Where have all the heroes gone?

One issue is that the vast majority of game protagonists spend most of their time in physical combat. It's how they grow statistically and how they are expected (by the mechanics) to make a living.

To paint a character with that kind of existence as being wholly heroic is to either ignore some very serious questions about the morality of killing itself - even killing an entire race of beings that are consciously devoted to evil (also something that can be debated) - or have a protagonist who is a fully consistent Actual Pacifist.

We could try to Take a Third Option of making the character a total Guile Hero who engages only in social or diplomatic 'combat' but that would involve ignoring the morality of manipulating other free willed beings.

Note that the majority of older games, classics and many indie titles today take the first option and just present a bog standard mass murdering game protagonist as a perfect hero and moral paragon, or they simply leave out any question of morality because the character is 'saving the world'.

edited 23rd Sep '13 3:55:20 PM by Recon5

Murder Is the Best Solution!

edited 23rd Sep '13 3:58:20 PM by VutherA

I kinda like Wonder-Red from The Wonderful 101.

Now, granted, he probably doesn't fit your criteria, as he's a hero to stop a literally planet-destroying threat, but one thing that stands out to me is his commitment to the team and the mission. See, he very well could have a personal and selfish stake in the battle. See, his father was murdered by one of the alien commanders, which in most cases (heck, in the case of another hero in the game) would put you on a path of blind revenge. But in Red's case, when that selfsame commander is right in front of him, he focuses on the mission and keeping as many people safe as he can. He's also a teacher, because he wants to protect the future off the battlefield s well.

To be frank, while I do think the OP has some what of a point, his criteria is rather... narrow. Almost every deed, good or not, is motivated by something. Whether those reasons are good or bad natured, in some way, shape or form they're doing it to benefit themselves in someway. No good deed is done just to be good.

Unless the creator insists so, that is.

Well, part of the appeal of video games (this also applies to tabletop RPGs and such) is escapism from some of the constraints of real world morality and society. Or, to put this case into trope terms, Wish-Fulfillment via some version of Pay Evil unto Evil.

edited 23rd Sep '13 4:37:43 PM by TotemicHero

Not every motivation is purely self-interested. This idea hinges on absurd semantic bull. Motivations aren't owned by some metaphysical self, they're mostly unconscious and unwilled. The unconscious mind does not make distinctions like that. The way people form ideas on what their own motivations are is almost identical to the way they interpret what other people's motivations are. It's all confabulation.

I suppose that you could define self-interest as people only willing to do things that make them feel good on some level (or at the least, make them feel the least bad). Beyond that, yeah, self-interest as an explanation for all human behavior isn't applicable.

edited 23rd Sep '13 4:54:29 PM by TotemicHero

Mmmhmm. The whole "Everyone is always selfish" talk kind of disturbs me actually.

Anyways as for the comment at the top of the page: Since when is combat immoral? Killing people isn't exactly something I expect to happen nonchalantly, but there are tons of ways to fight without killing people. Nonlethal takedowns. Nonhuman enemies. Organized tournaments, even.

And someone can still be considered heroic, I think, despite racking up a body count. Not if they immediately choose to use lethal force at every opportunity, but it's a tool like any other. I don't expect everyone to have the same code as Superman. The aforementioned Raiden was actually prevented from using nonlethal means of disposing enemies because they all had self-destruct mechanisms built in.

Taking a life is something that is treated far too lightly in gaming nowadays I think, and the act (Especially repeated ad nauseum) shouldn't be brushed off the way it so often is but it certainly won't ever be something completely verboten aytime soon... And I see no reason why it should be.

edited 23rd Sep '13 6:07:59 PM by ShirowShirow

I personally wouldn't say it's automatically immoral - but it is typically socially unacceptable in modern society, unless you're in a specific job (police officer, military, and so on) that requires it.

I would hope so.

Of course no game is set in typical modern society. Minus The Sims I guess. Even when you have a contemporary setting it usual involves over-the-top terrorist plots.

The question is: do the differing morality and social norms exist to help accentuate the difference of society, or is the different society an attempt to justify the differing morality and social norms?

Or in plain terms, are we dealing with a variant on Excuse Plot governing fictional societies, or not?

edited 23rd Sep '13 6:40:51 PM by TotemicHero

What I find amusing is that even Saints Row 4 did a turn away from gritty antiheroism... oh, granted, they definitely keep the antiheroism, but they ditched the gritty in favor of 'puckish rogues'. And they also sidestepped the 'psycho rampage' factor by putting you in the Matrix, so that none of your psycho rampages are actually hurting real people.

It's hardly a conventional heroic path, no, but given that SR 2's psychopathic overlord morphed into SR 3's gonzo action celebrity with a machine gun morphed into SR 4's Metal Wolf Chaos homage, apparently they've been trying to trend up... well, as far up as you can get while still acknowledging 'yeah, all that stuff from the earlier games happened and you still did it'.

