would find very many games that fit those criteria in prior console/gaming generations, for the reasons Tobias mentioned.

You know, I never did know why the plot says Mario is rescuing Princess Peach...

If you want to get down to it, everything's a personal stake. Raiden abandoned his job for vengeance; to avenge the kids who were suffering, because he had a personal history with being a Child Soldier. Raiden didn't go, "These children are suffering. As a Good person with his heart in the right place, I'm not okay with that. I have to protect the children." Raiden went, "These children are suffering. I've been a suffering child; I'm not okay with this! Fuckers need to die! Vengeance for my metaphorical past!!!" That's a personal stake; even though it's not Raiden, himself, he's fighting for, he's motivated by his own personal connection to the crime being committed.

This is something you'll find in all heroes, because people need to have a motivation before they're going to fight a dragon, and "because it's the right thing to do," can only carry you so far. A personal stake gives them more than a reason to be there; it gives them a reason to keep going, which is what Raiden did when he effectively flipped off his superiors and kept chasing. Most importantly, it gives them a goal. "To do good" is tenuous and can abandon you at the slightest provocation, and can very easily lead you down the entirely wrong path. Road to Hell, good intentions, and all that. Good is, in and of itself, such a nebulous and relative concept that it's impossible to craft a motivation around, "Selflessly doing Good things always".

Well, there's something to be said for "I don't like it when people suffer right in front of me". Which might be a bit reactive, but honestly the idea of someone devotedly hunting down opportunities to do good (usually by slaying evil) is a bit scary.

If you take that same list of prerequisites and try to find villainous protagonists using it, you'll hardly get any dings for team evil, either. That's a pretty obvious sign that you're using an overly stringent set of requirements. At the most, I think we've seen a major expansion of games that give you the OPTION to be evil, but truly set in evil protagonists are still mostly confined to the black comedy of GTA sandboxes and God of War (not even God of War clones as a genre, since many of Go W's clones have reasonably non-evil protagonists even when it doesn't make any sense for them to be that way).

At the very least, your protagonist will almost always be fighting for mere SURVIVAL as a personal stake. However, he usually will do so in a way that also takes risks to fulfill other goals, such as Defender's Quest allowing you to save a bunch of people along the way to escaping the underworld, or Jolly Rover's classic rogue-saving-a-maiden ending, or Gordon Freeman rescuing the whole of mankind when he could have buggered off or defected at almost any time in the series.

Thing is, I largely disagree with all that.

There are plenty of characters I love whose goal is to "Just do good". Zidane from Final Fantasy IX was my fave FF protagonist because he said it outright: "I don't need a reason to help people."

Vyse from Skies Of Arcadia is another winner. One could make an argument for the original Dante. Solid Snake too, although he's grumpy about it. The entire cast of Persona 4.

Having a character whose goal it is to make the world a better place because they want to has given us some pretty great characters, and it could certainly give it more. It's not a slippery slope to being a Knight Templar... Hell, the fact that that might be the lens people are seeing it that way may just be more proof we need more moral characters in my eyes.

edited 23rd Sep '13 2:48:39 PM by ShirowShirow

I'm curious: why do you equate "someone with no personal investment" and "moral" as if they are synonyms? Is Link of Ocarina of Time an amoral character because he's fighting for people he knows? What about Final Fantasy X's Tidus? His core motivation was to protect a girl he likes. Was giving his life so that she wouldn't have to not a selfless, heroic act to perform?

People like Zidane tend to be that way because there is nothing in their life worth defending in the first place. Of course he doesn't need a reason to help people; it gives him something to do. He's a traveling performer and thief looking for adventure. It's not about being heroic. It's about adventure. Sonic the Hedgehog is exactly the same; he'll jump at an opportunity to fight evil because he's an adrenaline junkie who gets off on it.

The cast of Chrono Trigger are another example; they arrive in the future, see the world get destroyed, and go, "This is what we're going to do with our lives." This is an easy decision to come to because they have nothing else that they're really doing. They're kids growing up into the world, still finding their place, and they found this to be their place in the world. It's easy to throw your life away when you don't really have a life to throw away. It's a lot harder to justify when you actually have something to lose. There's a reason this kind of protagonist is always a teenager.

edited 23rd Sep '13 2:58:49 PM by TobiasDrake

On that note you'd probably disagree with Immanuel Kant, who would hold the person who does their duty without liking it to be morally-superior to one that does.

No, like I said, I'm not saying all the characters that don't count aren't moral. I said as much in the original post.

