One Actor One Character

I recently had a comment on one my Let’s Play videos “correcting” me on a certain issue. During my Let’s Play of Final Fantasy X-2, I called Tidus (the protagonist of FFX) a Lombax. The commenter felt the need to address the fact that he isn’t actually a Lombax.

But the thing is, he is. And today, for your entertainment, I’m offering up the “single actor, single character” theory, which suggests that every character that an actor plays is actually the same character each time. In the above Final Fantasy example, Tidus is a Lombax because he shares a voice actor with the first titular character in the Ratchet & Clank series, who is a member of the Lombax alien race (he’s the last of his race, specifically). Because James Arnold Taylor voiced them both, they are the same character.

The best example of this theory I have found is in Harrison Ford, aka Indiana Jones. Every character Harrison Ford has ever played has been Indiana Jones at different points in his life. Let me illustrate this point.

In the 1930s, Indiana Jones battled against the Nazis for numerous artifacts. One of these was the Holy Grail. Now, in an important scene in The Last Crusade, Indy drinks from the Grail to determine it’s the real one (ie. If it doesn’t kill him, it’s the Holy Grail, pretty flawed system, but hey, it worked for Indy). Now, it’s also established that the Grail is likely to grant immortality to those who drink from it. Therefore, through this simple act, Indiana Jones can now live forever. SHOCK HORROR! The Grail also gives his father regenerative powers, a la The Doctor, which allows him to change his appearance, voice and personality every few years, which is very handy as he works as a secret agent. He currently resembles Daniel Craig.

Anyway, I digress. Back to Dr Jones. Indy lived a normal life for a while, despite all this. He eventually joined the police force, and investigated a crime amongst the Amish. This led him to working for the CIA, and this put him on a path to the presidency. BUT OH NO! Air Force One gets hijacked, and Indy has to battle these evil men and put them in their place. He succeeds. There is much rejoicing.

But then someone frames him for the murder of his wife, which leads him to lose the presidency, and instead gets pursued across the country by one of the Men In Black (although the Fresh Prince was nowhere to be seen). He dives off a drainage dam. He goes into hiding. Changes his name to Deckard. Society begins to crumble as technology rapidly improves, and soon Indy, sorry, Deckard, finds himself in a job as a bounty hunter tracking down rogue replicant units.

After a high profile case involving a replicant modelled on Rutger Hauer, Deckard earned enough credits to get himself on the next spaceship to one of Earth’s many off-world colonies. Upon arrival, he encounters a Wookie named Chewbacca. Together, they steal the Millennium Falcon, and fly away to a galaxy far, far away. Then they meet Luke, and Leia, and all those other wonderful characters, and together they battle the evil empire formed by Simba’s dad, who has now possessed the body of the Green Cross Code man.

That’s how the theory works, and you can see how easily it can be applied. It’s a fun thing to apply if you don’t want to take your media too seriously, much like I don’t.

So now I’ve explained the rules of the game to you, go ahead and come up with similar character life stories of your own!

Confessions Of A Twenty Something Pokémon Trainer

Is there something wrong with being 25 and getting seriously into a Pokémon game? I mean, sure, I’m a gaming geek, which is all well and good, but there’s still something odd about playing Pokémon in your 20s.

Let me elaborate. I recently visited my very good friend UberBunneh in America, and while I was there we jointly bought the Gold and Silver remakes (I got HeartGold, she got SoulSilver), with the intention of playing through them semi-simultaneously and trading Pokémon in the ultimate quest to catch ‘em all. So yes, here we are, in our 20s, bonding through Pokémon.

It is, of course, incredibly enjoyable. There’s a certain nostalgia in playing the remakes, particularly as many of these Pokémon are the ones we knew from when we were younger, not to mention that there’s a strange addiction in wanting to be the very best, like no one ever was. Every time I get to a new area of the game I’m checking online to see if there’s any new Pokémon I can catch, and I’m not resting until I get them. I’m studying gym leaders’ Pokémon beforehand, and actually training up my miniature army before taking them into battle. What’s more, I’m consulting with Bunneh over what we can trade and when.

And yet, this is a “kid’s game”, meant to be played by school kids who like to spread rumours about how to catch Mew because, honest guys, Sam in Year 9 caught one and he never lies. It creates this strange dichotomy, where on one hand I’m enjoying this “child’s” game and on the other I’m telling myself I should really be trying to pretend to be an adult and focus on things like jobs and bills and producing unwanted offspring that I can ignore until they set fire to a Sainsbury’s distribution centre 12 years down the line. Or worse, I should be focusing my gaming attention on the likes of Call Of Duty and pwning n00bs and then insulting them over voice chat about how I had sex with their mother, because, you know, that’s the kind of game that adults should be playing, right?

Ultimately, the enjoyment wins. After all, I have a buddy playing along with me who is my best friend in a world we must defend, and let’s face it, playing Pokémon with a buddy is the way it’s meant to be played. AND I’m still able to juggle all those boring adult things without anything getting horribly affected. After all, I am somehow still employed. And silly little DS games are a nice break from the craziness of the outside world. Like all games tend to be these days for me.

And as for playing more adult games, playing Generic First Person Shooter #4824 makes me want to fall asleep. I played the demo of Killzone 3 and despite the amount of SHOUTING and EXPLOSIONS and GUNS and GIANT CANNONS and JETPACKS and MANLY MEN DOING MANLY THINGS I was slowly dying of boredom. Give me something that can keep me interested. Sure, Pokémon’s probably not the most mentally stimulating game ever, but it’s deeper than SPACE MARINES AT WAR SHOUTING AND EXPLODING EACH OTHER YEAH!

So yeah, I’m a 25-year old Pokémon trainer, and I’m bloody happy with that. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to travel across the land, searching far and wide. I know it’s my destiny.

(P.S. if you now have the Pokémon theme tune stuck in your head off the back of this, then my work here is done)

Sidenote: it’s been a while since I last updated, but now I’m aiming for a M/W/F update schedule, free time permitting, with a much more professional (yet still casual) writing style. Feel free to beat me with sticks if I fail to keep this up.