Hello,
readers! We’re getting close to the end
of this list. I’ve really enjoyed
writing about my favorite characters and the games that they come from, and I
hope you’ve enjoyed reading about them. The
next two characters both had good intentions when they began their separate journeys,
but things may not have turned out the way they wanted them to. Let’s see what happens when someone is so
desperate to accomplish something that they lose themselves along the way.
4.
Daniel, from Amnesia: The Dark
Descent
“Don’t forget, don’t
forget, some things MUSN’T be forgotten… My name is… is… I am Daniel.”
The timing
of this character’s position on the list is impeccable, considering I just
talked about Amnesia in my last post. I
won’t talk too much about the gameplay this time around; instead I’ll focus on
the main character of the game, Daniel.
I mentioned last time that Daniel isn’t entirely mentally stable, has
forgotten everything about his past, and that you slowly uncover his secrets as
you progress through the game. While the
gameplay, the setting, and the monsters are indeed terrifying, perhaps even
scarier and more disturbing is Daniel himself, his past deeds, and how exactly
he got involved with this terrible, terrible castle.
From the first
letter you find in the game, the one he wrote to himself after drinking the
Amnesia potion, you find out that his goal is to hunt down and murder
Alexander, the baron of Castle Brennenburg, and that a creature known as the
Shadow is following Daniel. So why and
how did he get in this situation? Well,
I can't describe the full scope of this character and why I like him
without spoiling all of the secrets that are revealed throughout the game. So if you don’t want spoilers, skip ahead!
Daniel is,
for all intents and purposes, an average guy.
He keeps to himself, doesn’t get into any trouble, and lives his life in
peace and quiet. He works at a museum
that specializes in excavating ancient lands and discovering long-lost
civilizations and artifacts. However,
one day he goes on a journey that will ultimately change his tranquil life into
a living nightmare: He embarks on an expedition
to Algeria and finds a mysterious blue orb.
It grants him strange and alien visions of places far away and times
long past. Fascinated, though disturbed,
Daniel keeps the orb when he returns and investigates what it could be. But curiosity, as the saying goes, haunted
the cat with brutal and terrifying nightmares for weeks on end, killed all of
its friends, and slowly drove it mad with fear of a horrible and terrifying
creature following it before finally ending its life. Wait, that’s not how it goes. Anyhow, Daniel discovers that Orbs such as
his are objects of power and knowledge that have been around since before
humans even existed. He visits a famous
geologist to find out more about its strange properties, and a history
professor to discover how the Orbs have influenced mankind throughout the
ages. Needless to say, he is a bit
disturbed when both of these people wind up dead a few days later. In addition, horrible nightmares take hold of
his mind, preventing him from even sleeping properly. He goes to visit his physician to get
medication, and discovers that he’s dead before
he even gets there.
Convinced
now that something’s after him, Daniel desperately sends out letters to various
people with possible knowledge of the Orb, seeking a way to prevent his
doom. One letter he receives is
different from the others, a cryptic message from a baron in Prussia: “I know.
Come to my castle and I will protect you." Signed, Alexander of Brennenburg.
At this
point, Daniel’s descent into evil and madness begins. Desperate to save himself, he goes to the
castle and meets Alexander. By this
point in the game, the player is aware of just who Alexander is and what he’s
trying to do. Alexander himself is an
awesome character, but I want to focus more on Daniel and his motivations. Alexander knows a great deal about the Orbs,
and more importantly, what’s hunting Daniel.
Moving the Orb, he says, is like moving a star in the night sky. It isn’t supposed
to happen, and as a result, the Orb casts a long and dark Shadow. It isn’t a vengeful spirit, it’s the universe
attempting to put itself back together again, and the Shadow is a living
nightmare that will kill anyone Daniel interacts with before it finally catches
up to him. Daniel, his sanity at the
breaking point from terror, is willing to do anything to stop the Shadow from
catching him. Of course, this is exactly
what Alexander wants: A person who he
can freely manipulate to his own ends.
There’s a magic ritual that will keep the Shadow at bay, but it requires
a great amount of life energy. This energy comes from a chemical called Vitae,
which, conveniently enough, can only be harvested from humans who have recently
died while under a great amount of mental stress. In other words, Alexander and Daniel have to kidnap
humans and slowly torture them until their bodies and minds are at the absolute
limit before finally killing them.
Alexander reassures Daniel that they will only do this to those who have
committed terrible crimes and are irredeemable human beings. Daniel, however reluctantly, agrees to do this so that they can postpone his dark fate.
So why is it
that Daniel is one of my favorite characters?
It seems like he’s just a tragic soul who’s a victim of circumstance and
who has gotten a fate he doesn’t deserve.
While the concept of taking other people’s lives away to save your own
makes for a selfish, though tragic, character, it isn’t what puts him so high
on this list. When you finally make it
to the deepest and most evil places within the castle, the horror no longer
comes from the atmosphere or monsters, though those are still prevalent. It’s here you discover the grisly truth about
Daniel: Inside the torture
chambers. Not only was he forced to
commit horrible acts in order to save himself, he slowly grew to enjoy what he
was doing. While constantly telling himself
that the people he’s torturing are evil, sub-human animals, he becomes one
himself. Someone can only be around so much pain and
misery for so long before the mental restraints and rules placed upon them by
modern society slip away. He starts to
think of himself some kind of god dispensing justice upon the world’s filth. “Paint the man… cut the lines…. paint the man….
cut the lines….”
