Your Favorite Game Villain Means Nothing to Geese Howard

High Handed Discourse About the Nature of Fighting Game Character Writing? HEH HEH HEH. Predictabo. 

*thinks about shippukens*

There is no doubt that games have become more and more complex as time goes on, in the methods they have to entertain us, and the approaches devs take to engage us. The results have been uneven to date, scarcely landing better than a .500 season- on the one hand, we have Machinegames working the magic they do, turning Wolfenstein into a subversive, daring game about small people mounting big resistance against fascism, but on the other, we also have the medium that convinced Ken Levine he has ideas worth sharing with others. Which, as we all know, is incorrect. But we are not here to argue the efficacy of “poorly understood Hegelian states, plus nothing really matters when you think about it, man” as a message. Instead, we are here to ask the questions that actually matter, and in this case, that question is “does any of this matter to Geese Howard?” 

 “When you’re like me, every gratification is sexual gratification.” 

The Short answer is “no.” The long answer is “maybe, but mostly no.”

I could start by describing the character of Geese Howard to someone that doesn’t play fighting games, using some canon description from a game manual. I won’t though, as that’s the sort of 100 level ‘Webster’s Dictionary defines’ half assery that I’m decidedly against. On paper, Geese Howard is the final antagonist of Fatal Fury, a murdering martial arts crime boss that runs the odd hybrid New York-Miami that is Southtown. In practice, he’s basically Business Satan Who Loves to Be Evil and Own Things, Also People, a living monument to the power of both self love and DREAD MARTIAL EMANATIONS. He’s a complete dick with a smile, which just so happens to be a completely dickish smile. He’s exactly the sort of performative asshole that would declare “THE NIGHTMARE BEGINS!” as he grabbed you a double leg and proceeded to direct your face downtown to pound-town with both hands. Recently, he was revealed to be a guest character in Tekken 7- the trailer for this basically consisted of him yelling at that game’s Martial Arts Crime Boss from an entire series away, talking all sorts of mess about how he’s a huge punk, followed by footage of him beating the entire cast’s ass to his theme music.

He is just delightful.

Workflow.

Geese Howard stands in stark contrast to modern overtures towards complexity. Geese Howard will not hear from your sympathetic, humanized villains or your ripped-from-the-headlines plots. Geese Howard has a schedule to keep, people to meet, deals to make, and all of these things are extremely evil. He’s evil, because he chooses to be. Geese Howard tried being good once, probably, and I bet it didn’t work out for him, it didn’t deliver the goods. Ethics are not a Culture Fit here at Howard Tower, nor are people advocating them, so clear out your desk and leave the premises via the top floor. Ten minutes.

Dude’s a Japanophile, but not in the sense of your average self-loathing twitter whitenoise account with a tiny girl avatar and fascistic tendencies. A 15 year old named Ryan that insists on being called Ryusuke does not love Japan like Geese Howard does. Geese Howard loves Japan likes James Clavell loves Japan after 3 tumblers of single malt. Man’s inner sanctum, his puttering space, is a wall to wall edifice of tatami, shoji, samurai armour and renderings of oni. There’s swords, too, as while a man of his caliber needs no weapon, they’re useful in performative discipline. Yet despite all of this, the fringe hanging from the ceilings is American flag patterned, because as much as a man like Geese Howard can appreciate culture, he appreciates the functionality of a tool such as Imperialism much much more. Geese Howard has priorities, and they are nothing if not consistent.

Geese Howard wants to own the world. He wants to, because he can’t imagine why he shouldn’t. Once upon a time, we would write this off as being too flat, too stock, not nuanced enough. To that, Geese Howard has words to offer, and they are most likely “double” and “reppuken,” which I know some of you may not think is a word, but Geese Howard knows that it is, and you should not doubt him.

No, really, you should not doubt him, it’s not at all a good thing.

Harry your enemy, give them no space to breathe.

The truth of the matter is, Geese Howard is an extremely flat character. So flat, in fact, that he’s extremely easy to grasp, so much so that some dope on a website can extrapolate how the man chooses his life from a few bulleted character points:

• Evil.
• BUSINESS.
• Martial Arts.

That’s basically it, they just happen to be incredibly entertaining when mixed in even ratio. What kind of business does Geese Howard do? Evil business, deals done to make bank and fund his hostile buyout of that orphanage for the children of all the martial arts masters he’s murdered. What kind of martial arts does Geese Howard do? The evil ones, ones that involve throwing purple energy arcs, shouting and thrusting your hands quickly diagonal-downward while sort of hopping forward. He’s not a hard act to get a lock on, and that’s why he’s great: everything you need to know about Geese Howard, you know from the second he starts whipping someone’s ass- the perfect execution of fighting game character.

So when videogames achieve a state where the public demands more complexity in their interactivity, and with it, a desire for more complex and nuanced story incites demand for better writing in games, and Geese Howard has a major stake as a shareholder in a AAA publisher via one of his shell companies, then complexity in writing and storytelling might matter to Geese Howard. But only then in the way that the standards of flaked light tuna in cans matter to a seafood company executive. Because Geese Howard has not time for games. Geese Howard has money to make, imbeciles to render prostrate before him, and the secrets of THE ANCIENT TECHNIQUE OF THE HAKUNOKUSEIKEN to unravel. Your favorite game villain means nothing to Geese Howard, because to an antagonist as single minded as him, very little actually means anything to him. To him, only the world is enough, because everything else is TOO EASY.