Disclaimer : The following article was written freely based on the author's opinion, and it may not necessarily represent Inven Global's editorial stance. 

When video games were advanced enough to finally portray “characters” instead of simple dots and blocks, they often game with a recognizable feature to help differentiate themselves from other, similar pixel-people. Mario had his mustache. Link had his hat. Simon Belmont had his whip. In the 1980s, this was enough in-game characterization to convince players that their favorite characters were more than just the simple square in Adventure, but as technology improved, we saw the need for more personality in our protagonists. Mario’s peppy, carefree disposition made him the perfect mascot for Nintendo, while Sonic’s rebellious attitude – certainly a product of its time – was as mesmerizing for fans as his games’ fast-paced platforming.

Role-playing games were largely the exception to the rule, allowing players to project their own personalities and personal attributed onto the characters they controlled – in fact, it was and continues to be a large point of the genre. But soon, this sort of choose-your-own-adventure approach to character design was translated into the first-person shooter as more of a “blank slate” approach. The famous “Doomguy” has essentially no characteristics outside of his desire to murder demons, and this was used to hilarious effect in the 2016 reboot. Elsewhere, however, intentionally leaving a protagonist as the vessel for a player’s own personality, can undermine games’ ability to tell anything more than a basic “good versus evil” story.

First-person shooters are unquestionably the most guilty of under-writing protagonists because of the perspective alone. If you can’t see who you’re playing as, it makes sense that there would be less need for these characters to be fully developed. When the genre was in its infancy and games’ storylines were little more than excuses for players to blast thousands of bad guys to tiny bits, it may have even been preferable. There was no need for Duke Nukem to comment on the moral struggle he suffered through while murdering aliens because they were the point of the game – in modern game storytelling, with few exceptions, the enemies must emerge as a consequence of other plot developments? Players wouldn’t be invested in a series like Halo if Master Chief was killing the Covenant and Flood with no clear end-goal. It’s this sense of purpose and story-driven accomplishment that can motivate us to essentially do the same thing for hours at a time.

And if the story surrounding the player-character is compelling, this can often be enough to keep our attention and interest until we reach the conclusion. Gordon Freeman never says a word in the entire Half-Life series. Until Wolfenstein: The New Order, BJ Blazkowicz didn’t have a well-developed personality, and he was rarely the target of criticism. After all, he was just a tough guy killing Nazis. But should we stop at “enough” if we want to continue seeing games improve and have their writing held to the same quality standard as books, television, or movies?

Many of the character roadblocks we’re encountering with game narratives today are related to the “everyman.” Let’s look at Wolfenstein: The New Order as an example – it’s a game that delivers a surprisingly thoughtful and sensitive take on resisting fascist rule and even lets players known that it’s perfectly fine to relish a Nazi’s death, but perhaps in an effort to avoid alienating certain players, developer MachineGames has never stated that Blazkowicz is Jewish. Instead, a statement shortly after the game’s release said that the studio would just “leave it for the player to interpret.”

In Wolfenstein: The Old Blood, BJ discusses the small holiday of Purim with a Jewish girl hiding from the Nazis. He works with a Jewish engineer in The New Order who seems to treat him as one of his own, and Wolfenstein 3D designer Tom Hall even said that his “intent” for the character was Jewish descent on his mother’s side. There’s no question: BJ Blazkowicz is a Jewish character. Were the game’s developers willing to fully confirm Blazkowicz’ Jewish identity, it would create a whole new layer to his actions. He wouldn’t just be fighting the Nazis because Nazis are bad, but as an act of self-preservation.

An ethnic, racial, gender, or religious identity isn’t even required to transition a character from the basic everyman into someone worth remembering. Take Joel from The Last of Us. On the surface, he’s a gruff, graying-haired man who is trying to save the world. Things don’t get much more generic than that. But by opening the game with scenes of his tremendous loss – his daughter dies in his arms almost immediately – Naughty Dog was able to create a wrinkle in the character that most of us can’t directly identify with. As a result, we no longer make decisions based on how we would act in a certain situation, but how we think Joel would act. At the game’s conclusion, we have no choice but to watch as Joel effectively destroys the world, carrying an unconscious Ellie out of the hospital before doctors can destroy her brain and develop a cure for the fungal infection taking over the planet. There is no “good” option, because we don’t get to make the choice. Joel has already made it, even if we disagree.

We need more games that are willing to take agency out of the hands of the player when it’s necessary to tell a story, and the first step in doing so is creating characters that don’t reflect the majority of the audience. We all, or at least most of us, like to believe that we’re fundamentally good people, and we prefer to make morally just choices in our games to best reflect that. In role-playing games, giving players that choice is certainly a fine way to approach stories, but in more linear games and those with more focused narratives, it will lead to too many happy endings. Games have the potential for so much more than that, and developers have to put the ball back in their own court if they want to subvert our expectations again. Otherwise, there’s little reason to experience a new game’s story at all.