It isn't interesting anymore. Gary Stus are S-T-U-P-I-D. I don't want to live your dumb Dragonborn/Mad Jesus/Chosen One/Literal Piece of Poo Elder God/special little flower-snowflake-fantasy, you sweaty, smelly nerd/whoever you are. I don't believe your character's stupidly tragic backstory for a second and I have no reason or capacity to empathize with him.
Fuck you!
It's boring being the center of the universe.
Oh chosen one, only you can do the dumb thing to save us! Oh please, oh Chosen One, oh Hero-Man, only you can punch the Dragon-Dolphin in the dick and light the Candle of Eternal Huge Dicks to save our Big Dick Party!
Fuck the world! Fuck everything! I just want to hang out with my pal Garrus, pork that hot-ass goth tavern wench, pork Garrus, listen to Queen, mine some ore, and at the end of the day just be a regular halfling-miner-dude who owns a little mine and as an ex-solider is good with his ol' rusty axe who's competent enough to kick a mini-Dragon-Dolphin in the cooch and save his small village, then resume his relatively regular-everyday-normal-guy life and get constipated once a month, motherfucker. Halfling-Miner-Dude who gets constipated once a month, has one good eye, a bad knee, a robot-arm, and likes his women with orange hair is a better character than Shepard will ever be no matter how hard anyone tries.
There are two recent mainstream RPGs that haven't done this bullshit:
Yes, GTA V is an RPG. Firstly, the stats and broad structure are there, but if you haven't caught on or know what kind of role-playing I'm talking about already, I'm not talking about whatever your thinking. I'm talking about role-playing. GTA V works so much better than you'd probably think for RP because while the characters are ridiculous stereotypes, they're no different than anything else in their world. Everything in the GTA world is satirical, whether it's good at that specifically or not is another debate. But the main point here is that I do think it's good for role-playing, because the player-characters are believable, and natural for the world they exist in, and aside from being proficient at thieving, they're not overtly special or immortal people. And they're written in such a way that the player is allowed/it feels intended to project or role-play a personality/different characters onto them without ham-fisted black & white choices. They all have this, but for example take Trevor since he's the most popular: on one side, he's a completely unhinged, relentless psycho. On the other, he's shown to be honest, loyal, and having something of a chivalric code.
In-game it is almost completely up to the player which parts of his character are emphasized. He can be a relentless, cannibalistic, Jason Voorhees-esque mass murderer, slaughtering civilians and selling people to lunatics in the mountains, or he can never kill anyone who doesn't shoot first and be a relatively regular, eccentric, drug-addicted career criminal. This is all up to the player and it's meaningful, and unique, and most importantly Trevor Philips is not the motherfucking Savior of the Galaxy.
Geralt is a comparatively rough or imperfect example, as his history from the books makes him an A-list celebrity with a piece of every kind of medieval media about him. That's a bit much for an ideal RPG character from get go even with amnesia (don't mean to be condescending, but yes, I know why he has amnesia as a plot device). Point is he's a bit too beefy. But as for his pros as a good role-playing character, he's a mutant, freak, sterile, an outcast, very attractive but only if one's into the extremely gruff, nasty scars-look.
He's an interesting minority with an interesting culture and the player is given a multitude of different ways to define his personality. He's a bit too overpowered since he's basically medieval-Wolverine, but his role-play potential negates most of that in my opinion, especially since he's still incapable of being the god damn Hero of Earth. He can stab a big monster and argue good with a learned bureaucrat, but he's not nearly powerful enough to save the universe and beat up Cthulhu exclusively with his fucking tongue. In my ideal RPG, Geralt is what an endgame player-character should look like.
I hope what I'm saying making sense to somebody, and I hope my examples don't suck. I'm trying to say that too many characters in mainstream RPGs aren't interesting to role-play or even play as. It's a crock of shit. You're supposed to be able to act out an interesting character and escape into an adventure, not somebody else's silly 'power-fantasy.' Character customization is so meaningless. In most games I can't even make a good freak. All my characters are too hot and all I can think about is how I'd rather be masturbating to them than playing them. Where the fuck are my fucked up deformities? Why can't I be fat?
The kind of faux characters in faux role-playing games are even worse in the context of MMORPGs especially with the incorporation of single-player-ish campaigns. I have had some of my best role-playing experiences in The Old Republic but in order to have those experiences everyone has to dismiss their weakly diverse companions and ignore the fact that we're all technically playing as super badass Jedi, Sith, Boba Fetts, Solid Snakes, and James Bonds. That's stupid. In-universe, in any MMORPG why the fuck should anyone respect their guild leader and not trying to constantly overthrow him if we're all just as powerful?
