Sunday 4 December 2011

Separated At Birth

He's "The Hero". He wears a recognizable green ensemble, and fights for the weak and useless.

He has no personality. He has only one facial expression. He kills and is unkillable. He is treated like a God by everyone that meets him. His enemies foolishly charge into his attack radius, despite the fact that that strategy didn't work out for the hundreds of other enemies he vanquished with ease. He has no family, no backstory, suffers no moral crises and has nothing to say. He blindly throws away any pretense of free-will, excusing a lack of backbone with "fate" and "responsibility".

He is boring.




Despite this, he is completely useless under his own power. His strength is dependent entirely on the equipment he has access to. The legendary guy is nothing without a bigger phallic instrument and special tools, and so he must defeat foes and claim their equipment. There is never a story for him, only a series of cheap excuses to go from one disconnected set-piece to another.

He is the same in every game. He never grows. He is never vulnerable or interesting. The only changes are made to make him look superficially better than he did last time. He is supposed to be a vessel for the player, to project their personality into, but this doesn't work. The cutscenes and context make him out of your reach, but they don't do anything else. He's the worst of both worlds, too established to be customizable, yet too plain to be grounded.

Everyone thinks he's this great, deep, iconic character, and I don't understand it. But their only answer for why is drooling. And-



Wait a 'tic...










...Holy shit, I just figured it out!





That's one mystery solved. Now if we could just figure out the success of cake shows...

END OF LINE

~A.H.

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