Character Profile: Travis Touchdown

"Everyone deals with grief differently. Some people fuck at funerals... I cut off heads." - Travis Touchdown

It's hard to analyze Travis Touchdown, the legendary assassin king of Santa Destroy. In true fourth-wall-breaking form his past and the events that led up to No More Heroes are shrouded in mystery. What we know about Travis can be surmised through the first game's intro: he's an otaku assassin, a punk paradox. He's usually out for blood to satisfy a spur of the moment urge for violence, yet it's an urge that has reason. Travis signals the end of Suda 51's series of "Kill the Past" games. A few writers have called out No More Heroes's story as a parody of video game narratives. Players saw a shift away from the abstract, intertwined plots of games like Killer 7 and Flower, Sun and Rain to a self-aware meta-narrative. That's where Travis Touchdown exists. He's a character trapped within a mature story created by a writer who continually circumvents it. Travis is constantly at odds with the author-god of his game, and it's a desperate struggle to escape.

Travis Touchdown from NMH and NMH 2 are going to be treated as separate entities. They share common character traits, but the narrative that surround the two Travis' are wildly different. While NMH's focus was on themes of "Killing the past" and memory, NMH 2's focus was shifted towards the ramification of violence and themes of revenge. I'll try my best to keep the two of them separate throughout the article and when something in common comes up I'll be sure to make note of it. Travis has shown quite a bit of character development since his debut. By all rights his character from No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle should be the one profiled, but his former self is still punk and unlike any other "protagonist" around.

Travis is constantly at odds with his sexual nature. In both games, he fights because of a promise made to him by Sylvia Christel, a United Assassins Association representative. A full course meal of sex for killing hundreds of people. Sounds like a good deal. This is the central impetus of No More Heroes, but there's another reason shrouded because of a hangover. In the first game, Travis meets Sylvia in a bar and she tells him - after he bought her a few drinks - that she can help him get the revenge he seeks. She lets him into the association, which might or might not exist, and helps him climb up the ranks. While Travis is in it for the sex, he's subconsciously seeking revenge for his parent's death. It's never said when or at what age his parents were killed. What we know is that someone scarred a young Travis, a girl not unlike Sylvia.

It's hard to say why sex is so important to Travis. It serves as a loose justification/impetus for him to reach the top of the rankings. Sex as a theme is never developed enough in No More Heroes. He's continually manipulated by Sylvia who uses her sexuality to lure him into killing, at least in the first game. What we have to look at are the base reasons why Travis fights, why he kills.

Travis in No More Heroes is green. Up until this point in his life he's never killed anyone, or at least no one that we've heard of. At the beginning of the game we get a taste of why he bought his beam katana from an online auction and why he wants to be the best.

Here’s Travis’s monologue from his tenth rank fight with Death metal:

This count, I feel as though I’m looking at my future self. Making bucks, big ass house, fast cars, dining is style with a world-class chef and a trusty nutritionist counting every calorie. A team of hot yoga instructors to keep me in shape, nurses to attend to my body, maids and loyal servants at my every beck and call. On the weekends, tan babes knocking at my door every two hours. Everyday full of excitement and luxury. That’d be the life.

Everything in its right place. It’s the perfect life. It’s the life of winners. That’ll be my life. I thirst for selflessness, hypocrites lusting for their own desire to get killed by young rookies like me. This is how it goes down, and for the old killers they’ll croak anyways.

I guess you could call this a comedy. I realize there’s nothing really here for me. But what else can I do but keep going? Maybe I should have been a little more careful before I jumped in. Gotta find the exit. Gotta find that exit to paradise. But I can’t see it. I can’t see anything. There’s this sense of doom running down my spine like it’s trying to suck the life out of me. I need to get rid of it before I bail. Something deeper… deeper than my instincts taunting me. Can’t find the exit… can’t find the exit… can’t find the exit… can’t find the exit.

Money, yoga instructors and a purpose in his comedic jaunt into the violent life of an assassin that's what Travis Touchdown wants most. All Travis can do is kill. He’s a merchant of death who has suffered due his sole purpose in life. Does he like his job? Does he enjoy his role in life? Is this just some huge prank being pulled on an otherwise redeemable character? What Sylvia offers to him - other than sex - is a way to channel his purpose within the video game experience. No More Heroes is an extremely self-aware video game. I wrote an entire article on how it breaks the fourth wall here and part 2 here, so I won't go over it in too much detail. What I will say is this, Travis Touchdown's desires begin to deteriorate as the game progresses and he lets you know that it's happening.

Like Garcian Smith Aka Emir Parkreiner in Killer 7, Travis Touchdown suffers from a multiplicity in his character. Each time he defeats a boss, Travis is given a tidbit of information, a story or a lesson that teaches him about the life he is about to enter. His dream of being at the top begins to fracture as the memories of his past return. At the climax of the game when he fights his sister Jeane, Travis recalls the events of his father's death. Though his relationship to Jeane is more a poor B-movie parody, it still serves to break his character further. The more he fights, the bloodthirstier he becomes and the more he kills, the more Travis becomes like Jeane and the "old hypocrites" he refers to in his monologue.

Maybe these lessons carried over into his three-year disappearance from Santa Destroy. The issue now is that in No More Heroes 2, Travis is confronted by the mistakes of his past and is

forced into confrontation by powers greater than the UAA.

What separates Travis from No More Heroes 2 from Travis in No More Heroes is his age, maturity and cynicism, yet you could never tell that his character changed. This is what made Desperate Struggle such a let down. Travis returns to Santa Destroy to find out that Skelter Helter, the 11th ranked assassin from the last game's brother, has killed Bishop Shidux. He's the guy who owned Beefhead video and Travis' only true friend. In a fit of rage, Travis calls up Sylvia setting up the next fight and begins a "motherfucking" war to kill whoever called out the hit on his friend. It's almost the same setup as before. There's no escape for Santa Destroy's former assassin king and he's forced into a confrontation for no reason. I guess the question is: why is Travis so affected by Bishop's death?

Throughout the first game, Travis is subjected to escalating examples of death and insanity. Thunder Ryu, his mentor, is killed. Bad Girl shows Travis how violence can lead to a life of maniac excess. Holly Summers showed him that all assassins live by a code dictated by victory and defeat. Each boss of No More Heroes foreshadows what Travis could become. Bishop's death is the unintentional result of his life as an assassin. Maybe it was the sudden nature of his demise. Maybe they had a longer relationship than other characters from his past. There are a lot of unexplained reasons why Travis feels so intensely about the death of his friend when hundred of people around him have died including his sister by his own hand. His death felt like the final straw. It's one thing to be attacked personally, but it's an entirely different thing to have your life outside of the game attacked.