Call it a sign of hope, in that even a traditionally 'evil' game admits at the end that you can't be a thug all the time.

edited 23rd Sep '13 6:50:18 PM by cliffc999

I just think that as a medium video games have gone beyond the whole "Hero" protagonists and have start experiementing with other types of protagonists. Also morality isn't objective thing either. So while someone like Raiden my be heroic to some he may not be to others.

Prototype was mentioned in the OP as an example of having "banked on the player taking control of a total psychopath".

That's only half-accurate. Initially, ZEUS is indeed a sociopath, because he's a sapient virus and therefore literally doesn't have a conscience. However, as the game progresses and he continues consuming people, he later starts growing a conscience from everybody he's eaten, eventually growing disgusted with a) what kind of creature he is, and moreso b) the monster that CREATED him, Dr. Alex Mercer. While the protagonist is never anything close to being The Cape or a Knight in Shining Armor, his behavior at the end of the plot - in comparison to how he started - is unambiguously more heroic.

Also, regarding locked-in heroic characters, I present to you Sora and associates. Yes, their franchise debuted ages ago, but Dream Drop Distance was released recently, and the first game's Final Mix finally got a stateside release as well, so on that basis I'd argue that it counts as relevant to the discussion.

Actually, "heroic" characters AFAIK seem to show up more in RP Gs overall, or maybe I just have that impression because most of what I play are RP Gs. Take Tidus from Final Fantasy X for instance (it got an HD rerelease, hence why I bring it up). When the Ensemble Dark Horse Cool Old Guy asks why the party should take on a huge fiend that eats Chocobos, Tidus kinda stumbles around for a second as if uncomprehending that Auron had to ask, and explains, "It's the right thing to do!"

Another note regarding Zidane from FFIX, since he was brought up earlier - true, he doesn't need a reason to help people who are in need. But he's never seen Walking the Earth actually LOOKING for people he can help, either.

I think the criteria is just fine, if it is not being met, oh well, now you have an easy way to make a character different from the competition's. Give them a personality and have them go out of their way to do good with no especially compulsory reason other than wanting too. That would be so hard to do.

Problem is, most of the "recent" examples I can think of are either older characters who are simply appearing in sequels or heroic mimes. Another problem is Japanese action games have a tendency to inflate in scale. What would be a random act of kindness turns out to have country/continent/civilization wide consequences which means they would have to get involved eventually.

That is not to say it is bad in of itself but does not lend well to the classic knight errant, the cowl or unfazed everyman if that is what you are looking for. I think the most recent one I can think of is Elza/Zael from The Last Story, who just wants to be a knight for the sake of having a greater ability to do good than being a mercenary, even taking the inevitable plot escalation into consideration.

...no one's asking and/or answering why people like to play these kinds of characters, or why the devs think these types of characters are more appealing to people? I don't think debating about characters work because I think it's more on consumer behavior...there seems to be demands for it...the question is: why is there demand for it? Or is it just devs force-feeding the consumers?

Also, I do think that games with actual Ideal Hero as actual character that's not AFGNCAAP or player-controlled are incredibly rare...but then, there's still other types of heroes...

edited 24th Sep '13 9:53:01 AM by onyhow

To address Shirow's comment on life-taking....

It's pretty much always been that way. What has changed is not our attitude towards killing in game design, but our ability to depict it realistically enough that it's making us more uncomfortable and sparking debates linked to real world ideology.

When I watch a let's play of a modern military shooter that starts with you capping an unaware target in the back of his head, it's impossible to not contemplate the real world implications of that gameplay.

But I don't angst over the horrible plight of the Goomba people even as I stomp on their heads and squish their entire race to extinction one by one as punishment for the crime of walking slowly towards me.

Not all games revolve around violent conflict, but violent conflict has always been one of the primary drivers in games, just as it is in other forms of media. I think there's room to object to specific depictions of violence in gaming, particularly if they tie closely into real world analogues. But I don't think we're ever going to evolve into a pacifist gamer utopia where everyone derives satisfaction out of giving each other digital hugs instead of getting off headshots.

We enjoy violence as a species, and there's nothing wrong with that as long as it's channeled in productive directions.

edited 24th Sep '13 10:00:16 AM by Karkadinn

They all died because writers these days think genuinely good people are all suicidal martyrs and impossible to make relatable without being an anti-heroic jerk.

Or they realized its weird to have a pure good hero who easily goes around slaughtering mooks wholesale.

And the younger generation loves its anti heroes.

^ So we're in equivalent of Dark Age of Comic Books?

Didn't we just have a thread on bring in the dark age of gaming?

Yep.

There's about a 100 of them in The Wonderful 101

edited 24th Sep '13 10:31:26 AM by Ukokira

I've already found many of the replies very informative. If you're annoyed by the thread, there's no obligation to be here.

@Onyhow I'm very curious about this too. One thing people brought up was that it's "Boring playing a good guy all the time" but... Does that mean playing as a bad guy all the time is a endless well of fun?

@Karkadinn Am I the only one that always assumed the classic Goomba Stomp was a Non-Lethal K.O.? Given how wacky the Mario games where I figured even chucking a Koopa into lava wasn't actually killing anyone.