The Plight of the Mary Sue Character in Games

[Nurb]

I get what he's saying, and can appreciate it from a stand-off position, but when it comes to escapism, I want to be really good at stuff in a game. That's the whole point. I wouldn't want to be some regular shlub

But I can see a game not being consistant and being annoyed with that.

 

[The Almighty Aardvark]

Ideally, a game where you play exclusively as a secondary character would do a few things:

[ol]
[li]The true hero of the story is not always (or even usually) around. They can be off doing something that impacts the story in a significant way, and you have to find out after the fact, once the consequences of his actions impact you.[/li]
[li]When you and the hero are fighting together, you play an active support role, not just an extra party member. This could mean playing healer, or disabling enemies so that the hero can get hits in, etc. Not too different from how teams play in an online game.[/li]
[li]The game's major plot revolves around the big hero, but the emotional story and themes revolve around the player character. Perhaps a focus on feeling powerless compared to the hero, or annoyed at being dragged on someone else's quest.[/li]
[/ol]

I think the idea of two at-odds stories running at once, one driven by an external conflict and observed almost as an outsider, the other driven by internal conflict and human growth of the player character, could be really interesting. I've actually been thinking about this a lot lately as an idea for a novel or movie, but it could work especially well as a game if done right.

I think you've got the right of it here. After reading the list I was about to say having a more personal, down to earth story for the PC would be a great way to justify them, but then you went and beat me to that.

I would actually love to play a game like this. There's so many games out there where you pull together your team to fight the greater evil, wouldn't it be interesting to be one of those pulled into the team for a change?

I feel like you could do that without robbing the character of their agency or choice too. In DA:O your party members can turn on you, you could express your agency in a similar way. Your leader makes a decision you don't like? Stand in their way and try to stop them.

There might be a story greater than you going on, but it still doesn't mean that they can't make yours captivating

EDIT:

Actually that does sound kind of interesting....as a one-off side episode of Batman The Animated Series, not a full game. In Gotham, players aren't going to want to be the random dude even if that random dude has a fully fleshed out backstory and interesting characterization, they want to be Batman.

I'd play it. I think that one would work particularly easily because you already plenty of opportunity to play as Batman if you like (Via one of the many other games). Playing someone in Batman's world, who's totally outclassed and has to make do anyways would be interesting.

 

[Not Lord Atkin]

What's funny about The Witcher especially is that in the books, Geralt is pretty much just this over-idealistic bloke with a hero complex. He is also a bit of a hypocrite, always claims that he's politically neutral even though this proves to be impossible time and time again. He always tries to do what he thinks is 'the right thing' but cocks up spectacularly because he fails to see the bigger picture. The sentence 'Don't mistake the stars reflected on the water at night for the heavens' is uttered on multiple occasions throughout the books and always proves to be true for Geralt. The fact is that he and his actions are mostly insignificant in the grand scheme of things.

The choice system in the Witcher games tend to reflect this in interesting ways; the fact that the consequences of your choices tend to be largely unpredictable is an interesting way to play into the idea that the books play heavily with - that the choice between what appears to be right and wrong in the immediate situation will often prove to be vastly different in a wider context.

That said, Geralt and his choices in the games tend to carry quite a lot of weight and have far-reaching consequences. This sort of clashes with the general theme of the books which was more concerned with relativity of what is right and wrong and insignificance of an individual going against the waves - or perhaps just being arrogant enough to think that that's what he is doing.

I can see that tracing back to the idea of recreating the world inside a game - especially since nihilism tends to erode the feeling of interactivity. Alternatively, you could see this as the developers being a bit too much in love with the source material, missing the point of the character somewhat.

 

[Thyunda]

I liked the qualities of Geralt as a protagonist - the heightened metabolism, basic magical signs and faster reflexes all, to me, seemed like someone justifying video game tropes. Just mercenary enough to warrant taking money for 'questing,' and morally ambiguous enough to realistically let you swing between good or evil without making him look schizophrenic or unstable. Sure, he's the rockstar of witchers - but for me the best part was when you go back to Kaer Morhen quite late on and Lambert, Eskel and Vesemir do nothing but demean Geralt's achievements. "Oh look I'm Geralt and I hang out with hot women and kings and everyone loves me," while Geralt mutters failed one-liners against the evidently far wittier witchers.
Though Geralt had the best limericks.

"Lambert, Lambert, what a prick."

It was moments like that, when he kind of dropped the robotic mentality once he was among his old buddies. I wouldn't know about his capacity for softer emotions though, I utterly failed to romance Triss because I wasn't paying attention and I despise Yennefer, so...yeah.

 

[Grumpy Ginger]

From what I can tell he does seem to be one of those characters that skirts the line between sue and non sue. I can think of few others but part of that might be the game design itself. I'm playing through dishonoured and I realized that Corvo is a little similar he's a badass swordsman, instantly knows how to do magic and can take entire armies down without being seen. However as Yahtzee said its up to the players to decide if they live up to that reputation. Also though making these character skills multi faceted is what games like dark souls and skyrim let you do. With you always starting off with the ability to do all skills at a low level so you can customize your play style.It just seems weird when you don't have a blank slate character since it make them seem overly competent and where the hell did they learn how to do all that.

