Brütal Legend slagged my heart. I was ready for solos that shred, men that shriek, and monsters with teeth where they should have had faces. I was ready to dig the jokes and hate the gameplay. But nobody told me that Brütal Legend’s a love story. (Oh and hey: spoilers follow. So go play the game. It’s epic.)
The hero of Brütal Legend, super-roadie Eddie Riggs, finds himself shot back in time to a primordial era where mankind suffers under the chokehold of demons, while the relics of metal – handed down by the Titans, and not, like I was taught, Satan – lay buried and forgotten. Only the power of metal music can free humanity, and only by offing superdemon Deviculus can Eddie start the revolution.
But truth be told, beating Deviculus barely mattered to me. I did it all for a girl.
Her name’s Ophelia, and you meet her in scene one of the game, when you’ve landed in the past and are still getting used to killing dudes. Ophelia is sneaking around in disguise, but once she sees you’re human, she fights by your side and takes you back to meet the resistance. The achievement you win here – “got a car and a date” – sums it up. This is a dude fantasy, where the gnarly lead man has just landed the metal babe of his dreams: traditionally hott but also deadly, a do-anything to-anything survivor who’ll leap right into your ride.
Of course, Ophelia’s dating some dude named Lars. At this point, I just hoped she’d dump him and end up with me. But writer/director Tim Schafer had some more twists in mind. And before I get into them, let me just explain why I dig romance in games.
I’m a romantic. In fact, I'm kind of a sap. I don’t read “romances” straight-up, but my favorite comedy and action flicks also have a love story, with flirting, banter, and a victory smooch in the denoument. And video games totally get this. Alyx from Half-Life 2 keeps raising the bar for shooter sidekicks, and a role-playing game can’t ship without a range of romance options, straight, gay and bi. The formula’s proven: What’s the point of saving the universe if nobody’s at your side?
And so in Brütal Legend, there’s a love interest. But the love interest is also far more important than the antagonist, because for half the game she is the enemy. Eddie and Ophelia fall for each other, share a smooch – with dramatic rain and wind rolling in, natch – and as soon as Lars is out of the way (courtesy Deviculus, actually, so thanks at least for that one, dude), they have a chance to couple up.
Except Eddie doesn’t trust Ophelia. She’s been keeping secrets, and she won’t say why. He walks away from her, and leaves her broken and distraught. Cut to three months later: she’s changed. She tried to drown herself, because yeah, I get the reference, okay? And when she’s at her weakest, Deviculus takes advantage of her and twists her into something awful - a goth. And he sends her out for revenge.
From that point on, the fight’s between Eddie and goth-Ophelia, and Deviculus – even in the final battle – is an afterthought. But when the battle’s won we discover that this is a phantasm-Ophelia, and the real one is still stuck in that river, safe, and ready to be rescued by Eddie. Dramatic kiss unlocked. And to the last frame, she’s the real prize.
And that’s where things get problematic. Because really, is the game just treating her as a prize?
Brütal Legend risks treating Ophelia as a reward, rather than a three-dimensional character. After all, she’s the damsel in distress at least twice, and no matter how tough she acts, she depends on Eddie –and so, on the player. Alex Raymond wrote a great piece on this problem that made the point that women aren’t vending machines, so why treat them that way in a game? And while gender’s a big part of this, the same issue applies if you’re playing a female Shephard in Mass Effect, twisting dumb Kaiden around your pinky. Or in a game like Fable II, where dating really does boil down to a vending machine: insert gifts, get back hearts.
But if you want a romance, you don’t want a vending machine. And Brütal Legend’s romance works because Ophelia is so much more than that. After all, she challenges Eddie. She’s the one who sees his dark side. She ends up with Eddie in the end, but Eddie can’t take her for granted. In a piece on the “romance problem,” Emily Short puts her finger right on it: “What's needed, from a gameplay perspective, is a romantic partner who is sometimes also functionally the villain. … It raises the emotional stakes between those two characters far more reliably than attempts to portray attraction in interactive form.” Of course, Brütal Legend’s love story isn’t interactive. But it is believable. And to us romantics, the romance – far more than the usual hokum about saving humanity – is the reason to see the game through.
After the finale, you can go back and find Ophelia, standing on a hill, swigging out of a bottle and waiting for you. Talk to her, and the two characters start to make out – and make out, and make out, while time passes and the weather changes and the sun rises and sets. And they’ll keep making out – unless you stop them.
Chris Dahlen writes about games, music, pop, and tech. You can find him online at @savetherobot, or drop him a line at chris [at] savetherobot.com.