The remorse Travis feels for Bishop's death is what ultimately propels him forward in No More Heroes 2. There's always the sexual impetus, which includes Shinobu Jacobs, a character I'll be talking a bit about, but it plays a smaller role in the game's narrative. The theme of revenge, the cycle of killing and death becomes the story's central focus. It's surprising that it would come into focus as Travis knows that revenge only begets more revenge. It's a lesson Travis learnt from the first game, and he's living proof of it. Near to the end of the game, Travis remembers that the main reason he became an assassin was to get revenge on his sister/childhood love Jeane for killing his parents. After fighting, maiming and killing 10 other professional assassins, he gets his vengeance and is ultimately left with nothing. What did Travis get by killing his sister? There's no emotional catharsis, he didn't win a prize, he didn't get laid, so is it any surprise that he'd try to run away? In No More Heroes 2, he's pulled back into the conflict and forced to confront, again, the cycle of violence he created by accepting Sylvia's offer.

In No More Heroes 2, Travis is confronted by another set of assassins propped up by an organization. In the new Santa Destroy, the Pizza Bat corporation has taken advantage of the bloody conflict that happened three years ago a la Mad World. They've made being an assassin more than a profession, they've made it into a sport. The new assassins that go after Travis aren't really up to par with the ones from the first game. In a small sequence before each fight, Sylvia, now working in a brothel, tells a mystery listener - it's Travis by the way - about the assassin's past. Alice Twilight, the second last boss, shows quite a bit of depth in her character. She recognizes the sick game that has been created by Pizza Bat and all she wants is to stop the cycle of violence. She embodies everything that could go wrong with being an assassin. Unlike Travis, Alice has analyzed her life and seen that it has been an endless cycle of violence, and yet she idolizes Travis.

Alice instill a new maxim in Travis. She helps him understand that whether you're an assassin, a murderer or anything in between humans bleed, they die and they suffer. Humans or even representations of humans in video games, literature and film are never worthless, and nor should they be played with like toys. It's a realization that gives Travis the most dramatic character development in the sequel. Although he has already learnt this from his first rise to the top, the fight with Alice and the subsequent lesson in humanity he receives is the most explicit message he's ever given. It is the one time Travis admits that what he is doing is wrong. And at the end of the fight, Travis vows to shut down the United Assassins Association.

What happened? Isn't that the end? Travis realized that he's wrong? Pizza Bat and the other ranked assassin organizations should be destroyed, he said it himself. Alice Twilight's last wish was that Travis would remember her. Who else said that in the series: Holly Summers from No More Heroes. Like Holly, Alice is an assassin, one that has lived a life of death by rank. Holly tells Travis that when an assassin loses they must die. For a moment, Travis matures, he learns the weight of his actions and he gains insight into the mentality of an assassin. After a brief cutscene, she kills herself leaving Travis neck-deep in regret. In a melancholic sequence after the fight, Travis carries her body to a sandpit where she is buried. What Holly said resonated with Travis and it was further emphasized by Alice's speech. These are two characters he remembers, unlike Helter Skelter. There's a convergence of themes seen here from the two games. Memory and revenge are seemingly interlocked with one another. Travis is the "No More Hero" the assassin king who walked away from the throne. After killing his sister Jeane he learns the true impact of vengeance. It creates a cycle of death. He doesn't gain anything, nor does he when he killed Holly or Alice. All he does by killing is bury himself further in a pit of sand, one he can't escape from.

After his fight with Alice Twilight, Travis has sex with Sylvia. He gets laid. It's awesome and everything that he's no longer the No More Virgin, but what's really the point? After fighting someone who made him reflect upon all of his actions as an assassin, essentially bringing back the regret he felt in killing Holly Summers, he has sex with the person who has facilitated all of the evil things he's done. This is one place where Travis' character has faltered slightly. Like the paragraph way back up there, Travis is constantly at odds with his sexual nature. After he's done, he triumphantly runs out of his apartment and yells "Downward Dog" to the whole of the city. Is it catharsis? Is it him finally being rewarded for becoming a killer? Was it all worth it? Why is that the only cutscene where we don't see him his sunglasses on? While themes of revenge and violence are most prevalent in No More Heroes 2, sex always makes it way back into the series.

Shinobu Jacobs returns in No More Heroes 2 as Travis' semi-servant. After the events of the first game, she traveled the world eventually conquering assassin tournaments in Asia. What happened between her vowing revenge on Travis and her becoming his faithful servant is never revealed, and we're left asking why she's so devoted to him. Call it a film cliche. We've seen it before when a sworn foe returns in a sequel only to become an ally. The difference with Shinobu is that she was spared by Travis. This condemned her as an assassin. As Holly Summers explained, if an assassin is defeated they have to die. To repay Travis, she devotes her life to him in a weird, unwanted sort of way. At one point she even offers her self to him because he is her "master." Why did he refuse? He said it was because it made him feel, "like that pervy teacher in a porn." There's more to it than that.

Throughout No More Heroes, Travis is confronted by hyper-sexualized male and female assassins. Every other fight he's taking on bosses getting off on giant-phallic brain vibrations - see Dr. Lentz Shake - and insane acid spitting vixens covered in bondage gear. Killing and sexuality become intertwined as thematic devices. Every time Travis returns to his apartment in the first game, someone from Beef Head video calls him up to return a number of different pornographic films. His beam katanas are basically giant, killer penis extensions that he has to jack to recharge. The overt sexual nature of No More Heroes symbols is never hidden from the player, it's pronounced. Yet when confronted by a woman's sexuality, Travis doesn't know how to react. Holly Summers, for example, calls him a pathetic example of a man because he wasn't able to kill her. Through her explanation, she de-sexualizes her character and her profession. This shows Travis that she's more than her appearance. She's a human being. Shinobu is a hyper-sexualized character, and in the second game when she comes onto Travis he relents being unable to go through with anything. Travis is sexually repressed. Why then is he able to have sex with Sylvia and not Shinobu?