But I am saying it's rare for a protagonist's conscience to be the driving force of their actions. They're always trying to keep themselves from losing something; their lives, their loved ones, their possessions.

... That's a pretty dark look at a blue hedgehog that runs really fast.

I've played a lot of Sonic games. He's an adrenaline junkie who gets off on it. Hell, Sonic Colors even ends in a space elevator that is actively self-destructing, at an escape hatch that will take Sonic and Tails to the surface, with an invincible doomsday mech looming towards them. Tails ushers for Sonic to get in the escape pod, Sonic instead seals Tails in alone, flashes him a huge shit-eating grin, and then proceeds to fight the doomsday mech all the way down the space elevator as it explodes around them for no reason.

This is pretty consistent behavior for Sonic. He's an adrenaline junkie. There are also lines from other games like,

• SONIC: Hey, I remember this place. Good times.
• TAILS: ...what, you mean back when all of our friends were being enslaved and Eggman was constantly trying to kill us?
• SONIC: Good times.

edited 23rd Sep '13 3:10:19 PM by TobiasDrake

If you want to get really technical, nothing can be 100% selfless just for the reason that you must have a motivation for doing it. Even if you do good just to be a good person, that implies you find satisfaction or happiness in being a good person. So it kind of just comes down to opinion on whether something counts as selfless or selfish.

To me, trying to say that someone who basically goes looking to do good in the world is the only unambiguous hero just seems kind of silly. I think it would be fine for this topic to count someone as a hero even when their primary motivation affects them personally, so long as they don't go around doing evil things to the people they don't care for.

oOo one of these threads.

been a while. was wondering when something interesting would come up again.

edited 23rd Sep '13 3:16:08 PM by Tarsen

inFAMOUS 2 features a full on Messiah character sacrificing his own life for the good of the world.

Narrative convention dictates that the protagonist is to have a personal stake in the main conflict. If the stakes can not be personal, the stakes must be high to make up for it. This is not so because the protagonist isn't allowed to be heroic, but because narrative is supposed to deliver a certain measure of drama.

If the writers want to establish the protagonist as a selfless hero, they will do so outside the main conflict.

it's funny, the premise reminds me of this (or the first few lines at least)

But in reality, Skyrim's just one of many games where doing good for the sake of good is an option, among many others. Take fallout, (3 ir vegas), theres a myriad of ways to be, and a fair number do go for good. I think these days, purely heroic games are being replaced by games where you can choose to be heroic.

edited 23rd Sep '13 3:25:14 PM by Joesolo

, Now these are interesting takes on the situation.

I don't necessarily agree with the first one, albeit perhaps because I'm using the word "Stake" wrong.

And player choice is of course an interesting wrinkle that is bound to be important. But the question I ask is... Why? Why do so many games with preset immoral characters exist whilst we are expected to be moral in the games that give us the choice?

I realize this was a little late, but wasn't a big part of Raiden's character development in Revengeance him realizing that he is not a hero. That deep down he loves to brutally murder people so much that his repression of those instincts created an cackling maniac alter ego?

Granted, he does realize that this is not a good thing and dedicates himself to ensuring that nobody else is turned into something like him (meaning that he still retains a sense of morality), but I still wouldn't call that completely heroic.

Hmmm, off the top of my head, Milla Maxwell is a relatively recent example. She considers protecting the world and its inhabitants her mission and tries to fulfill it without regard for her own safety. When she's told that she's no longer in the shape to do it, she doesn't care and just proceeds on with it anyway. And then there's a bunch of spoileriffic stuff that makes her situation a bit more complicated.

And I especially wouldn't call that devoid of personal stake.

edited 23rd Sep '13 3:30:40 PM by TobiasDrake

And yet he rescues hundreds of children from a horrific fate as combat cyber-slaves, takes out an entire corrupt military organization, tries to avert a new cold war and stops a psychopath from running for the president.

Actions speak louder than words. He might take part in Heroic Self-Deprecation (A Metal Gear standard) and realize things can get greyer than he'd like to admit, but he still saves the day because that's what he wants to do.

He relates to the stakes at hand, but they aren't his. If he had just sat back and let things happen he wouldn't have lost anything. It's merely his conscience that tells him that he can't, and that actually does cost him his job and safe access to his family.

I think the problem is, playing as a purely noble character would get boring after a while. While we like to think that'd be a good idea, the truth is, a lot of people would be tempted to do bad things in a video game, which is the one place we can do things with the dark side of our soul without any consequence, gets it out in a harmless manner.