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HK-47

Member
Oct 25, 2017
5,595
Love them. Also "unsympathetic" is relative, it seems like a lot of people have problem understanding context. (Like Luke from ToA or Shion from Xenosaga)




That's what happens when you have PTSD and your whole world comes crashing down.
She is a shitty enough person without that adding to it. All the other characters have serious hangups yet she stands out for how unabashedly critical and self centered she is.
 

Taruranto

Member
Oct 26, 2017
5,049
She is a shitty enough person without that adding to it.

Not sure what makes her a "shitty person" in Ep. I and II. The only person she's particularly mean to is her brother, to whom she has a complicate relationship because he's emotionally constipated. Other than that, she's very kind to MOMO for example, tries to understand the Commander before he passes on, slams Allen for his racist beliefs, consoles MOMO multiple times and slams Albedo for being a mass-murder who uses people. Oh I guess she's kinda mean to Allen at times, but it's more like indifference than anything. You are supposed to laugh at those scenes anyway.

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All the other characters have serious hangups yet she stands out for how unabashedly critical and self centered she is.

Different people react to different situations in different ways. The most tragic human character other than Shion is Jr., who was created as a weapon and ironically had someone who understood him at his side for all his life (Nigredo). Shion was 7 years old when her mother, father and nanny were impaled in front of her eyes. After that she never sorted her issues, not even as an adult. Her fiance dies, she finds out the company she works for is behind the latest catastrophes, she is "forced" to think her father worked for the space terrorists and sacrificed her mother for a while, she's dying and her robot-daughter is killing her and she's forced to revisit her childhood and finds out that she's responsible for the death of billions of people and the end of the universe. (And those are the stuff just on the top of my head, let's not get into Almadel or Ep. 1's fun times into the Encephalon)

Yeah, not shit she's being critical and self-centered, it's the whole point of her character! She's mentally ill and not making correct-life choices.


According to Enneagram personality classification, Shion is classified in herbehavior aspect with a type-7 characteristic (talent-rich, impulsive, extreme, high-spirited{?}).

In a healthy state, type-7s show interest in everything around them; they are active, and they can yield spectacular results.

However, within relationships to others, it is the case that this kind of personality goes too far, endlessly searching for new stimulus. Shion is of this type of condition. The more they act and the more they search, the more they become unable to be satisfied. In very serious times, they are convinced that they have been "robbed", and even become as if greedily wanting everything.

At an unhealthy state such as this, they become self-centered, and in order to satisfy their own desires, they may even make violent demands from others.

For Shion, life was something that should be called "a state that differs from death".

Shion, who saw the death of her parents at a very young age and saw the death of a loved-one a few years ago, felt that her own life was always right next- door to death. Therefore, she came to possess the view of life&death where life, which "does not go beyond the state of not being dead", places a leg in death.

However one wishes for life, death visits like an unavoidable fate. No matter how deeply one wished to escape death, no matter how deeply those around him also wanted not to die, death mercilessly visits.

Based on experience, the dark feeling of the nothingness of death was controlling Shion's life. Because of that very thing, as if turning her eyes away from death, Shion immersed herself in work to an abnormal degree. By turning her eyes away from death and hiding her head in the work that was before her eyes, she was able to forget the feeling of nothingness.

It came to be that it gives her strength in a realistic meaning. Her blindly optimistic speech and conduct is something that stemmed from her feeling of nothingness.


Even the robot gets it.

 
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Deleted member 511

User requested account closure
Banned
Oct 25, 2017
3,676
I'm currently replaying Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep. I almost forgot just how awfully written and unsympathetic Terra is.

Terra is one of the worst characters I've had the unfortunate pleasure of playing as. Everything about him is awful and he is a complete moron that people and yet fans will still defend his stupid decisions.
 

Hailinel

Shamed a mod for a tag
Member
Oct 27, 2017
35,527
His kid is going to die and he'll be back on his bullshit, I can already see it.
Either that, or Kratos dies and his kid grows up to be a ball of rage.

Regardless, Kratos is an amazingly shitty character and I can't believe how he just kept getting worse with every game in the original trilogy.
 

pikachief

Prophet of Truth
Member
Oct 25, 2017
6,526
Joel in TLOU is one of the only characters in a game where his lack of sympathy hurt the game for me.
 

Masquerader

Banned
Nov 4, 2017
1,383
Nora/Nate in Fallout 4. For the first time in their history, Bethesda made me play their way, not my way, which I hated. Let's hope it's the last time, because they're generic as hell.
 

BossAttack

Member
Oct 27, 2017
43,003
Really cannot stand Aloy. Part of it is the voice acting and the way it feels like the actor is speed reading lines, as well as how those lines are incorporated in any given conversation (sounds very stilted or rushed). Another part is that just because she's the main protagonist, she's somehow more world-weary than everyone else she encounters, despite being a social outcast and essentially having any real social interaction with only a single other person her entire life. She's always snarky, even when the situation doesn't demand it and seems to actively look down on everyone she encounters. This would be somewhat understandable if it was only towards other Nora, but it's not. It's everyone. Guess that could just be her inner troglodyte from not being socially well adjusted though.