 

[DementedSheep]

I think part of the problem with stories and game is since it is a game the players want to win and the player and the character they are playing as tend to bleed together. A lot of people hate forced loses, having to do something wrong and having other characters call them out on shit they had no choice about doing or without having an option to say the perfect rebuttal they thought of. Having those sorts of thing is a big part of difference between a Mary Sue and a character who is just powerful.

 

[FPLOON]

You know, this part made me think:

But in a video game, the plot revolves around the protagonist by necessity

Could a game ever work where you are not the star of the show? There's someone more competent than you, around which the story revolves, and you are an observer or support. I'm curious if this could work, although it'd definitely be difficult to justify it to the people asking "Wait, why am I not playing as him?"

I remember a game where you played as a security guard trapped in a booth telling a person what to do what to do by watching cameras and speaking into a microphone.
Don't remember the name of it though.

Spoiler: Was it this game that X-Play reviewed?

Bark like a dog...

OT: I don't know shit about Witcher, but I will say that it's interesting that video games, for the most part, give the Mary Sue the better representation that other mediums just because of their overall interactivity... With that said, this could ultimate clash with games that want to tell a specific story under a specific setting with specific controls, so I can see this working better in more open world/choice-based games where the outcomes are based on the actions you partake within the game itself...

Overall, Mary Sues can make great video game protagonist, but only when the interactivity leans more towards the player than the game going into, I guess, "movie mode"...

 

[Cerebrawl]

My first connotation to Mary Sue is a dreadful hate propaganda mill.

Geralt however doesn't really feel like a Mary Sue to me, he's a specialist. He's a monster hunter that's lived to be over a century old, so of course he fights well, and is a great tracker... his social skills could definitely use some work though, and his magic use is weak and limited, no more than a dilletante.

He's earned himself a reputation, even becoming legend, but that's because he's been fighting monsters for generations. You run into people who's heard about you from their grandmothers from when they were young.

 

[Kopikatsu]

As mentioned, every other game in the Final Fantasy series has the character presented as the player character (more specifically, the audience surrogate) play second fiddle to the main character. Locke to Terra, Tidus to Yuna, Lightning to Vanille, Vaan to Ashe, and so on.

 

[Amir Kondori]

A hero character is not necessarily a Mary Sue. I think you've read this wrong.

 

[The Madman]

If Geralt is a Mary Sue, he's pretty damned terrible at being one considering how badly things often turn out whenever he ends up getting involved in other peoples problems.

Also is The Escapist not doing a Witcher 3 review? I was kinda looking forward to the inevitable drama surrounding one, whether it be a high score or a low one.

 

[Transdude1996]

You know, this part made me think:

But in a video game, the plot revolves around the protagonist by necessity

Could a game ever work where you are not the star of the show? There's someone more competent than you, around which the story revolves, and you are an observer or support. I'm curious if this could work, although it'd definitely be difficult to justify it to the people asking "Wait, why am I not playing as him?"

There was that PS2 game "Michigan: Report From Hell". The PC character in the game is the cameraman for a news crew, and all he's able to do is just record everything that's going on. He's unable to perform any other actions aside from directing the other characters on occasion.

 

[Imre Csete]

Wow, sorry guv', this article makes just as much sense as the Borderlands 2 review, and for the same reason, you should really finish atleast one of the games first.

Get to Novigrad in the third to see just how shunned you can be, you can even get murdered on the street by the church's orders if you stand up against them a bit too much. Or get into fistfights over Gwent because mutants cheat at cards. Berengar in the first game even betrays the Witcher caste to the antagonists because how much being one sucks, and Lambert in the third doesn't turn out to be a fan either. His sidequest even mentions how one of the other schools turned into reviled assassins. In the Witcher 1 tutorial area you can find out that a progrom raised the castle into the ground, that's why there are so few of Geralt's buddies around from that part of town. All it takes just some looting around and reading. Part of the motivation behind the plot of the second game is that Witchers don't have it easy. Geralt is like the top 1% in that regard, Eskel even lampshades it in the third game.

And for being a Mary Sue, there are sure a lot of moments when you can fail in spectacular/gruesome ways across all games, and even end the trillogy on a really down note.

 

[Balkan]

Yahtzee certainly hasn't done his homework this time around. Geralt isn't really disliked by the whole of society, he's actually made tons of friends throught the book series of which the games are sort of sequels.
Witchers are said to kidnap kids and put them through the incredibly dangerous and painful proccess of turning them into witchers. That's why Geralt's proffession is shunned upon by a lot of people. That's an interesting part of the backstory of the witchers and brings some ambiguity to the proffession. On one hand, they save a lot of people by ridding the world of monsters, on the other, they straight up murder children.
Also, there's a reason why Geralt gets so much female attention. Witchers live much longer than normal humans and sorceresses are almost immortal. Surely if you're 100+ years old, normal people would bore you. I haven't finished The Witcher 3, but there's a pretty good narrative justification for all the sex scenes up to this point. Yennefer is his big love from the books, Triss was a love interest in the past two games and Keira Metz was simply horny from all the time spent alone in the countryside. One thing on which the developers dropped the ball is Geralt's appearance. He's said to have lost all body pigmentation, his skin is supposed to be littered with ugly scars. That was certainly the case in Witcher 1 and 2, but in 3, his skin is looking pretty healthy and most of his scars have healed. He also has a better haircut and a cool beard. Overall he's a pretty handsome ************ this time around.

