8 Video Game Characters Who Desperately Need Therapy
These characters need to speak with a professional.
Much as video games are often perceived by many as an escape from reality, as their graphics become ever-more realistic and their stories grow more nuanced, it becomes difficult not to engage with the characters on a real-world level.
After all, empathy is the most basic means through which we as players can connect with a video game character, and in the case of these ones, we've certainly forged quite the bond with them.
But it's also anxiously apparent these characters - whether heroes, villains, or more ambiguously motivated - have some serious business going on under the hood.
That is to say, these video game characters could do themselves a huge solid by doing the very thing more of us should probably do in real life - seek out therapy.
Therapy can be an immensely valuable tool to work through trauma and forge lifelong coping mechanisms, and given what these characters have been through across their respective franchises, they'd clearly benefit massively from meeting with a therapist and talking through some of their issues.
Therapy won't necessarily solve all of these characters' problems, but it'll surely help them process everything that's going on upstairs...
8. Nathan Drake - Uncharted
On the surface, Nathan Drake may be a charming, wise-cracking facsimile of the globetrotting Indiana Jones archetype, but let's be real here - beneath that irresistible smirk, the guy is sublimating the literally thousands of lives he's responsible for ending.
It's often said that the Uncharted franchise is one of gaming's all-time great examples of "ludonarrative dissonance" - where there's a fundamental disconnect between the story and gameplay.
In this case, the fact that players are capable of, or even forced to kill hundreds of anonymous goons in each of the games feels wholly at odds with their presentation of Nathan Drake as a devilishly likeable rogue.
Nate - it's time to sit down and talk about all that blood on your hands.
He might seem like a well-adjusted chap throughout the series' cutscenes, but it sure doesn't seem like he's processed the gravity of his actions, like, at all.
Whether you deem him a glorified serial killer or more generously accept his actions as motivated by self-defense, Nate urgently needs to talk to someone about it all.