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Gray
Grayson Hunt
Voiced by: Steve Blum
A former Dead Echo Squad member, he and his team betrayed their superior (Sarrano) after they discovered that they were doing "dirty" jobs and not being told all the details; Sarrano had ordered them to kill an innocent man - a reporter named Bryce Novak - who had discovered too much about Dead Echo "erasing" civilians. Grayson and his crew then flee to the outer edge of known space in self-exile and take up piracy, raiding Confederacy ships and depots to get by. Extremely cynical, resentful and harboring a drunken disposition, Gray is pissed at the world, a ticking time bomb ready to explode at any second, which makes him both a dangerous and a skilled soldier.
Tropes related to the weapons Grayson uses alongside the game go in the main page.
- The Alcoholic: He can slake his thirst for hooch by toking entire bottles of the local firewater in one go, stumbling around for a few moments then immediately sobering up. The Booze Based (De)Buff this awards the player gives additional points for kill enemies while under the influence. Alternatively the player can opt to make him a teetotaler by destroying bottles he finds instead of emptying them. Both options give a Achievement/Trophy for finding each one in the campaign.
- Anti-Hero: Loses most of his crew during a drunken Roaring Rampage of Revenge against the Big Bad, and was a belligerent alcoholic before it. It's stated, however, that the cause of his Roaring Rampage of Revenge was the fact that said Big Bad was his former commander who used him and his team to do assassinations on innocent people, and he desperately wants to get his only remaining friend off of Stygia to receive proper treatment. Also, his Character Development is based on him trying to make amends.
- The Atoner: A significant part of Grayson's character development is him attempting to atone for doing all of those assassinations for Sarrano and later getting nearly his entire crew killed in a Roaring Rampage of Revenge. Ishi ultimately agrees that he's trying to make amends.
- Boisterous Bruiser: Played With. Behind the foul-mouthed Blood Knight exterior is a surprising amount of intelligence, as he provides his own Layman's Terms to Techno Babble. Also, when he kamikazes the Ulysses in the beginning of the game, he quotes literature that by that point in the future is very old. That said, he goes outright Psychopathic Manchild when he gets his hands on a weaponized robot, and his attempt to create a bridge in a level where Trishka heavily suggests stealth ends up demolishing half a building.
- Blood Knight: You can tell he's enjoying his time brutally and sadistically killing anything in his way.
- David Versus Goliath: Taking down Sarrano and the Ulysses with a ship much, much smaller and with considerably inferior armaments than the latter.Grayson: "Sank your battleliner is what we did. Took down your prize warbird with a Class D Spectre. That's gotta sting a bit."
- Deadpan Snarker: Less so than the others, but he gets in some good sarcasm from time to time. The end of his "The Reason You Suck" Speech to Serrano while they're on the Ulysses is a biting example.
- Deconstructed Character Archetype: He's a subtle deconstruction of the average shooter protagonist. Throughout the game, Grayson makes impulsive, foolhardy decisions to take on hugely stronger enemies and tries violence as the first solution to pretty much everything. This results in most of his friends dying, other innocents being killed, and several times he ends up causing further problems for himself with his reckless destructive behavior. It is implied that his "badass oneliner" persona is a front he puts up to deal with the situation he and his crew found themselves in, and a lot of his wreckless behaviour invites the interpretation that he's a Death Seeker. This ends up putting a lot of his erratic behaviour and alchoholism in a new light. This article
even points it how Gray is different from the usual shooter protagonist. - Determinator: He's lost everything, either because of his own mistakes, because of Sarrano, or because of his need for revenge. But he's not going to give up on it, nor is he going to give up on getting Ishi off-world.
- Disproportionate Retribution: He has gone to some pretty insane lengths for the sake of revenge.
- Gay Bravado:
The elevator scene.Grayson: (looking at sunset) "Nice view." (to Ishi) "You wanna make out? Just two gruff military hardened dudes sitting in an elevator, snuggling out their woes in a totally hetero way." - Hidden Depths: Grayson hides some surprising intelligence behind the foul-mouthed bruiser he projects. Sometimes he proves to be oddly eloquent and aware of literary conventions, and does his own Layman's Terms for Trishka and Ishi's technobabble. He even quotes Fifteen Men on a Deadman's Chest in the intro when he rams his ship into the Ulysses. This can be explained by the fact that Special Ops commandos include intelligence in their selection criteria, and Gray was the leader of one such team.
