Empty shell protagonists

Games are quite unique in that often the protagonist is literally just a camera and a floating gun. Doomguy, point man, and corporal marine sergeant are all from big titles yet have literally no personality. They don’t even have a name. They are blank slates, empty casing, carcasses I suppose; and too often than not, they make for bad games. Games that while they might be fun, you just don’t engage with in any emotional way. Critically though, there are exceptions, and these are important.

Generally speaking, when you pick up a book or watch a film, you are invited into the world that it presents through a character. The character will be established in the world and have a deep back story with it in one way or another. He/she will have a personality, a history, and relationships. You need this, because you, as the new person in this world which you are being invited into, have none of these things. If a plot is to unwind you need a base for it to unwind around; that’s this character – and as long as you empathise with them and their situation you effectively become this character with their personality, history and relationships, so not only are you in this new world, but you care about what’s going on inside it.


Doomguy doesn’t have a personality. He’s just this guy, who has these guns, and…erm…he shoots bad monsters with them. He technically has a history and backstory, but these are hidden away in a readme file and I wouldn’t class them as deep. You don’t care why your shooting monsters in doom, you’re just doing it because they’re monsters and I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that if doom wasn’t one of the first of it’s kind, no one would care about it now. There are endless titles which have totally failed to be engaging because of the sheer lack of a character to latch on to, and when these have bland or fairly standard gameplay mechanics bolted on, well you get a game that no one cares about. This is what happens most.


There are some games though, that while having no central character that you can get your teeth into, still produce a pretty decent game. There is Just Cause, Turok 1, Prey, Crysis, and lots others. While these are good, they are just that – good. They are never great, they never excel and are not going to be brought up in ten years as still being good now. They have other ‘killer apps’ sure – crysis is pretty, Just Cause is big and parachutey and Turok had dinosaurs, but these are effectively novelties, and novelties by nature fade over time. This happens second most.


Lastly, there are games that still give you an empty slate, but something almost magical makes them astounding. Gordon Freeman has been silent since we first lived through his eyes all those years ago. All we really know about the guy is that he has a beard, is/was a physicist at Black Mesa, and has a penchant for crowbars – yet somehow we know more than that. From the start of Half Life 2 onwards we know he’s a nice guy, and a hero. We also have the complete drive to accomplish whatever Gordon wants to accomplish, and throughout the game we are utterly engaged in what we are doing. We want more, continuously, and Half Life 2 will forever be remembered as truly great. All this happens because of one special person – Alyx.


In Morrowind you, whatever you call yourself, are literally nothing (you know, apart from when you find out you’re some resurrected god but that’s late on so is irrelevant as far as we’re concerned now). You are a prisoner to start with but other than that, you’re not defined at all. You can make yourself good, evil, stealthy, strong, an ork, a human or an elf. There is nothing in that character to bind you to Vvardenfell, but from the moment you open your eyes on that ship, there is a plethora of interesting and often bat shit crazy NPCs willing you on your way. The naked guy whose had his clothes stolen by a witch, the crazy Telvani woman who keeps going on about Ash Yams, and the wizard who plummets from the sky outside of Seyda Neen – these are what Morrowind are about.


Marcus Fenix…No, I’m joking. Chell is a woman inside Aperture Science. You don’t know why she’s there but she is and doesn’t seem to be complaining. She gets handed a portal gun and puzzles ensue, and while the puzzles are good, they aren’t the reason I love Portal. I love portal because it was hilarious, Glados (whatever the caps) was hilarious.


The difference is obvious with these great games that will be forever be called great, and the good ones that will wither with time. It is of course that while these games don’t create a base through the main character, they do it through a good, strong NPC – or in the case of Morrowind and it’s ilk lots of NPC’s. What’s even better about this than having a well defined main protagonist is not only do we have a way in to the world through the NPC, we can also actually become that blank slate character. By removing personality from the protagonist, we can fill it with our own. Alyx doesn’t make Gordon have a sad yet genuine laugh with her Zombine joke – Gordon is incapable – but she makes us laugh and we feel sad because of the situation. It’s almost heart wrenching, and you can’t get that any other way.


Stories need a base, a way in to the world for the reader. For films and literature, it’s the main character; for games it’s normally the main character, but it shouldn’t be. As we have seen, using someone else to give us grounding in a world is fine, hell, it’s even better on occasion, but it needs to be done right – and the only way that can happen is through characters like Alyx, like the random crazies in Morrowind, and like Glados. You do this right and add some of that unquantifiable gameplay magic and you have yourself a great game. These NPCs have personalities, histories, and relationships plus they can interact with you, not the character. Bring this all together and you have something rare but utterly brilliant. This happens the least.