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The Death of Bad Ass Lead Characters
- Thread starter Arsic
- Start date
MagiusNecros
Gilgamesh Fan Annoyance
simpatico
Member
Cal and the cast of Gears 4 and 5 are a master class in soft handed girly man characters. Tack on Nathan Drake for good measure.
Also, Dad of War was an intentional tear down of bad ass main character tropes. Don't see how anyone can view it as something else.
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Arsic
Loves his juicy stink trail scent
He had his moments in the sequel. I’d definitely argue that Merrin is more bad ass teleporting around shanking fools.
Doom Slayer has my vote still as the latest and last iconic and cool character leading a franchise we’ve been given.
The rest is either one offs, or questionable.
LordOfChaos
Member
Hard to believe they actually ended it here and never milked the franchise past any satisfying conclusion even seeming possible
MagiusNecros
Gilgamesh Fan Annoyance
Last badass male characters we ever got is probably these guys. The current games and male characters are pretty lame.
Arsic
Loves his juicy stink trail scent
Rock and stone over rip and tear?Last badass male characters we ever got is probably these guys. The current games and male characters are pretty lame.
MagiusNecros
Gilgamesh Fan Annoyance
Found myself a Leaf Lover over hereRock and stone over rip and tear?
Platinumstorm
Member
We spent most of the PS3 generation bashing boxes that showed a generic male with a buzzcut standing "looking hard".
We now are in a generation of endless voice acting, so we need some degree of personality in our protagonists.
Arsic
Loves his juicy stink trail scent
Shoot characters like Ryu, Leon, Chris, Snake, and more don’t fit that description.
MagiusNecros
Gilgamesh Fan Annoyance
We haven't really had big name iconic characters that have caught on or stuck for over 5 years IMO. I really can't think of any that also didn't have a Character Creation component.
Arsic
Loves his juicy stink trail scent
A character like John Wick is fairly new.
Timothy in Dune is becoming more and more bad ass with each film.
TV we have Billy Butcher as of late granted he’s sourced from another medium.
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Platinumstorm
Member
80s arcade, ps1, [not sure who chris is, maybe chris redfield? ps1, and ps1. this is well before the time of generic buzzcut guy
Ps3 would be:
Infamous guy, starkiller, resistance 2 guy, Commander Shepard off of the top of my head; and more forgiving - I suppose this applies to call of duty as well, but I haven't played a cod game in a very long time.
It's possible that there were just limitations with hair rendering so that happened in that respect.
If you asked to make a game box for ps3 time period you would make this. Looking hard into the box, orange/blue. Bonus points if in game has a yellow/brown tint.
PanzerCute
Member
The Penitent One from Blasphemous.
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NecrosaroIII
Ultimate DQ Fan
Or Dash Rendar. Can't get enough of the iconic SotE theme too.
Did John Williams compose that? Sounds pretty close to his style
Astral Dog
Member
If you are gonna count Bayonetta, then 2B should count as well eventually there is going to be a sequel to Automata even if its another main character,i hope to see a Stellar Blade 2 as well
I haven't played it so i don't if he's badass or not but FFXVI Clive tries his best to look the part
Batman and Spider Man ,of course two iconic leads at least until their recent games
DOOM protagonist in the newest series
Despite not having a face, Resident Evil hero Ethan Winters is secretly one of the best protagonists in the series, he faced unspeakable horrors to save his wife and daughter he has balls made of mold
I haven't played it so i don't if he's badass or not but FFXVI Clive tries his best to look the part
Batman and Spider Man ,of course two iconic leads at least until their recent games
DOOM protagonist in the newest series
Despite not having a face, Resident Evil hero Ethan Winters is secretly one of the best protagonists in the series, he faced unspeakable horrors to save his wife and daughter he has balls made of mold
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Elginer
Member
Loved this dude and this game. Shame Ubisoft couldn't make a proper Pirate game after this.
