14 DAY TRIAL // Our protagonist is buffed, has thick black hair with wild strands, an old fashioned revolver laying on the table ahead of him and relies on strong liquor to put his troubles behind him. He sits at an old fashioned wooden table somewhere in the wasteland and talks about how being an outlaw has changed his life. The man has some demons to keep under control and some deeds in his past that he is not proud of. But for him there's no time like the present and our character is set to touch the lives of all around him, trying to do good while the authorities would be more than happy to see him disappear.
Reading the title of this article is a dead give away for the fact that I'm talking about Jim Raynor, the main character in Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty. But I could also be talking about a certain John Marston, the protagonist of Red Dead Redemption, the open world Rockstar Western title that managed to top the sales charts for the United States for two months. There are physical links between the two character but their background are also eerily similar. It seems that the outlaw with a heart of gold and a flare for leading men is a stereotype that big video game developers cannot stay away from.
Starcraft II is full of such stereotypes. Tychus, Raynor's old friend, is even more of a redneck but can be counted on to show up when it really matter. Tosh, the ghost with a weird amulet which suggests voodoo rituals, has thick dreadlocks and an even thicker Jamaican accent. The main doctor on the ship is a woman who server as a counterpoint to the personality of Sarah Kerrigan. Pirates are backstabbers, the lab assistant is, of course, a young fellow who cuts his face shaving and the man in the armory could be substituted with a dwarf named Scotty. The presentation is quite interesting in Starcraft II but unfortunately all these tropes get real old real fast.