This week, I’ll be examining the heroic narrative and it’s close, close relationship to video gaming! I’ll start by defining what I mean by heroic narrative, and then have a short discussion on what its propensity in the world of gaming means for games as art.
A Narrative Undaunted
Now, I should make a distinction here between the hero narrative as a form and heroism as a concept. Though many games conform to the hero narrative, the characters in those games may not necessarily be all that heroic. Heroic activities are unified by this trait: the hero figure rescues another, typically a helpless person or persons, and this rescue may or may not entail self-sacrifice. However, the hero narrative (I’m referring to it this way because heroes more often than not fill the protagonist role in these stories) is a form of story, in which the main character (and perhaps a select group of allies) face insurmountable odds in a battle with very high stakes and still manage to snatch victory from the hands of their opponents. This strain of story can easily be traced back to ancient myth, found in the Hercules and Gilgamesh tales for instance. It also has an incredible foot-print in fantasy and science fiction media as well, which is partially indicative of why video games are dominated by the narrative.
Now, games like God of War may not feature a hero in any sort of moralistic sense (as revenge, which is a distinctly non-heroic action in modern America, is the motivating factor, and Kratos surpasses mere disregard for other human lives in his struggle), but it still contains all the hallmarks of the heroic narrative. The avatar character is the lone warrior against a pantheon of foes explicitly more powerful than he and he finally, despite numerous setbacks and ultimately the sacrifice of self, expends his revenge and claims victory. A simple investigation of the character Kratos shows him to be firmly in heroic territory. He is an immensely powerful warrior, which is evident both in character design and his pitiless manner; Kratos is a more brutal envisioning of the Conan archetype, albeit with less cunning. His immortal foe is, at the beginning at least, the Greek god of war. In his service to that same god, he was driven to kill his wife and child, and so revenge provides the motivation. There is no question that Kratos’ anger is justified, but the story becomes heroic when Kratos elects to seek revenge against an opponent that is seemingly impossible.
It’s worth noting that this is not a heroic story if Kratos seeks revenge against a fellow spartan of similar standing. What matters, for the heroic story, is that the chances of victory are slim or non-existent at the beginning of the tale. To be a hero, the enemy must seem insurmountable. As the old adage states, “A man can be judged by the quality of his enemies.”
This power imbalance between protagonist and primary foe has an important impact on game design. After all, if a protagonist’s foe has access to no more resources nor power than the protagonist, then the game must stretch farther and farther to have any sort of verisimilitude. Barriers to vanquishing the foe begin to feel forced. But the foe need not be especially powerful in and of itself to be threatening and difficult to confront. Sauron can be slain by tossing a ring into a pool of lava; Frodo never even has to confront him directly. But Sauron also has a massive army at his disposal, and the ring itself proves a barrier. Such models frankly work a little bit better than the “cosmic power” villain, since the story doesn’t have to justify why the villain doesn’t utterly destroy the weak hero before the hero can amass enough influence and power to be an actual threat.
Even if the foe and the foe’s minions aren’t constantly threatening at the gates, the heroic narrative ensures that there is consistent opposition and threat. This is a stronger trait in video games heroic narrative than in other sorts of heroic narrative, but that’s because game pacing is in fact designed to suit heroic narratives. For instance, there are frequent moments when Kratos’ loss and untimely death seems assured, but a combination of skill and determination allows him to vanquish his foe, often by a slim margin. This generates a steady pace of dramatic tension in the narrative. This becomes a more dominant trait in God of War 2 and 3, in which boss battles occur at regular intervals to maintain an optimal amount of dramatic tension. That said, many war games also correspond to the heroic narrative, despite often lacking a single defining enemy.
