James Bond Needs Therapy | Semi-Ramblomatic
On this week's Semi-Ramblomatic, Yahtzee unpacks the smugness (or lack thereof) of James Bond in 007 First Light.
Comments (9)
It sounds like they've nailed the middle ground between Nathan Drake and Captain Walker (Spec Ops The LIne). Not so grim and gritty you can't have fun, but not so smug about his success that can't enjoy it.
For me, the character's motivation matters to how much of their obnoxious attitude I'm willing to deal with. Nathan Drake just wants to get rich. While that's understandable, I don't have a lot of rooting interest in his success. Yay, Nathan got rich, that's nice I guess? Bond, on the other hand, and his knock-offs like Ethan Hunt from Mission Impossible as well, are typically out to stop terrorists from murdering a whole lot of innocent people, so it's easy to get invested in their success even if they're jerks. (We can leave aside that Bond and Hunt are also agents of their own country's national agenda -- if you want to engage with that element of spycraft stories, Jason Bourne is over that way, go chat him up.) I could make a convincing case, I think, that Bond is a lot more tolerable as a character when the media he's in takes the threat seriously and has Bond take it seriously as well. The goofier and less grounded the Bond character is, and the more over the top the gadgetry is, the less interesting the story tends to be. I really enjoyed Daniel Craig's era as James B(l)ond, precisely because it restored a lot of the grittiness to both the character and the situations. I haven't had a chance to play in the new Bond game yet but I looked at some playthroughs of the early chapters and the "Grit Factor" seemed satisfyingly high.
This makes me curious where Indiana Jones falls on the confident smug guy axis.
He is confident, yes, but he keeps messing up in a 1000 small ways. Getting a uniform that doesn't really fit, blunders into a nazi command central. He has more a "whoa, how did I get away from that alive!?" vibe.
Witness James Bond in his most introspective adventure yet, Tomorrow is Always Bothering Me.
Never been able to see Bond as anything other than an intolerably smug dickhead in any context - frankly, James Bond Jr deserved a better uncle - but I think you're entirely correct about the fighting style in Dying Light being the clincher. It's hard not to root for Bond as he fights like his life depends on it because *it very literally fucking does*.
What a final sentence! Can’t help but to assume it also takes a British-y mind for that
My only complaint about this game is that none of the characters in the very generous training segment of the game amount to much. When (REDACTED) becomes the big villain, I was like, c'mon... GoldenEye this shit. Make (REDACTED) the cloaked villain. (REDACTED)'s (REDACTED) already has beef with the 00 program, why invest so much time with that group if one of the (REDACTED) isn't the ultimate Bean at the end...
Starlord barely got a mention in your list of examples, because he has all the positive qualities you mentioned during the video - he's broke and struggling to keep his crew afloat, and they get mad at him when he screws up. Though I guess the "playing music while shooting guys" makes it look like he's not taking his life-or-death fights seriously.