Substance TV

Every great video game has many components which come together to form one cohesive gooey ball of moist and chewy goodness (that sounded strangely dirty). Along with all the usual suspects, character design has been a major part in any superb video game. Although, as of late, many high profile games have lost this all important piece of the gaming puzzle…

This all came as a crashing realization while I was perusing a local game store. As my eye passed by the hundreds of covers, a lingering feeling of deja vu fell over me. I swore I had seen the previous character on the last cover. Then again on the next. After sometime, it turned into some sort of sick game. Not only were many of these characters similar, they were all vaguely bland and boring.

The above picture is but a small depiction of the characters guilty of this crime. From left to right, Fracture, God of War, Mass Effect, and Force Unleashed. I give you the jury proof of these henious crimes:

- The same bald and/or buzzed haircut
- The same average adult male build
- The same everyman tough guy face
- The same dull design

I ask the jury take all of these points into consideration. For far too long, these cookie cutter characters have tainted an otherwise creative craft. With irrefutable fact such as these, I see no other conclusion then a verdict of GUILTY!

I know, I know, some of you are crying foul on this. “But Kratos is such a bad mo fo!”. Yes, he’s all big, bad, and buff, but strip him of his predictable bad boy act, and look at him as merely a character, and you’d be better off inserting Mr. Clean in his stead.

Then others of you say, “But they have such great personalities, stories, gameplay, and blah blah blah”. Oh yes, I agree. Many of these characters have some great mechanics. Some, such as the aforementioned Kratos, have slick gameplay. So then why water it down with this sickly exterior? It’s plain lazy. It should be even less tolerated in games with such amazing traits as it does nothing but leave the player with a bitter aftertaste

These are but a few of the suspects guilty of this crime. But, let’s not blame this upon the creations themselves for they did not ask to be formed into this blob of mediocrity. It was the designers themselves responsible for these injustices. Why and when did this trend start? What convention did all these designers meet up and agree to make the most mundane and docile creations possible. Even worse, these are supposedly the main characters in their respective game.

Now I have nothing against bald or buzzed people, as I am one of them, but when the gaming landscape is saturated with these abominations, it becomes a problem. What happened to characters that looked amazing and exuded creativity? Characters that took time and effort to craft a persona unseen before. Something new, fresh, and previously unseen. Of course the argument could be made that this ideal is much harder as many ideas have been used already. While I give a small amount of credence to that argument, for the most part, I disagree. When did the human imagination become so stagnant that it could no longer reach beyond the status quo? Who put limitations upon a designer’s ingenuity? The human imagination is a boundless and beautiful thing and is hardly limited.

For far too long we have taken this siting down, standing up, and upside down. Personally I’m a little sore from the whole ride. I’m going back to play Strider 2.