I can separate what he's saying from who he is, and on the basis of his assertion of "gee, I'm tired of playing douchebags in games" I ABSOLUTELY AGREE. I'm fucking sick of playing someone who Smolders With Generic Rage, and who is trying to be viewed as a sympathetic figure even as he murders people by the truckload. If he's gonna be a douche, REVEL in the douchery, like the baby-seal-clubbing that is apparently in the very beginning of Overlord 2. Or better, give the main character a slightly geeky side, or vaguely accident-prone, or possibly not very smart, or ACTUALLY make them witty (instead of sounding like those circa 1995 US cartoons where characters were "hip!" and "edgy!" and their dialogue made me want to ram a pencil in my eye), or something. Give them a flaw, but don't make them ENTIRELY A FLAW.
I think someone who toes the line an excellently acceptable amount is Jimmy, the main character in Rockstar's Bully. At times he can be a little bit of a toolbox, but most often he's just trying to keep people from trying to beat him up. He sticks up for the little guy a non-after-school-special fashion. Taking from a fellow game designer, "his motto is 'this place sucks, don't make it worse,' as in don't make a shitty place [Bullworth Academy] suck more." He's by no means a role model, but they not only keep him from being too-goody-goody, they give him a rival who is just so EXCELLENTLY douchey that you cannot wait to see him get taken down in a big way.
But yeah. Had it up to here with douchebags in games. If given the option to make a character, yeah, I might see how much of a jerkstore I can be, but god, if more games made it so the main character wasn't a brooding dickwad, Annie would be happier by far. And while Tidus got on my goddamn nerves way too much, I can admit his sort of personality type is a nice change (his "main character isn't a silent tool" in the FF series actually came about with Zidane in chibi-tastical FF9, but nobody on this board fucking cares, so nevermind). That assertion should be taken as a push for more varied characters, not a plug for FFX, so wind down the JRPG-hate-o-meters, too.