EverydayBeast
thinks Halo Infinite is a new graphical benchmark
- Josh Duhamel as Jacob Lee
- Spiderman
- Hitman
- Sam "Porter" Bridges (Norman Reedus) who is a guy 100% committed to delivering packages and is in a situation where he must deliver a dead president's body to an incendiary. (bad ass huh)
rodrigolfp
Haptic Gamepads 4 Life
Dude is nothing without guns and knifes.Did I miss the clause where we're not counting Leon Kennedy?
ByWatterson
Member
Zavala, TBH.
balls of snow
Member
Geralt of Rivia, that voice, that smoldering cat eyes look, the twin swords. Yeah he was in book form made badass in videogame form by cdpr.
MagiusNecros
Gilgamesh Fan Annoyance
He did. It's unused track from the original Episode V score. Shadows of the Empire was a big multiimedia project experiment meant to go across different forms of media to tell a story that wasn't a film and was supposed to happen in between V and VI.
Arsic
Loves his juicy stink trail scent
??? He’s mentioned in the OP, and isn’t recent at all. He’s been around for 2 decades plus.Did I miss the clause where we're not counting Leon Kennedy?
I assume you read the thread title and said fuck it let’s ball?
"Modern" gaming tastes definitely leave a lot to be desired. It's great seeing variety in your main protags, but I think those of us who prefer those more "badass" types of heroes -- or hell, even characters that are just genuinely *heroic* -- have been left without much to latch onto in recent years.
In a lot of ways, I would really dig a He-Man sort of character, but as we saw even in the recent revival of that show, creatives today seem to have an animosity towards those types of characters.
Hell, even beyond just "badass" characters, there really aren't a lot of "good guys" in general anymore. Everything always has to get bogged down in some kind of unnecessary "drama". Zack from Crisis Core (the original version with Rick Gomez as the VA) is one of the best examples of a "hero" I can readily think of. It's disappointing we don't have more characters in that vein. I always enjoy a good ol' classic "Human Paladin" sort of character, but now those characters always have to have some massive character flaw like "superiority complex" or "actually evil".
In a lot of ways, I would really dig a He-Man sort of character, but as we saw even in the recent revival of that show, creatives today seem to have an animosity towards those types of characters.
Hell, even beyond just "badass" characters, there really aren't a lot of "good guys" in general anymore. Everything always has to get bogged down in some kind of unnecessary "drama". Zack from Crisis Core (the original version with Rick Gomez as the VA) is one of the best examples of a "hero" I can readily think of. It's disappointing we don't have more characters in that vein. I always enjoy a good ol' classic "Human Paladin" sort of character, but now those characters always have to have some massive character flaw like "superiority complex" or "actually evil".
Heimdall_Xtreme
Banned
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Heimdall_Xtreme
Banned
Im gonna start ... but what game is Better, FF 7 Remake or FF 16?Despite my many issues with the game, at least Clive was pretty badass
Bonus points for being a JRPG protagonist that's isn't some androgynous dude with stupid hair that looks straight out of some J-pop band.
Shame he couldn't be in a better game
Dirk Benedict
Gold Member
Someone also mentioned Gerald of Rivia. Good stuff.
StereoVsn
Member
This is the right answer. You don’t get much more badass than Kiryu. His heat action moves are brutal. He fights with anything from a bicycle to a gun to a cigarette. He can fight off tigers barehanded. He has a heart of gold.Amazed nobody has posted:
And in so many games he hasn’t even killed anyone!
Arsic
Loves his juicy stink trail scent
The man was introduced on ps2.This is the right answer. You don’t get much more badass than Kiryu. His heat action moves are brutal. He fights with anything from a bicycle to a gun to a cigarette. He can fight off tigers barehanded. He has a heart of gold.
And in so many games he hasn’t even killed anyone!
I swear, either I’m shit at explaining stuff or GAF doesn’t read a god damn thing.
The point I’m making with the thread is that there hasn’t been damn near any Kiryu level bad ass characters introduced in like 5-10 years for a franchise that’s new.
Sure there’s plenty of examples of one off new characters like a Clive from ff16, but they are one and dones.
When you think of kiryu he’s been in a ton of games, and is iconic.
The last iconic franchise carrying introduction was Doom Slayer. That’s all I can think of. He’s coming up on his 3rd game hopefully this or next year.
