Watched the Louis Theroux documentary on Jimmy Savile last Sunday. It was a follow up to the initial documentary he made in 2000, when Savile was alive and had yet to be accused of numerous sex crimes.
I'd heard Theroux talking to Richard Herring about this issue, a year ago, on Herring's podcast - Richard Herring's Leicester Square Theatre Podcast, which I massively recommend. You can find the podcast here. Warning - contains much swearing and adult humour. It's podcast number 69, or you can go straight to it here.
In the podcast, Theroux discussed the original documentary, and is clearly vexed about how he failed to spot, at the time, that he was friends with a monster. He - Theroux - is an accomplished journalist. An expert at getting inside people's heads. His entire style, whether he is talking to the religious lunatics of Westboro Baptist Church or to people working in the adult film industry, is to disarm the subject and slowly, subtly let them reveal themselves.
The masks that hide us
It is clearly difficult for him to understand how he could have been so close to Savile and yet not seen the evil beneath the man's skin. The new documentary positions Louis as, to some extent, another victim of Savile. Another person emotionally abused and manipulated. If Savile was a monster, his crimes were not just physical. They were psychological too.
As always, part of my mind turns to games. What good villains are there in the games we play? Are there any who truly get under the protagonist's skin, in a meaningful way? Or are they all, when it comes down to it, a series of strong guys who you have to hit a lot?
There must be some villains who properly get into your head. The villain in Life is Strange, I suppose, has some elements of that. The mechanics of the game - choice based, with dialogue trees - allows for some sense of relationship and develops psychological consequences. Are there others?
The closest I can think of is in That Dragon, Cancer. A deeply upsetting game, where cancer itself is the antagonist. A cruel, inhuman force that seeps into every scene. And games like that are important - ones which deal with real issues and proper horror. I see no reason why a game shouldn't deal with cancer, or abuse, or any of the things which humanity struggles to comprehend.
But then, That Dragon isn't a game which really allows for strong play mechanics. Can mainstream gameplay deal with these things?
As I mentioned in a previous blog, Deus Ex: Mankind Divided falls down a little when it tries to marry its story and mechanics. There is a side-quest villain who is very interesting and has some well written motivation. Pursuing her leads to a decent dialogue boss-fight, which I failed. But then it's just running about, shooting guns at each other. Which is over in seconds, because I'm a massive cyborg and she was just a psychologically interesting monster.
How would Savile function as a game villain? How would his slippery, complicated persona be communicated into the game world? Would I just end up chasing him round the streets of Leeds with a machine gun, dodging exploding cigars and listening to his repeated dialogue barks?
Opinions welcome.
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