The Plight of the Mary Sue Character in Games

[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.

 

[Kargathia]

Spoiler: snip,snap

Dude, this is why you (EDIT: Yahtzee, not any other posters) needed to play more of the first game - Witchers are generally reviled because they literally kidnap children, then train them to death Spartan style.

Actually, no. They are never kidnapping children. As Geralt tells and displays a good dozen times in the books - only an Unexpected Child that was sold off to a witcher according to the Law of Surprise has any chances to survive the mutation process. So no, they are not kidnapping kids - they are buying them bound by the word of honor.

I don't know how they come across in The Witcher 3, but certainly in the first game a lot of relatively ordinary people disliked or distrusted Geralt - including a fair share of hypocrites and bigots, because the whole point was that everyone is a hypocrite or a bigot one way or the other.

... except Geralt and his friends, who are all sometimes troubled (to the point of wangst, actually. "YOU'VE SEEN MY SCARS GERALT?! OR MY COLLECTION OF LINKIN PARK CDs?"), but nevertheless Ultimately Good Nice Friendly Educated and Enlightened fellows in a world of Dumb, Superstitious Treacherous Liars.

Geralt is also famous for saving a princess, so he's about as liked as Witchers ever get. He is the rockstar of Witchers - young ladies love a bad boy but their parents all want to keep him at arm's (or pitchfork's) length.

Yep. Totally not a Mary Sue. That's without mentioning a few dozens of OTHER female characters in both games and books that melt onto his mutant dick just because it's their sole role in the script. Totally not a Sue.

Quoted to catch attention

But actually it's not Geralt's unimaginable hypercompetence in fucking everything (and no, he doesn't "just knows some alchemy" - he's an expert on a plenty of different cultures, all things herbal, all things monster, all things magic, all things curses, all things potions, fluent in Elven and a few other languages and has more education than entire Oxenfurt put together), his ability to catch attractive women like dog catches fleas or the Role of One Epic Hero that in the end makes him a Mary Sue.

What does so is his effect on the world around him. Like I said - even when presented with a hard choice, Geralt and his pals are still undeniably The Ultimate Good Guys. All the hardships they face only exist to be beaten and make them even cooler, as opposed to being actual hardships. Every single man or woman or monster who opposes them is just stupid, or evil, or insane, or misguided, or uneducated and is there just to be dealt with and maybe give Geralt a reason for some wangst. No matter what conflict Geralt and Co face and what hard decision they take - they forever have the moral high ground. They are always the more moral, the more humane, the more enlightened and more understanding than everyone around them.

That's what makes Geralt a Mary Sue. And that's what makes a Mary Sue so destructive to a narrative - he shits and pisses on the entire world around him on a meta level to look better in comparison.

Geralt reduces the rabble around him from already not the brightest level of Dung Ages to an entire world of people Far Too Dumb To Live, so that he and his pals may look ever so smart.

Geralt reduces the racial conflicts in his world to "some bunches of dumb people coming at each other because they are dumb and hateful", so that he may place himself above it and look good when he "delivers justice" while "protecting" one innocent human/elf by slaying a fivescore of "dumb and hateful" elves/humans.

Geralt reduces the very complex morality system of old times to "everyone is dumb and evil except us", so that he may look sympathetic to us viewers while bashing on it from the high ground of XXIst century morals that he and his pals adopted SOMEWHERE in their cruel and hateful world.

Geralt reduces every single antagonist in the series to a misguided madman or fool, so that he - an unstoppable super-warrior with a fuckton of political power - never gets into a position where HE might be the one fucking up the world around him with all that power by acting first and thinking second.

Geralt reduces everything he touches, and that makes watching his adventures unbearable at times.

Now, I really loved the first Witcher game (hell, I even enjoyed a plenty of things in the second one) and early Witcher books for their wonderful atmosphere, thought-out plot and immersion. But whenever I hear someone praising their characters or dialogues - I just can't stay my hand from grabbing a bunch of feces and flinging them in that general direction.