What Travis showed when confronted by Shinobu was guilt. He felt that taking advantage of his "servant" made him into a perverted individual, which he has already shown to be a main character trait. Travis parades his sexuality around Sylvia continually pursuing her for the purpose of sex. He talks a big game, but when confronted by someone who has the same strong sexual desires he's affronted, scared even. Shinobu, like many of the other characters in the game, is a reflection of Travis. The master-slave relationship they have is no different than the dependence Travis shows for Sylvia. The guilt he feels when confronted by Shinobu is informed one: by his innate inadequacies in understanding his sexuality and two: by the guilt he associates his relationship with Sylvia Christel. On the promise of sex, Travis killed hundred of people. On the supposed promise of a relationship, Shinobu killed for her "master". It's complicated.

What we can take away from Travis Touchdown is this: appearances are deceiving. While he remains a big talking, macho beam saber wielding maniac deep down Travis is a disturbed and guilt ridden individual. The loose justifications he used to kill others, seeking vengeance only to create another cycle of violence and his want to escape an author created narrative make Travis one of the more complicated "protagonists" in video games today. People often look at No More Heroes' story as as kind of watered down Suda 51 experience. It isn't. No More Heroes and No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle are some of the deepest games available to international video game audiences. If you dig into the characters you can find as much depth in them as Emir Parkreiner in Killer 7 or Sumio Mondo in Flower, Sun and Rain.

No More Heroes is a series that is at the pinnacle of the self-aware video game narrative. It's an experience that knows it's a parody, but tries to circumvent whatever label is attached to it. As a "protagonist" Travis represent a video game character that has reached a kind of sentience. Throughout the series, he is confronted by characters who have already lived the game he is playing. They are just as guilt ridden as he is, and some of them want to be killed. Through Travis, the game preaches non-violence even when showing some of the most gruesome examples in video games. Like Travis himself, No More Heroes is a paradoxical entity. At once it feels like an immature series about killing, violence and assassins. It feels like a B-movie made into a video game, yet there's a depth to the experience that pulls it out of being a experience. No More Heroes is a game about the worst hero that has ever existed, and one that's one of video game's most human.

Character Profile: Travis Bell

Straight up, being a remnant psyche would be horrible. Actually, on second thought, that could be kind of cool. It would all depend on who you followed around. Celebrities, boring; politicians, ugh; sports stars, God no; a group of professional assassins, now that could be interesting. The Killer 7 are an elite group dedicated to exterminating the Heaven Smile threat, and Travis Bell was their first target. He became the “Killer who got killed on the job,” and the group’s first remant psyche. And Travis isn’t afraid to provide harsh and relentless criticism over it. As he puts it, “Hey Smith, I ain’t letting you go nowhere.”

As odd and eclectic as he may seem, Travis is a reliable voice. His ability to tell Garcian “Straight up” what's going on shows his insight into the government’s underground affairs. In a game as convoluted as Killer 7, Travis is an invaluable ally in finding the truth. He doggedly pursues any and all connections between the assassins and their targets. Travis is usually willing to share what he finds, but he’s also disenfranchised soul. This gives him a huge agency within the story. He could tell us exactly what's going on, but he won't. As a psyche, Travis could go anywhere and do anything, but he’s tethered to the group. To stick around with a bunch of assassin for a week is one thing, you’d get to know them just enough to see what they do for a living. If you spent fifty years with them, you end up a little jaded. Travis knows what’s going on in the world and can see past the hypocrisy. And why make it easy for them? They did kill him after all.

What makes Travis so interesting is that there are three elements involved when reading him. First, there’s his posture. Each time we encounter Travis he’s always in a new position or performing some action. From pelvic thrusts to cooking to working out, he’s always doing something that’s symbolic of his mood. Second, there are his t-shirt. Like his pose, each says something about the tone of his upcoming dialogue. His t-shirts also add an unconscious layer to his tone. The third is the straight up analysis of his dialogue. For instance, in the first level he says this to Garcian:

“Oh, there you are! Don’t be shy, Emir! Who woulda figured you’d be the only survivor? Well, anyway, how are you getting along with the chief? Straight up, I was waiting for you this whole time. Yeah, I know… Don’t be so mad, man… Don’t glare at me like that… The chief’ll wake up. Really, I’m sorry. The other chief must be rolling on the floor with laughter.”

Travis is just nonchalantly reclining against a wall waiting for Garcian Smith to show up, whatever, he’s cool with it. In reality, Travis was killed in 1969, almost fifty years prior to the incident at the Celtic Building. He’s been waiting for a long freaking time. His t-shirt has the words “Pillow Talk” written on it. This may seem insignificant, but it affects the player on a subconscious level. Travis t-shirt is saying that he's “In Bed” with the Killer 7 and he's able to share intimate details about their lives. And right off the bat, Travis’s dialogue shows that he can see through Harman’s façade. He can see into the deeper conflict inside of Garcian Smith. This shows just how much power Travis holds over the game’s narrative. The only problem is that he’s a cryptic and reluctant expositional character.

In “Setting sun” Travis talks about the Yakumo Party Cabinet and introduces the International Ethics Committee. These are big names in the government conspiracies surrounding you. This is how Travis confronts Garcian and his identity. Travis asks us, "How much do you actually know?" and in truth we know absolutely nothing about what's going on. Garcian believes that he is working for the United States government to help stop the Heaven Smiles, he’s right and he’s wrong. Behind all of the bloodshed there's a veil of deception being pulled over Garcian’s eyes. This is the thing about Killer 7, you can’t know what’s going on in the game.

Travis is one of the lucky few who were transformed into a remnant psyche. According to Iwazaru, these kinds spirits are only formed by killing them and most are either unwilling to leave their killers alone or unable to. Travis is in the former category. But we see people who we have killed returning to talk with us and give us some advice. Afterwards, they always disappear, but not Travis. He stays with us and haunts us. Travis is unable to release his grip from Garcian because his death brought a kind of pleasure. He even says, “The pain went straight up my spine, and then back down again. To be honest, that shit felt good.” You can see how Travis is able to connect his catch-phrase to the sexual pleasure/ecstasy he got from death. This is why he follows the Killer 7 around. To be with them is to be stimulated, in more ways than one.

Travis Bell was killed on a hot and muggy summer’s night, and not without a hint of irony. He was assigned to take out the Killer 7, but got a bullet instead. Even in death Travis managed to keep his sense of humour about it. If you read Hand in Killer 7, you can get a sense of who he is in relation to the group, but there’s an air of mystery surrounding him. Travis has a fragmented sense of self. This is why he has to display his emotional states in his posture, in his facial expressions and on his t-shirts. Each character in Killer 7 is obscured in some way. This is why Travis is so important. He is an expositional character, a secondary voice who is outside of the main story. As one of these remnant psyches, he has insight into the psychological condition of the characters. He knows things about him. But as a means of exposition, you’d probably be better off listening to Iwazaru than Travis. Travis is a reliable and an interesting voice, but he’s also a smartass. The thing about him is that he can see past the façade. He can see into Garcian’s true nature and the conflict he’s apart of. Near the end of the game, Travis says this:

“There you are, Smith. I was waiting for you. Do you remember this hotel? Let’s talk straight for a second. Well, suit yourself. It was stuck into this sofa. I found it again. What does this bullet mean? You know, right chief? The charade is all over, my friend.”

