The Trickster
I'll get this right out of the way for anyone reading this thread: this is not a thread about game balance or gameplay or anything, it's a thread about character.
When The Trickster first came out, I did not have a positive impression of him. I thought his aesthetic was grossly mismatched with the rest of the game, and I was admittedly part of the "kpop cringe, so killer cringe" crowd. However now that he's been in the game a few years I've come around on the trickster a bit. While I'm still not a fan of his gameplay, I like his character a lot now.
There are two main things I like about his character:
1: His emotiveness and enjoyment of killing
2: Notoritety/Operating in the public.
- First his emotiveness. I absolutely love how The Trickster revels in his killing. Hearing him hum to himself, laugh and do flourishes as he chases survivors down adds a lot of character to him that I can get wrapped up in when killing. A lot of killers in this game fall under the "silent killing machine" or "Unwilling victim of circumstance" category of character. The only killers the seem to take joy in their killing seem to be Clown, Ghostface, Trickster and Deathslinger. I would like there to be more killers that revel in their killing in the game and are vocal or emotive about it in same way. Clown, Trickster and Deathslinger all laugh at points throughout the match, but Ghostface's personality really only shines through in his mori, so I don't get as much enjoyment out of him.
Quite simply, when the killer has fun, so do I.
- Notoriety. The Trickster is a person who is well know to the public, which I think is something that adds to his character. The fact that he can be killing people and still maintain a positive public image adds a level of sneakiness and duplicity to his character that I quite appreciate. The truly evil characters in this game, imo, are the ones who can kill people, revel in it, and then still put on an act of being a normal person to the public. The only other killers in the game I can think of that do this are Skull Merchant, and Ghostface. I think this works well enough in Ghostface as well, because his lore touches on the effects that his activites are having on the world around him, he's building up a reputation of a serial killer, which we see through his reporting on himself. I don't think this works too well on The Skull Merchant though. This is because the only effects of her killing her story touches on his how they build her up, and not what effect it has on the world around her. Trickster greatly benefits from the presence of Yun-Jin, because through his killings we get to see the effect it has on someone else, as The Trickster's killing clearly is affecting her
TLDR:
I like the Trickster because he takes joy in his killing and expresses this joy through voice lines and animations. I like his lore because we get to see the effect his killing has on the world around him and adds to his character. I would like to see more of both of these in killers.
Comments
I kinda thought he was cringe when I first saw him too, but after reading his lore and looking at the archive cut scenes he became a very interesting character.
Trickster would unironically make for a great villain in some Korean horror movie.
He is dbd's own Patrick Bateman and the people who disregard him solely for his appearance or that he's related to Kpop are the same people who probably wouldn't suspect him of being a psychopathic murder.
That's honestly a really good point right there. When he first came out I didnt think he looked particularly intimidating compared to the rest of the cast. With his lore, that does make a lot of sense though, he's not supposed to be intimidating he's supposed to be someone you wouldn't expect to be a murderer.
And I would absolutely watch a movie about the trickster. Here's to hoping the dbd movie could have something to do with that.