- I Call It "Vera": The mech he pilots during one of the stages, which he calls Waggleton P. Tallylicker.
- It's All My Fault: For all his foul-mouthed bravado, Gray is riddled with guilt and regret over the things he did for Sarrano and how his actions led to his friends and many innocent people dying. He spends a lot of the game apologizing to Ishi and Trishka.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: He loves killing and being brutally cruel to his opponents (though in his defense, they are murderous, cannibalistic psychopaths), but this is juxtaposed with the fact that the entire reason he turned on Sarrano was because he was having them kill innocents, he orders Ishi to protect an innocent bystander, and that his driving motivation for most of the game is to get Ishi off the planet so he can be properly treated. On top of that, Gray frequently expresses regret for his past actions and seeks to redeem himself.
- The Kid with the Remote Control: When he's piloting Waggleton P. Tallylicker. Emphasis on kid, as he reacts to using it with sheer glee, like a child in a candy store.Grayson: "Barrel go boom! Hahaha!"
- Knight in Sour Armor: Initially it seems like he's just out for a Roaring Rampage of Revenge purely because Sarrano betrayed him, but towards the end it looks more and more like he's convinced himself (perhaps because of some of the things Ishi and Sarrano have said) that it's not just about revenge, it's about doing the right thing and making amends for all of the suffering he's caused to innocent people.
- Large Ham: When Waggleton P. Tallylicker is around in act 2.Grayson: "He's my favorite robot pal! Ishi was okay, but he isn't fifty feet tall!"
- No Cutscene Inventory Inertia: While he can carry three guns (the assault rifle and two other guns) at a time in gameplay, in cutscenes he only has his assault rifle, with the other weapons being stored in Hammerspace.
- One-Man Army: Even on the higher difficulty settings, your killcount will far outstrip the help your supporting characters give you.
- Psychopathic Manchild: While definitely saner than Sarrano, he does take a childlike glee in killing enemies in creative ways. It's especially obvious when he gets his hands on Waggleton P. Tallylicker.
- Punched Across the Room: He's a graduate of the Duke Nukem school of putting your foot through things. Not only does it send enemies flying, it also sends them into slow motion and does a fair bit of damage besides. More importantly, it's key to setting up many skillshots.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: He dishes out a short but stinging one on Sarrano while he's on the Ulysses with him, after all the Breaking Speech Gray had been receiving up to that point.
- Redemption Quest: To "fix" Ishi. Ishi even lampshades this at one point.
- Red Oni, Blue Oni: The red to Ishi's blue.
- Sean Connery Is About to Shoot You - The cover of the game features Grayson about to kick the viewer in the face.
- Sir Swears-a-Lot: He and Sarrano account for a great deal of the swearing in the game. Though even he calls out Sarrano for taking this trope too far.
- Sociopathic Hero: He is very happy with the gruesome deaths he's able to cause to his enemies.Grayson: (in a very pleased voice, during the start of a fight in a skyscraper) "Murder time."
- Revenge: The game is kicked off by Grayson having his crew get into a very ill-advised fight with a giant warship because Sarrano happens to be on it, and the result is half his crew dying because of it and Ishi being saved by an Emergency Transformation. He later tells Triska that he would've given anything to kill Sarrano for what he's done. Part of Grayson's Character Development is him coming to grips with being The Atoner, and that he is in fact trying to make amends by getting Ishi off-world and getting payback for the innocents Sarrano used Dead Echo to kill.
- Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: Throughout the game, he fights alongside a lot of the people who he either dislikes or is disliked by, with only survival trumping their need to shoot one another instead of the dangerous criminals and/or mutants trying to kill them.
- What the Hell, Hero?:
- From the moment the game begins and beyond. The game begins with him very drunk and ordering a self-destructive Roaring Rampage of Revenge on a drunken whim.