Oh, and the entire saga fails forever at any sort of morality play. I can elaborate on that if someone gets angry enough with this wall of text. Or at least bothers to read it.

(Speaking about game Geralt here, book version is a different discussion) Aren't most of these points indicative of him not being a Mary Sue? He certainly is a hypocritical jerk with a very negative outlook on pretty much everyone else, but those are probably the "qualities" heaviest against his Mary Sue status.

He certainly has a lot of the hallmarks, but the games are pretty clear on that while he may consider himself dispensing justice / doing the right thing, often it's just a coin toss how exactly it fucked up.

Last note: the games failing at morality is -very- debatable. The majority of choices are unable to be quantified by a morality meter, especially in hindsight. I'm not sure what your definition of "good" is here, but I'm always a fan of crapshoot choices where it's far from clear whether your meddling improved anything.

 

[Scrythe]

That's what turned me off from enjoying the seemingly-universally-acclaimed classic video game Another World [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Another_World_%28video_game%29].

The game starts you off right away with showing the protagonist as a hip, young genius who drives his Ferrari [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferrari_288_GTO] to his private lab, with a private AI and private particle accelerator.

Even if you could justify all of this by the fact that the protagonist is the squishiest character in gaming since the whole cast of the King's Quest series, you still can't devorce yourself from the sheer Mary Sue-ness of Lester Knight Chaykin (Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way).

 

[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.

Why despise Yen
They are so sweet together

Amnesia is a valid excuse!

 

[beebop]

"Geralt is ostensibly considered to be disgusting because he put himself through a traumatic mutation process, the end result being that he's really good at fighting and got an advanced metabolism, with no damage to his mental faculties or physical appearance besides cool and interesting white hair and cat eyes. Oh Geralt you poor lamb. "

You forgot the part where he can't show emotions and more importantly he is sterile. I'd say those are pretty big drawbacks, especially combined with the fact that people usually treat him like shit

 

[ForumSafari]

You forgot the part where he can't show emotions and more importantly he is sterile. I'd say those are pretty big drawbacks, especially combined with the fact that people usually treat him like shit

Which probably themselves contribute to him not being liked.

"Oh no, here comes a witcher. He's disease resistant and sterile so anyone that wants to can fuck him and all the ladies know it and if you object he'll straight up kill you without batting an eyelid. He can also help you get rid of the monster that skinned your little girl the other week but he will charge you money and if you can't pay he'll just leave."

 

[Steve the Pocket]

And then you have Gordon Freeman, who basically spends the whole first game just escaping with his own life - which is pretty reasonable by FPS protagonist standards - and yet is hailed as some sort of Hero of Earth by everyone he meets in the second game anyway, right from the start. It's especially ridiculous when you realize that all of them, even the nebbish Dr. Kleiner, had to have orchestrated some epic escape from Black Mesa themselves before it got nuked from orbit. When you meet Dr. Magnusson and he regards you as just another mook that can help him take down the Combine reserves, it's practically refreshing.

 

[elvor0]

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?"

Well Blizzard sure as hell been trying with WoW as of Cataclysm. No matter what your player accomplishes, no matter who you defeat (that isn't retconned), as far as the story goes you're just there for the ride.

Since TBC actually. Maiev kills Illidan, Aveena, Kalecgosa and Velen defeat Kil'Jaeden, Tirion Fordring defeats the Lich King, and so on. Of course you can't be the actual canon hero in WoW, that would daft, everyone can't be the hero, you've /always/ been a band of adventurers in lore, never actually The Hero. You'll do heroic things, but never be The Hero. I can't remember who canonconically deals with the vanilla raids, but it's not you.

 

[beebop]

As for sterility - wow. The entire ONE drawback of being an unstoppable killing machine - a medieval vasectomy. Now that's worthy of 60 years of angst.

Yeah. Not being able to have children, by far one of the most important things in the world.

And he's far from an unstoppable killing machine, he died getting stabbed by a kid.

 

[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.

