Once Aiden gets into the vents, instead of honoring this guy’s sacrifice and skedaddling, he just sits there, face pressed to the vent, for roughly five or six minutes while Waltz (the bad guy) acts menacingly and, surprise surprise, ultimately kills the guy. This guy gave Aiden the information he was looking for, and, on top of that, gave him this device no one asked for (which will further aid Aiden later on). Heck, if anything, he just saved the guy’s life, even if only to extend it briefly before it ends gruesomely anyways. Now, Aiden doesn’t know this guy and doesn’t owe him anything. The informant then tells Aiden to take the vents to get to safety while this guy, already pretty much done for, says he will stay behind and hold off the fast-approaching guards. The guy then gives Aiden a tool to use on his journey, a name of someone that might have further info, and where to look for that person. Aiden is looking for a guy that might have info regarding Aiden’s sister, whom Aiden is trying to locate.Īiden goes to meet the informant, but the guy has been ambushed and isn’t going to make it. Take, for example an interaction very early on the game. It’s almost like being John Malkovich in Being John Malkovich, when John Cusack’s character has taken over his body and relegated John Malkovich’s psyche to merely a spectator as John Cusack’s character makes him say and do things he otherwise wouldn’t.Įvery time Aiden Caldwell says words, or expresses ideas, or professes plans, they are almost always hare-brained, idiotic, or completely outside the realm of rational human behavior. Aiden Caldwell, the playable protagonist of Dying Light 2, is a dreadful, annoying character that all but brings the game down a peg or two every time he opens his mouth and says words.Īiden Caldwell is insufferable, made all the more irritating since we see the world through his eyes. Now that it’s out, I have the chance to test this hypothesis, and it unfortunately turns out to be pretty spot-on. I had hypothesized about the dumbing-down effect of the name leading up to the game’s release. It might be safe to assume that, even if being named Aiden wasn’t the impetus for the negative reaction to the Watch Dogs character, it also doesn’t help any character that is already about as exciting or charismatic as a glass of milk slowly reaching room temperature.īecause we now have another protagonist named Aiden courtesy of Dying Light 2: Stay Human. And although it seems silly to assume the main underlying issue for the public disconnect - and even backlash - was solely due to the fact that his name was Aiden, now that we have a larger sampling of data, I think it’s time to revisit this naming thing. He became a meme almost overnight, and only continued to be one, with Ubisoft famously even claiming his baseball cap was iconic before the game even released.īut try as they might, Ubisoft was unable to produce anything but the walking butt of a joke that no one wanted to be in on. He was too moody, too brooding, and far too homicidal to be endearing or even likeable. The second is that no one likes Aiden Pearce. The first being the cool reveal trailer from E3 2012 (the game that shipped was downgraded pretty significantly from what was shown in that trailer). That name, of course, is Aiden.Įveryone remembers all of two things, on average, from the first entry in the Watch Dogs series. There seems to be one name in particular that will always relegate a character to the category of forgettable - or worse, offensive. So it is a curious thing when a name seems to carry with it the kiss of death for a game character, dooming them before one even has a chance to interact with them. Most people tend to identify Vaas as the standout character of that game, so much so that many struggle to remember the name of the protagonist. In some instances, they aren’t even the playable character, like Vaas Montenegro from Far Cry 3.
Not all of them are good people - some of them are rather despicable. They stand the test of time, and even through various permutations, they tend to still harbor that “it factor” that made us love them to begin with. I’m talking about characters like Mario Mario, Joel Miller, Samus Aran, Commander Shepard, Master Chief, Lara Croft, and many other characters like them.
For the most part, these characters stand out in our minds more than probably 90% of all other characters - even more than other characters in the same game. Throughout the history of video games as a narrative medium, there are character names that loom larger than others.
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