The Geriatric Superhero
15
By Madhav Goel
plain
934422
2019-11-18T18:37:47-08:00
To consider Captain Geriatric's idealistic setting, one must first look to the protagonist. Most contemporary superheroes tend to be in their 20s or 30s. Occasionally, one will find heroes older than this, but they still tend to be in peak physical state, with any injuries or diseases they might have being treated as a point of grievous danger for them. However, in Captain Geriatric, the titular character is eighty years old and has bad eyesight, yet he still fights crime, with his age and eyesight never being brought up by other characters. He still works as the sole protector of dumpleton, and is trusted by those around him. This shows the work’s idealism as it shows a world in which anyone can be a superhero, not just billionaires or aliens. It shows the players that one need only be willing to fight crime to be a superhero.Furthermore, the protagonist being a marginalized person, at least for the role of a superhero, the work can also be interpreted as invoking Gonzalo Frasca’s Video Games of the Oppressed essay. More specifically, it has the degree of separation between audience and story that Frasca argued for in his essay (Frasca 90). This might seem strange to many, as the players play as the titular Captain Geriatric, and not another person. However, the format of the work, i.e. the fact that it does so closely resemble a point-and-click adventure, lends itself to Frasca’s interpretation.
While on a surface level, the players do play as the titular character, there is no choice nor immersion involved. The players cannot choose different paths in the story, nor can they interact with the environment. Instead they watch the Captain figure out the case, and click on the right options to progress. While, they are the ones who decide who is guilty of the crimes, they can only ever choose one person, as if they choose anyone else, the game tells them they are incorrect. This sets up a level of separation, however, a more implicit one than, say, a work like Gone Home by the Fullbright Company. This means that the player might not even think about this separation, very much like gone home, meaning that the player would not consciously think about this separation, but it might implicitly affect the player, and make him or her reconsider his or her preconceived notions of what a superhero looks like. In this way, it tries to inspire a sense of idealism in the players, to show that anyone can be a hero.
