Design Analysis: Jack Garland

October 24, 2024 - Published

If you introduced this character to me today by saying, "This is Jack Garland. He beats up monsters with his FISTS and wants nothing more than to KILL CHAOS" then I would've assumed you were reading an AI-generated script trained on the most generic blockbuster movies and AAA games. However, this character actually took the internet by storm a few years ago -- partly to make fun of him, sure, but many people actually found him incredibly refreshing and entertaining. Despite being an extremely one-dimensional character, Jack Garland could hardly be written to be more interesting.

1-Dimensional Characters

Generally, the term "one-dimensional character" is used as a critique, and something to avoid. I imagine that many character designers become rather hesitant and worrisome about creating characters without any depth. However, there are cases where a one-dimensional character is actually very effective for storytelling.

The most obvious one is The Evil Villain. If you want your main character to take down an Evil Villain, then it's much more likely for the audience to feel satisfied if the Evil Villain is entirely one-dimensional. The Evil Villain is Evil because they are a Villain, and they don't need any higher desire or purpose than wanting to "rule the world," through either power, riches, or something similar. This is most common in 1) movies, which favor limited character exploration and a fully wrapped-up ending due to their limited screen-time, and 2) episodic TV shows, which generally want all character dynamics to be easily and immediately understood since every episode can be watched out of order.

The one-dimensional Good Protagonist is rather common in #2. For example, Ash Ketchum, despite having some great character moments in some media, is very one-dimensional for the majority of the Pokemon anime's run-time. He is The Good Guy, he cares about his friends and Pokemon, and his one goal is to become a Pokemon Master. These are characteristics that literally never change for the entire series. He is a character that rarely has any internal conflict with his values, and compared to other shows, there is very little visible progression for himself as a character. However, it works anyway because he only exists to create the context for interacting with the Pokemon world, and to ease people into the show with a simple, reliable character.

But we're not here to talk about "functional." We're here to talk about INTERESTING!

How do you make 1D characters interesting?

The best and easiest way to make a one-dimensional character interesting is to make the context AROUND them interesting. You can make some sort of twist for the character themselves, but that will generally change them from being a one-dimensional character to being a multi-dimensional character (as an aside, I'm not sure if there's an agreed difference between 1D and 2D characters, but I've been using 1D since it gets the point across more).

Without getting into spoilers yet, Jack Garland is an interesting character because he's in a fantasy setting. Final Fantasy, to be more specific. His outfit and style look plain because he looks someone who comes from our world -- but when put into a fantasy setting next to other fantasy characters, he sticks out like a sore thumb!

He looks like a completely normal dude who came into a world with magic and knights and monsters. Then, despite having a huge sword on his back, he'll still sometimes fight with his fists anyway, like a completely normal dude. If he were fighting people in a game like Grand Theft Auto then I wouldn't have any interest in him, but the fact that he fights actual magical beings with his fists turns him into a HILARIOUS character.

The other thing that makes him interesting is that they double down on his one-dimensional character traits. In RPGs, since they're primarily a long-form storytelling medium, it's more common for characters to be very complex with dramatic storylines. However, despite being 10 hours into the game at the time of writing, I have not seen Jack ever have doubt or internal conflict for more than a single moment. He has not even vaguely steered from his original goal stated in the first minutes of the game.

It's this character trait of him that made him so viral from the first trailer that dropped for Strangers of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin. Literally every line he speaks in the trailer mentions Chaos, and everything he does in the game is to kill Chaos. In an age where everyone is pressured to write more complex, more conflicted characters, it is so refreshing for me to see a character that just unabashedly commits to one singular thing, all the way through.

There is one other trait of him that feels like a "twist," and it's that he's not a very typical protagonist. In the trailer, he says about killing Chaos: "It's not a hope or a dream. It's like a hunger. A thirst." This reflects on his character, how he will kill his enemies rather brutally, and sometimes even seem to revel in the violence. He's not a typical good guy, one that would prefer mercy or believe in themselves for the hope of the world. He would actually read very easily as a bad guy, if his motivations were even slightly different! 

Still, this can also be interpreted as being under the umbrella of being "context" -- his character is not more complex for being a violent man, it's just a trait that becomes more interesting under the context of him being the good guy.

Spoilers for 1-2 hours into Strangers of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin

While I haven't yet finished Strangers of Paradise, there is one twist early on in the story that I want to mention which makes his character even more hilarious. Checking gameplay footage, it's about 1 hour into the game, but we'll call it 1-2 hours to be safe.

That is: Jack is told multiple times that Chaos isn't real. The exact wording they use is that Chaos is "a fairy tale."

That's right -- this grown man who beats magical beasts and fully armored knights with his bare fists is chasing a LITERAL fairy tale. It's like telling someone about the grim reaper and they go, "Hmph, then I'm going to kill this 'grim reaper,' and nobody will ever have to die again," and after telling them the grim reaper isn't a real physical embodiment of death, they scoff and walk off to kill it anyway!!!

I actually cannot emphasize enough how fascinatingly funny this is to me. 

My best comparison would be Kirby, who could be argued to be another one-dimensional character, but has the exact opposite issue where he's an adorable puffball Good Guy while the context of the story makes him kill existential universal threats that look like they come out of a horror novel.

While I haven't finished Strangers of Paradise yet, I have been spoiled about parts of the game, so I expect this article to hold up regardless of the ending. Even if it doesn't, I mainly wanted to comment on the sensationalist nature of Jack's design which would only really mean that the first part of the game is relevant. Either way, I'll finish the game one day...

• Vecderg