Daniel
reaches his ultimatum when a little girl he’s captured escapes from the castle’s
prison. He relentlessly hunts her down
and murders her, and it’s after this that Daniel finally comes to his senses. In a torturous and horrifying realization,
all of his evil acts crash down on him.
Thinking himself beyond redemption for his crimes and wanting to create
a new identity for himself, he vows to kill the one who did this to him,
Alexander, and to drink the amnesia potion so that he can become a new person
and shake off the bonds of his past.
Daniel
represents how someone can go from a model of civilized society to a
deranged lunatic. He shows what a big
difference there is between being a victim and an aggressor. Even though it seemed like he had no choice
but to do those horrible things, did that make them any less evil? Was it the fact that he tortured people, or
that he grew to enjoy it that made him such a twisted person? Did forgetting his past redeem him of his
acts, or will murdering Alexander do that?
Daniel is an incredibly well-written and deep character, and I love
discussing him and the others within Amnesia.
Sometimes the best characters are the ones that make the worst
mistakes. Speaking of which…
3.
Maiden Astraea, from Demon’s Souls
“Leave us, slayer of
Demons. This is a sanctuary for the lost
and wretched. There is nothing here for
you to pillage or plunder. Please, leave
quietly.”
Yay, Demon’s
Souls! Remember, that game that I talked
about a long time ago? I mentioned that
Maiden Astraea is an easy boss, but one that makes you feel guilty for killing
her. Well, I like her character for
similar reasons to Daniel, but her motivations are far different.
So in Demon’s
Souls, people go crazy after having their souls devoured by Demons. You visit various regions throughout the
game, each with different kinds of enemies that symbolize ailments of the
mind and problems with the people that lived there. The area that is perhaps the most hopeless
and despairing is the Valley of Defilement, a giant crevice into which all the
world’s garbage and refuse is dumped.
Waterfalls of poisonous sewage and clouds of buzzing flies permeate this
place, which has somehow become even worse after the colorless fog swept across
the land, bringing with it a scourge of Demons. You'll find such vibrant creatures as a Demon composed entirely of leeches, giant blood-engorged ticks, and soulless madmen with venomous knives.
So for a priest whose job is to make life better for others, this place
is like buy one get a thousand free at a furniture store. An evil
furniture store.
Maiden
Astraea journeys into the valley along with her brave knight, Garl Vinland,
with the intention of purifying the place and bringing happiness to the
populace. Sounds great, right? Ha, this is Demon’s Souls. Of all the
characters in both this game as well as Dark Souls, Maiden Astraea might be the
most morally ambiguous and thought-provoking.
Rather than rely on a God who, in her view, has abandoned the world and left
the people to rot, she turns to a greater source of power: Demon’s Souls. Using the power of the Soul Arts, the same
magic that corrupted the world in the first place, she takes in the darkness
and filth of the swamp unto herself. The
mindless and soul-starved people begin worshipping her and bowing. She becomes a Demon, and though she retains
her pure and innocent appearance, she has become the most impure and unclean
being in the world. The other priests
you meet in the game condemn her actions and urge you to end her heretic
existence. Since the only way to stop
the Demon invasion is to destroy the most powerful Demons, you have no choice
but to comply.
So you journey to the bottom of the putrid and
god-forsaken crevice and find her sitting in the deepest swamp, where all the
world’s filth finally meets in a festering pool of the unwanted. She holds up a glowing globe of power, a tiny light in the crimson-red darkness. Throngs of people circle her, bowing in
appreciation of her efforts. In
the corrupted water dwell, I’m not making this up, aborted fetuses that will attack
you if you get close. The Maiden
truly believes that while anyone else in the world would simply throw these
beings away, she is helping them and caring for them, forming a sanctuary where
the un-desirables can gather. She asks
you to leave, as you have no business in interfering with her holy work. There are only two outcomes of this
battle: You can kill her despite her
constant pleas for mercy, or you can kill Garl, her guardian, at which point she loses
all hope and kills herself. Either way,
you get her Demon Soul and are one step closer to your goal.
Once again,
this is a character that seems to be a victim of the circumstances, except this
time, there is a more noble reason behind it.
Rather than preserving her own life, Astraea is sacrificing herself to
demonic corruption in order to make the lives of the most miserable and
far-gone beings imaginable just a little bit better. And you walk in there and kill her. Worse yet, by this point in the game, you are
corrupted with demonic power as well. So
how are you more fit to live than she is?
Are you truly killing her in the name of the greater good? Is a world where you must kill such
kind-hearted and innocent people truly worth saving? Maiden Astraea became a Demon because she
refused to believe in God’s benevolence.
By taking on the power of the Old One and drawing in the impurity of
others, she herself became impure. So if
she refused to do nothing and insisted on putting others before herself, even if
all hope of truly curing them was lost, is validating her belief that no one
will take pity on her really that bad?
If she chose to seal her fate by becoming a Demon, and her very
existence prevents you from stopping the Demon scourge, is she truly doing the
right thing by helping a few, pathetic, people?
Why help the dead when there is still hope for the living?
In Demon’s
Souls and Dark Souls, the right thing is never right for everyone, and the
wrong thing always makes somebody smile.
In a world of morally ambiguous characters, Maiden Astraea is as grey as
the fog that covers the world.
Holy dang, that post was long. If you’ve read this far, thank you so much
and I hope you enjoyed reading about these tragic and deep characters. The final two will come next time! Until then, don’t touch any glowing blue orbs
or visit any plague-ridden valleys. Bad
things could happen!
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