Another common trait in heroic narratives is the ultimate success and survival of the protagonist. There is much made of “satisfying” endings. In the heroic narrative, the hero’s success must be total. This does not mean that there are not sacrifices offered up (though such sacrifices are usually not total, that is, the hero’s life is rarely demanded), but rather that the effect’s of the hero’s journey and actions are significant and lasting. Perhaps the hero has purchased years of peace with his or her efforts, or perhaps the hero has won the cure to a horrible plague. Deaths are temporarily averted, more often than not, and if revenge was a motivating factor, then karmic justice is doled out in full. The sacrifice of self sometimes appears, but it must be handled with care. The death of a character, even if the character is not especially worthy of empathy, can have large effects on the ending of a narrative.
There are plenty of other heroic narratives tropes that exist in gaming; it’s not too hard to see them when you look. I won’t spend any more time defining the narrative, though, and trust that I’ve illustrated it sufficiently.
I Don’t Want To Be A Hero
The heroic narrative has become, in many cases, synonymous with video games. The concept of progression and “leveling up” tie in to the heroic narrative seamlessly. Again, this is sort of common sense, but taking away the powers that the protagonist has collected is a risky proposition. Now, the narrative isn’t totally responsible for that; a player who exerts mastery over a system comes to like options, and having those options taken away can be frustrating. However, the narrative at least reinforces the danger of stealing back character powers, though I think that it may even be partially responsible for it. So the heroic narrative features a steady progression to power. One actually struggles to find games that don’t feature a neatly-implemented progression system after the Super NES era. Now, this progression isn’t a negative thing; I think that progression systems offer frequent and satisfying rewards for playing a game. But at the same time, this progression will more often than not bend the game toward heroic narrative.
What I’m getting at here is that the vast majority of video games are heroic narrative, and this is not necessarily a problem, but working to get outside of the heroic narrative will be important as video games makers seek to produce art. The tropes of heroic narrative are part and parcel of the video gaming experience; if they’re not there directly, they’re present implicitly, or they are directly subverted. But this art form is also quite flexible. Experiences like Braid, which offers an interesting inversion of the hero narrative in that its ending reveals your protagonist to be harmful and dangerous in his tireless search for the “princess,” alternately a purer love than the one he has or the nuclear bomb, (it works on multiple levels. Just play it, trust me) are refreshing because they speak a different dialect than most video games, even as they depend on some aspects of game design that are often explicitly tied to the heroic narrative. In Braid, there are levels that grow progressively more difficult, for instance, though read through the lens of the time-bending mechanics and the ending of the game, this could also easily be read as subversion.
Heavy Rain proves another fertile example. Admittedly, since I lack a PS3 and money, I haven’t played it, but I have watched a lot of videos and read a lot of reviews… hopefully that will be enough. From my limited perspective, I can say that its game mechanics are not exceptionally sophisticated when compared to, say, FPS games. It also shares very few traits with heroic narrative (much less than even its predecessor Indigo Prophecy, it would seem). Now, it sacrifices physical distance to get there, but it does something completely different than most video games, eschewing many tenets of game design in the process. Regardless of its quality, Heavy Rain is an example of something else that video games are capable of. It’s an example of a very different story and a very different experience, and should probably be judged by a different rubric than most video games are, since it is so far removed from the “typical” heroic narrative experience. Most narrative art forms are capable of telling many different kinds of stories, and while video games shouldn’t be faulted for finding a familiar form and building around it, video games should also not be limited by the dominant form. Heroic narrative still has plenty of material, I think, and I sure hope to play some good heroic narrative-style games in the future, but I’d also love to play through radically different experiences, as well.
As a small end-note, I think it’s also worth noting that the hero narrative is going out of vogue. The postmodern project has rendered typical hero tales quaint at best, and destructive at worst. At the very least, hero tales that portray villains as totally evil and heroes as pure and holy have become stale, but also a little distasteful. After all, in the real world villains are more complex. Video games are not often known for their nuanced and complicated treatment of characters and themes, and can often express a “them vs. us/me” mentality. Such forms have less to say to us today (though I won’t say that a work should be castigated because of such a mentality), and games that present more nuanced views of the world would be welcome.