ALSO – Jecht and Tidus in Final Fantasy X!
Tidus seemed haunted by memories of his father throughout the entire game, and although you never really see them interacting with eachother again as Tidus reaches adulthood, you piece together the way Spira changes his father, and in the end this seems to change Tidus’s impression of him too.

I’d definately like to see more father/mother/son/daughter relationships in games. When they work, they’re so emotionally engaging.

Running around chainsawing mans in half is pure fantasy for me (or atleast that’s my story!) but raising a child that’s something that is pretty troubling (mostly worried about being a good father while also having no idea what that entails).

Alot of people these days don’t have a full set of parents or don’t maintain a traditional relationship with them that’s ofcourse a deeply personal and complex issue where the player brings a lot of baggage to the table before the game even starts.

Although saying that I do enjoy games that genitally nudge players towards thinking about new ideas. Bioshock and its exploration of objectivism , even with its entirely negative perspective, was a real watershed moment for myself where I realised that games don’t have to exist in a bubble and can cross pollinate with other experiences.

Interesting topic :D

Cuddles, I think the themes of protection, working together and passing down experience would be really interesting with a father-son team, rather than two meathead space cowboys. OH! And I know you’re a big The Road fan, you made the topic on the forums! There – perfect example of how a father puts himself in danger and gives up food in a horrible post apocoloyptic world, becuase of the love with his son.

Thanks for all your comments.

More so than the initial themes of genetics, information control, and nuclear deterence, the centre-point of the Metal Gear saga is arguably the relationship between The Boss (yes, a woman), Big Boss, as well his cloned children. Spoilers (and rant) ahead!

The Boss is simply an amazing character. To sum her up in a simple paragraph does not do her justice, but I will say that she brilliantly plays the role of both mother and father to multiple characters in the series, despite enourmous personal baggage from everything she gave up in the second World War. In one of the saddest endings to a video game, she makes one final sacrifice for her country, dying by the hands of her metaphorical “son” for the greater good.

Big Boss, on the other-hand, is perhaps the most beat-up Dad in games today. Starting off as an aspiring partriotic soldier, he’s handed the usual “Stop the terrorists, save the world!” mission by the US government, gladly accepting. But things go ary sharpish, throwing him into a bloody political mess which forces him to end the life of his mentor, the aforementioned Boss. By the end of his experiences in MGS3, he becomes understandably bitter and jaded at the world around him, and tragic, society-altering decisions follow. He’s the archetypal Darth Vader of Metal Gear; promoted to powerful badass for his actions, but ultimately regretting them, waiting for his son to show him the light.

Solid Snake, the end product of this madness, is then tasked with killing his Dad, stopping his abhorant twin brother from going on a nuclear power-trip (a man both jealous of Snake for ending his Dad’s life and for his “superior” birthright), and preventing a man who was quite clearly gay for his father from re-shaping society once more (confusingly, he’s the good guy!). Oh, and Solid Snake might also be an walking apocolypse, himself. Yikes!

… Of course, it all works out in the end, but not without a mass of death and destruction along the way, all of which could have been avoided if parental relations had turned out just a /litte/ differently. To quote the credits theme of MGS3, “Way to Fall”:

“Son, you’ve got a way to fall
They’ll tell you where to go
But they won’t know

Son, you’d better take it all
They’ll tell you what they know
But they won’t show”

(Good job ranting, Scott. This could have easily been a blog post.)

There.

It’s cultured prose like that that allows me to forgive you smacking me in the bonce with your baseball bat in GTA every damn week.

Could we maybe sling Bioshock into consideration here? The Little Sisters perhaps stir a parental instinct in the player – Bioshock 2 may explore this theme further.

Beyond the theme of loss (or motivation to avoid loss), how else could parenthood be explored through games? That’s not rhetorical – I’m sure there are other ways to explore it, but I’m struggling a bit to think of any beyond The Sims. Help me.