- Late in the game, even Sarrano pokes at Grayson for all of the deaths that he's caused due to his actions. And Sarrano is no saint. Of course, it's mostly because Sarrano is an ass who gets his kicks by messing with people's heads, but still.
Ishi
Ishi Sato
Voiced by: Andrew Kishino
Essentially both The Lancer and The Smart Guy, Ishi is the most distressed by the group's "repurposing" into assassins during the prologue. He is the voice of reason, tempering Grayson's (self)destructive tendencies.
- A.I. Is a Crapshoot: His robot half. Mostly because he's only got half its brain, and even that is operating off a dodgy connection.
- Brainwashed and Crazy: In the end of the game, he has finally surrendered to the AI and is now on Sarrano's side.
- Came Back Wrong: After the surgery that turned him into a cyborg. It saved his life, but the AI used to patch his brain started causing problems.
- The Comically Serious: At least at the beginning.
- Cybernetics Eat Your Soul: Post-injury. Vaguely justified as since the doc had to use the processor from a nearby robot to fix his brain, its AI is trying to take control, because A.I. Is a Crapshoot. It zig-zags back and forth from there.
- In this universe it seems Cybernetics Eat Your Soul happens if it's an emergency patch job, with little to no proper supplies, you're missing half your brain and need them replace with a combat robot's, the doctor gets an axe to the back during the process, in constant pain because of the rushed patch job, and you're pissed at the guy who caused it to happen to you.
- Cyborg: He gets half his body burnt to a crisp and is subjected to a rather slap-dash operation that fuses him with a bunch of nearby robot parts. It really hurts, and his mind has been partially made cybernetic, resulting in him going Terminator whenever he's pissed.
- Deadpan Snarker: It's subdued, but he gives a fair amount of snark in the story. Grayson actually suggests using it to keep his human side in control.
- Emergency Transformation: How he got to his Cyborg state, as he was grievously wounded in an explosion during the fight with the Ulysses, and Doc was gutted before he could properly finish the cybernetic grafts.
- Evil Sounds Deep: His voice drops an octave whenever his cybernetics take control.
- "I Know You Are in There Somewhere" Fight: When Sarrano uses his special leash to control him into trying to kill Grayson. Grayson fights it long enough for Ishi to throw off Sarrano's control.
- I Owe You My Life: The only reason he was following Grayson around at the beginning. Since Grayson nearly got him killed all over again, Ishi pretty much figures that's the end of that.
- Morality Pet: Functions as one for Grayson, as Grayson's Character Development from a bellicose alcoholic to repentant Knight in Sour Armor comes about from Gray's desperate need to get his only remaining friend off of Stygia for proper treatment.
- Red Eyes, Take Warning:
- Red Oni, Blue Oni: The blue to Grayson's red.
- Ishi is also the blue to his AI's red.
- Sidekick: Essentially, as he is Grayson's second in command, even while they were still in the Confederate military.
- Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: Ishi is not happy when he's revived as Grayson's reckless pursuit of revenge killed off most of the crew. He's extremely terse and disapproving of Grayson, only working with him as a matter of practicality.
- Tranquil Fury: Both he and the AI he's struggling against have this quality about them. The AI is just more vicious about it.
- We Can Rebuild Him: Twice! First, shortly after the attack on the Ulysses, then again during The Stinger.
Trishka
Trishka Novak
Voiced by: Jennifer Hale
Commander and last survivor of Serrano's ill-fated Final Echo team.
- Action Girl: The second time you meet her, she`s beating two Creeps to death.
- Bitch Alert: Also the second you meet her she proves to be one of the biggest examples of this: picture Jack with extra slurs.
- Blood Knight: Though she says she only got into the Corps to avenge her dad, she's at least as gleeful about fighting as Gray is.
- Deus ex Machina: When she shows up to rescue Grayson and Ishi just as it looks like they're about to be stuck with the DNA Bomb. Grayson actually calls it a Deus ex Machina, even. But they Never Found the Body, so it was bound to happen eventually.
