The bad boy protagonist is ruining everything

I wonder if video games would have gone downhill as badly if they latched onto lesbian half-vampire protagonists or secretly super hero protagonists (who can only change into their alter ego when the rest of the party can't see them for one reason or another) instead.

Actually, that really does make clear to me one of the most consistent sources of dumbing down in the industry: Idiots come in on some wave and learn how amazing some underlooked genre is... because they have just encountered one of the shittest things in the genre (FF7, KotOR, Oblivion, CoD) and think THAT is amazing because they never encountered the genre before.

 

If you mean the FF series, none of the protagonoists were emo douchebags.

 

I will grant you that paladins are equally as realistic as zombie skywizards who love everyone and hate masturbation and shellfish.

 

Well, FF8 had an emo douchebag hero that caused me to abandon my support of square products.

 

Squall was.

 

To be fair, both Squall and Cloud were apathetic douchebag heroes. Emo implies that they spent a ton of time and effort whining about their dark, grim pain, which wasn't the case. The only character that really springs to mind is Vincent from FF7. And he was a secret character anyways, not even part of the main plot.

 

Yeah. Squall's characteristic was that he didn't talk about his emotions with anyone, which is the opposite of "emo". Whether you consider him a douchebag depends on how you think annoying fuckers like Zell or Selphie should be treated.

And Cloud wasn't a douchebag. He's quite friendly, in fact. Maybe a bit cocky, but that's justified.

 

Nor was Cloud apathetic.

Squall was the dark brooding stereotype, which I associate with emos, but I can see why one might not.

 

Well, I never saw him as dark and brooding either, just antisocial and "boring". He's just not interested in interacting with others more than necessary (and then Rinoa comes and "fixes" him with the power of love )

 

Well, Cloud never had much dialogue, and what he did have...

Seems pretty apathetic to me. Certainly in comparison to everyone else, who were hyperactive spazzes by comparison.

In the case of both Squall and Cloud, they strike me as not wanting anything to do with their incompetent comrades (which makes sense, given that they're both ostensibly mercenaries and their comrades really are useless cretins they didn't have much choice in accompanying.) The doucheyness comes from the fact that they have pretty much the same reaction to being offered free ice cream as they do to reports of epic failure or desperate pleas for help. That goes a bit beyond apathetic into plain dickishness.

 

One great thing would be a paladin character in real world setting where basically one would choose an objective for a suicidal mission and destroy the forces of evil. Evil clerks, bullies, gangers, politicians, that sort of human scum. The goal would be to achieve 1:10 casualty rate.

 

I like the bad boy protagonist. It functions as a failsafe flag for media that proudly displays its worthless, shallow nature and cheerfully admits that it ought to be avoided by any rational being.

 

This.

One thing I hate about most so-called RPGs is that they make "good" boil down to an easy binary choice. A truly well designed game should force player to compromise their stance if they wish to survive, with player only getting to choose which way. If you have your standard, worn and tired D&D LG paladin as protagonist the game should at the very least force you to choose between L and G at some point and kick you in the ass hard for either choice (albeit in different ways), possibly even force you to do something nasty to survive. Even supposedly deconstructive games, like PS:T make being consistently good possible, nice and easy.

It also applies to shit like pacifist runs and so on. Sure, mechanically being able to do a technically pacifist run is desirable - it caters to a character without combat skills. However, technically pacifist doesn't need to and shouldn't be actual pacifist run.

And finally this.
An archetype of knight, paladin and other sorts of idealist character generally revolves around holding some ethos and set of ideals higher than everything, including one's life.
However if cast as player character this involves everything noble but none of the hard parts - effectively rendering nobility of good parts meaningless (plus some parts would be difficult to monitor mechanically).

Updated my dumbfucks.txt .

 

Yeah dudes, reality is like, shit and stuff. There are no heroes, people are assholes, its all bitches and bling, faggots. Word, yo.

 

Awww. LS is trying to be cute again.

 

I like the quote from the Mudder's episode of Firefly where the captain says something like, "The way I see it, anyone with a statue made in their honor was some kind of asshole."

EDIT: Mal: It's my estimation that every man ever got a statue made of him was one kind of sumbitch or another.

 

But he's right.

 

Losers always cry about their best. Winners go home and fuck the prom queen.

 

I think this derision of the paladin archetype is misplaced. For one, it's not that common in fiction. For two, I don't think lawful good is the paragon of virtue in the west. The good that is worshiped in the US and the UK is really neutral good. The person that does good for good's sake and doesn't let anything get in their way. The most famous hero in English language literature is probably Robin Hood. He's clearly chaotic good.

 

ITZ called "projecting"

 

You don't believe in authruistic people? I can understand the lack of belief in deities but cmon. Progressives nowadays is the degenerate version of a paladin. There should be a game about a progressive, might as well keep an eye in the indie scene.