Again, we can use the same method of analysis. In this dialogue, Travis is sitting in a pretty dramatic spot inside of Hotel Union. As you run through hotel, you are confronted by six different rooms each with a "soul shell" hidden inside. Each time you uncover one of these shells, Garcian, in the second part of the level, recollects the fragments of a mission he was sent on many years ago. This is how Travis confronts Garcian with the “Truth,” and he knows it’s going to hurt. Travis’s t-shirt says “New York” on it. There’s an over arcing theme in the game about the deception of the United States government. By connecting Garcian’s false identity with the word “New York” it creates a bridge between Garcian’s fragmented identity and the United States. In essence, it’s Travis attacking Garcian’s identity as a person and his role as an assassin for the US government. Travis sees past the charade and he knows how little time there is left in the game. This is another aspect of his character I'll be talking about a little later on.

As a remnant psyche, Travis Bell is nothing more than a figment of Garcian Smith’s imagination. This is what makes his character so interesting. Travis is aware of his existence as a videogame character. In "Alter Ego" he comments on how stupid collecting the colour samples is. He says something like, "What's a pain in the ass! What's with the design of this studo? Straight up, this sucks ass. Pissing me off, I tell ya." He is aware that collecting these samples if far too complex for any real world security system.

To say that Killer 7 is an accessible game is like saying Goichi Suda and Shinji Mikami are mainstream developers. The more you think about the story the less it makes sense. Garcian Smith is fragmented along the lines of his personality, his psyche and his identity. So, in order to fully understand Travis, you have to look to the source of his creation, Emir Parkreiner. Major spoilers ahead, I’ll do a small recap of Travis below.


Travis Bell is a remnant psyche who can see almost everything. He’s willing to share his knowledge, and right from the start of the game we can see just how much he knows. He looks at Garcian and just laughs. He says, “The other chief must be rolling on the floor with laughter.” Travis is important because he can see into the conflicts surrounding the Killer 7, and ,unlike Iwazaru, he’s no servant of the Master. He can speak his mind. He has free agency to say what he wants and do what he likes so long as he follows his killers on their journey. In some ways, this makes Travis more of a prisoner than Iwazaru. He’s trapped in his spiritual form, not because he likes it, but because he can’t escape from his obsession with finding the truth behind his death. He wants to know the truth, and this is what drives him. He’s an important character because of the exposition he provides. He tells us about the alternate reality we are in and what the hell we should be doing. Travis Bell can see into Garcian’s mind and collect some of the fragments. The only problem is that picture he constructs is grotesque and unfinished. On with the profile!

Emir Parkreiner was an assassin who was trained at Coburn Elementary school. After killing all of the school’s faculty and students, he was picked up by the US government as an assassin. Emir was then tasked with killing a group of assassins called the "Smith Alliance" that included: Harman, Dan, KAEDE, Kevin, Mask, Coyote and Con. This murder spree was later known as the Killer 7, partially due to the intense level of violence that took place but mostly because there were seven victims. After these events took place, Emir committed suicide on the roof of Hotel Union. This death of the “self” spurred the creation of a disocciative identity disorder. He thus assumed the roles of the assassins he killed and used them in his government sanctioned operations. On a spiritual level this was when Harman Smith, an ancient demi-god, decided to take in Emir as a vessel to wage his battle against Kun Lan.

For me, understanding Killer 7 depends on your grasp on the characters. One of my goals for doing all of these character profiles was one day to get around to categorizing and examining each of the Smith personalities. Each of them is article in and of themselves, they’re that complex. I thought starting on a smaller would be best. Travis Bell is anything but simple, his moods and thought are complex, his dialogue is insanely cryptic and his purpose in the game is somewhat obscure. Straight up, he knows what's going on. This is what makes Travis so different from the other spirits. He can see through Emir, he can see through Harman and he can see through the United State’s historical façade. Travis can see the truth.

In Travis’s last dialogue he says, “I’m warning you, the truth is too big to even begin to scratch the surface. But Smith, I do believe that you can find the truth.” He confides in Garcian that he believe that the end is near. It’s quite a dramatic moment and it signals the death of his character. He says, in probably is the best last words in all of videogames, “I’m telling you straight up, this is about it from me. I wish you all the luck, and die like a dog. Then laugh it off. I’ll be waiting for you with a grin as wide as the truth.” What a way to go out.

Haunting the Killer 7 would be tough. The hardest part would be trying to keep the important details to yourself. If anything, Travis helped Garcian find himself. Killer 7 is a tough game and is practically impossible to decipher. It’s a game that no one can really understand, and this applies even to the characters themselves. Travis Bell is a minor voice in the grand scheme of things, but the fact that he can see so much makes him almost too important to be left unexplored. Sure, being a remnant psyche of an inherently fragmented person would be kind of confusing, but Travis works with what he can get. He's "The Killer who got killed on the job" and, ironically, he helped Garcian actually get somewhere.

Character Profile: Hunk

The Mercenaries introduced me to the neck-snapping and silent Hunk. It took me a while to get used to him, but he turned out to be the character for those tense trapped-in-a-corner moments. The problem with Hunk is unlike Leon, Krauser, Wesker or Ada, he doesn't have definition as a character. I was making him go into insane and zombie-filled situations without knowing the real history behind him. I'll admit, I thought he was a little bland. Then I started opening up his character and exploring the man behind the gasmask. Though he may lack a voice, this doesn’t mean that Hunk lacks a personality. In fact, it means that there’s a wide range of speculation for his profile. And though most of what you see is really what you get, especially in the Mercenaries, his character goes much deeper than his outside appearance. Underneath the combat gear and silent façade, he’s a character obsessed with death and a character who suffers from a number of psychological delusions in order to cope with his job. He's called Mr. Death after all.

