Where have all the heroes gone?

I just wanted to discuss why heroes, and titles that explore the concept of morality, are so relatively rare in gaming nowadays. That's it.

Oh, heroes and the exploration of morality? I thought it was about how most recent "heroes" were jerkassess, forced by circumstance or uncharacterized blank slates and was arguing against what I perceived to be denial of this of or defending the trend.

Why has that particular approach not been done, a hero who chooses to be at his own expense while the narrative breaks down the consequences and perceptions of right and wrong? Maybe because you are not a game designer with enough clout to push the projects you want how you want them yet?

But until we get a regular stream protagonists choosing to act without obvious reward or flight-fight responses we cannot really take the next step into analyzing it can we?

It might be also that we have not made enough transition away from excuse plot to satire=/=reconstruct yet. We have passed the "we made pictures on the screen move" phase but are still in the "let's imitate that comic/cartoon/movie/book we liked so much" phase rather than the "lets take a good look at ourselves and how we operate" phase.

Yeah. I really don't think you can deny that jerkasses and "Morally ambiguous" protagonists are flooding in. The four games that are being put up for Game Of The Year so far are Grand Theft Auto V, Saints Row IV, Bioshock Infinite and The Last Of Us. All four make a point of showing that the people you play as are not very good people.

As for why we haven't seen that sort of narrative breakdown... I don't know. It looks so fascinating to me but we haven't seen it.

And that last paragraph... A lot about the industry can indeed be chalked up to immaturity. Gaming as a whole hasn't even learned the difference between "Satire" and "Exaggeration".

Well, it all depends on where you look. There are a number of games out there that deconstruct various aspects of videogame plots, be they Commercial, Independent, or Freeware. It's just that, oftentimes, these aren't the games that really get the vast public's attention.

I think that JRPG's (including Western made RPG's that use a JRPG framework,) have have a focus on storytelling long enough for there to be plenty done with them, and, again, if you know where to look, it's there. Legend Of Heroes VI FC has a couple of do-gooding heroes to start out with, but from what I understand, the next game, SC, partly explores why someone would be so completely selfless. Master Of The Wind has a protagonist who wishes to do selfless good as well, but then goes into the reasons as to why he does this, and confronts the notion of whether or not merely defeating your foes (which includes killing them, bye the way, as well as Non-Lethal K.O.) is all there is to doing good. Perhaps there's something more? And then Last Scenario and The Reconstruction tear apart the average JRPG plot to shreds, and build it right back up to something unique. Each game also has a do-gooding selfless hero, who is again confronted and challenged as to why he is selfless and do-gooding, and in the end, it's clear that it isn't enough to just be a 'hero', for everyone has a different definition of what a hero is. And then there's Laxius Force, which explores how a money-grubbing, but still fundamentally decent, young warrior, (also, Random had three games before this one, but he was kind of a jerk, so he was less of a 'hero', and more of a Jerk with a Heart of Gold,) can be transformed into a truly selfless hero who asks for nothing in return.

Mind you, more then half of the example's I listed are either freeware or Independent, but I still think it shows some Deconstruction and Reconstruction in the JRPG genre. And heck, even in commercial games, you have Tales Of Symphonia, which was actually written by Japanese writers, so it shows the Japanese people deconstructing and reconstructing their own tropes, rather then English writers doing it for them, as in all of the game's I've mentioned here. And that was also a big one. So, yeah, I think it's there, it's just not all that common.

edited 2nd Oct '13 5:12:03 PM by kkhohoho

Then the problem is your assumptions. You are not only assuming that there are no modern heroes, you are assuming that said statement is an undeniable fact that everyone accepts. If the pages of debate has meant anything, it's that that assumption isn't true.

...Or maybe it is true, provided you replace "hero" with "Knight in Shining Armor". Because that's the implication I keep getting.

I do agree that exploring morality would be nice. I chalk the lack of it to immaturity, corporate pandering to the LCD, and the medium still being stuck in something of a ghetto.

Well, I guess the issue is that games focusing on moral exploration don't get as much publicity as the popcorn.

Heavily advertising the moral exploration has its own risks as well as players may not want their belief system challenged.

For example, people who have adopted non-mainstream moral paths after extensive thought often seem to be extremely combative when questioned about their standpoints and crusade against many a thing the mainstream simply ignores or takes for granted. On the flipside, those with mainstream beliefs simply do not take invitations to challenge themselves. How does a company publicize a moral exploration title to either group?

edited 2nd Oct '13 6:59:16 PM by Recon5

I question the idea that games ever had "heroes" to begin with. Pacman is fundamentally a story of kill or be killed, and Mario's status as a genocidal monster has hopefully been well established.

How about Galaga? Saving the world from evil aliens!

Are you? We never see any planets, and the ships don't shoot until you do; how do we know you're not playing as some space pirates or Reaper ship?

Isn't there a pretty big difference between having "heroic" heroes and having stories about morality? Quite frankly, the primary purpose of having selfless knights in shining armor is so that you don't have to look at morality. You just have a "good" hero and an "evil" villain and can assume that the right thing is being done. Even decades ago games were already questioning this, and that's only reasonable because every other medium was questioning it before games even existed.

That isn't to say that all protagonists need to be villains now, or that "good" heroes can't have their own compelling character arcs, but I'm not sure that what you're asking for is quite the same thing as what you think it is. Or that your memories of past games are quite accurate.

