It's come a few times, but we here at Never Say Dice have a somewhat unique generational viewpoint as "cuspers" or X-lennials or whatever they're calling us this week. We were the very last students to have our primary schooling take place in entirely the twentieth century, and while they were on their way out, we still received a fair amount of Cold War rhetoric and American Exceptionalism, especially in the earlier years of elementary school. Notably, we got some of the final vestiges of the kind of "
Great Man theory" our parents also received, curricula full of flawless figures, sanitized into simple stories for easy digestion by attention-deficient pupils: founding fathers, war hero presidents, tireless inventors... In our region, at least we were lucky enough to cover Martin Luther King and Harriet Tubman, their fascinating lives stripped down to a few selflessly heroic actions that helped solve the crises of their day. They were special, unique people (most hagiographies were sure to cover their notable childhoods) and they did special unique things. It's a viewpoint that's
mostly gone from our history (Teddy Roosevelt and Nicola Tesla worship notwithstanding) as more people have a wider understanding of systemic issues and there's less of need for an emphasis on rugged individualism to differentiate us from the homogenized uniformity of the communist hordes. Where it's still present, there's the undercurrent of "success through unique capability," particularly with individuals who have made gains in
STEM fields - those whose exploitation would be particularly effective under capitalism... but that's something we'll discuss later in the post. (You guessed it, it will be about
Metal Gear.)
"Great Man" theory is still a concept that permeates a lot of our culture, though, and not only for propagandistic purposes (although those are certainly still present), but because it's one of the standard modes of characterization in media. So electronic games, as a kind of uber-media uniquely able to draw from so many others, were bound to feature a lot of "Great Man" characterization simply through osmosis. And, when working with the severe limitations of early games, where story was primarily a matter of evoking feelings through music and symbolic visuals, "Great Man" is a good fit: the hardware can only handle one protagonist against a horde of enemies, so the player character is literally the only one capable of defeating them. This was worked into the backstories told via manuals and the backs of packaging materials as well - how often have you been told outright that your character is the best at what they do, or innately talented despite being unproven, before the crisis of the game's story even begins? If you're trying to rescue the President, you can assume you're already a Bad Enough Dude to do so, even if Mr. Sunglasses Man phrases it as a question. After all, when you've only got a few minutes (if that) to hook a player, you don't have time to start with a training montage.
But, as anyone who's played games knows, the trope has stuck around, especially in games that offer the player a power fantasy. As game lengths increased, the timeframe was extended backwards, following the protagonist's journey
to greatness, but never doubting greatness as the final goal after all the challenges... and this is where we add "Chosen One" to the conceptual mix as well. I'm not as keen as some folks to apply the "Hero's Journey" framework to everything, finding it somehow too vague ("everything follows the Hero's Journey if you just squint hard enough!") and too limiting ("
Star Wars is based on the Hero's Journey, so that means we just need to copy
Star Wars in particular)" but this is one aspect that's unavoidable and all-too-often taken entirely literally. As will be revealed gradually (depending on the game), your character will discover/be told that they are a uniquely designated or foretold figure, the Chosen One of your own generation or of all time. (Or, through time travel shenanigans, both, but I suspect this scenario is mostly satirical.) Chosen One narratives run the gamut of gaming genres, but RPGs (of both the Japanese and Western varieties) are particularly susceptible. Again, it's easy to see how this ties into the limitations of early games, especially in comparison to their tabletop inspirations. When you don't have the imagination of a gamemaster (or their library of pre-published material), there needs to be some inherent significance to why the player character
and their choices
matter. Much as I find early "solo dungeon crawl" efforts like
Temple of Apshai charming, they're also fundamentally unsatisfying, especially when compared to games like
Ultima and
The Bard's Tale, which presented a goal, a narrative climax to work towards. (To be sure, they were the
same goal, but when you ain't got much, "defeat the Dark Lord" is good a goal as any.) Not to mention there's a certain symbolic significance to the player's character being the most important in the world - much like Zaphod Beeblebrox's encounter with the
Total Perspective Vortex in a simulated universe, the game's world exists solely for the benefit of the player.... no wonder a creator might want to make them feel important, especially when it's technically difficult to populate that world with anyone else.
If those are the reasons the "Great Man" trope was so prevalent in the early years of electronic gaming, why is it still so popular today? It's still all over the place culturally, of course, even if it doesn't form the basis of historical education as it once did - we still love the spectacle of epic beings doing epic things. As such, superheroes are generally embody this trope to some degree, depending on the particular character, their setting, and the general tone of the piece. Western superheroes, and even moreso, their Japanese counterparts in shonen manga and anime, offer to lay bare another significant appeal of the "Great Man" that we see replicated in games: the power fantasy. This isn't inherently a good or bad thing, and there's plenty of positive energy in growing a character over time, watching them become stronger and more capable. But there are also games that give us little else, presenting the protagonist as a fully-powered hero right from the outset and thriving simply on the rush of vicarious experience. Interestingly, though, this is where we see a lot of the potential for the trope to be subverted.
We've
discussed before how anyone coming into the
Metal Gear series through any installment other than its very first (released in 1988) will go in playing a character whose prowess and abilities are unmatched, who is literally referred as a "legendary hero," a term that might as well have come from the founding texts of "Great Man" theory. (I'm aware that the term "legendary hero" is a common translation of a particular Japanese concept and shows up in a lot of other media as well.) But none of this gives him any reward over the course of the narrative - every
Metal Gear game is about powerful characters being simple components of larger, more complex systems that use them up and throw them away when their purpose is served. To go back to a statement earlier, this matches the way that students who excel at certain fields are lauded and praised... only to go into careers that serve only to make the wealthy wealthier and the world a worse place - something
Metal Gear is pretty explicit about in its portrayal of the Military-Industrial complex. This kind of commentary is only possible because we, the audience, go into the games with "Great Man" expectations... and we can see what the world does with them.
One complaint I tend to hear (and have made myself) is the way that gameworlds, even today, often seem to exist solely to build up the protagonist, to be the backdrop by which the hero can make their legend. So one way to counteract the potential for embodying the worst elements of "Great Man" characters is to make the world around them great in itself: interesting, unique, populous, and detailed - just as the theory itself has long been countered with an emphasis on larger society and the material conditions in which it exists. This is a takeaway that applies to tabletop games as well: if you want to integrate your characters into the setting, you need to show that existed before them, exists when they're away, and will continue to exist after they're gone. "Great Man" theory is one that always amplifies existing prejudices and justifies the status quo - they must have been great, look at what they accomplished. But it's also around us, and far to easy to replicate in stories of our own. Keep an eye out, and you're bound to see a lot more of it out there than you realize... then take your observations and make worlds where everyone, and everything, is great... not simply those who are "destined" for it.
- B
Send questions, comments, and more weird nineteenth-century sociological thought to neversaydice20@gmail.com or tweet us @neversaydice2.
