This is something I do not understand but has been poisoining our industry for years and is becoming ever more prevalent.
Everywhere I look gamers are drooling over how bad ass certain characters, games and even boxarts are. Othertimes I see them complain about how a character isn't bad ass and that the game or character sucks because of it (Raiden to name the most infamous case)
Because of this companies are churning out cliche's and otherwise shit, one dimensional characters and storylines that have absolutely no depth. The dialogue in Gears of War, GoW2, Resistence, Killzone, Haze, hell, pretty much any big budget FPS or action game out there is becoming increasingly cringe worthy due to badly delivered, testosterone fueled lines consisting of 90% swear words. But gamers demand this, they reward it with mountains of praise on how "bad ass" certain, otherwise shallow elements of a game are.
This in return results in even more games delivering shallow storytelling, thinner and more cringe worthy scripts and one dimensional characters that are becoming more and more difficult to tell apart (see, big, bad space marines for the 21st century video game cliche).
Killzone 2 went even a step further, by not only including the mandatory, cringe worthy testosterone fueled dialogue but also throwing on huge, ridiculous gas masks with red glowing goggles onto enemy units for no apparent reason. Sure, there was some half assed explanation given in the backstory of their website, but it left so many plotholes that it's obvious that the masks were included with no other intention but to up the "bad ass" cred of the game.
It is literally taboo in western games for characters to show any emotion or weakness. It becomes instant "emo", hate material and offenders such as Raiden, JRPG characters and others become crucified in the "not bad ass enough hall of shame". Why do gamers place such an emphases on shallow, most often stupid and emotionless but "bad ass" characters? And more importantly, why do gamers virtually kill characters that conform to a more human standard -that have a sense of empathy, deal with emotional difficulties like most of us, that show a gentle side and compassion, and characters that in general aren't all out killing machines?
Surely, most gamers are not all killing machines themselves. Surely, most gamers carry at least a spec of empathy and emotion and are more than a reflection of their one dimensional space marines?
Are you guilty of this, of applauding the cringe worthy cuss-offs and murderous looking main characters while badmouthing everything that isn't up to some sort of universal "bad ass enough" standard? Why?
"Bigger, better and more bad-ass" pretty much sums up the industry's current infantile complex of game design.
