Where have all the heroes gone?

@Cassedy The Devil: While I'm not entirely sold on psychological egoism (the technical term for the concept that all actions are done in self-intterest according to wikipedia and google), it's not nearly as baseless as you suggest, though its validity is largely contingent on either significant self-delusion of supposedly selfless people, or for the good feeling of Good Feels Good to count as something selfish.

On the other hand, I would also contest the idea that a person can't be driven to greatness without being either a psychopath or an ultimately selfish raison d'être unless you move the goalposts far enough back to define any sort of gratification or pleasure derived from an action or task as selfishness.

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Wasn't annoyed. Just making the point that these threads are likely going to overlap.

I beg to differ, at least in the specific case of Blue. Blue is working as a hero to save the world, but he has his own agenda, in that his personal goal is his revenge against Vijounne. This actually endangers the team on multiple occasions, and is something that he needs to work past if he ever wants to be a real hero.

Now, Red. He's a true hero to the core. That I can totally get behind.

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I'd love to get into a discussion of the difference between the terms "self-interest" and "selfishness" (which do mean somewhat different things), but that would be off-topic.

I suspect the real culprit behind this sort of discussion predates video games, and his name is Gary Gygax. After all, you could ask the exact same questions regarding Character Alignment and such in D&D gameplay. (How much so varies based on the GM, but still...)

Expergiscēre cras, medior quam hodie. (Awaken tomorrow, better than today.)

I'm surprised it hasn't been noted before, but most media today thrive on two things: cynicism and post-modernism. Be it TV shows or video games or movies or comics, we can't walk two steps without a lampshade and an injection of snark. The OP is asking for the noble knight right out of our collective childhoods from a culture that looks to our childhoods for the next mind-blowing twist.

Every once in a while, that cynic postmodern shit really grates on me. Like these guys are afraid of even an ounce of sincerity for just one moment.

ALL CREATURE WILL DIE AND ALL THE THINGS WILL BE BROKEN. THAT'S THE LAW OF SAMURAI.

At least the game doesn't try to pretend the protagonists aren't terrible people like previous games.

"It's so hard to be humble, knowing how great I am."

Oh, there are lots of kinds of characters not falling into the described category that are interesting for a variety of reasons.

Revenge, even if we do not agree with it, is easy to relate to. It is basic psychology most people will get even if they were only the target of irrational revenge.

Money is understandable. Most gamers are blue collar and interested to see someone on the job doing what they love, or at least successfully reaching what they want through working. It is an easy way to take care of motivation, supporting cast and all that nonsense from a developer/writer's stand point too.

Rescue your friends or family? Again, something most people can relate to, as most of us have at least one family member we can fondly think of and probably a friend or two. [[Videogame/Donkey Kong In video games, one of the first to actually have a plot was save your girl]] so it is kind of a stock plot choice out of tradition for developers.

Forced to act? A drastic states plot is easy enough to get emotional investment in and can feel satisfying to overcome heavy odds.

And of finally the asshole, the evil guy and the nominal hero...I really do not understand the appeal of how video games often portray them but I get Video Game Cruelty Potential's appeal. Rampaging around Vice City or causing crashes in burnout is fun but when it comes around to story mode I find it a little sickening to be dealing in the powders that ruin people's lives to get this wannabe Pablo Escobar ahead. I love rampaging like a madman, not so much fulfilling the desires of unlikeable criminals. I like my villains Played for Laughs and find the former a lot more funny. When perceive my evil avatar being taken seriously it is a turn off.

Still, a simple, do the right thing hero is something I like too. There were a lot of reasons why I could not bring myself to finish Final Fantasy X2 but the reason I gave it a shot in the first place was because it was advertised as traveling the world because you want to and doing good along the way because you can. Swinging around and helping random people in Spider-man 2 is as appealing as any damage done in Burnout or Grand Theft Auto.

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@Enlong.I didn't meann all 100 heroes.

I'm not a big fan of villain protagonists in story mode either, with one exception: Fallout. I love being a dick in that game, which is strange as I play the hero in every other game hat lets me choose.

I think the setting might have to do with these choices for everyone.

I tried being as heroic as possible in that game. I ended up pretty broke until i took out a whole raider camps

I'm baaaaaaack

Nevermind, wrong thread.

edited 24th Sep '13 2:23:24 PM by TotemicHero

Expergiscēre cras, medior quam hodie. (Awaken tomorrow, better than today.)

