Is there a world where Bowser is the good guy trying to keep Peach safe from a stalker ex-boyfriend? 

 

The majority of the video games I've played have put me in the shoes of the hero allowing me to make decisions as them and, if they're well-written games, live with the actionable consequences of those choices. Even if there are consequences, a game is never too hard to ultimately beat in the end and stop the thing from destroying the world, or whatever. As I've matured I've started to look under the hood of more games, so to speak. My curiosity in the past has predominantly been surface level, occasionally subdermal:

 

- Where's the next waypoint? 

- What do I need to upgrade my armor/ weapons?

- Have I found all the dog tags in this level?

 

Though I still consider those aforementioned questions, a new question hovers over them all: 

 

-Why am I here?

 

Within the context of a video game, answering the question why am I here? has taken me down some interesting paths. A meta answer to that question is always I'm here because this is where the programmers/ designers intended me to be. In the silo, If my suspension of disbelief is on point, the answer can be tough to find. In Mass Effect, why is Shepard there? Broadly, he's there to save the galaxy against the Reapers. In rote hero fashion, he needs to assemble a team of unlikely soldiers and scientists to help him with his quest. The Mass Effect Trilogy takes the player on an intergalactic scavenger hunt of people, aliens, and information that ultimately leads to the Reapers. As I understand it, the Reapers have always existed. There's no record of their creation, only that they come around every 50k years or so to conduct a cleansing of the galaxy. It is said that they created the Mass Relays that gave all intelligent races the ability to star travel. Granted, the Reapers have some nefarious ways of interacting with the life they encounter; reprogramming (infecting) said life to fight for them against enemies, while often ending in unstable self-destruction where no one survives. Thinking back, I never had the opportunity to see the galaxy through the eyes of the Reapers; this was not intended by the game designers, at least not yet. I believe Shepard exists because the Reapers exist. I want to know, however, why the Reapers exist. Perhaps their war against the intelligent races of the galaxy made sense. If they existed before everyone, maybe they know something no other race does. In the end, Shepard, and by extension the player, has a reckoning. Do they choose to destroy the Reapers, control them, or merge with them, creating a symbiosis between the Reapers and intelligent life? Those are murky decisions that have even murkier consequences. Any one of those decisions can result in either Shepard becoming a villain or leaving behind a villainous legacy. Mass Effect grazed the possibility of seeing the game-world as the villain, creating just enough intrigue to perhaps feel sympathetic to the Reapers' cause. I could see a future installment of Mass Effect (forgetting about Andromeda) showing us a Reaper perspective. One can only hope.

 

But, were there any games that handed us the reins to the baddy? One could argue that any GTA game makes the player the villain, maybe the lesser of the villains portrayed in the games, but a villain nonetheless. What about Kratos? Throughout the history of the God of War series Kratos gained entry to every pantheon, flame-chaining through the gods with no regard to town folk under the purview of the now-dead gods. Even in the 2018 God of War, there's a reckoning with Kratos as the Norse gods have heard tales of this very dangerous being and ultimately need to eliminate him so that he doesn't pose a threat. He's wrenched back into a life he left many years ago; all he wants is to protect his son and to spread his wife's ashes at the top of a mountain. In a different section of the modern game lexicon, Arthur Morgan in Red Dead Redemption 2 is as villainous as they come. He's a criminal and bandit in an aging wild west. The difference is, you see the existential shift that transfers to his actions as he begins to question the relevance of the outlaw life entirely. Dutch, his one-time friend, and a monstrous asshole isn't his only advisory, the looming and unstoppable modern age is arguably a greater foe.

 

~Minor spoilers ahead for Last of Us Part II~

 

An interesting take is Naughty Dog's 2020 game, Last of Us Part II. A little less than a quarter way through the game, after Ellie has decided to venture out on a vengeance quest against Joel's killer, Abby, the player switches from controlling Ellie to controlling Abby. The rest of the game is experienced, back and forth, through the eyes of the enemy and the hero, challenging the player to identify who is who throughout the process. What we find out is both Ellie and Abby are fighting for the same thing; they, for a time, exist in a world where a great and unforgivable wrong has been done to them and theirs. We discover their motivations and idiosyncrasies through a series of flashbacks, which give us context to who they are and what their purpose is. At the end of that game, both Ellie and Abby were the protagonists in their own stories and antagonists to everyone else. Can that treatment be applied to the games in the cultural fabric of the medium? I think it's a fun thought experiment. What if, in the next Mario game, the player all of a sudden gets to play as Bowser trying to defend his home against a plumber hell-bent on razing it to the ground? I bet Bowser has motivations just as strong as Mario and, like Mario, I'm sure he believes that what he's doing is meaningful and right. 

 

I'm not sure there's an easy solution for this or if there's even a substantial desire among players to walk in a villain's shoes. Can games exist where there's a function to switch, on the fly, between the good guys and bad guys? I think it would be rad as hell and, after which, our gamer lexicon would be bolstered with the experiences of the characters who have only lived in the cut scenes and audio logs of the victors. 

 

Until I'm allowed to be a Metroid in the next Metroid game, I'll continue to ask why am I here?