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Driven By Our Flaws
By Corvus | May 20, 2008
Our literature, from Gilgamesh to the Green Lantern, is strewn with the fractured egos of flawed heroes. Even that paragon of perfection–Superman–was eventually provided with an Achilles heel in the form of Kryptonite in an effort to retroactively apply some form of flaw.
Of course, the interesting flaws are not ones of a physical limitation, but a psychological one. Loki thought himself too clever by far. Rorschach was certifiably insane. Joan d’Arc heard voices. John F. Kennedy spent time in the beds of beautiful blonds (and was possibly in bed with the mob as well). Bruce Wayne was so emotionally scarred by the loss of his family that he sacrificed a fulfilling personal life to wear a bat suit and hang out in a cave.
So what about game heroes? Do they fit the mold? Are they flawed in some significant way? And more importantly, if they are–how is the flaw expressed through the gameplay? In this post I’ll discuss two strong examples of gameplay representing a game’s central character’s flaws.
Our first flawed hero is the eponymous Max Payne. Max was an honest cop who played things safe, preferring to maintain some life balance so that he could spend time with his wife and newborn daughter. That all changed when he arrived home one evening to find his house overrun with junkies and his family dead. The pain and anger and loss were too much for him and he shut down emotionally, taking a dangerous full time position on the force as an undercover officer.
The first game starts at the end of the story, with Max saying he’s fired the last bullet, that it was all over. Then it jumps back in time to the very beginning–the fateful evening that started Payne out on his path towards destiny.[1]
The good and the just were like gold dust in this city. I had no illusions. I was not one of them. I was no hero.
The game then jumps you forward to the point where things start going horribly wrong for Max professionally. He even knows that something isn’t right, that the train has jumped the tracks, and still he moves relentlessly forward. So intense is his focus on revenge that time itself dilates around him as he dives around corners, guns blazing, filling his targets with slugs of digital lead, hoping that by causing enough pain, his own will lessen.
Now imagine a Max Payne put on mandatory leave when his family was killed. Imagine a Max Payne forced to spend some serious time in a therapists office. In a survivor support group. Imagine a Max Payne that no DEA agency in the world would allow to investigate a drug cartel whose product was involved with his family’s killing. Yeah… hard to picture a Max Payne video game not driven by the title character’s flaws, isn’t it? The stylized run ‘n’ gun gameplay is the perfect representation of a man in over his head, following a line of action described by the path of a bullet.
Our next flawed hero also happens to be named Max. I was put in mind of him when Chris mentioned Bloodweb in his Round Table entry. This Max isn’t so violent as Detective Payne. This Max, in fact, is a doctor who has just found a cure to a deadly virus.
This Max is Dr. Max Laughton of the adventure game Sanitarium. Like the previous Max, Dr. Laughton is driven by the death of a loved one–his sister. Max’s flaw isn’t a permanent one. In fact, it’s a flaw that’s overcome by completing the game. Max, you see, trusted the wrong person with his research and now, after a terrible car accident, he must find his way through his own fevered imagination as it warps his perception of reality, transports him to fantastic hallucinatory worlds and brings him deep into the corridors of his memory.
Sanitarium drops hints about the central character of Dr. Laughton while providing the player disparate environments in which to solve a series of environmental puzzles. Unlike the fiendishly difficult Myst, Sanitarium did a good job of leading you through each bizarre world, allowing you to feel an increasing sense of mastery as you uncovered more and more about the character you controlled. In the game’s final scenes you actually feel as if you’ve finally uncovered the truth about yourself and a strong sense of vindication when the central conflict behind the game is resolved.
It’s masterful storytelling via game mechanics that wouldn’t have been near as compelling if the hero actually seemed heroic throughout the entire game.
But the use of flawed characters to inform and drive gameplay in interesting and compelling ways doesn’t end with these two games–not by a long shot. I challenge you to come up with a list of your own flawed heroes whose very flaws create the gameplay you enjoy. I’m sure you’ll think of one or two. Who knows–maybe you’ll even write your own Round Table entry about them before the end of the month!
See what other’s have to say on the topic of this month’s Round Table:
[1] One of the uses of back story that I approve of, by the way–let me play it! [return]
Tagged:Blogs of the Round Table, character flaws, storytelling. | 3 Comments »
May 20th, 2008 at 7:49 pm
Good stuff. It’s funny, when I first read the Round Table discussion about character flaws in videogames, the first one I thought of was Max Payne.
May 21st, 2008 at 1:17 am
[...] a recent post on Man Bytes Blog, Corvus talked about Max Payne’s bullet time. From the programmer’s point of view it [...]
May 21st, 2008 at 1:32 am
I… I … I just had to write more about flaws. I swear it’s the monkey’s fault. My elbows are not pleased. RUN!
Alright, my dadaist needs are fulfilled for now.
Turns out the subject of character flaws is much more profound than what I could have anticipated, and I can’t just stop thinking about it. What can I do? Blame my brain.