That's all I got. I really wish more people role-played or at least understood what they're missing. ):
Fuck you!
It's boring being the center of the universe.
Oh chosen one, only you can do the dumb thing to save us! Oh please, oh Chosen One, oh Hero-Man, only you can punch the Dragon-Dolphin in the dick and light the Candle of Eternal Huge Dicks to save our Big Dick Party!
Fuck the world! Fuck everything! I just want to hang out with my pal Garrus, pork that hot-ass goth tavern wench, pork Garrus, listen to Queen, mine some ore, and at the end of the day just be a regular halfling-miner-dude who owns a little mine and as an ex-solider is good with his ol' rusty axe who's competent enough to kick a mini-Dragon-Dolphin in the cooch and save his small village, then resume his relatively regular-everyday-normal-guy life and get constipated once a month, motherfucker. Halfling-Miner-Dude who gets constipated once a month, has one good eye, a bad knee, a robot-arm, and likes his women with orange hair is a better character than Shepard will ever be no matter how hard anyone tries.
There are two recent mainstream RPGs that haven't done this bullshit:
- Grand Theft Auto V being the first and best example.
Yes, GTA V is an RPG. Firstly, the stats and broad structure are there, but if you haven't caught on or know what kind of role-playing I'm talking about already, I'm not talking about whatever your thinking. I'm talking about role-playing. GTA V works so much better than you'd probably think for RP because while the characters are ridiculous stereotypes, they're no different than anything else in their world. Everything in the GTA world is satirical, whether it's good at that specifically or not is another debate. But the main point here is that I do think it's good for role-playing, because the player-characters are believable, and natural for the world they exist in, and aside from being proficient at thieving, they're not overtly special or immortal people. And they're written in such a way that the player is allowed/it feels intended to project or role-play a personality/different characters onto them without ham-fisted black & white choices. They all have this, but for example take Trevor since he's the most popular: on one side, he's a completely unhinged, relentless psycho. On the other, he's shown to be honest, loyal, and having something of a chivalric code.
In-game it is almost completely up to the player which parts of his character are emphasized. He can be a relentless, cannibalistic, Jason Voorhees-esque mass murderer, slaughtering civilians and selling people to lunatics in the mountains, or he can never kill anyone who doesn't shoot first and be a relatively regular, eccentric, drug-addicted career criminal. This is all up to the player and it's meaningful, and unique, and most importantly Trevor Philips is not the motherfucking Savior of the Galaxy.
- The second game(s) I think does this well enough is the Witcher series.
Geralt is a comparatively rough or imperfect example, as his history from the books makes him an A-list celebrity with a piece of every kind of medieval media about him. That's a bit much for an ideal RPG character from get go even with amnesia (don't mean to be condescending, but yes, I know why he has amnesia as a plot device). Point is he's a bit too beefy. But as for his pros as a good role-playing character, he's a mutant, freak, sterile, an outcast, very attractive but only if one's into the extremely gruff, nasty scars-look.
He's an interesting minority with an interesting culture and the player is given a multitude of different ways to define his personality. He's a bit too overpowered since he's basically medieval-Wolverine, but his role-play potential negates most of that in my opinion, especially since he's still incapable of being the god damn Hero of Earth. He can stab a big monster and argue good with a learned bureaucrat, but he's not nearly powerful enough to save the universe and beat up Cthulhu exclusively with his fucking tongue. In my ideal RPG, Geralt is what an endgame player-character should look like.
I hope what I'm saying making sense to somebody, and I hope my examples don't suck. I'm trying to say that too many characters in mainstream RPGs aren't interesting to role-play or even play as. It's a crock of shit. You're supposed to be able to act out an interesting character and escape into an adventure, not somebody else's silly 'power-fantasy.' Character customization is so meaningless. In most games I can't even make a good freak. All my characters are too hot and all I can think about is how I'd rather be masturbating to them than playing them. Where the fuck are my fucked up deformities? Why can't I be fat?
The kind of faux characters in faux role-playing games are even worse in the context of MMORPGs especially with the incorporation of single-player-ish campaigns. I have had some of my best role-playing experiences in The Old Republic but in order to have those experiences everyone has to dismiss their weakly diverse companions and ignore the fact that we're all technically playing as super badass Jedi, Sith, Boba Fetts, Solid Snakes, and James Bonds. That's stupid. In-universe, in any MMORPG why the fuck should anyone respect their guild leader and not trying to constantly overthrow him if we're all just as powerful?
That's all I got. I really wish more people role-played or at least understood what they're missing. ):
