Rico Rodriquez, Commander Shephard, Cole McGrath, Alec Mason..... Jesus Christ. How is it even possible to come up with something so uninspired and generic as these guys. Why would i want to play time and time again with bald, middle- aged man with no personality but the one he uses to shoot bullets. What the hell is wrong with western game developers these days? Give me a 50 year old junkie woman with children to play. I wanna play with an animal, like a cat for a while. Give me a punk rocker who has tired to society. Give me ANYTHING out of the ordinary. Wait a minute... i forgot. I'm playing Nintendo, so i shouldn't have worries at all. At least i get to play with a middle- aged plumber, an ape from the jungle, and a fairy boy from magical forest. But out of nintendo's (and Japan's) own cream of the crop, i would really like to see something with more personality coming from western developers for once and a while. So, what do you think?
Sorry, but it seems like that trend is sticking for a while. If you're really bothered by it, just go play some indie games. That should wash the taste of Captain Bland McGeneric for a while.
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You do realize that part of the rationale of using a "generic" hero is it potentially allows the player to "be" the hero? Generic characters, in theory, are applicable to everyone; each player can (gasp) use their imagination and make the hero their own.
Not saying this is always succesfully accomplished, but that's one of the ideas.
Gotta say that i agree with you. HL 2 was a great game, but Gordon Freeman doesn't have any kind of personality. He's one of the most generic video game heroe's ever created. The fact that he wears glasses and is supposed to be a professor or something doesn't give him any more character. He's just another "hero" who isn't even able to speak, but only shoot everything on sight.
I think the fact that he never speaks and we never see him in cutscenes or anything is the whole point of Gordon Freeman. The player is Gordon Freeman. We don't have the protagonist's thoughts and actions thrust upon us, we can think and act for ourselves.
I think the fact that he never speaks and we never see him in cutscenes or anything is the whole point of Gordon Freeman. The player is Gordon Freeman. We don't have the protagonist's thoughts and actions thrust upon us, we can think and act for ourselves.
If the gamer's supposed to be Gordon, then why give him any backstory at all? And why is a doctor of filosofy and theoretic physicist so good with guns? They could have expanded his story in other ways than adding voice acting or that kind of activity in the cutscenes. How about some notes that Freeman had wrote, and which the player could collect and inspect to find more about the man and his motives? That alone would have added a lot of depth to his character.
You do realize that part of the rationale of using a "generic" hero is it potentially allows the player to "be" the hero? Generic characters, in theory, are applicable to everyone; each player can (gasp) use their imagination and make the hero their own.
Not saying this is always succesfully accomplished, but that's one of the ideas.
But I'm not a butch war veteran with questionable facial hair and the voice of a creaky drainpipe, which 90% of these characters inevitably are.
I think the problem is that they're not generic at all. They're a very specific design of character, but the design is so overused that its become cliché.
Of course it's a generic character design. It's a generic soldier, and in a military shooting game that character is very appropriate. Anything other than a soldier or "butch war veteran" would be out of place in a game about shooting enemy soldiers. You should not expect a plumber in red and blue clothes landing on the beaches of Normandy.
The character type is not half as often used as people in this thread (or this site in general) would believe, anyway. Outside of this specific type of game I can't think of any game with a balding, bearded war veteran. All the complaints about this character type are really just complaints about a genre, which is not surprising given the forum we're on.
I think the fact that he never speaks and we never see him in cutscenes or anything is the whole point of Gordon Freeman. The player is Gordon Freeman. We don't have the protagonist's thoughts and actions thrust upon us, we can think and act for ourselves.
If the gamer's supposed to be Gordon, then why give him any backstory at all? And why is a doctor of filosofy and theoretic physicist so good with guns? They could have expanded his story in other ways than adding voice acting or that kind of activity in the cutscenes. How about some notes that Freeman had wrote, and which the player could collect and inspect to find more about the man and his motives? That alone would have added a lot of depth to his character.
They give him a backstory so as to explain why the character is there. The rest is left open ended so you can put yourself in his shoes. It's nothing new. 90% of JRPGs seem to rely on a silent main character you were meant to envision yourself as.
And as for asking why a theoretic physicist is so good with guns, that is just one of the mysteries of gaming. Why is a plumber so good at saving a kingdom of incompetent mushroom people? Why are a war verteran, biker, office manager and college student so good at surviving zombie hordes and grabbing pills? For that matter, how can a singing sunflower in your yard repel a zombie invasion?
"The government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion."
I want someone Who is like me but has a Katana, save the game by using the bathroom, and seeks revenge for his fallen friend. Or Mabey a game about a wolf... Yah No... No.... Wait I want Animals to fly blasting an evil Polygon shaped Dr. But seriously My game would be an adventure game kind of a R and C Mix with Metroid and Marvel with magic like KH
Digitaloggery 3DS FC: Otaku1 WiiU: 013017970991 Nintendo of Japan niconico community is full of kawaii! Must finish my backlagg or at least get close this year W...
I know a bunch of physicist buddies who love to go paint balling.
Sean Aaron ~ "The secret is out: I'm really an American cat-girl." Q: How many physicists does it take to change a light bulb? A: Two, one to hold the light bulb, the other to rotate the universe.
"How could one man have slipped through your force's fingers time and time again? How is it possible? This is not some agent provocateur or highly trained assassin we are discussing. Gordon Freeman is a theoretical physicist who had hardly earned the distinction of his Ph.D. at the time of the Black Mesa Incident. I have good reason to believe that in the intervening years, he was in a state that precluded further development of covert skills. The man you have consistently failed to slow, let alone capture, is by all standards simply that — an ordinary man."
Dr. Breen has the best voice acting I've ever heard in a video game. The swings his performance takes throughout the various Breencasts is amazing...and that one in particular really starts to show his security slipping away...
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Topic: Generic protagonists
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