I wonder if a morality meter being more common in games has anything to do with it too?

x alot:

I don't think psychological egoism is false, necessarily. I think what it is is *useless*. Its, essentially, tautological: "why does a person do something? Because they want to." Its definition of "self-interest" is so broad that every conceivable action is encompassed within it, leaving no such thing as an action that *isn't* 'self-interest.'

Essentially, psychological egoism is non-falsifiable.

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I think it's more a result. what used to be "Your a hero! save the world!" is now "Hey you want to save the world? no? want to slaughter innocents? ok then. BTW, police/guards with mild knee injuries from tension-based projectile weapons are coming your way."

I'm baaaaaaack

Well, the only way to prove or disprove it would be more detailed knowledge of the human brain and human physiology. But again, this is off topic.

@Morality meters: Remember, they are just a more modern version of the original Character Alignment system, hence why I said it all comes back to Gygax and his team.

Expergiscēre cras, medior quam hodie. (Awaken tomorrow, better than today.)

Seems Japanese games have more of these types of characters (Sora says hi). Does Dante in DMC 4 count?

Dopants: He meant what he said and he said what he meant, a Ninety is faithful 100%.

Dante's not the protagonist of DMC 4, Nero is (Who gets to save his girlfriend. Bleurgh.)

What I was looking for in my first combthrough was basically a game, any game, where the hero makes a conscious decision to do the right thing even when doing the right thing isn't the path laid before them. Dante is a Spanner in the Works during DMC 4 who basically waltzes onto the scene to fix everything because he's Dante but the story doesn't really follow him.

Of course this is getting into technicalities again. But that was kind of the point of the original combthrough; I was looking for a game that essentially showed a protagonist that made a choice to do the right thing. All those "Requirements" boiled down to that. A preset protagonist that makes a choice. "Kill this thing that's trying to kill me." and "Kill this thing that's captured my wife." and "Kill this thing that's trying to kill everyone." aren't really choices, they're the only path someone in those situations could reasonably be expected to take. Something is threatening them directly or indirectly.

I don't think your definition of hero matches with the rest of ours.

I can think of very few heroes in any medium lately who go save people because dangit, they want to save people. The only one I can think of recently would be Gideon Jura, from Magic: the Gathering. He's interesting because he often has to work against larger powers to BE good. For example, in Ravnica, he's forced to eventually work against the Boros Legion's blind desire for justice, despite having worked with them before. He then tried to become the champion of the common people. This was interesting because both groups are technically good (consideirng what the Boros Legion are fighting against), but one is more "good" than the other. This is one of very few instances where the unconditionally "good" character is actually more interesting than the others.

Otherwise, all heroes have deeper motivations. To be honest, heroes that go out to be good just because they want to are generally very boring.

For example, people keep mentioning Sora. IMO, Sora is one of the most boring protagonists in modern games, though he did get more interesting when it turns out that he was furthering the villains' plans all along by being blindly good. To be honest, both Riku and Roxas were far better characters (barring Riku in KH 1, since he was being the opposite: evil for the sake of being evil).

edited 24th Sep '13 5:13:53 PM by Funden

While I can get behind the overall desire to see more heroic heroes in video games, I do think the criteria in the original post is a tad too stringent. Even Zidane, for example, is largely involved in the game's plot because of Garnet. And also to stop a cataclysm that would destroy the world.

I don't think he's any less heroic because of that, mind you. There are a number of times where giving up or switching sides would have made things much, much easier for him. But he chose the hard way — not solely because of his friends and family, but also because it was the right thing to do. He probably could have struck a deal with Garland to save the people he cared about, but he didn't. His personal stake didn't keep him from doing the right thing.

In my original post and my last post I specifically said that you don't need to meet all those criteria to be a hero, but the way the stories have been framed is really important. None of the other games follow a story where the protagonist is primarily motivated by their conscience.

That's what I was looking at: The story, not the one it stars.

Well, see, that's the thing. I don't think Zidane was primarily motivated by his conscience. I'd say it was roughly even with his feelings for Garnet, honestly.

I'll restate what a lot of others have said, but in a different way: It's hard to write a purely selfless character, especially in today's culture. Most people can't get around a character being good because it feels good without making them a bit of a joke. Because we are not selfless people; we are almost always motivated by some self-interest, and we can more easily accept that.

Of course, don't you know anything about ALCHEMY?!- Twin clones of Ivan the Great

Perhaps (It's been a long time since I played that game) but one way or the other the game still outright glorified heroism and the idea of doing the right thing.

That's... Really scary.

A character who does good purely because Good Feels Good can fall easily into Stupid Good.