- Intergenerational Friendship: Grey's old enough to be her father, and she admits to being his friend at the end of the game.
- Lady Swears-a-Lot: Not as much as Grayson, but she has a very colorful vocabulary.
- Ms. Fanservice: The developers made sure not to overdo it though; some dev interviews mention that they tried to strike a balance between "cute" and "practical". The result is Trishka decked out in military fatigues and combat boots from the waist down, while from the waist up she's wearing a tank top. It's actually pretty effective at making her look both attractive and like a practical soldier.
- Fire-Forged Friends: She begins the game with absolute hate towards Gray, since her father died from a raid he was in. By the end, she willingly calls herself his friend.
- Not Quite Dead: Sarrano pushes her off of a very tall building, and both Grayson and Ishi believe her to be dead. Turns out she caught a power line on the way down and made it to safety.
- One of the Boys: So it would seem. She is a Final Echo squadron commander after all.
- Red Baron: "Lovely Bitter".
- The Reveal: Towards the end of the game, she reveals that Novak, the man Dead Echo assassinated in the prologue chapter, was her father; she was the little girl Ishi found waiting just outside the office. Later, an in-universe example: Serrano tells Trishka that Grayson's Echo squad (specifically, Grayson himself) were the ones who pulled the trigger.
- The Squadette: A squadron leader, in fact.
- Supermodel Strut: When she's first introduced, she walks towards Grayson in a slow-mo strut where she's rocking her hips in a Male Gaze shot. Then she punches him and the whole thing stops, implying it was just a Crush Filter of his.
- Tsundere: A not-romantic type A example. She hates Grayson at the beginning of the game and is willing to make sure he understands that. A fire nurtured by Gray's incredibly brainless tactics. Then, they decide to work as a team to survive and save each others' life countless times, making her start to see him as a teammate, not a liability. At the end, she is his only friend left.
- You Killed My Father: Her motivation for going after Sarrano, and later, Gray. Then Sarrano again.
Rell
Rell Julian
Voiced by: Chris Cox
Dead Echo's explosives expert
- Book Dumb: His backstory mentions he never did well in school.
- Deadpan Snarker: He might be the most sarcastic one in the whole game.
- Death by Irony: He's the team's explosives expert, and he dies by performing a Heroic Sacrifice involving explosive barrels to save Gray from a bunch of Skulls. That being said, given how badly wounded he was at that point, he'd most likely have died anyway.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: He's a jackass, but it's made clear that he does care a lot about his teammates, even willing to risk his life to save Ishi.
- Killed Off for Real: Near the beginning of the game, in fact.
- New-Age Retro Hippie: Rell makes a sarcastic remark about this when Ishi expresses concerns about their mission to kill Bryce Novak.Rell: "Skippy Granola's groovy dreamcatcher is pickin' up some bummer vibes."
- Stuff Blowing Up: Rell was an explosives' expert while in the Confederacy.
- Those Two Guys: He and Doc serve as this.
- Toxic Friend Influence: He's this to Grayson, as he is more accepting and nurtures the distinctly negative aspects of Grayson's character.
- We Hardly Knew Ye: Sadly, he doesn't make it past the prologue.
Doc
Whit "Doc" Oliver
Voiced by: Robin Atkin Downes
Dead Echo's resident medical expert.
- Killed Off for Real: He's murdered by a Skull in the middle of saving Ishi's life.
- The Medic: He serves as the crew's doctor, with his medical skills were useful both in the military and in saving Ishi's life.
- Those Two Guys: His relationship with Rell. But, given that they are both killed early on in the game, we don't get to see much of it.
- We Hardly Knew Ye: Like Rell, he dies in the prologue.
Sarrano
General Victor Sarrano
Voiced by: Anthony De Longis
General of the Confederate Army, likely one of their highest ranking officers and almost certainly personally responsible for the creation Dead/Heavy/Final/etc. Echo trooper lines, designed as his personal shock troopers.
- Asskicking Leads to Leadership: He's more than happy to trick other people into doing his dirty work, but that doesn't mean he can't put up an impressive fight. He doesn't seem to have left his crashlanding site since touchdown (likely several hours) and was almost certainly under attack by the locals almost the entire time.