Arsic
Loves his juicy stink trail scent
A character from 2007 isn’t exactly a new iconic franchise carrying bad ass.
He’s a staple along with master chief, Chris red field, Dante, etc.
Arsic
Loves his juicy stink trail scent
I completed ff16 and both dlcs despite its issues.
I have dropped ff7 rebirth after 2-4 hours. Remake took me 3 separate coming back to it across years to complete. It’s a 7/10.
Idk it just doesn’t pull me in. :/
Giallo Corsa
Member
Dude got robbed Arsic - he deserved much, much better than the game he starred in - imagine SOTD where you got to ride a cool bike (like that in the intro) and other game mechanics other than the featured ultra mediocre shooting in square-like rooms.
Game had so much potential but EA had to fuck up Shinji's and Suda's vision.
Shit, even a low budget game in the vein of No more heroes 3 with it's semi-open world featuring a bike would have been much better than the shit we got.
For the love of God, I hope Suda has a sequel incoming
TerribleAtThisGame
Member
The new cool is having mental issues, being sorry for being "not a good guy", having some brat lecture you on life despite them having zero context for adulthood and so forth.
Fbh
Member
Haven't played Rebirth.
- I liked 7 Remake a lot more than FF16 simply because the gameplay is way better. FF16 forces you to play on very easy which completely kills the combat system, and virtually every other game mechanic is ridiculously underdeveloped and/or shit (some of the worst loot, progression, world design and crafting in any RPG I've played).
-The world and level design is pretty bad in both but I'll take the linear design of 7 Remake over the open areas with nothing to do or find in them of 16.
-The side content is pretty bad in both
-As for the plot, I like the characters and overall plot in 7 better, but the writing and dialogue is superior in 16, specially if you play with English VO. It's one of the few high budget JRPG without cringy anime dialogue (or at least not as much)
-Visually I prefer 7 remake: 16 is superior in terms of raw graphics but you either have to play with shitty 30fps or horrible resolution and IQ (and even then it's not locked 60fps). Meanwhile 7 remake offer nice IQ at 60fps while still looking pretty good
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Guilty_AI
Member
The problem is the two terms you're imposing are in direct opposition to each other.
You want a completely new, recent character but you also want it to have already become iconic and spawned a long franchise despite your terms dictating a timeframe where it'd have barely any chance for multiple games or to become well known.
Kiryu for example remained fairly obscure until Yakuza 0. Geralt was also a niche b-game character until The Witcher 3 blew up in popularity.
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DryvBy
Member
As you use one of the most iconic hot headed rats as one of your avatars.
Get out now, hypocrite!
Arsic
Loves his juicy stink trail scent
Perhaps a time frame would be better? In the past say 5-8 years?
Since PS4 and on is really when this happened it seems.
Jin from Ghost of Tsushima needs another game to get there.
Doom Slayer made the cut and is being invested into it seems. I’d be surprised if the next doom game isn’t slayer again.
When we get a cool character they get one game and are killed off. :/
Guilty_AI
Member
Doom slayer is the one who most makes your cut. He became instantly iconic and is memed to this day, as well as has 2 games and one expansion already, but its also worth pointing out he still "borrowed" part his image from older games.
Making instantly iconic characters is already difficult, having its fame last longer than one entry even more.
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Arsic
Loves his juicy stink trail scent
Definitely.
Ultimately we get very little nowadays. M
It’s a shame Eve in stellar blade doesn’t have more of a personality because then she could’ve been it.
The action genre essentially disappeared when souls game took over. That’s where a lot of the characters came from.
We live in the worst timeline.
Guilty_AI
Member
Its not like we got a lot back then either. I mean, how many truly stood the test of time? Master Chief and Snake perhaps, Kiryu only got popular recently. Others like Marcus Fenix were more or less forgotten in the same gen they came out. Kratos would've been put in the back burner too weren't for the 2018 game.
We did get plenty of one or two off games, but we still get those today like i pointed out in my first post here in this thread.
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Heimdall_Xtreme
Banned
Goro majima of Yakuza 0