The Virus of Space Marines

I have been playing through Red Dead Redemption lately (review to come later) and the character of John Marston got me thinking that there just aren't that many truly interesting characters in games these days. John Marston is the antithesis of uninteresting. He is complex and his motives are sound, and his views on certain issues and ideas come out through the dialogue Rockstar wrote so well. But for the majority of games these days, how many can truly claim to have a truly interesting character who isn't simply a hardened marine or the cliched "everyman" who gets caught up in something bigger than him? With such games as Gears of War, Prince of Persia (the 2008 release) and Killzone 2, you get either the wise cracking everyman or the marine who wants to kill a whole lot of aliens or people or whatever. Call it lazy on the developers part. Personally, I think that the whole thing behind the space marine epidemic is that developers don't want you to care about the characters sometimes, instead wanting you to focus on the situation the characters are in or on how much crap they can blow up. With the everyman, I see it as a way for developers to make a character relatable to the audience. But sometimes we don't need to relate to a character, sometimes we want to see what THEY think, what THEY want, and how THEY are different from us. The characters of Mass Effect or Heavy Rain really show us how character progression is done right. Those to games had me caring about those characters too the point of thinking about them even when I wasn't playing the game. That's the sign of a good game and, the sign of a good character. I'm having a top ten list of my favorite characters go up soon and be sure to comment on the issue in the comments below. (Speaking of comments, thanks Jessepe)

-Smith