Character Study: Trace ~ Axiom Verge

[angik20]

You know what? I'm going to talk about what is definitely my favorite part, and what is in my opinion the most under-appreciated part of Axiom Verge: Trace, the protagonist. At a glance, he may seem "one-note" and "boring," but there are too many nuances that many of the game's critics seem to just... skip over..
Trace's state of being for the most part is that he's lost and confused. He doesn't take things at face-value and is in perpetual doubt of himself and what he's experiencing and constantly questions the reason why he's there or the true motives of both the Rusalki and Athetos. He expresses bewilderment to the more outlandish aspects of the game, like when he dies and is revived in one of the rebirth chambers for the first time, he is unable to believe it when Elsenova informs him that he has died. His motivation, though, is to seek answers for the questions he has, and this motivation makes him a perfect fit for his occupation as a theoretical physicist. He's in a constant struggle to understand the impossible situation he's been thrown into. He's the kind of guy who spends all his time trying to achieve his goals in the only ways he knows how, even if those ways aren't actually working. He attempts to follow through on his decisions, even to his possible detriment, like when his lab explodes during his experiment in the intro cut-scene, or when Elsenova shuts down his nanogates after Trace tells her and Ophelia that he needs to talk to Athetos. This is what I mean when I say there are nuances to Trace's character: the cycle in which he seems lost and confused for a period of time until he makes a decision and stubbornly sticks with it.
What's been getting more interesting the more I thought about it is how Trace interacts with the other characters. Early on, he's tried to reach out to some of the Variants in the hopes that they wouldn't try to kill him, but his attempts had been in vain. He's also tried multiple times to talk to the Rusalki, particularly Elsenova and Ophelia, in more straightforward attempts to get answers, but their constant omissions of important information only serve to subtly frustrate him to the point where he just couldn't take the whole situation anymore and decides after the Aborted Clone "boss fight" to go against their wishes to kill Athetos. And I say "subtly" because the change in Trace's demeanor is not conveyed through the limited variations of portraits that show up on the side of text boxes, but through his dialogue in the text boxes themselves as his tone changes from polite (he calls Elsenova and Veruska "Miss" before learning their names) to blunt and sometimes sarcastic (he once outright asks Elsenova for an apology for killing him, then snarks that he'll look for the "damned" key she says he'll need) as his skepticism of everything worsens. But just a few scenes earlier, during the flashback after the Vision "boss fight," you can see Trace working together with Doctor Hammond on his Theory of Everything. Look closely at Trace here, see how open and expressive his body language is as he describes his ideas for Hammond to write on the white board. Before the flashback, Trace seemed more closed-off and guarded. He was even suspicious of a random syringe lying on the floor, citing it as ominous. Even after this flashback, he tries to hide the fact that he knows he's Athetos from Elsenova and Ophelia. It's not until the end of the game that he actually starts expressing his more hidden feelings, such as worry that he'll never know if Athetos could have be redeemed if he wasn't blasted by Elsenova. When combined with his tendency to question everything, what I got out of all of this is that he doesn't trust others easily with his true thoughts and emotions. It's not unreasonable to think that Trace is closest to and most trusting of Hammond out of all the supporting characters, especially since that even after Prime Trace was outcast by the other scientist because they didn't accept his "pseudoscience," Hammond stuck by his side.
One thing I've noticed in a lot of indie games (and some triple-A games) is that the main protagonist is someone who would have been an ordinary person happily living his/her ordinary life, if not for the events of the game. Therefore, many of these "average every-people" have a certain humility to them. As of writing, however, I've never seen humility presented in such an incredible way like I've seen in Trace. SirTapTap mentions in his review of the game that Trace "shows clear signs of being in over his head, and attempts to talk rather than fight when the option presents itself."[1] However, I believe Trace's humility goes much deeper than that. After turning on the Power Filter and listening to Elsenova's story, he asks why it has to be him to stop Athetos, offhandedly saying that "the whole 'chosen one' story doesn't inspire much confidence..." He tells Gir-tab Variant that he's "just a normal guy" and doesn't even want to be on Sudra. He also tells Ophelia that he's "pretty normal" and "fairly confident that there's no secret magic going on in [his] DNA or anything." These three lines of dialogue seem to suggest that Trace sees literally nothing special about himself. He cannot imagine any possible thing that would make him a powerful being capable of manipulating reality. He'd likely agree with the sentiment that he's "boring," and I think that's what saddens me the most about his detractors passing him over like this.
