Lately I’ve been enjoying the Dragon Quest VII remake, Fragments of the Forgotten Past . One thing I noticed early on is that one of the game’s main heroes, Prince Kiefer, is kinda futt-bugly. I admit, I’m not a huge fan of Akira Toriyama’s character art at the best of times. Kiefer, though? He looks like a young Jay Leno put on a wig made of straw and punched himself in the face a lot… and I rather like the poor bugger for it. After all, royalty is no guarantee of beauty. I’m not exactly shivering in my socks to see Prince Charles appear on my (Canadian) currency someday. But Prince Kiefer’s homely looks made me think about how we could actually use more ugly heroes in video games.
Why do so many of our game heroes look like supermodels or extras in a Magic Mike movie? It’s an issue that pervades all of our media. In fact, it’s worse in movies and on American television, where anybody less than stunningly gorgeous is relegated to comic relief, villaindom, or simply not allowed on camera in the first place. At least in video games we have heroes like Mario or anybody in a Bethesda game, shaped into relative non-gorgeousness by the limits of technology. The more our technology improves, however, the more games start to look like Hollywood – and even beyond that, with heroes sporting gravity-defying busts, impossibly large muscles, and with never a facial blemish to be seen.
The problem with these impossible creations, aimed at fulfilling player fantasies of being beautiful and powerful (or desiring a beautiful and powerful character), is that they join the rest of our media in putting an insidious message in our heads. If all our heroes are good-looking people, we start to think that good-looking people are better than everybody else. This unspoken prejudice has been shown in studies of job interviews and contest judging (even for things that aren’t supposed to be about beauty), especially for women. It’s an issue for men as well, though, as we know that tall, svelte, or obviously strong men are viewed more positively than their peers. Our games may indulge our fantasies, but they also help warp our brains a bit. I think it’s good for us to step away from that fantasy sometimes and tell the story of a different kind of hero.
In fact, we like seeing ordinary or even exaggeratedly ugly people save the world sometimes. There’s a trend for players to create the oddest malformed creatures they can in RPG character creators and then use them to save the world. Not only does it feel a bit cathartic to buck the trend of carefully sculpted beauty kings and queens, it’s often hilarious to see the overwrought RPG dialogue come out of the mouth of somebody whose face looks like a failed pottery project. Actual game designers don’t need to go that far, of course, but I think we’d enjoy seeing more normal-looking Joe and Janes saving a fantasy or sci-fi world. I know I enjoy using character creators to make fuller-bodied heroines, while my skinny husband often plays female characters because he doesn’t like the super-beefcake male body models in most games. We’d both love to see more pre-designed characters who look a bit more like us, as well.
It’s especially important to see more female heroes with average looks. Although the industry is getting better, all of us too often look to female game characters as either our personal sexual fanties or our personal beauty inspirations. We as game fans pick the design of female heroes apart and mod them to death in our PC games, all in the service of creating our own personal beauty ideal. That can’t be healthy in the long run. I think we need to get used to seeing a variety of female character designs in a variety of body types – and as lead characters, not just background NPCs. Maybe then we’ll stop being quite so critical not only of individual game characters, but of ourselves and each other. Maybe we’ll even start to see more female characters written as people instead of “generic pretty lady” or “generic girlfriend.” Maybe we’ll see a few female characters over the age of thirty. Shocking, I know.
The greatest figures in human history aren’t often pretty people. It turns out that random genetic luck in the looks department has nothing to do with a person’s level of courage, intelligence, or leadership ability. And while beauty fantasies are all well and good, not all of our games need to go that route. It’s really nice to see somebody who looks a bit more like us saving the world sometimes. So here’s to Prince Kiefer, to the cast of Fable , and to all those custom uglies in Dark Souls , Mass Effect , and Saint’s Row. You all show us that you don’t have to have a pretty face to be a hero, even an imaginary one.
Image Credit: Alex Solis