You're gonna catch heat for this, but I agree with you.

Kratos is the reason why I don't want to touch the God of War games, everything I see him in portrays him as such a meatheaded asshole that it completely turns me off from trying the game.

He is an asshole, but the first two games acknowledge this. You're not supposed to like him. Kratos fits right into classic Greek tragedy myths. The problem is GoW3 trying to make him sympathetic and redeemable. There is NOTHING redeemable about Kratos.
 

ahoyhoy

Member
Oct 25, 2017
4,319
The main character from Tales of the Abyss was so damn irritating I couldn't get more than a few hours into the game.
 

Neoleo2143

Member
Oct 27, 2017
3,462
Not sure what makes her a "shitty person" in Ep. I and II. The only person she's particularly mean to is her brother, to whom she has a complicate relationship because he's emotionally constipated. Other than that, she's very kind to MOMO for example, tries to understand the Commander before he passes on, slams Allen for his racist beliefs, consoles MOMO multiple times and slams Albedo for being a mass-murder who uses people. Oh I guess she's kinda mean to Allen at times, but it's more like indifference than anything. You are supposed to laugh at those scenes anyway.

Different people react to different situations in different ways. The most tragic human character other than Shion is Jr., who was created as a weapon and ironically had someone who understood him at his side for all his life (Nigredo). Shion was 7 years old when her mother, father and nanny were impaled in front of her eyes. After that she never sorted her issues, not even as an adult. Her fiance dies, she finds out the company she works for is behind the latest catastrophes, she is "forced" to think her father worked for the space terrorists and sacrificed her mother for a while, she's dying and her robot-daughter is killing her and she's forced to revisit her childhood and finds out that she's responsible for the death of billions of people and the end of the universe. (And those are the stuff just on the top of my head, let's not get into Almadel or Ep. 1's fun times into the Encephalon)

Yeah, not shit she's being critical and self-centered, it's the whole point of her character! She's mentally ill and not making correct-life choices.

Even the robot gets it.

Fantastic Post. Shion isn't "Likeable" but she is most certainly "understandable" and emotionally complicated in a way that few RPG protagonists even compare.
 

KillLaCam

Prophet of Truth
Member
Oct 25, 2017
15,388
Seoul
I generally like playing as horrible ppl. Like I did care about Marcus and the cast of Watch Dogs 2 more than Aiden. But I actually liked Aiden better for that type of game.

I also think I'm gonna like old always angry Kratos better than "im trying to be a family man" Kratos.

I cared about Franklin in GTA V the most but Trevor was the most entertaining and memorable for me.

Prototype guy was pretty bad though. But I guess it fit considering that he was just a parasite that eats ppl. Kinda impossible for him to be sympathetic.
 

Erik Twice

Member
Nov 2, 2017
685
Man that Tomaru Sawagoe example is something else. Jesus, I googled it and the guy gives Rance (who would very much find a place in this thread) a run for his money.

--

I like evil or otherwise unsymathethic characters. The problem is that, well, most of the time they are meant to be sympathethic despite engaing in terrible, abusive and genocidal behaviour.

The most common way this problem shows itself is through the "two hands divide". "On one hand" the character is a murderous sociopath who kills everyone in bloody, compeltely unnecessary manners but "on the other" he cares about X or the guys he kills are supposed to be evil or some other excuse. This kind of split where one good thing is meant to excuse or temperate a character that would be considered a complete monster other way is extremely common in games and nerd media and is one of my most hated writing tropes.

The "second hand" is often some kind of deus ex machina thing like the enemy shooting first so as to protect the purity of the character. All the fun of having a character be a murderer without none of the responsabilities, I guess.

She's a kid who has went through a horrible tragedy.
That something bad happened to her doesn't change the fact that she is a massive asshole who acts in an abusive manner towards everyone in her life.
 

Sir Laguna

Member
Oct 27, 2017
251
Kratos is a piece of shit.

I once wrote an article about how Kratos was not only a dislikable character but it was very bad written and nonsensical.

I received a threat and a "lenghty explanation" of a so called veteran.
 

Budi

Member
Oct 25, 2017
13,883
Finland
That something bad happened to her doesn't change the fact that she is a massive asshole who acts in an abusive manner towards everyone in her life.
Yeah that is true. But that doesn't change the fact that people should atleast try to understand what shapes people how they are, why are they acting in a certain way. Since this understanding can lead to help for that person, to change how they are so we would have one asshole less. And also as we are all (most atleast) adults here. The understanding of limited capabilities of kids/teens to deal with a tragedy is paramount. It's not always easy for adults either. Chloe is the way she is because of immense pain. And she herself is the biggest victim of her own behaviour. First and foremost it affects her in a negative way. She isn't evil or bad, she is complex just like the rest of us. She needs help and understanding, not shunning and punishment. She shouldn't be excluded from empathy, she isn't some monster preying on the weak.
 
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ArjanN

Member
Oct 25, 2017
10,114
Is this a characters you hate thread or characters who act like they dont give a shit about your problems thread?

I feel a lot of people don't really make the disctinction between characters that are intentionally written to be shitty people, and just plain shitty characters.

IMO something like the Kane & Lynch games were a good example of this.