 

[Neurotic Void Melody]

If you're wondering why the Mary Sue's called that, it's the name of a sort of Porto-Mary Sue character from a piece of Star Trek fan fiction in the 70s called 'A Trekkie's Tale', where Mary Sue was universally loved and respected by the entire crew despite being way too young for her post. The word Mary Sue sort of mutated from there.

Mary Sue refers to a character originally called "Ensign Mary Sue" from a long-running Star Trek Fanfic from the dark and early days of the internet. The character was, in many ways, a spoof of the self-insert characters people were (and still are) writing into their fan works.

Through her career, it is revealed she is half-Vulcan, half-Klingon, half-Romulan, and ultimately a member of the Q Continuum. Throughout her story, every character she meets falls in love with her, and all challenges are victories for her through no effort of her own, usually because her opponent considers her too awesome/great/beautiful to fight. In her final story, all of the disparate governments of Star Trek elect her Queen of the Universe because of her grandeur and poise, and her great beauty.

Her name became synonymous with the characters she was lampooning, hence the phrase "Mary Sue."

Here is the parody that originated the trope name:
http://www.wiccananime.com/amslt/amslttrekkiestale

Oh I see now. Thanks for the info! Am rather glad that parody isn't particularly long as it is not exactly pleasant to read.

 

[killerbee256]

Usually the Mary Sue character (why that name?)

It comes from a star trek fan fic making fun of mary sues people were creating around that time in 1978.

 

[sageoftruth]

Interesting argument. I think that may be part of why I like the game so much. Skyrim tried to set me up as a hero, but nothing I did ever felt like it mattered. The fact that the fate of the world seems to revolve around everything Geralt decides to do in Witcher 3 makes my choices all the more engaging. So, perhaps you're right about Mary Sues not being a problem in games.

 

[LordLundar]

No, Geralt is NOT a Mary Sue. To call him one requires redefining the term. Being an enlightened mind in a world of blind bigotry does not a Mary Sue make. Geralt doesn't walk into an area and make very intelligent, capable people become blithering idiots. He's simply specifically trained and has considerable life experience. For a character to be a Mary Sue, they need two things:

1. The character is loved, respected, and admired by all the characters for no reason or worse, despite their actions. Any respect and admiration Geralt received was earned by the time of the third game and I doubt it is universal. Don't forget the second game he was locked up for regicide and had to explain what happened.

2. The character is a walking Deus Ex Machina, able to overcome any task with no effort applied. Now call me crazy, but if that was the case, then the game would be despised for being FAR too easy.

Now if you want an example of a Mary Sue character, look up Thrall in World of Warcraft. He was essentially turned into a walking god, had his allies, enemies, and borderline deities praising him and the most active things he had done was make stupid decisions that caused world war to break out and show up at the last minute to "save the world" after the players did all the hard work. THAT is an example of a Mary Sue.

 

[TreuloseTomate]

Over the course of the game, my Geralt has majorly fucked up some decisions, that he lost his Mary Sue status a long time ago.

 

[mega lenin]

Great column this week, Yahtzee, but I would digress on a few points.

1. Mary Sue's can and do work in films and books. Perhaps the most iconic example would be Indiana Jones. He's handsome, smart, tough, punches people, gets to shoot foreigners with no repercussions, fights Nazis, says great sarcastic quips, has all kinds of women crawling over each-other to touch his long firm whip, and has a bad ass jacket and hat. His only flaw is a fear of snakes played for comic effect in each movie with no real consequence to be had from said fear. The Action Adventure genre is filled with them because the genre's main appeal is escapism via vicarious fantasy. To borrow from Plinkett, the appeal of these characters isn't the characters its being them. They're vessels for us to imagine our selves doing awesome things, having awesome adventures, saying awesome things, having everyone see how awesome we are, and hooking up with awesome people.

2. Mary Sue's fail when the world around them seems only to exist to emphasize how awesome the Mary Sue is, because everyone else in it is grossly incompetent. Take for example the Say No To Video Game Drugs episode (The Game) in Star Trek TNG, where Wesley Crusher essentially by himself had to save the Enterprise. Riker comes back from Risa a changed man, playing a virtual reality pong game 24/7, telling everyone how great it is. It was all he was talking about non stop like some kind of obsessed psychopath. Normally when people don't seem themselves they get sent to sick bay to start reasoning out what's going on, but whatev's let's all break character and put on this silly head gear cause Riker, with a thousand yard stare, told us its the shit. Thus Wesley is the sole voice of reason and wisdom in a universe where every adult is having too much fun tossing a disc into the mouth of a worm using their mind. We as an audience reject this kind of Mary Sue, because the world itself broke our suspension of disbelief. It is when the world devolves into some kind of solipsistic fantasy that cowtow's to one character that it begins to lose the audience.