- Ax-Crazy: A raving sadistic madman to the very core, he is so obviously and dangerously psychopathic that it is truly surprising that he got to lord over an army instead of being locked in a padded cell.
- Badass Longcoat: Seemingly part of his uniform as a General.
- Bad Boss: Especially in Anarchy Mode.
- Big Bad: The cause of literally every one of the main characters' problems. The only issue in the game he's not responsible for is the dismal state of the planet they're on.
- Card-Carrying Villain: He is aware he's a horrible person, and he revels in that fact. He spends most of the game pole-vaulting over the Moral Event Horizon with glee. When Triska has a gun in his face, and demands to know if he killed her father, he admits to it and laughs in her face.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: Set on fire, leashed, and kicked into some protruding rebar. Ouch.
- Averted, actually, as he survives it. However, his internal organs are "paste" because of it.
- Cyborg: He's implied to have become this in the end, but we don't actually see anything.
- Deconstructed Character Archetype/Take That!: Can be very easily read as one of the Mall Ninja/12-year old Call of Duty player crowd. He shows just how the annoying brats would act like in real-life- impractical, insipid, sociopathic, irritating in the extreme, petty, and exceedingly moronic. And it's somehow even more annoying than when it happens on Xbox Live. He's a blatant sociopath and is treated like exactly that, and outfits his team with weapons he sees as 'cool,' in spite of being far more destructive and sadistic than most militaries would allow, and most of said weapons are horribly impractical. Serrano causes absolutely horrific amounts of destruction and chaos for his own enjoyment with no remorse, and is gleefully laughing while he does it. Even Grayson, who is possibly the most foul-mouthed character in the game besides him is taken aback. The Skillshots system? Those are used to earn resupplies. If the men don't do well enough, they do not get ammo, and are left to die.
- Depopulation Bomb: The entire reason why he and the Ulysses were sent to the planet was to drop a "DNA bomb" on Stygia that will kill all organic life on the planet, allowing the corporations to rebuild from the ground up. Naturally, said bomb goes off at the climax of the game, wiping the planet clean.
- Drill Sergeant Nasty: Though he's technically a general, his never-ending verbal assault makes him seem more like this.
- Evil Laugh: Frequently. Most notably When he leaves Ishi and Grayson on the Ulysses to die.
- Expy: As befits a foul-mouthed commanding officer, both his appearance and dialogue are transparently modeled after R. Lee Ermey's Gunnery Sergeant Hartman in Full Metal Jacket.
- Faux Affably Evil: Occasionally, he'll slip into a pseudo-friendly tone when taunting the heroes.
- Flowery Insults: Almost every single line of dialogue falls under this.
- Hypocrite: He guilt-trips Gray for killing everyone aboard the Ulysses at the beginning, despite being a sociopathic war criminal who has killed God knows how many people himself.
- Insane Admiral: He is not someone you want directing you into battle. Operation Anarchy, for instance, where he employed the Skillshot counter to determine whether or not a dropkit would resupply the soldiers using them: If the soldiers didn't perform well, they were not resupplied, which is a death sentence on a place like Stygia.
- It's All About Me: Implied by Grayson, as he notices that while the crew of the Ulysses had very little time to make it to the escape capsules, Serrano somehow managed to be one of very few who did. And given how Sarrano acts....Grayson: "And while not all of your crew managed to make it to the escape capsules in time, I notice you did. Women and children first, ain't that right?"
- Jerkass: Very. Particularly when he tells Ishi and Gray the origins of the Burnouts, he laughs about it. Ishi's response is a disgusted Dude, Not Funny!.
- Jerkass Has a Point: No matter which way you cut it, Grayson did kill a number of Heavy Echo troopers, and the crew of the Ulysses, who were by-and-large innocent bystanders in his feud with Serrano.
- Karmic Death: Or maybe not...
- Lack of Empathy: Sarrano has no concern for anyone but himself. His attempts to guilt-trip Gray over the latter's body count are more about getting under Gray's skin than about concern for those killed. He even sounds downright gleeful when telling Gray that the Burnouts he's been killing are mutated civilians.
