The Rainbow Six series features a, uh, spectrum of nationalities, but its hero is arguably the Angeleno Ding Chavez. John Clark may be the main man in the narrative, but you don’t get to be Mr. Clark in the game.
The decision to make Men of Valor’s protagonist a black Marine was a stroke of genius, but sadly unexploited. The game’s mediocrity didn’t help things: When you’ve walked past an invisible line that triggers the magical appearance of VC behind your squad, the color of your skin doesn’t matter–you just hate the designers.
Lastly, let’s not forget Lo Wang, exemplar of Oriental culture.
(Do the boys from Redneck Rampage count as action hero stereotypes?)
Granted, but I’m not that concerned with the default, as long as other options are available. Bioware has promised we can choose to make the main character male or female, and whatever ethnicity we want. Really I’m sure on their side it’s just a matter of making the models and then having male and female voices available. Apparently the character’s name is “Commander Shepherd”. You can give him/her a first name, but all the voice overs use “Commander Shepherd” which has the side effect of being gender neutral.
In the next id software game I want to see the lead character be a female, part-eskimo, part aborigine and part pakistani who also aspires to have a sex change operation and turn into a male. God, that would be awesome!!!
Me too, but do you think they’ll be able to get away with that in the movie? I’ll grant you that it’s quite possible, but I don’t know if they’ll be able to resist giving him a face, unless it gets a great director (if Peter Jackson had ended up doing it, I know they’d leave out the face, but…)
Agreed. Showing his face would negate the purpose of always leaving the helmet on, and it would never live up to expectations anyway. Not only does Bungie get a lot of mileage out of teasing fans with the Chief’s perpetually hidden face (see the recent commercial and the beginning of Halo 2), but depriving him of a visage and keeping his in-game persona very basic allows the player to feel like they’re a more active participant in the story. Final Fantasy this is not.
And Rob, Master Chief is definitely human. He’s just very strong and augmented. His name is John. Exciting, eh?