Why despise Yen
They are so sweet together

Amnesia is a valid excuse!

Ohh it is.

Too bad that aint the first time Geralt screws up

So I finished The Wild Hunt after only playing a bit into Flotsam in the second game and never touching the first - and just today I played the first game (it was on sale, at long last) and after the attack on Kaer Morhen in the prologue, I can only say that Triss is goddamn predatory. And everyone is so averse to mentioning Yennefer it's like they all want to see Geralt get battered by his missus.

Yeah. Not being able to have children, by far one of the most important things in the world.

Quite a lot of people might disagree with you on that one. And not being able to come to terms with your condition for MORE THAN 60 WHOOPING YEARS?

And he's far from an unstoppable killing machine, he died getting stabbed by a kid.

Died and REFUSED TO STAY DEAD. That's the definition of "unstoppable".

I thought the angst had more to do with the whole School of the Wolf getting wiped and the fact witchers are generally antisocial by nature, travelling alone and only wintering together at the castle. The semi-immortality also means that they'll struggle with long-term friendships with anyone that isn't a witcher or a sorceress, and since witchers and sorceresses are, without exception, varying shades of moody and/or malevolent, that's hardly something to look forward to.
Add to that the fact that witchers hunt monsters for a living, and whenever there's social upheaval, it's the witchers that get it in the neck by the very people they've saved. And the whole world's shite as it is, so I think Geralt having a bit of a grump is perfectly excusable.

 

[Arcane Azmadi]

I dunno if anyone else mentions this (I'm not reading every post) but I was surprised to find that Yahtzee didn't mention (maybe he missed it?) that another one of the "terrible drawbacks" of becoming a Witcher is that you become sterile. Which, combined with the complete immunity to disease, justifies Geralt's ability to bone everything with a pair of tits in the entire world without having to even consider either of the two most common consequences of such behavior.

 

[Kargathia]

Spoiler: snip,snap

(Speaking about game Geralt here, book version is a different discussion) Aren't most of these points indicative of him not being a Mary Sue? He certainly is a hypocritical jerk with a very negative outlook on pretty much everyone else, but those are probably the "qualities" heaviest against his Mary Sue status.

Notice that I say "he shits and pisses on the entire world around him on a META level". Meaning that it's not the actions of a character ruin the world around him, but author's WRITING while implementing said character.

I'm not sure what your definition of "good" is here

Why, I don't use any in here. While the games and the books certainly do, despite their attempts and grey morality.

One of my favorite examples: the first chapter of the first game. The entire issue with Abigail the witch and peasants wanting to blame everything bad ever on her for no apparent reason, despite a certified witcher advising them to look elsewhere for reasons of their curse (because dumb knaves be dumb knaves, amirite?). Game presents us with two chairs: either we wash our hands and allow the peasants to burn Abigail (who, despite not being directly responsible for the curse, is rather a complete ***** and contributed a plenty to the fucked up state of the village), or we pretty much slaughter the entire male population of the village. Seems like a choice with no one "right" outcome at first, right?

WRONG! Should you choose "traditional witcher neutrality", it will echo a dozen fucking times throughout the game, making a number of quests unavailable due too "Geralt having blood of an innocent on his hands". AND IT HAPPENS A BUNCH OF CHAPTERS LATER! Meanwhile killing the peasants has literally no negative consequences. Game straight up says "Yeah, that one ambiguous situation you had on your hands? It was not ambiguous at all - one of the sides was completely innocent, while the other was completely guilty".

>but Marxie that's the way magic works there Geralt became tainted by Abigail's innocent blood!
EXCUUUSE ME? So let me get this straight: the witch, who on her free will sold poison to one of the knaves while explicitly knowing that he is going to use it to kill his brother (and he succeded) still remains innocent, as does Geralt if he chooses to "just" kill a fivescore of peasants, while refusing to commit a genocide on an entire village for the sake of one really questionable soul means "guilty!"? She indirectly kills a person for dem monies = okay, he indirectly kills a person to avoid a bigger bloodshed = not okay. First of all - yeah, we just went from grey and grey to black and white. Secondly - well, local magic sure does have interesting outlook on things!

