Looking at Protagonist Agency Using Sam Strand and Aloy
Some thoughts and spoilers after the end of Horizon Zero Dawn and Death Stranding.
Disclaimer: I started writing this piece just after finishing the main storyline for Horizon Zero. I’ve been caught up with work and travel, but in my spare time I’ve gone back and finished several of the side quests and hacked the remaining cauldrons and corrupted zones. My initial takeaway was that Sam Strand was granted an agency that I didn’t feel with Aloy. My views have shifted slightly after a deeper exploration, but not in a strictly polar direction.
Aloy personifies all of heroic qualities that a protagonist needs to shoulder an epic story, but her interactions with many characters end up feeling superficial. Part of me is thinking “why shouldn’t they?” Aloy has been labeled an outcast from birth in her home valley. She’s only just recognizing how large (and how old) the world really is. Other than the one man who raised her, she’s had almost no positive or meaningful relationships. She’s experiencing a lot of this (different biomes aside, entire wars that have taken place outside her valley that she’s never learned about) for the very first time, so perhaps some lack of choice can be explained by her simply being swept away in events larger than her before she has the chance to make a different decision. However, I initially felt as if Aloy had little personality for this very reason. After going back to play through the Frozen Wilds DLC and the rest of the side quests you realize they are almost exclusively about righting wrongs and Aloy is never reluctant, implying a sense of justice and compassion.
Sam Strand is unlikeable, and while he accomplishes great feats over the course of Death Stranding’s story mode, he’s completely reluctant from the start. DieHardman and Bridget painting a picture of a future of a United Nation couldn’t convince him.. He only eventually agrees to set out after Amelie begs him in a dream and convinces him that she’ll be trapped and all of her work for nothing if he can’t do this. Over time, with more connections made, more characters revealed, and outposts assisted, you start to wonder if he’s changing his mind. Its obvious he’s changing those around him, and obvious he’s growing to recognize BB not only as a tool but as a child. It isn’t until the epilogue that we get a glimpse of him reaching out to someone else. It’s the first time we see him allow and even initiate touch with another character that isn’t Amelie. An overcoming of his aphenphosmphobia (Haphephobia, to us) implies, for the hopeful like me, that a deeper shift has taken place in Sam’s paradigm.
While other characters you meet throughout the game tend to praise Sam as godlike for his feats, it’s never hidden that he’s flawed- you find out he may have been responsible for a similar incident to the void-out that nuked half of South Knot City when his wife died. The conversation with Deadman in which this is revealed hints that he may have hidden her body, a decision that killed hundreds if not thousands. I’m not sure if you’re supposed to sympathize with him in that moment, or hate him: probably both. Its humanizing in the most uncomfortable way.
Where Aloy is afforded (a) scene where she gets angry, and a few where she’s sarcastic, there was no moment in Horizon Zero Dawn that felt quite so brutal or left the player feeling as vulnerable. I think the way that she humanized through pain comes from and undercurrent of loneliness or otherness. To say that this theme is not present in Sam’s story would be amiss, but it feels less central to the presentation of his character than his standoffishness.
Somewhere here there’s a lens called internalized misogyny to view this opinion piece through — a light in which it appears I am more critical of Aloys representation because of her (assumed) gender. I’d love to hear it. Personally I think Sam is afforded more individual agency throughout the game, whereas even through her anger and frustration, Aloy never veers from the path of saving the world she was raised to believe hated her. Sam saves the world, but is still given (and takes) the option to leave it behind. Maybe its none of that. Maybe it’s the lack of closure that keeps me turning the epilogues of these games over and over in my head. Sam gave this epic speech about having to move forward with the world that we have — after a panoramic shot of all of the.. friends? he’s made over the course of his journey.. and then he leaves Fragile at the gate to Bridges, calling after him to stay. He saves BB, and in the final scene he’s carrying her with him. So he got something — he got to be a father again, we can assume. But he left everyone else behind and that drives me insane. My favorite trope of all time, found family, was dangled in front of me and then snatched away.
The way in which this idea of agency is presented to the player in both games also continues to niggle at me. Although Aloy doesn’t get a choice in whether she completes missions to move the primary mission along, the player is allowed to make choices in how Aloy responds to certain questions or situations. This, to me, allows for an illusion of agency. Or perhaps, an agency for the player rather than the protagonist of the story.
The gameplay of Death Stranding affords the player no such illusions, and in this context, Sam’s choices are his own. I might hate them, but I’m fascinated trying to pick apart this idea of choice and whether either approach to storytelling is more or less effective at molding three dimensional and memorable protagonists.
The epilogue for Horizon Zero Dawn was much simpler — they defeat the bad guy, and a montage of Aloy finding Elizabet’s body, while a tape of Elisabet telling the interviewer what advice she would give to her daughter if she ever had one plays in the background. Its beautiful and short. Its open ended, but I’m not left with the feeling that Aloy has forsaken all those she met along the way. In comparison, Sam’s decision to incinerate his only way of contacting the network and (presumably) disappear into the wilderness with a baby is…Aggravating. Inscrutable. Maddening. But even the fact that it drives me crazy instead of comforting me makes me feel as if he is completely free to make his own choices and say screw it the perfect story. Maybe I’m just a little masochistic.
The Death Stranding saga is over for now, but I’ll likely continue thriving in obscure tumblr discourse for a while longer. The release date for Horizon Zero Dawn 2: Forbidden West is scheduled for later this year, and while I hope we get to tie up a few more loose ends (Sylens, where the hell did you go?) as well as explore the future of a world that is both the cradle and the grave of an advanced technological society. And hopefully, we’ll get to see Aloy doing a bit more of whatever the hell she wants.
