Day 2: Your Favorite Character

Brandon

Well hello again dear readers. Hopefully this time I can type something with grammar and spelling better than a third grader’s.

Now who can really say with complete certainty what their favorite video game character ever is? Likely it would be someone who has never even played a video game and actually has no idea what they’re talking about. Anyways, more or less, my favorite would probably be this smug asshole:

First and foremost let me get one thing straight when I say Jak is my favorite. I mean this Jak and this Jak alone. He seems to be unfortunately plagued by a strange habit of looking cooler with each sequel, but also become more and more unbearable each time. This isn’t to say that he becomes completely unbearable, I still love them all to death, it’s just that each Jak is a little less likable than the last. Now how about some praise for this guy and why he’s vastly superior to your favorite character.

Silent Protagonists Are Silent For A Reason: Or at least that’s how I figure it. In a game where the hilarious dialogue is one of your main selling points (See: Anything Daxter ever says) why wouldn’t you give your main protagonist a voice to join in on the quips? Why leave him silent other than a handful of athletic grunts and a dramatic yell when falling to his death? (See: Link) Maybe you want to make him mysterious, as everyone knows that the strong mysterious silent types ooze raw concentrated sex.

How can you say no to a face like that

Maybe you tapped out your creative dialogue juices writing for all the other characters and couldn’t come up with anything that wasn’t completely stupid. Maybe you just felt like having a silent hero, because lets face it, silent heroes will never go out of style. Maybe you just couldn’t find the perfect voice for the character and gave up on it all together. This is totally my headcanon and I don’t care how ridiculous it is. To give him a voice they had to age him up two years and turn him into a revenge obsessed gun-nut. I’m not saying nothing good came of it at all, just this one line is hilarious all on its own: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ash0oTxkw-M#t=19s but it also showcases how little much contempt he has for everything now. When you have to completely change a character’s personality in order to let them speak, you know you had something good. (This is completely ridiculous I know, but shut up and let me have my fantasy. Silent quirky wonder-filled goofball Jak was the best Jak)

Quirky Character Best Character: You’ve just destroyed a giant super robot with your bare hands, saved the entire world from basically not existing anymore, and put a couple of arrogant jerks in their place to boot. How do you celebrate? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fvOeltEJaY By break dancing with an otter. This scene is a really great summation of the kind of guy Jak was. He probably spent his pre-adventure life goofing off without a care in the world. Likely some combination of fishing, napping, disobeying an old green magic man, pranking said green man, and just generally not giving a damn. Imagining your high school summer life if you lived on a mildly tropical beach would probably get you a pretty good idea. (Unless you do live on a mildly tropical beach, in which case screw you. You go live in the cold rainy valley for a while. Jerk.) His basic outlook on everything was more or less to smile, shrug, and go with the flow to get shit done. Not to mention his compulsion to help literally everyone in the world. Lost your pants in a race? Sure I'll go get them back for you. Giant monster destroying the town? Don’t sweat it man, Ill take care of it on my way out

Not All Heroes Are Epic: Sure saving the world is nice and all, but I’m just here to help my friend with his embarrassing hair problems. The premise of the game is not to defeat the bad guys and kick off Jak’s illustrious career in saving everyone’s asses. The game is about two kids who were goofing off where they weren’t supposed to when one of them has an embarrassing accident. Well let’s go fix that. What? Saving the world? Nah man, we're just on our way to the doctor’s office, don’t be silly. This is Jak and Daxter. Not a big band of heroes off to beat the baddies, but an average Joe trying to help his best friend fix a problem that he more or less caused. The very idea of saving the world doesn’t present itself until you’re around 75% through the game. How’s that for a hero? Stopping the world from being destroyed is almost sort of a secondary goal when all things are considered. They had no idea that everything was going to blow up the way it did. They were just travelling cross country to get Daxter back to normal when the shit hit the fan. While this may be the basic premise behind plenty of other character’s rise to hero status, it just seems to hit home for me with Jak. I don’t know what it is.

So there you have it. Really shoddily fleshed out reasons for why I like this kid as much as I do. Decent character points with dangerously shaky supports. This was probably more one of those “I don’t know why, I just do” situations than anything. But hey, I tried.

Kam

Kirby

Oh man I love this guy! He's cute, funny, likeable and unlike other Nintendo characters, hasn't been ruined by voice acting. There's just so much to love about him no matter how cynical you are. Actually wait, that's a good point, what could Nintendo do to make you hate Kirby?



Oh yeah, that. Nevermind.