Ugh, let me see... Batman's nothing more than a playboy-turned-capitalist's-wet-dream, Superman is the living embodiment of small-town American values (family and faith anyone?), Spiderman's a hyperactive teen with ADD and severe father "issues", Wolverine needs to be neutered before he can be shown on film because the marketing execs have decided that it's supposed to be "for kids"... wouldn't a better thread title be "Heroes you DON'T hate"?
The weird thing is that I don't think this thread applies to any videogame because in the vast majority of them nowadays you see through the hero's eyes.* The obvious exception is JRPGs, and then it's pretty much a given that the main character will be a particularly unpleasant precocious twelve-year-old who needs the barber's scissors a lot more than he needs a mystical sword.
*I except the Duke of "Duke Nukem 3D" (sadly not "Duke Nukem Forever" now), but unusually for a FPS you get to see him a lot (in reflections in mirrors, water, etc). Also he's hilarious.
The same has been true throughout history by the way. Most of the ancient Greek "heroes" practically defined "emo", with parental "issues" bursting from the "jacksie"; moving to more recent times, the typical heroine in eighteenth-century novels would have been a simpering moraliser, in nineteenth-century novels a self-absorbed drama queen, and in twentieth-century novels an ex-drug addict with an abusive boyfriend who she keeps obsessing over even as she's declaring her independence from him. The same applies to the male characters from those periods (misogynistic alcoholic private investigators anyone?) In short, everyone hates the hero!
On the plus side, look at some of the villains and secondary characters. Who didn't love the Joker or Commissioner Gordon in "The Dark Knight"?
The weird thing is that I don't think this thread applies to any videogame because in the vast majority of them nowadays you see through the hero's eyes.* The obvious exception is JRPGs, and then it's pretty much a given that the main character will be a particularly unpleasant precocious twelve-year-old who needs the barber's scissors a lot more than he needs a mystical sword.
*I except the Duke of "Duke Nukem 3D" (sadly not "Duke Nukem Forever" now), but unusually for a FPS you get to see him a lot (in reflections in mirrors, water, etc). Also he's hilarious.
The same has been true throughout history by the way. Most of the ancient Greek "heroes" practically defined "emo", with parental "issues" bursting from the "jacksie"; moving to more recent times, the typical heroine in eighteenth-century novels would have been a simpering moraliser, in nineteenth-century novels a self-absorbed drama queen, and in twentieth-century novels an ex-drug addict with an abusive boyfriend who she keeps obsessing over even as she's declaring her independence from him. The same applies to the male characters from those periods (misogynistic alcoholic private investigators anyone?) In short, everyone hates the hero!
On the plus side, look at some of the villains and secondary characters. Who didn't love the Joker or Commissioner Gordon in "The Dark Knight"?
