‘Free Guy’ Will Apparently Make People Feel for NPC’s
By George Robbins
Ryan Reynolds’ upcoming movie ‘Free Guy,’ directed by Shawn Levy, is meant to give us a closer look into a video game world to see what life is like there. The movie is meant to be a film which gives us a glimpse at a game where the character we follow through the film is nothing more than an NPC. For those unaware, this stands for non-player character and it is any character in a video game that is not under player control. The main selling point of the film is that it follows this NPC named “Guy” as he finds out that the world he lives in is actually a video game. What follows is supposedly a journey for him to try and save his game, and therefore his universe, from shutting down.
For those of us who play video games, we never really focus on much of what actually happens to characters other than the ones we control in game. This is because, most of the time, we have no way of empathizing with any other characters unless the game really wants us to in some way. Even then, we may not really end up caring unless that character has been really well-written into the story and we come to see things from their point of view. Sometimes we don’t even have to see their point of view to realize that we feel for them in some way shape or form. Most of the time however, we couldn’t really care less what ends up happening to them.
According to Shawn Levy, the director, the movie is going to be a way for people to try and have more feelings towards the NPCs. According to Levy, this movie is one that many different people can relate to as it shows us this guy who is normally nothing more than a background character in someone else’s story being noticed. We are supposed to notice the background character this time around and understand what it must be like to be the one who is always sitting in the background and that they have their own story. If what Levy said is true, then this movie will be one that shows the importance of empathizing with people we often just see in the background instead of just whoever is front and center.