The Unappreciated Heroes of Video Games

In video games, quite often or not your character is pegged as the one who saved the world. You stopped the bomb going off or you saved rescued the people or you even might have correctly navigated the complexities of building a city winning the over the people. Although a lot of the time, the real heroes were the ones who stepped up, and supported your character through there time of hardship. The put everything on the line and ensured that the hero of our game could achieve their great victory. In this article we want to explore a handful of those unappreciated heroes and call out their successes. If you think I missed any from this article, be sure to post your thoughts in the comments sections on our social media pages.

At first Morrigan comes across as a scheming companion with a hidden agenda, and across all of her appearances in Dragon Age, she never stops giving off that ‘vibe’. Being the daughter of the ‘Legendary Witch of the Wilds’, Flemeth, also helps you kind of not trust this character. However, in both Dragon Age: Origins and Dragon Age: Inquisition it is Morrigan who actually moves the story forwards directing both protagonists and ALSO offers them solutions to their problems (at a cost of course). The example ill primarily draw on is during the events of Dragon Age: Origins, where the epic grey wardens are heading towards their final battle in which, once the Archdemon is slayed, the warden that killed it will die. This option can be used, forcing players to chose whether their hero dies, or their best mate Alister dies. Although, before these moments, Morrigan offers the players an ominous alternative, in which the player needs to ‘court’ Morrigan to conceive a baby. If they do this, she will cast a spell which will removes the effect of ‘suddenly dying’ when they slay the Archdemon. The cost however is that she will leave with the baby, and never see the wardens again. If you took this path, later in the games, you find out that the child survived the spell, taking in the soul of an old god and is being looked after well. It comes across that Morrigan did this entirely for her commitment to the Warden, saving his and Allister’s lives and had no real hidden agenda.

I know Barret is a playable character in Final Fantasy 7, but he in his own way, had just as much of an impact on saving the world as Cloud did, yet everyone seems to only cheer for Cloud. I wont get to much into the detail on this, but ultimately Cloud saved the world from Sephiroth destroying the world with a huge meteorite to I suppose ‘reset the world?’. Although, the world was already creaking at the seams, as the worlds “life-force” was being drained from it and harvested to make power. This practise was spreading destruction of fauna and flora across the land. Although it was not a more imminent threat as Sephiroth was, it would have done Sephiroth’s work for him. Barret took it in his own hand to join Avalanche and take some drastic actions to slow down this destruction. He made it is mission to fight against the corrupt Shinra company, who were harvesting the lifeforce, and bring down their capability to do so. The issue is with this approach is, it has collateral, but its kind of one of those ‘Greater Good’ scenarios. In the end Shinra is all but destroyed and their destruction of the land mantle is passed over the antagonist Sephiroth. But, without Barratt hiring Cloud, taking down the reactors and ultimately antagonising Shinra, Cloud might not have even stumbled across Sephiroth’s plan, therefore being way too late, and underprepared to bear him.