A one-man conversation

Of course, the silent protagonist features heavily in gaming, due to its early roots. And two famous examples of this would have to be Link and Mario. Both characters end up going out of their way to rescue a woman – presumably because they think it’s the right thing to do. But we all know that they just wanna get some, and that’s okay. Though if a Bowser-like person took my woman, I’d at least interview the dude/monster/creature/thing.

And what’s up with Bowser always being seemingly evil?  Do you honestly think that Peach is being held against her will? Is she being held at all? Maybe it’s Mario who’s the evil one, yet Peach can’t bring herself to just tell him outright what a piece of work he is… So she stages a kidnapping – weirder things have happened, like finding a flower that shoots fire. But back to the stereotype at hand – the silent protagonist. Often featured in early 80s games, voice-work was not feasible back then. Nowadays, many Nintendo games still feature minimal voice-overs – as if the characters they talk to are psychic. Perhaps it’s a good idea to keep these characters silent – after all, I wouldn’t want Link’s voice to be butchered in the same way as Sonic’s was.

Another early stereotype

But ja, just about every old-school RPG, such as Zelda and Pokemon, had one character that everyone took for granted – your parents/guardians. Normally you had a father – though in an attempt to be different, some games might give you both parents. And try as hard as they could, the devs couldn’t make you care about them, instead, you wished that your character was orphaned already. But looking back at it, starting off with parents made the most sense – after all, aren’t those the people you’re most likely to see?

**** stereotypes man!

Now we come to the guys that have no father – gangbangers (hiyo!). Propelled to popularity by GTA: SA, all these foul-mouthed, chain-wearing, walking stereotypes also make appearances in Saints Row 2 and True Crime: NYC. If I had a cent for every time I wanted to strangle the baggy pants-wearing idiots…

GTA’s Carl Johnson was often painted as a character seeking revenge – yet by playing through the game we see that his character was as flat as they come. He was as stereotypical as can get, and it was for that reason, that I couldn’t buy into his emotions.

Fighting the British stereotype

Our next port of call would have to be evil British people. Even the great games like MGS have used this stereotype, as seen in Liquid Snake, to convey the fact that they’re the bad guys. “Nice shot” indeed – at British citizens. I guess that ‘bad teeth’ and ‘bad guy’ got mixed-up during localisation. But in all fairness, games like Perfect Dark have included an all-British cast – making for a game that didn’t include ‘upper-crust’ voice-work.

Stereotype – The Game

Looking at a more recent title, Borderlands, I wasn’t surprised that the game played host to quite a few stereotypes. I love Borderlands, it’s one of my favourite games of this generation, but we have a range of stereotypes – from a ‘roid-rage addled Brick to the Russian arms dealer (the fall of capitalism in future Russia meant that he probably had to take his business elsewhere). The best part about the game was once again, the mash-up of stereotypes, from exploding barrels to enemy voice-overs. Borderlands might not be a stellar example of character development, but it’s proven that you don’t need to delve into that field to make a good game.

Of course, these are but a few stereotypical characters in gaming. So tell us, what are your favourite examples?