Two months after the first incident in 1998, Hunk was a part of an elite unit sent to recover the G-virus from an underground lab. He was the only one to survive. About three months after that, he had a hand in the mission to deliver the T-virus to Rockfort Island. For a character who’s so seemingly minor, Hunk has really gotten around in the Resident Evil universe. This is what makes his character so interesting. He’s practically a ghost when it comes to the operations he’s been involved in, yet you can see the impact it has had on everyone. He’s a behind the scenes kind of mercenary. Whenever he goes on a mission, he completes it with deadly precision and what makes his tactics so interesting is that he’s always the only person to return from his squad. This happens because all he knows is the mission. He’s got a serious case of occupational tunnel vision. What kind of personal life could that make for? Being known as a reaper could do some serious psychological trauma to a person’s sense of self. There are a few theories about his character, two of which I think are probably the most sound.

Hunk’s a cold-blooded assassin who exists for the next objective. Through this “mission only” mentality, he’s able to justify the use of his Death persona. It’s an efficient mindset for killing zombies and the occasional tofu monster. Hunk was originally trained at Rockfort Island and there he learned how to kill quickly and ruthlessly. Now, working for the Umbrella Corporation as a scientist is pretty dicey. You’re exposed to lethal viruses, there’s a pretty good chance of getting mauled or going insane, but at least the danger isn’t imminent. Working as a mercenary for a company who dabbles in necromancy is going to be filled with death and your conscience is likely to be laden with the guilt of what you’ve helped do. Hunk is something special. Using his persona as Mr. Death, he puts himself into a mindset where he becomes more than a merchant of death. He thinks that because he is the only one ever to come back from the mission that he’s an invincible spectre, a character who has achieved “god mode” status. This is a really interesting way of looking at his psychology.

Another is to look at his exterior persona as nothing more than a façade. If we look at his character history, so much has been protected. We don’t even know his first name. The persona as Mr. Death and Hunk could be his way of protecting his identity as an individual. This has to do with his psychological conditioning. On one hand, his identity as Hunk could have been created through warfare. On the other hand, his persona could have been created during training in order to protect his identity as an individual. I like to think of his gas mask as a physical manifestation of his obscurity of self. It’s him protecting his identity and keeping his person separate from his persona’s actions. You can see how his character is open to a scope of speculation.

You can see some similar psychological profiles in other characters in the series. Ada Wong has a very similar attitude about her identity as Hunk. Her prologue in Resident Evil 3 says:

A woman looks at herself in the mirror. She used to be called Ada Wong… but this morning she will say good-bye to that name. “I’m not Ada anymore.” She feels her ab and thinks “This is Ada’s scar, not mine.” And as she says good-bye to Ada Wong, she can’t stop her tears. However, there isn’t much time left before her next mission.

This could be me reading way too much into things, but it looks like “Ada Wong” is just another created persona. She seems to have created a second self in order to deal with her role as both a tool for the Umbrella Corporation and Wesker. This kind of disassociation is related to a real psychological disorder called Dissociative Identity Disorder. With Hunk, we see another and very similar epilogue:

“Once again, only your survived, Mr. Death,” the chopper pilot speaks with cold bitterness. “Always, only your, survive, Mr. Death,” the pilot continues. But Hunk does not respond to the pilot. He doesn’t care. “The Death cannot die…,” the survivor thinks to himself with a warm smile…”

Unlike actual cases of DID, Hunk and Ada are aware of their actions and aware of their seperate personalities. Hunk may be a little more schizophrenic than Ada, but without any real kind of definition of character it’s hard to come to a real conclusion about his psyche. Being deluded into thinking that he is more than just a merchant of death, but Death itself could obviously create some psychological trauma. Or it could just be his way of coping with his work. Ada and Hunk aren’t at the level of disassociation as Alfred Ashford. Through Alfred, we can see that there is a history of this character creating process in the Resident Evil series. Hunk is just a little more obscure in his motives.

One definitive aspect of Hunk is that he’s a veritable badass. He is a trained solider who has undoubtedly participated in many combat situations and recovery operations. We see how effective of a soldier he can be when fully utilized in the Mercenaries and we see how clean his methods are in the Fourth Survivor. What makes his character so unique and standalone is that no matter how invincible he may be or how important he is to the canon, he has been left undeveloped. And this is a good thing. His ambiguity is what makes him such an interesting character to read into. All we have from him are a handful of quotes and a few case histories of his operations. That’s about it! He’s a hunk of combat gear and death!

I’m certain that Hunk has a life outside of the Umbrella Corporation. Somewhere in the Resident Evil canon there’s room to give this character a little more definition, but there is a slight problem with this. Imagine what would happen if we were to learn about his family. In the Resident Evil universe, the individual is always a target and family is right at the core of most characters. Another theory about his lack of definition is that he is trying to protect, not only his self, but his family. By withholding information about his personal life, he is protecting those who he might love. It’s a little bit of a cheesy theory, but it would help explain his deadly mindset and his creation of the Hunk persona.

Everyone always seems to complain about the campy writing in Resident Evil. The dialogue can get a little corny every once in awhile, but on the whole characters of the series are well defined, deep and interesting. Hunk is unique in that what little definition he has says a lot about his personality. Through just a few lines of dialogue, we can find so much detail about this silent assassin. I just hope he doesn’t get a gritty reboot any time in the near future. He’d probably have to kill the writers.

Character Profile: James Sunderland and Angela Orosco

Like the town itself, there’s a mystique surrounding the characters of Silent Hill. But before I get into this profile, I’ve got something to get out of the way. I love these games. Everything about the series just makes me pulsate with excitement. I recently played through Silent Hill and Silent Hill 4, which were both amazing experiences, but my mind was always wandering back towards Silent Hill 2. In most players’ minds, the second game is definitely the best. James Sunderland is an enthralling protagonist because of his ambiguous nature and segmented psychological profile. He has lost his self within Silent Hill. He’s really just a big, metaphorical question posed to the player. The town itself is a reflection of his psychological state, but one character stands apart from it. Angela Orosco is in her own Silent Hill, and she’s going to be the main focus of this article. But to understand Angela, we first have to look at James.

James has just received a letter from his dead wife Mary who said to meet her at their “special place.” James immediately sets out for Silent Hill, a resort town located somewhere in the United States. This game starts off much like the first. James finds himself walking through the fog filled and deserted streets of the town looking for someone. This is the first time his psychological state becomes apparent. When he looks into the mirror at the roadside stop he sees himself, but as we go into the town of Silent Hill it begins to fill with fog. This is James’s “Fog World.” It is the essence of his confusion and his muddled nature. His world and its inhabitants represent all the desires he has suppressed and memories he has compartmentalized throughout the course of his life. His memories, his anger, his sexual frustrations, they are all hiding and lurking within the fog. The first real manifestation of this is the straight-jacket creature. It’s called the Lying Figure and it’s symbolic of James’s internal suffering, but it also plays another role. It introduces the player to the kind of experience you are about to embark upon. The survival horror genre is as much about constraining the character as the player. Let’s look at another example.