And there's a LOT of such instances throughout both the game and the books. Dragon or a bunch of village militias? Put militia to the sword! Dumb knaves be dumb knaves (amirite?) and dragons are wise and majestic creatures, nevermind them burning a city or two when they feel like it - "it's just a part of their nature!"

A guy is rather successfully creating an army of mutants to help humanity survive through the upcoming ice age? Well, he might actually have a poNEVERMIND KILL THE BASTARD DESPITE YOU HAVING ALL THE REASONS TO JUST GIVE THEM KINGS THE FINGER AND WALK AWAY BECAUSE YOU'RE A WITCHER NOT AN ASSASSIN.

Driads vs. humans? Humans are DUMB, EVIL and GREEDY, while driads are wise and tragic in their fate.

Powerful Nilfgaardian Empire is slowly taking over the weak Northern Kingdoms? Well, sic transit gloria mundi, right? WRONG! The Empire are treacherous and merciless Medieval Nazis, Northern Kingdoms are noble and honorable freedom-lovers (I see your Polish gonor sticking out like an inappropriate erection, pan Sapkowsky).

That's one of the things that annoys me to no end in The Witcher franchise. It goes out of it's way to establish a lot of situations as having no right choice (which is great), but often can't help but get on a soapbox and through the Divine Might of Writer Favoritism say: "NO, THIS ONE WAY IS GOOD BECAUSE WE CAN DEFINE WHAT IS GOOD AND SO WE DO!"

And this sucks ass.

Being an enlightened mind in a world of blind bigotry does not a Mary Sue make.

It totally does. Being Only Sane and Moral Man in a world of blubbering idiots and mustache-twirling villains is the textbook definition of Mary Sue. Just add "Geralt's pals" and "hot babes" to those two and you'll have the entirety if the Witcher world.

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

Actually, every single positive character loves and respects Geralt. And every single major villain respects him far more than they should, from Vilgefortz of Roggeveen to Yakov of Aldersberg etc etc. Every single knave who dislikes Geralt is in the story only to show how he is ignorant for doing so. Every major power player who opposes him is there only to be proven wrong and/or killed, not before trying to convert Geralt to his side, even if there's literally no use for him in the villain's plans (I'm looking at you, Vilgefortz!).

That's as Mary Sue-ish as Mary Sues go.

Just so we're clear: I'm not debating there isn't a strong case to be made for Geralt being a Mary Sue: there absolutely is.

Many of your problems in the examples you've given can be boiled down to "nobody gives a shit about a bunch of peasants". The ingame repercussions aren't telling you that killing the peasants was wrong, it's telling you that other characters don't care about them. Which honestly is not that far-fetched.

In game mechanics it's dodgy, story-wise it's in keeping with the general theme that everyone - including Geralt - is a meddling idiot at the end of the day.

The universal love / respect also has a few holes in it, even if it is mostly correct. Take Dijkstra for example: he values Geralt's discretion, and his skill at killing things. Other than that he's just one more violent twerp to him.

 

[Tsun Tzu]

Technically speaking, we observe this in Final Fantasy X. Tidus isn't so much the person the plot revolves around as he is the trigger for change - the outsider in a world full of people that don't ask questions. He sparks change, but it's Yuna that ultimately carries it out and is the one whom the plot revolves around. For all his talk of it being his story, Yuna is truly the star of the show, while Tidus takes on the role of protagonist purely for the sake of exposition. Tidus is a bit of a Mary Sue as well; his perfect hair, body, blitzball skills, and natural talent with a sword are the only reason he's along for the ride, but he's definitely not the star of the show.

Be honest now.

The only reason Tidus is involved in the storyline at all is because of the sweet dulcet tones he elicits during moments of uninhibited merriment.

Everything else is secondary.

Well Blizzard sure as hell been trying with WoW as of Cataclysm. No matter what your player accomplishes, no matter who you defeat (that isn't retconned), as far as the story goes you're just there for the ride.