As for games that do examine the nature of hero-ness, I'd recommend Wild Arms 2 which is basically an extended essay on heroes (it's not even subtle) and more recently Tales Of Xillia which examines the effect that being a perfect self-sacrificing hero has on the people around her. Both of these games disagree with your conclusion, but they are exactly what you claim to be asking for.

edited 2nd Oct '13 7:31:58 PM by Clarste

Hmm... thinking about it more... in terms of game I've played this year:

1. Fire Emblem: Awakening: Unambiguously good heroes. Not much to say here. They save the world cuz the world needed saving.
2. Etrian Oddessy IV: Nameless, faceless, backgroundless protagonist. Naturally you lack a personal motivation, but you also lack the option to choose not to do good.
3. Shin Megagami Tensei IV: This game does have an extensive moral choice system, but you can't choose to be "evil". It just asks you to examine what you, the player, think of as good. You can even choose to destroy the world if you think it's the best option. It's framed as a mercy kill.
4. Tales Of Xilla: Already mentioned. Features extremely selfless hero who thinks of nothing but the greater good.
5. Civilization V: Added more peaceful routes to victory.
6. Video Game/Undertale: Explored the fuck out of morality.
7. Virtue's Last Reward: Was all about repeatedly choosing to Ally or Betray people you barely knew and had no reason to trust. Hard to describe without spoiling, but that was the theme anyway.

So anyway, based on my own personal experience, 100% of recent games are exactly what you're asking for. How refreshing.

edited 2nd Oct '13 9:30:21 PM by Clarste

Semi random comments that may or may not tie in well with the rest of the thread:

"Which is better: to be born good, or to overcome your evil nature through great effort?"

While it wouldn't clear your criteria because it's a Wide-Open Sandbox, the Skyrim thread here is rather full of discussions of the game's morality, which is full of a lot of shades of grey. Being a truly Lawful Good character in that game (I've found out) is hard; it means you have to pass up on a lot of questlines and their rewards, many of which are required for some of the game's achievements. And many of the choices the player can make don't have clear-cut good/evil, such as the perennial Imperials vs Stormcloaks debate. Both sides believe that their way is needed to secure a better future for Skyrim, both have obvious problems that call their reasons into question.

—-

Motivation maters. I reject the Kantian categorical imperative entirely. Kant believed that questions such as morality could be derived from the study of "pure, practical reason" which boils down, as far as I'm concerned, to "stuff pulled out of thin air", divorced from physical reality...and a philosophy that ignores reality is useless. Believing a philosophy that ignores reality is delusion. (That said, our understanding of reality is, and likely will often if not always be imperfect.)

Serenity comes to mind. Mal is a disillusioned misanthrope scared by his failure as a former rebel, and is clinging to his ship and his crew and living from day to day. Shepard Book's last words to him are "I don't care what you believe. Just believe it!" He finds that cause in the tragedy of Miranda and that is what pushes him over the line from simply being a protagonist to being the hero.

Bioshock Infinite ending spoilers within, you've been warned. Booker is an interesting case. He is not a good person, no one denies that. But as the game progresses you see him evolving. His motivation shifts: by the last hour of the game, it's no longer "bring us the girl and wipe away the debt", it's full-on "save the girl, because she might be the only good thing that ever happened to you". I don't think he expects it to cancel out the horrible things he's done. But when he kills Comstock in the end, he does it out of righteous, moral anger over what he's done. And when he realizes that he and Comstock are one and the same, he finally accepts responsibility for all he spent his life after Wounded Knee running away from...and the necessity of his death to break the chain. "Which is better? To be born good, or to overcome your evil nature through great effort?"

What would you fight for? What would you die for? What would you kill for? What is it really worth?

edited 3rd Oct '13 12:18:35 AM by Elle

You can certainly have one without the other, but that doesn't make them mutually exclusive.

I never meant to imply that they were. Just that the OP was conflating them for some reason.

Huh. You know, you just made me realize that Booker De Witt is Charlie B. Barkin. The moral of that movie: there is no such thing as a Complete Monster. Even an absolute remorseless scumbag is capable of doing something incredibly noble for someone they love.

edited 3rd Oct '13 4:49:51 PM by TobiasDrake

Not every story should be about the protagonist struggling to overcome its own evil nature, at least not in the same way. I think part of the situation is that morally-shadowy figures in games tend to have very conventional or blatant flaws. But you can tell a story about someone who had a dark past but has already confronted it, repented, and consciously left it behind and now the story is about something else entirely. Or about someone who by moral luck has never had a dark past and has not yet had certain unpleasant facts about itself brought to its attention. And perhaps it never will.

Even struggling against one's own evil nature through great effort doesn't have to mean "murderer decides not to do it again". The initial temptation can be just as dramatic as the last.

What about the struggles against ones human nature? People are not automatically good and sometimes being good despite other factors is quite the challenge. Facing off against your own instinct and innate behaviours frequently is a major effort in and of itself. Set against the backdrop of say a war, crisis, or adventure it can be very telling of an individual.

Yes, exactly.

Would be even better if they show the person back sliding now and then struggling to keep up the good part of things.

But that is mostly me liking characters to be more human and less superb blameless supermen.

I wonder if it's possible to set up a character who has absolutely no sense of ethics, and creates their own throughout the story.

Reminds me of the Wolf Among Us. The main character isn't exactly the most moral person, having eaten thousands of people alive in his past. He is kind of a jerk, though, if basically an atoner.

Prototype comes to mind when I think of that.

I don't mean gray ethics.

I mean no ethics. Period.

Maybe if the main character was a half programmed cyborg or something, they could get dropped in the middle of a war or disagreement and be forced to form their own ethics to make sense of it all.

What does "no ethics" look like, though?