The Mannequin is constructed of the bottom half of two women, you probably get the picture and you probably see what key desire James has been suppressing. Everything in Silent Hill: the town, the people, the fog and the creatures are all apart of James’s psychological state. And this brings up another interesting and unavoidable point. The people who James meets in Silent Hill are all constructed from his mind. Maria is extremely sexualized and for a good reason, she is the ideal state of his dead wife. She is what James desired most out of Mary. He wants Mary to be her sexually active self. Quite Freudian if you ask me, but I digress. Every character and every monster in his town make James whole, it’s like they are his manifested persona. The obscurity of the self becomes a major theme of this game and this is reflected in its characters. James can be broken down into his id, ego and superego. Eddie is his id, Maria is his ego and Silent Hill is his superego. Without getting into a deep Freudian reading of his character, you might want to take a look at this: http://www.shadowcouncil.org/randy/archives/003127.html. There are certain things I agree with, especially his reading of Eidde, and there are other things I disagree with this analysis of the game. Whoever wrote this has disappeared since 2008, but I think he has a pretty good understanding of Silent Hill.

The problem with taking a reading of Silent Hill from a “James Only” perspective is that we assume his quest is central to the game. Of course it’s the main focus, but Angela Orosco begs an important question. What is the true nature Silent Hill? I’ve always thought of it as a transformational area, a place where a person’s subconscious manifests itself into a physical form. Just take a look at the first game. Alyssa’s Silent Hill is filled with fog and cold. She was trapped within a hospital for almost her entire life and had a limited view of the world. The fog would only come naturally to someone like her who has been trapped within a room for ages. Henry Townsend from Silent Hill 4 has a very different view of Silent Hill. Like Harry Mason, he has an outsider’s perspective on the town and its surroundings. What separates him is exactly just what I just described, they are outside of the psychological scope of Silent Hill and they are experiences another person’s manifestation. What makes Angela so interesting is that her reality runs parallel to James. She has her own Silent Hill that actively engages with his.

Angela is a 19-year-old runaway, she’s was also abused as a child and it’s alluded to that she was repeatedly raped. She came to Silent Hill looking for her mother, but she is unable to find anyone. What makes her reality so interesting is unlike James’s fog, she has her fire. There’s a piece of dialogue right at the last time we see Angela where James remarks, “It’s hot as hell in here” to which she responds “It’s like this all the time for me.” Her Silent Hill is filled with engulfing flames that are constantly trying to catch her. It’s all the pain of her life manifested into something terrifying and encroaching. As James has his confusions, Angela has her pain. Unlike Eddie, who is a manifestation of James’ id; Laura, Mary’s innocence and Maria, James’ sexual frustration, Angela totally stands a part. What has to be understood about her is that when she is with James their realities merge. In some of the scenes where they interact, she acts as though she does not know James, as if they had never met. She acts confused and muddled, like she’s suffering from smoke inhalation. This is how James affects her. This is also what separates her from his reality.

What does the Lying Figure or the Mannequin mean to Angela? Absolutely nothing, but that’s not necessarily the case. If you take a reading of her character you can see that the characters who exist to James are of no consequence to her. If Eddie was really a person, why don’t we see any interaction between him and Angela? Why doesn’t she know about Laura? Why is it that whenever the two meet, she moves onto a separate path unavailable to James, it is because she has her own hell to go through, she has her own memories to conquer. This is what makes Silent Hill as a transformational environment so interesting and a character like Angela so intriguing.



What would it have been like to have played through her experience? I remember playing through Maria’s Born from a Dream and feeling kind of disappointed. It really didn’t add any depth to Silent Hill even though it helped explore Maria’s character. To have played through Angela’s journey would have made for a better experience. The only draw back is that this article would basically be useless, and you wouldn’t want that. What Angela represents is another lens through which to understand Silent Hill. It’s kind of like a purgatorial quest. I always thought that James and Angela are together because they had died at the same time. The only problem is that purgatory for them is a symbolism filled hell.

Angela is a rape victim. This is what drives her psychological state. There’s a scene in the game where she is being attacked by a monster called the Abstract Daddy. In walls of the flesh-coated room metal pistons steadily pulsate in and out of small holes. When James kills the monster, Angela lashes out against it and viciously attacks it. We can see here that the Abstract Daddy is her manifestation because it only has a small representative nature to James. After the fight, she accuses James of hating his wife and then disappears. Through her lens James is a representation of her oppressor, he is her father. Every time he reaches out to her with compassion and caring, she recoils because her father and her mother were unlike that. One part of the human psyche is developed through our interaction with role models and parents. This is the superego. The values that are passed on by our parents act as a mediator between the ego and the id. Her ego and id are out of sync with one another because of her lacking of a superego. This isn’t her fault; no one can say that what happened to her was her fault. This is also what makes her character so tragic, her mother also blamed her. This is her pain, she’s running away from the memory associated with her rape. It’s quite sad.

What makes all of this so important is that she solidifies the nature of Silent Hill as transformational. I could write an entire character profile on the town itself and one day I might, but right now I’ll keep the focus on James and Angela’s relationship. This is an easy way of visualizing it. Imagine that they exist within two spheres. Both spheres have a separate theme and effect on the surrounding area of Silent Hill. James’s clouds everything within fog and Angela’s creates walls of flame. When the two spheres interact they merge and create a middle ground for both characters to interact with. You can see this in their last scene together. Angela mistakes James for her mother while James comments on the intensity of the flames. Utter hopelessness is the feeling that can encapsulate that scene. As a player, the only thing I wanted to do at that point was run up those stairs and tells Angela that wherever she is going isn’t the right way. Burning to death in your own fiery hell isn’t the right way of dealing with pain, but James really isn’t a character who can relate to this.

Spoiler alert! I’ve alluded to this a few times before, but just in case this next part will be covering a few endgame events. I’ll do a small recap right now of what I’ve covered just to make sure everyone gets my point. Angela is equally as important as James because she has her own path. Unlike Eddie or Maria, she is her own person constructed of her own memories and schisms. Everything about her stands in contrast to James’s character and she acts as a reflection to his plight. He has his Mary, she has her pain. What makes her so important to the series as a whole is because she changed Silent Hill. Instead of it being a simple little town somewhere in America, she transformed it into an allegorical place where lost souls go on a purgatorial journey. James did play a big part in developing this, but she solidified this theory about Silent Hill being more than just a special place.

