​John Marston raises his pistol and points it at the U.S. Marshal, demanding to know where his family has been taken. The grizzled cowboy is informed that his family is safe for the time being but, if he wishes to see them remain that way, he must help the authorities locate his former mentor and bring him to justice.

Marston scowls, threatening to kill the Marshal without hesitation if he discovers he has been lied to. The Marshal knows this outlaw-turned-family man speaks the truth. In the weeks leading up to this meeting, Marston has been a very busy desperado. He's shot down an untold number of settlers. Most were from the wrong side of the tracks, but some were innocents. He's robbed trains, played both sides of a bloody revolution and dropped a stick of dynamite into more than a few gang hideouts.

Marston is by no means your typical "hero," and that's what makes Red Dead Redemption's leading man so damn interesting. He's got a lot of layers. And while his quest can be boiled down to the quintessential "rescue the princess [wife and son]" story arc, his motivations and means for achieving them are complicated.

The video game hero has come a long way in the past 30 years. As the industry has matured, so too has its members' thirst for heroes who see the world in more shades than black and white. Life is never that simple, so it's no surprise that we would want our digital lives to be just as complex.

 

Video games got their first real crop of legitimate heroes during the back half of the 80's with titles like Super Mario Bros., Castlevania and The Legend of Zelda. The graphical capabilities of the Nintendo Entertainment System meant developers could flesh out their worlds and characters beyond the most basic of designs, meaning their games were in need of deeper [though not by much] stories and, thus, deeper characters.

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Studios were still figuring this whole "video game" thing out, so it's no surprise that the most successful franchises of all time kicked off with a story about an Italian plumber trying to save the princess of a magical kingdom from a dragon king and his army of mushroom men and turtle-lizards. But whether you were controlling Mario, Link, Simon Belmont or Samus, the objective of these early games was very simple: Defeat the bad guys.

The heroes of this era and the 16-bit years that followed had little motivation beyond that initial goal. You were always the good guy. The bad guy has your true love held captive or is threatening to destroy the universe. Clearly, you can't let that sort of evil slide. To get to the bad guy, you need to fight your way through 20 levels of underlings. Go!

In the early days of gaming nobody craved anything more than those basics. Into the next generation of consoles and we began to see a whole new type of hero come forth, but the creation of these icons was frequently fueled by more business-minded decision making. Nintendo was no longer seen as king by divine right and companies like Sony and Sega were posing a legitimate threat. If you wanted your console to sell, you needed to give players something the other guys couldn't provide. Your gaming machine needed spokesmen, and thus the era of mascots came into existence.

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Nintendo leveraged its earlier success by pushing established characters like those mentioned above. Sony put Crash Bandicoot and Lara Croft in the limelight while Sega was all about their supercharged hedgehog, Sonic. Gamers needed leaders they could rally behind, and developers were eager to [at least try to] provide them.

While not all of these mascot characters took off, this shift in focus brought about the realization that the characters were a pretty important part of the successful video game equation. Developers started to give their leads more intricate stories and loads more personality. From that, deeper worlds were being created and, thus, deeper video games in general. Developers didn't want players to just buy their games. They wanted them to truly buy them.

Into the turn of the century and the console war really started to heat up. Nintendo, Sony and Sega were joined by newcomer Microsoft, so mascots remained a heavy focus for the early years of the next console generation. These new machines provided a lot more horsepower, though, meaning that developers could add even more layers to their properties and craft some truly unique experiences. The industry was doing well financially, too, bringing more and more talent to the creativity pool. This talent brought with it an even greater appreciation for story and character.

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Eventually, people started to realize that video games were a very viable form of entertainment, so long as the quality of the product was high. Gamers were still content to take the occasional romp into the randomly bizarre, but what they really started to crave were experiences that provided the total package. Why is Mario trying to save the princess? Is there a reason for Master Chief to be running around on this ring-shaped planet?

Taking a tip from movies, video game studios began to put an even greater focus on stories that would engage the players and characters they could more easily relate to. None of us can truly see eye-to-eye with the ultimate good guy. But a main character that's flawed, though still trying to do good in a bad world? Now we were on to something. These more complex protagonist had already popped up from time to time (Silent Hill, Metal Gear Solid, etc.), but as the last generation started to reach its twilight, these characters and stories really started to take off.

God of War's Kratos seems flat at first, but once you find out why he hates the gods of Olympus so much, that single violent emotion that drives him becomes far more interesting. Shadow of the Colossus' Wander must track down and destroy 12 seemingly peaceful creatures in order to bring his companion back from the dead, but doing so seems to be killing our hero at the same time. The objectives are the same as they've always been, but the characters and their reasons for storming the castle have evolved.

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Nowadays, the complex hero is commonplace. We want our avatars to be sophisticated individuals and, as a result, even the most seemingly straightforward protagonists tend to carry some sort of emotional or psychological baggage. We want consequences for our actions and choices that truly test our morals. The stone-jawed bringer of good has been replaced by the foul-mouthed gangster trying to redeem themselves in a world where the "right" decision might not always be the correct one.

In the early days of video games, John Marston would have likely been a U.S. Marshal himself, on a quest to save his family from an outlaw who wouldn't think twice about putting a bullet into anyone foolish enough to stand in his way. Try to imagine Red Dead Redemption had the roles been thus reversed. I refuse to believe the game would have been anywhere near as memorable had our "hero" been as strictly aimed down the path of good as his 8-bit brethren.

Infinite Ammo is a weekly column by Ryan Winslett about video games, the industry that make them and the people who play them. He can be stalked via his blog at staticechoes.com and followed on twitter @RyanWinslett.