 

Thats not a real word (and certainly more than a typo) but assuming you mean altruistic then it boils down to two things:

Even 'altruistic' behaviour is ultimately a matter of wanting respect, assuaging guilt, or other such selfish ends. It can certainly produce a great deal of self sacrifice, but it still has to prioritize one thing over another. No amount of altruism lets you make everyone happy, you still have to pick a side to help in any conflict, and having every such conflict be against evil incarnate is the only way to make a character that never has to do something evil to make ends meet.

Secondly, the path of altruism is one that leads speedily downhill, for it is charitable in nature. If you're giving up your wealth and influence for the sake of justice and righteousness, soon you have no wealth and influence left, and beggars can't be paladins. Suppose, for example, you wanted to give some poor third worldians a fair wage for their work, or better conditions, or whatever. You could certainly do that if you had the wealth in the first place to do so (which you presumably inherited, rather than than acquiring it by being the sort who would work people to death for a pittance in the first place) but you'd be operating at a loss, and soon find yourself out of business. You wouldn't miraclulously gain ever greater wealth and fame and influence and be renowned as the generous saviour of third worldia like a paladin should.

All that said, while I think paladins and deities are unrealistic bullshit, they do make for good entertainment, so long as they aren't over used. The story of a holy chosen warrior who fights on against impossible odds but wins anyways because he's the hero is a classic one for a reason. People love that shit. They love it precisely because it's something they can't have in real life, just like magic and aliens and kung-fu masters that can smash rocks with their bare hands. I wouldn't want to see any of that shit fade out either.

As an added bonus, such black and white stories are a lot easier to tell properly. You don't need lots of sensible dialogue and realistic motivations. You just need slavering bloodthirsty hordes and wordlessly violent masters behind them. I'd certainly prefer that over badly written biowarian good/evil choices that give you two equally implausible clownish ways to play. At least this:



has the benefit of having some coherent themes to work with, instead of trying to make a game where your allies stand by you whether you kick puppies or spend hours saving someone's precious lost kitten.

 

Yes, and that expands to modern society as well, since moderntards can only seem able to interpret history in lieu of their own degeneracy. Like Schuon said, modern "civilization" has rejected what is "above" man only to pave the way for what is "below" him, and then history is reinterpreted according to this sub-human conception of mankind. And notice how the underlying premise is always that of reverting hierarchies, not only in terms of values, where the lowest aspects of man are exalted while all the greater values such as heroism, virtue, charity and so forth are relegated to some idealistic fantasy, but even class is factored in where the vulgar and the ignorant are considered to be superior to those of noble birth or spiritual disposition, thus in one stroke removing the very model by which the "common" man would measure himself thus escaping his own mediocrity by participating into something greater. Indeed, aside for the deeper esoteric meaning hidden in the ancients myths and tales, the "heroes" and "saints" of ancient times were meant precisely to present an archetype which all men would strive to imitate, thus creating a bridge between the civitas Dei and the profane world, elevating the latter into the process.

 

The real issue is whether or not bad boys brush their teeth before going to bed.

 

I don't think Paladins only fit black & white settings, Fallout is pretty grim and gritty yet you can be pretty paladin-like on it, if somewhat of a Paladin that leaves a trail of corpses on the way to good (but they were all raiders and mobsters, so fuck them, pray for their souls and move on). You can even be a 100% Pacifist who resolves pretty much everything through dialogue and persuasion, and what you can't persuade, you sabotage with stealth, cleverness and SCIENCE!

This also applies to Arcanum, etc.

Problem is that most RPGs essentially push you into Noble Pure Paladin of Good vs Hilariously Maniacal Omnicial Machete Rapist Baby-Eater because they only feature a simple Good vs Evil meter with a X axis. Some of them also push you towards the very bizarre character type that's some weird sort of Evil/Good balancer who does good and bad acts to be "neutral". "Hmm, I feel pretty vile lately, I'm gonna give some water to beggars!" "Hmph, I feel too nice. I'm gonna burn a orphanage and rape a defenseless girl to wash off this excess goodness."

D&D is actually better because you now have a X and a Y axis rather than just X: They may be both good/evil, but there's a serious difference between Honest Upholder of the Law, Good-Heartened Outlaw Hero, as well as there is a difference between Vizir Traitorius who manipulates the law and Machete Rapistius the guy who randomly murders rapes and eats peolpe for teh lulz.

I would say adding a Z axis to alignment would be awesome. Althrough Age of Decadence shies away from Good-Evil axis, I like how one of its personnal modifiers is Honour/Loyalty (can't remember which). Why? Because in some traditional CRPGs (Fallout, Arcanum, etc), many quests had alternate options where you betrayed your questgiver and fucked him over in favour of the guy/faction his actions will screw over somehow. These "Screw over your original questgiver" options were actually more lucrative or easier sometimes and there were simply NO consequences of being a fucking doubledealer. This exists to combat that.