On with the article.

James killed Mary. He killed her because he was tired of her being so sick and being a burden upon him. He felt that by ending her pain she could finally rest, but he also had an ulterior motive. He hated her for stealing away his life, he felt that he had wasted so much of his energy and what he had keeping her alive within his heart. When I said, James can’t relate to Angela, I meant that the way he dealt with his internal pain was no better than Angela’s contemplation of suicide. At least her way is morally neutral, but murder is a sin, it’s something that goes against most laws and tenets of society, it’s something that will land you in Silent Hill. This is why the “Leave” ending is the true ending. He reveals all of what he felt to her and then leaves Silent Hill with Laura. James casts away his guilty conscience and moves on with his life. It’s a sad ending, but one with some closure.

Angela doesn’t get any of this, and this is why she’s a tragic figure. Unlike James, she is left undeveloped. We only meet with her four times each of which only last about five minutes. That’s not a lot of time for her to develop, but that really all she needed to become one of the most engrossing and interesting characters within the series. When she walks up those stairs no one can really tell what awaits her. Maybe she was able to confront her father and mother like James and Mary or maybe she found her way to the afterlife. This is why I like Angela so much. She’s an ambiguous character. Characters like her have been lost in modern videogaming, and it’s kind of sad. Everything always has to be explained and there’s hardly anything within the subtext. She is something special when it comes to character creation and development. Her ambiguity is her biggest draw and her depth leaves the player wanting more.

I love Silent Hill. It’s a series laden with meaning. The latest instalments, not so much, but every game up until four is filled with interesting characters to profile and to examine. Angela and James are just two characters, but two of the most interesting. How they interact with Silent Hill is truly remarkable and how they interact with each other speaks worlds about their personalities. They are tormented, confused, angry and filled with sorrow. They are thoroughly human and they remind me why Silent Hill 2 is one of the best games ever made.

Character Profile: Tommy Angelo and Sam

Mafia: The City of Lost Heaven (2002) is one of those titles that all gamers can appreciate, at least those who bought the PC version. Its story and its characters are brilliantly designed around delivering an intense and deep experience. Before I go off on a tangent about how much I love Mafia, I’m going to get a start on this. This article is going to be a close examination of Tommy Angelo, Sam and their conflict. When I first played the game, I automatically took Tommy’s side. He’s the protagonist and as players we’re supposed to relate to his struggle. I’ve been thinking about Tommy’s motivations and though he may be the only angel in the city of Lost Heaven, he’s also an angel of death.

Tommy Angelo isn’t your normal protagonist. Sure, he’s got the strong look, he has the attitude and he’s under the player’s control, but what’s he really like? Tommy joins the Mafia because he needs their protection. He slides into his position as the capable wheelman of Salieri’s mob, but he does more than just drive. There’s strength in numbers and it turns out that he’s a real team player. In “Ordinary routine,” Tommy gets his first gun and he ends up killing about 15 people. Any normal person one might go, “Whoa, I just killed a lot of people.” Not Tommy. He says, “You know, I ain’t one of those people with a thirst for blood. I don’t need violence in my life, and I don’t look for trouble, but I also don’t have any remorse.”

For a protagonist, Tommy makes some seriously immoral choices. He doesn’t condone hurting women and children, he spares a priest who witnesses a mass murder and he makes some morally good choices, but in “Whore” he plants a bomb in a hotel and blows it up. This sets fire to the building and probably sends shrapnel careening through the halls and adjoining rooms. Who knows how many innocent people were killed in that incident. Tommy eventually has an epiphany and it makes him realize the error of his ways. He escapes, talks to the police and decides to take the Mafia down before they can get him and his family. Tommy is seen as the “good guy” and his actions are always justified by the simple reasoning of protecting his wife and child or himself. There’s nothing wrong with that, but though he wants to protect his family, he ends up alienating his first one, the one that initially protected him.

I always felt bad for Sam. In “The Death of Art,” Sam dies bitter, angry and betrayed. My initial reaction, like most players was, good now Tommy is safe. Now that I’ve gone back and played the game again, I find myself questioning why Sam was killed. Players always need a justification to commit murder or to use violence. In Mafia, everyone you kill helps to circumvent Don Morello’s power. When Frank Colletti goes against the Mafia, he becomes a target. Now, deep down Tommy is a good guy, his Mom probably helped with that, and he knows not to kill Frank. He has a wife and a kid, and if anything he’s a reflection of what Tommy’s future self. Tommy like Frank wants an escape. For a character like Sam who doesn’t have a girlfriend, who doesn’t have a wife or kid and doesn’t even have a last name, all he has in the Mafia. Killing Sam, who honestly believes what he’s doing is ethically correct, seems a little unfair. To have just let him go might have been a better alternative than killing him in cold blood. Tommy had a right to avenge Paulie’s death, but Sam was just doing his job.

Sam is driven by a strict work ethic. He’s always there to do a job, not to have fun. He’s a Worker as well as a Mafioso. Unlike Tommy and Paulie, who are always in the spotlight, Sam constantly finds himself out of the action. On two occasions, Sam is taken away, beaten and interrogated. He finds his purpose obscured and placed into the background against the dominant central characters of the story. He only finds usefulness as an occasional tough guy and as a temporary auto mechanic. In the missions leading up to their conflict, Sam is given a specific task by Don Salieri. He’s told to keep quiet about the diamonds that are hidden inside the cigar cartons. Tommy and Paulie feel betrayed because they weren’t told what was at risk during the mission. They decide to rob a bank and blatantly disregard the organizational structure of the Mafia. This, of course, presents its problems.

Tommy is one of the lucky ones, he managed to get Sarah, Luigi’s daughter, and secure himself a nice little spot in the organization. Sam even says that Don Salieri thought of Tommy like a son, and this is what makes his betrayal of the Mafia so heartbreaking. Whether or not the Don was being honest or just vindictive, the friendship between Tommy, Sam and Paulie was a tangible relationship. There’s a moment in the game where you learn that Salieri and Morello used to be best friends. And even the best of friends can find themselves at each other’s throats. There’s no evidence to suggest that Sam was even told about Frank, Sarah’s friend and the other screw ups Tommy has been apart of. It’s entirely possible that Don Salieri told Sam about all these incidents to fire him up to kill Tommy. It’s a complicated affair.

