Who Do You Think You Are? The Style of PCs

Let's compare Commander Shepard of Mass Effect fame with the Courier from Fallout: New Vegas, shall we?


Take my Shepard, Wren. Wren Shepard grew up on a space station, never setting foot on a planet until she was in her teens. Her parents were proud members of the Human Systems Alliance Navy, and when Wren came-of-age, she followed in her parents' footsteps and joined the Alliance Marines. When Batarian slavers attacked the human colony of  Elysium, Wren single-handed protected the colonists from the invaders, earning the Star of Terra and being selected into the prestigious N7 program. During this time, she rose through the ranks, eventually becoming the Executive Officer of one of the most advanced ships ever built, the Normandy, under the command of Captain David Anderson. And that was before the game even started.

Now, let's look at one of my Couriers, Adam. Adam is a courier. He ran afoul of Benny and his Great Khan cronies outside of Goodsprings whilst carrying the Platinum chip. Annnnnd that's it.

These are two pretty different kinds of PCs. One is a fleshed out character in a long story: creating Shepard in Mass Effect involves deciding who Shepard is, and where he/she has come from. Deciding the story of Shepard comes even before deciding what Shepard looks like. In ME1, the first scene of game comes with the knowledge of the kind of person that Shepard is. It's fairly important to the story; Shepard's past changes and informs how the NPCs of the galaxy interact with him/her, and even comes back to haunt him/her at certain points of Shepard's story.

The Courier is, of course, almost the exact opposite, a blank slate. While snippets of who the Courier is comes out occasionally in conversation with other NPCs, really, it almost doesn't matter the roads that the Courier has walked. The world continues turning even without knowing every detail of the Courier's life.

So who's the stronger PC? The obvious choice is Shepard; after all, Shepard is a fleshed out PC with a lot of hooks, a fair amount of depth, and that's reflected in the world around it. But really this isn't a fair comparison. What the Courier lacks in backstory he/she more than makes up for by just being a set-piece in a bigger story around them. Shepard is the king of the Mass Effect chessboard: the most important thing on the board that, by the end of the third game, becomes the single focal point of all the galaxy's attention. The Courier, by contrast, is really a pawn in the big scheme of things, especially to those he/she chooses to work for throughout the course of the game. The Courier slogs along, one square at a time, until the Battle of Hoover Dam where it meets the other end of the board and becomes the queen, the most powerful piece on the board. This is the second biggest difference between the Courier and Shepard: Shepard is a child of circumstance, a (wo)man who happens to receive a message from a long-dead civilization fortelling the death of the galaxy, setting him/her on a course of the its salvation from the Reapers. The Courier is a child of nurture, someone who makes decisions based on what's best for him/her as opposed to what needs to be done. While both PCs are ultimately the arbiters of their own fate, making the decisions that shake the world around them, the motivations for the characters are radically different.

I like Shepard. I like being able to choose who (s)he is and what happens to him/her. But I like the Courier too. I like being able to put myself in the Courier's shoes, pretending that I'm lynchpin of the war of attrition between the New California Republic and Caesar's Legion. And it's that ability to be in New Vegas that makes the Courier every bit as memorable as Shepard. In my opinion.

--D Marx