The bad boy protagonist is ruining everything

This.

Oh wait, it's mondblut.

 

Some people love when characters are willing to kiss their asses.

 

Contortionists, you mean?

 

Plastic dolls with shitty voices.

 

Idiot protagonists that force their dumbfack choices on you and have you to solve consequences of their retardation are ruining everything.

 

I think the problem of bad boy protagonists is that they're just, well, lazy.

The Paragon Paladin Archeotype has to deal with moral and ethic dillemas like Right vs Might, Law vs Justice, Loyalty dillemas, some of them are so powerful they have to deal with the fact they're almost Gods (Superman) and people sometimes up to them as such, risking them being dependent on his power and help. They also often have to deal with people looking up to them as a example.

The "Rough around the edges" outlaw hero has to deal with their lack of rules to their behavior, and how low can he/she slip in the name of justice. He also has to deal with the law, which sometimes has good reasons for going after him. Think Batman or Jack Bauer.

The anti-villain has to deal with doing evil for a good cause, ends justifying the means. Think Black Adam.

The fake ultimate hero has to deal with the unwanted fame of being considered awesome by pulling the shit that made him be considered awesome even through that shit was a accident or a fluke. Think Ciaphas Cain.

The Super-Soldier hero has to deal with essentially being created to fight and kill and destroy. Can he turn himself from the slaughter and dedicate himself to constructive activities or is killing the only thing he's good for?

The bay boy hero is like a bad version of "The Man Without a Name" or Conan: He creates his right through might, rarely has moral dillemas, has no ethical limits to his activity (so he can do whatever he wants to the villains), is always looking annoyed or being snarky all the time, can be a douchebag because he brought the omnimorality license, yet never goes crazy or has any sort of breakdown.

 

Thank you for that, May I suggest a new term of derision for new instances of popamole? Triple Bay games with visceral Bay grade action!

 

I think we should have a real bad guy as the main character.
Not this faux badboy shit.

 

The problem is that bad guys usually don't have a motivation for traveling around the world embarking on glorious quests. They make a name for themselves in some place and then sit on their ass letting minor criminals take care of the "thrilling" stuff.

JRPGs have anesthetized me to this. When the protagonist or a party member does something retarded like telling the king off in front of the entire court, I just smile sadly while the guards drag everyone to the dungeon, knowing it couldn't have happened any other way.

 

Meh, even GTA games have main characters that are good bad guys.
That's bullshit. We need a real bad guy, an up and comer street thug who will steel, rape, and murder his way to the top.

 

I agree with this, but additionally I think HHR would have been better with titling the thread "Developers/Publishers following stupid protagonist trends are ruining everything." Don't really agree with HHR entirely (surprise, surprise), but mostly because he pulls some kind of Man-na Sarkeesian and misses the actual problem because he has an agenda. The problem isn't completely because "bad boys" are lazy, but also that they're usually not done very well because they're done so often and you have the law of averages coming into account.

I've recently got through showing someone all four seasons of The Pretender. It's not a great TV show by any means, but it's certainly a classic case of someone deciding to follow trends... in one show. The protagonist - played by the voice of The Nameless One if you're interested in trivia - basically turns from a "paladin" (though partially because of guilt included in his desire to help people) into a "dark, brooding emo" for no real reason, so much so that the reshot a single line that appeared in the show's opening to make it more snarling and angry. This was because that's when "dark" and "edgy" characters was becoming a "thing", and someone involved with the show's creation decided that's what should be done. Add in a bunch of other stupid show changes and abracadabra: your alright show gets turned into an unbearable train wreck.

It's generally the same thing I see happening in games: something will be super successful, then everyone decides to jump on the bandwagon and do it, even when it doesn't make sense.

 

Being a bad-boy is a luxury of a safe and controlled society. Being a 'bad boy' in Hyboria will get your skull split, as a general rule.

 

One of the best examples of "bad boy" is Kain from Blood Omen 1. He is saving the world so he is a hero, but he is also an anti-hero and not just because he is a vampire, he does not actually care about the world he is saving he just wants to find his killers.
And his voice acting is spot on perfect.

 

IO attempted this and failed with the Kane & Lynch series, thought that failure may well have been down to the fact that the gameplay was so poor more than anything else. But I do remember a review of the first game at launch (It may even have been the Jeff Gerstmann review) where the reviewer was completely put off by the fact that the major characters were all dickheads with few redeeming qualities.

In fact, on the subject of IO, isn't the pre-Hitman Absolution Agent 47 a real bad guy? Kills mostly for the cash money and occasionaly for revenge, that's it. Bad man.

 

I don't play modern games, so i don't know about this "bad boy" thing, but one of the things i find insufferable about modern Hollywood is the lack of morality even among the so called "heroes". Perhaps the problem is that this trend is creeping into video games as well.

 

HumanTotemPole yeah, Agent 47 in the first game was all about the money. Not really the human friendly type. Actually, some things were altogether foreign to him. In one scene, a woman kisses him on the cheek and he visibly shudders, recoiling at the act. Not just because she's a dirty hooker either.
But rather, it's because those feelings, those actions, are foreign to him.

 

An archetype that doesn't work in interactive fiction and isn't terribly realistic either.

A good fit for video game protatgonist if the narrative doesn't constrain mechanics and gameplay, actually.

Anything more noble should be a result of player's agency, although game reacting properly is, of course, welcome.

Suddenly Iliad.

 

I'm told the audience is supposed to "relate to" to a protaganist who is a dumbass for some reason.

Just goes to show that attempting to have the audience "relate to" a character is nothing but trouble.

 

Not to mention that in a computer game audience pretty much *IS* the character (in before denial from virtua-LARPers) so character doing something stupid against player's judgement shoots any attempts at making character relateable down.

 

That's why shit like Last of Us bugs me. Maybe I don't want to mercy kill the infected guy, but I'm told to shut up and do it because, damn it, our character development is more important than the player. The game doesn't have the decency to kill the guy for me, it gives me just enough control to do its bidding.

 

I see nothing irrealistic about paladins. Archeotypes don't come out of the void, you know? There were people genuinely like that in history - Noble, chivalrious, educated, honoured, etc.

 

It is because of the popular appeal for the REBEL!!!! protagonist. Makes sense, if you consider that most gamers are overgrown kids. People who forgot to realize that they are past puberty. I blame final fantasy fans.

 

And by sheer coincidence, every single one of them was wealthy and never lost a war. I'm sure they were very insistent about having history record their deeds very accurately.

Paladins are about as realistic as Robin Hood or the Punisher. Real people are either powerless and swept aside by ruthless assholes, or they compromise their morals to achieve their ends. Nice guys finish last. Assholes finish first and use their influence to declare the losers assholes from their position of authority.

Real life paladin:

 

Realism, according to sheltered suburban nerds who have never endured hardship in their entire existence, yet lecturing us about how "real" life is all gritty and shit. Evil and darkness bro, evil and darkness.