- Laughably Evil: He's a highly unpleasant person to be around, but funny to watch.
- Manipulative Bastard: The reason Dead Echo turned against Sarrano is because he told them their assassinations were against drug runners, slave traders, and all manner of badness within the Confederacy, when in reality he was using them to kill innocent people whose deaths were politically expedient to him. He does it again when he and Grayson meet again midway through the game, telling them that they need to defuse the DNA bomb so that it doesn't explode before help arrives, only to reveal after they've seemingly disabled it that it wasn't actually primed to explode and the supposed defusing procedure actually started the countdown to detonation.
- Meaningful Name: Sarrano is a Jerkass villainous ham, Serrano is a tasty Spanish ham
- Not Quite Dead: Unlike Trishka's one, it's a genuine plot twist, given that we're actually able to see him give Grayson his last "Afterburner"/"Voodoo Doll" combo. And then there's the post-credits scene...
- Politically Incorrect Villain: Makes frequent misogynistic statements towards Trishka and cracks wise about Ishi being of Asian descent more than once, an obvious dig at the casual racism and sexism frequently exhibited by CoD players online.
- Psychopathic Manchild: See the above for deconstruction.
- Sir Swears-a-Lot: So much that even Grayson calls him a potty-mouth, which is saying something.
- Stupid Evil: He’s absolutely uncaring of the public opinion of him and his actions and doesn’t even try to be a Villain with Good Publicity, relishing in the fact that he’s a raving, kill-happy psychotic being public knowledge. He also needlessly screws over and throws away the lives of his troops for no reason other than to be a petty, spiteful dick. In the end, the only things stopping Sarrano from getting a round inserted into his skull the moment he and Gray cross paths again is that he’s needed to get off the planet and the fact that he’s a rather skilled combatant despite being psychopathically insane.
- Smug Snake: He has no respect for anyone, treating his enemies and the soldiers under his command with equal disdain, because he really doesn't care about their lives. He's also perfectly content to throw Trishka off the edge of a building because she'd kill him if she found out he was responsible for the death of her father.
- The Sociopath: He's an unrepentant mass murdering psychopath. The reason the sequence of events even happens is because he was ordering the deaths of innocent people.
- Strawman Political: He refers to the workers as "pinko commie socialist queers" for wanting better treatment.
- Troll: He gets a kick out of provoking angry reactions from Grayson and Ishi.
- Un Evil Laugh: He has an oafish, deep "hu-hu-hu-hu!" laugh at odds with his masculune-but-shrill texarkanne accent.
- Villainous Valor: He may be a psychotic, sociopathic Jerkass with a creatively foul mouth, but he never once shows even the slightest hint of fear throughout the game. Even when he's impaled on a piece of rebar and at Grayson's mercy, he still manages to spit out some venomous words.
Skulls
The Skulls
A gang of homicidal bandits made up of convict labor.
- Ax-Crazy: They've gone feral and insane after Stygia fell into ruin, and will go out of their way to violently murder outsiders and rival gangs.
- Baldof Evil: Many of them are bald and are murderous, psychopathic killers.
- Boxed Crook: Sarrano explains that they were convicts that were employed by the company in charge of Stygia's vacation resort as cheap labor in exchange for shortened sentences, maintaining the resort and the planet's gamma filters.
- Butt-Monkey: By default and massively so, given they'll be the frequent victims of whatever skillshot the player inflicts on them.
- Gatling Good: Many of the Minibosses use the Chaingun, including the first one Gray and Ishi encounter.
- Hulk Speak: How they communicate, likely due to being trapped on a radiated wasteland of a planet."You no live! You no live!""You no fight!""Ha, fun for kill!"
- I Am a Humanitarian: They've resorted to cannibalism to survive since the planet's food supply ran out, using the mutated inhabitants as food.
- No Indoor Voice: They are always screaming or yelling anytime they're around.
- Stupid Evil: The Skulls are so feral and blinded by bloodlust, they have no regard for their surroundings and will run headlong into danger.