For me, their conflict is more than just a case of relativistic morals and ethics. The Mafia in Lost Heaven can in no way be considered the “good guys” and their activities can definitely be seen as morally questionable. Prostitution, drugs, gambling and bootlegging are all bad things, and even though we don’t see Tommy or Sam involved in them that doesn’t mean that they were indirectly tied to them. Tommy and Sam are just pawns in overall structure and when one of them gets a chance to ascend through the ranks, they vie for it. This is what makes Sam’s participation in the diamond scheme okay.

Sam’s always in the background. This is finally his chance to make a name for himself as a “good guy” within the Mafia. Tommy and Paulie have threatened both Sam’s chance of making something of his purpose in life, but they are also threatening the structure of the Mafia and thus Sam’s purpose within the narrative. What does Sam really have? He has his clothes, sometimes he has a gun and maybe a little respect, but overall he doesn’t have anything other than the Mafia. This is what makes Tommy’s betrayal so tragic. The Mafia didn’t betray Tommy, Tommy betrayed the Mafia. He acted selfishly and ended up getting Sam killed. Tommy said he didn’t have any remorse about using violence as a means to an end. This time the consequences go deeper than just a question of morals and ethics, it affects someone outside of the scope of relativism.

This master piece of dialogue was read by Tommy at the end of the game, check it out:

"You know, the world isn’t run by the laws written on paper. It’s run by people. Some according to laws others not, it depends on each individual how each his world will be, how he makes it. You also need a whole lot of luck, so somebody else doesn’t make your life hell, and it ain’t as simple as they tell you in grade school. But it is good to have strong values and maintain them; in marriage, in crime, in war, always and everywhere. I messed up, so did Paulie and Sam. We wanted a better life but in the end we were a lot worse off than most other people. You know, I think it’s important to keep a balance in things, yeah, balance, that’s the right word. Because the guy who wants too much risks losing absolutely everything; of course, the guy who wants to little from life might not get anything at all."

Tommy always seems to get the last word. He’s a big character with an indomitable personality, but he’s also not the protagonist his appearance makes him out to be. He may have all the characteristics of a “good guy,” but he’s also a Mafioso. He may have Sarah and his daughter as the moral backbone of his epiphany, but characters like Paulie and especially Sam suffered because of his selfishness. Sam was always in the background and when it came for his time to be in the limelight, one of his best friends stabbed him in the back. Of course, this is just one reading of their conflict. Mafia: The City of Lost Heaven is a deep game and is always a pleasure to sift through all the little intricacies that make it a masterpiece. Emotion runs deep within each character and the relationships they have. Tommy and Sam both screwed up and paid for their crimes, not a fitting end for two of the best characters in all of videogames.

Character Profile: Norton Mapes

F.E.A.R. (2005) and the Breakdown (2004) changed the FPS world. Instead of being stuck in first-person perspective unable to fully interact with the environment, your proverbial box had holes cut for arms and thus a whole new way of looking at the world. The unfortunate part is that F.E.A.R. lacked a strong narrative backbone to reinforce the innovation.

The Point Man is a wholly unremarkable. What little character he has is just user manual material. He just transferred to F.E.A.R. and has been made the point man of the team. We also know he has a brother and at some point he was genetically modified to have faster than human reflexes. Your teammates, most of whom disappear, have little to no effect on the story’s progression, unless you count Jankowski’s ghost.

The only character who has any notable personality traits is Norton Mapes.

On the whole, Norton is left unexplored. We know that he’s a computer engineer working at Armacham and he likes Cheezee Pooz. He’s basically the result of Wayne Knight from Jurassic Park and Cartman having a kid. Of the characters in the game, that, for the most part, are bland and without definition, he is the only one that has any definable characteristics outside of the norm. He’s both a good and evil. He displays two sides, one in the destroying vital documents that could help reveal the Point Man’s identity and the other in his almost insane devotion to Armacham.

Norton is bumbling. He hides under a cactus for God’s sake. He makes me and almost every-other-person in the world feels. He’s a character designed around antagonizing you. For all of the Replica soldiers, tanks and assassins you kill, Norton is somehow able to evade you. This fat and obnoxious character undermines your integrity as a video gamer, and that’s why I like him.

As a character defined by a certain purpose, Norton fulfills it in almost every respect. What makes this worse is that he’s virtually untouchable, unless you count his appearances in the expansions where you get to wreak sweet havoc against him. He’s not an antagonist. He’s a secondary character that somehow manages to force his way into your path. It’s not that he’s not important, it’s that he’s important enough to be there for the developers to make us angry and indestructible enough to ensure that he survives even until the end of the game. He intrudes upon the experience to do nothing important except make you slightly annoyed. What makes Norton a weird character is that he seems to be just an elusive an indestructible as Fettel. In this way, he begins to fill in as a scapegoat for all the player’s anger and frustration. In that, he does a fine job as a character.

If you look at the way he is designed you can almost taste him. That sounds kind of gross, but you can just imagine what the developers were trying to get at. Norton is the stereotypical computer geek. He eats Cheezee Pooz, he has an obnoxious RTFM belt and he’s fat. This seems to be one of the qualities that are a little unfair to his character.

Making Norton so obese has an effect on how we view him. It makes him into a kind of jester or joker during the game. Not in the way that he becomes the comic relief of the game but an object of pity. Yes, it’s kind of funny that he gets stuck in the air vent, but it’s also a little sad. A character like him that generates so much ire, he makes you feel guilty for getting angry at him. It’s kind of sad and kind of pathetic, but that’s his character.

We don’t see Norton for more than thirty seconds at a time, but in that time he manages to get us to do a lot. He makes us open doors, he makes us angry, he makes us laugh when he ends up getting shot and then making us feel a little guilty when you realize he actually helped us out.

Norton has an amazing affect on the game’s story. If you look at what he does, just because of his general build and constitution, he managed to get past several replica soldiers, makes his way to Alma’s prison and still be alive after being shot to help you into Origin. A character should always have some redeeming qualities. Norton helps you out in the end, but that didn’t stop me from unloading a couple rockets his way when I finally got the chance to. We’re supposed to hate him and pity him.

Norton is portrayed both as an object of pity and an object of our hate. We both love him and we hate him for making us display any kind of sadness for his supposed demise. When he’s lying there bleeding after being shot in the chest, you sort of just stand there listening to him wondering when he’ll shut up and when those feelings of regret might go away.