An aspect that Trace shares with his fellow Metroidvania protagonists is that he starts off as weak, but can potentially become an overpowered badass if he collects all the weapons, upgrades, and power-ups. This is typical in Metroidvanias, as the gameplay emphasis is on exploration and discovery of secrets, and by seeking out these secrets and looting whatever they find, players will find their protags growing in strength and arsenal. However, this is not the only way Trace shows growth. At one point near the last area of the game, he tells Elsenova when she asks him if her full body frightens him, "I think I was already at some point beyond fear." This one line is the biggest indication that he has grown from his ordeal, as it implies that he did feel fear previously. Trace's conflict was originally that he was stuck on an alien planet; helping Elsenova and the other Rusalki was his only way to find out how to get himself home. Before the fourth boss fight, he tells Gir-tab Variant that he doesn't want to be there. At the end, he was concerned that he doesn't have the whole story of what happened on Sudra; Elsenova laser-blasts Athetos before Trace could finally get some answers, and when he's sent home, he couldn't return to his normal life, feeling that he's lost all sense of who he was or where he belonged. That's when he decided that he needs to go back to Sudra.
The reveal that Athetos is an older, corrupted Trace halfway through the game seems to have come out of left field, because on the surface, Athetos and Trace are as different as night and day. Evidenced by the fact that Trace would rather talk than fight and once freaked out over the thought of killing innocent people while Athetos was willing to kill off an entire species to get what he wanted. However, the two similarities between them cannot be overlooked. First of all, Trace's tendency to stick to his decisions so stubbornly in spite of the possibility of failure is also present in Athetos. It's written in the note Security Notice, "Attempts to negotiate with the intruder have failed, as has the use of force." Trace's stubbornness is so overblown when he's Athetos that not even violence would deter him from his path. Another example of this is this scene right at the end of the game before you fight him. Trace reaches the Breach Attractor at the top of Mar Uru and demands answers from his genocidal older self, but Athetos claims that he can't tell Trace everything, or else "your captors would have to kill you." However, after he gives Trace his justifications for killing off the entire Sudran population, he does the ever-classic "with you at my side, we have a chance" and asks Trace to help him. If Athetos knew that the Rusalki would kill Trace if he ever knew the real story, why would he offer Trace to join him? I've thought far too long about this question, and I think I might have an answer. In the prior scene, when encountering the completely optional boss Xedur Hul, Trace attempts to coerce the variant into obeying him by going: "WRONG! It's me, Athetos! OBEY ME!" When it doesn't work, he simply states, "Well, it was worth a shot." Trace knew that it won't work, but he just wanted to try it anyway. The same is true for Athetos; he knew his attempt to manipulate Trace into joining him wouldn't work, and he also knew he was going to die, so he made one last ditch effort. Since he knew his death was inevitable, he accepted his loss rather gracefully and even told Trace not to take the blame for it.
The second way in which Trace and Athetos are similar is that they both believe that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. However, even this similarity has a key difference that alters their motivations. Trace thinks that one must take care of the needs of the many before one's own needs. He tends to bottle up his true thoughts and emotions behind a stoic wall to preserve reason and harmony with the Rusalki, hoping that eventually he'll get some explanation. Athetos, however, believes that the needs of the many must be taken care of with what the few have. The Sudrans refused to allow outsiders to access the Worldstream's incredible technology, so Athetos decided to wipe them all out in order to take back the technology to Earth.
Reading through the blog on the official Axiom Verge website, I've come across a post that provides some of Thomas Happ's creative intent. Essentially, Trace is meant to be a subversion of the typical action game hero, described as "This character is really tough and strong, has no neck, is a bit rough around the edges, and mostly does the right thing - but maybe had a criminal past or something. As everything explodes around him, instead of being admitted for Post Truamatic[sic] Stress Disorder, he plugs onward, undaunted."[2] Happ wrote that there's already enough of this kind of character, so he created something a little different, starting by giving Trace a neck, and ending up with a fantastic character. A character that has managed to captivate me so strongly that I wrote out this huge essay in response to the unjustified criticisms he's gotten, egregiously Destructoid calling him a "one-note good guy"[3] and "spacetwinks" on Tumblr calling him "the most boring possible protag."[4] A character that I can't wait to see more of in any future installments of the franchise.