written by Jih Wei Peng
So, stop me if you’ve heard this one before: The protagonist sees his homeland ruined by disaster, an act that spurs him to a quest to prevent such disasters from ever happening again. He eventually learns about six MacGuffins of incredible power that, if united, may well have the potential to achieve his aims and sets about acquiring them. In doing so, he goes through many trials, makes painful and emotional sacrifices, and confronts an increasingly powerful set of guardians who try to thwart his plans, eventually culminating in an epic confrontation and a boss rush of his most powerful opponents in a battle to determine the fate of the universe.
Thanos is a video game protagonist already is what I’m saying here, and Marvel might as well make that formal.
For those of you who don’t follow Marvel’s labyrinthian continuity, Thanos began life as a powerful tyrant obsessed with Death – which is to say, the actual physical personification of Death as a beautiful woman who he attempted to court by causing as much lower-case death as he could, eventually culminating in his collecting six Infinity Stones, giving him the godlike power necessary to wipe out half of the population of the universe with a snap of his fingers.
Hilarious though such a mundane motivation and bare naked villainy were, however, when it came time to direct the Avengers’ “Infinity Saga” movies the Russo brothers decided that he needed a more sympathetic motivation and portrayal, and in so doing they managed to create one of the most engaging villains in cinema today.
Thanos’ Neo-Malthusian motives may be misguided, but they can be understood. Throughout the movies, he demonstrated a consistent sense of personal integrity and fair play that commanded respect. And despite constantly fighting against the heroes and even being thwarted from time to time, he constantly demonstrated a certain sympathy for their lives and their cause which did much to humanize him, which is a pretty impressive feat for what was ultimately a giant genocidal purple troll.
Of course, no matter how sympathetic he is, he’s still a villain and his stated goal is still literally killing off half the population. Games have traditionally been a bit leery about having their protagonists be outright villains, and with good reason – the cognitive dissonance of committing villainous acts is a bit tough for most players to swallow. But Thanos does have a couple of particular advantages that make him more plausible as a protagonist – his panache and sheer charisma, for instance, can smooth off the edges of what he’s doing from moment to moment. While his final motivation is horrific, it’s still possible to spin it as a positive as he mostly avoids on-screen atrocities for his time in the two Marvel movies. But perhaps his greatest perk, and the best argument in favor of a game featuring him, is that he’s a Marvel supervillain with an excellent reason to face down every Marvel superhero.
Most superhero games tend to suffer a bit from the problem of balance – you can’t give the player all the awesome toys right out the box, and even when they DO get their toys you can’t let them run completely riot over the enemy or you’ll kill all sense of challenge. In any game featuring a team of heroes, inter-party balance becomes an issue as well – if one character becomes superior to another, it starts becoming painful to play with the weaker character. But if you’re not playing AS the heroes but instead AGAINST them, all bets are off – the heroes are now free to be as powerful, and as cinematic as only video game bosses can be. Paradoxically, the best way to show off the awesome power of a hero can be not to play as them, but to fight against them.
That’s all very well, of course, but what exactly would a game featuring Thanos even look like? There are a couple of options; One could go with the classic God of War route, running down the basic plot of Infinity War in a series of missions to acquire the Infinity Stones, with an RPG powering system as Thanos gains more Infinity Stones and unlocks a greater understanding of their powers, allowing to face off against the Avengers with an increasingly broad array of reality-shifting powers – phasing enemies temporarily out of existence, teleportation, time reversal, mind control – there’s a lot a creative developer could do with the Infinity Stones.
It could also be possible to go with a “reverse XCOM” route, where you control not just Thanos but also his armies and his children, the Black Order, sending them out on tactical missions where you hurl waves of faceless mooks at the Avengers backed by the occasional member of the Black Order in a bid not so much to defeat the heroes as to tie them up and distract them long enough for you to get away with the Infinity Stones. Not only would this provide unique gameplay possibilities, but it would
also allow the writers to flesh out the Black Order and their relationship with Thanos in more detail since their treatment in the movies didn’t go too far beyond being cackling henchmen.
Whatever treatment he gets, however, one thing is for sure – Thanos has the potential to be one of the gaming world’s most iconic protagonists if treated right, and we here at Game Insider look forward to seeing a dev bold enough to try and take on his challenge.