
The next day, Leo is atop the tower when he imagines his father talking to him (or is outright visited by his ghost, it’s hard to say). At first, Epitav seems to be insulting his son, calling him a crybaby (which the game has always used as an insult), only for him to turn around and say that Leo’s empathy is a positive, a quality that Epitav lacks, which prompts some visual frustration from Leo. It’s a rare, genuinely effective emotional moment between the jackass father and his abandoned son, but I should note that it’s hampered by the fact that Leo is basically a silent protagonist and hasn’t really shown any empathy. When you want a character to communicate, your options are to have them to do so directly (through speech, sign, writing, or other methods), to have them express their feelings through animation or narration, or to have others comment on their behaviour. Leo doesn’t do the first, has barely any of the second (less than a dozen animations?), and the third is an extremely shaky and arbitrary route to begin with, and would take extremely skilled hands to handle! Suffice to say, MLK doesn’t manage it in my eyes. All Leo’s qualities, like empathy, are just informed attributes that don’t actually show up in his actions.
(more…)