That's a good one, actually.

A lot of MMOs are like that, even when they're doing that Age of Conan "U R TEH CHOZEN WUN...AWL 1 MILLUN O U" nonsense. MMO player characters are essentially tag-alongs for the actual protagonists and only really function as a mobile pest control service.

The same could be said for the Diablos, to some extent, as you're doing all of the work and you're a badass and everything, but the 'Main' characters are the ones who actually get screen time/focus.

 

[LordLundar]

Since TBC actually. Maiev kills Illidan, Aveena, Kalecgosa and Velen defeat Kil'Jaeden, Tirion Fordring defeats the Lich King, and so on. Of course you can't be the actual canon hero in WoW, that would daft, everyone can't be the hero, you've /always/ been a band of adventurers in lore, never actually The Hero. You'll do heroic things, but never be The Hero. I can't remember who canonconically deals with the vanilla raids, but it's not you.

Well Until the Cata retcon it actually was the "nameless heroes" aka the player characters and in the other examples the PC's are praised for doing the bulk of the work and actually being important enough to factor into the story. Wrath for example was essentially this throughout it's entirety. Then a bunch of them were retconned to be Varian doing it single handedly in Cata and the players were reduced to sidekick and comic relief status where's they've stayed to this day.

That's a good one, actually.

A lot of MMOs are like that, even when they're doing that Age of Conan "U R TEH CHOZEN WUN...AWL 1 MILLUN O U" nonsense. MMO player characters are essentially tag-alongs for the actual protagonists and only really function as a mobile pest control service.

The same could be said for the Diablos, to some extent, as you're doing all of the work and you're a badass and everything, but the 'Main' characters are the ones who actually get screen time/focus.

Blizzard was actually pretty good in making sure the player characters were important enough to be a part of the story. No one mentioned by name exclusively but still regarded as important by the factions and a threat by the forces they faced. Prior to Cata while the player might not get the recorded death blow the story is still depicted that without the players the efforts would have failed.

Then Cata rolled around and the players went from "important" to "impotent" and the player isn't even regarded as present. It wasn't the "nameless heroes" that saved Thrall or weakened Deathwing, it just happened or it was attributed to Varian or Garrosh or whatever central NPC was around. It wasn't the "nameless heroes" that led the charge into and up to corrupted Garrosh or prevented his previous efforts to become superpowered, it was . The player quite literally doesn't exist in the story beyond Wrath. Worse yet has been Warlords because the player is considered as little more than a soldier for their faction so any credit for the efforts the player has accomplished is simply attributed to "The Alliance" or "The Horde" so you're not even sure if you actually factor in.

The devs became so focused on writing the story where their characters are the grand heroes that they forgot that the players don't play as those key characters. If you do have an interest in the story it sucks that the most you'll ever be considered is an extra.

 

[happyninja42]

And then you have Gordon Freeman, who basically spends the whole first game just escaping with his own life - which is pretty reasonable by FPS protagonist standards - and yet is hailed as some sort of Hero of Earth by everyone he meets in the second game anyway, right from the start. It's especially ridiculous when you realize that all of them, even the nebbish Dr. Kleiner, had to have orchestrated some epic escape from Black Mesa themselves before it got nuked from orbit. When you meet Dr. Magnusson and he regards you as just another mook that can help him take down the Combine reserves, it's practically refreshing.

I think the main reason Gordon developed the mythology around him, was that he was actually defeating the aliens, not just escaping them. Special forces squads, security guards, you name it, anyone that went up against the aliens, died horribly. Except Gordon. He kept surviving, and destroying their plans to accomplish stuff. So the scientists, after pointing at the alien portal world and hoping he accomplished it, realized he did accomplish it, and were like "Holy fuck, that one guy did all that shit! He's a One Man Badass!" Thus the myth of The Free Man. He's sort of like John McClain from the first Die Hard movie, and the scientists would be the people held hostage by the bank robbers.