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Thread: Evil Protagonists

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    Insert Coin (Level 0) yanclae's Avatar
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    Question Evil Protagonists

    I don't mean to "turn the tables around" or anything, but has anyone else really thought about what makes the protagonist of a video game "good"?

    I wanted to post this thread so that I can name all the positive qualities of the supposed villians:
    * Highly industrious
    * Creative, often inventors
    * Good management skills
    * Intelligent, often misunderstood
    * Eccentric, often a snappy dresser
    Sure, these supposed criminals or "masterminds" are blunderers, and their designs expose obvious weaknesses. But I don't blame them. Often enough, it is because they do not choose their friends wisely. Sometimes the crucial design flaw is just there to invite the protagonist in, and he the villain secretly and desperately is seeking real companionship with the one person who can stop him. At least, this is the case in real life.

    Revenge-seeking & pride, we can rightly say, are undesireable qualities. But how often do these traits appear in the protagonist, not the villian? We are living in the era where "vigilantes" & "Rogues" pass for heroes, in a charming way.

    Classic games gave a more compelling picture of the goodness of the protagonists. They were people who wanted to save a distressed land or a helpless people (or talking animal population). We knew polluters who were enslaving cute little animals, turning them into cyborgs. For classical games, the picture is much clearer. But it must've been after the era of DOOM & Duke-Nukem, that the line started to blur, for the games and perhaps all of us who played them. There was something universal about them that made children believe "They must be stopped."

    For the protagonist, there is an obvious moral trade-off to saving the world. He must develop skills by fighting and vanquishing wave after wave of misguided denizens. Such skills are simply not useful when it is time to put the sword down. That's why there is a woman to be saved in so many games: there is an inherent implication that the battle is done, and prosperity will ensue. Without this type of promise, the heroes of the battle remain violent, wonder what the meaning of their fight was all for, and sometimes lash out at those who deserve only kindness.

    Even if these villians are truly bad, at least they deserve a closer look, that we may derive all of the beneficial qualities they could have served. Like if they were sent to jail and were rehabilitated. Because the heroes of video games, despite truly being adventurers, are often enough lacking in creator qualities. When the adventure is over, it should be time to use their fame and treasure to improve the community they've come from. To build something. Yet the heroes are usually never the builders, and the villians usually are.

    We tend to project universal revulsion onto this type, despite the fact that creative processes are so needed in our world on this day. We project it onto the characters in the game, but do we scorn the inventors in life just the same?
    Last edited by yanclae; 07-15-2013 at 03:57 AM.

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