Assemble! - Custom Shooter Squad - The Elemental User

Welcome to Assemble!

 

Here, we'll look at several different characters across multiple series to see who would form a perfect team for a certain genre. From fighting game rosters to RPG adventuring parties, different types of characters tend to show up frequently. What we'll do here is look at those archetypes to see what character is the best fit for that slot, and in the end, we’ll have the best team for the job. These articles will also be shorter entries, compared to some of the more long-form articles here, focusing on one or two characters at a time.

Despite a perception of a lot of these titles as generic war games, some shooters allow players to dive into an engaging story in a captivating world, taking the role of interesting characters with varied weapons, abilities, personalities, and motivations, especially with the popularity of hero shooters like Team Fortress 2, Overwatch, and Paladins. In this series of Assemble articles, we will be assembling a hero shooter roster using characters from several different shooters, based on different character archetypes.

The picks will be based on the different themes and tones of the characters and the worlds they inhabit as well as the roles they fill on a team or the kinds of weapons they use. Only characters that originated from video games, shooters particularly, will be observed here. Both first and third-person shooters will count and so will first and third-person action games if their main method of combating enemies is gunplay. Finally, I’ll only be discussing games and characters that I am at least somewhat familiar with. While this means I won’t discuss every shooter in existence, there should still be a good amount of variety with the series explored.

=

THE ELEMENTAL USER

Often found in games with a wide variety of unique characters, skillsets, and weapons, the Elemental User is a character who, as the name implies, uses a variety of elemental attacks in a shooter setting, whether these attacks come from a gun, like a chemical thrower, or magical/supernatural powers. Common elements used include fire, ice, and lightning, but can also include poison and nature or earth-themed abilities, and their attacks may even inflict status effects like burn damage or freezing/stunning enemies. This character is often portrayed as intelligent, sometimes even a mad genius, able to switch elements quickly to adapt to whatever situation he is presented with.

Our pick for the Elemental User is…

 

Booker DeWitt from BioShock.

While Booker was chosen over any of the other BioShock protagonists for his more defined personality and character, they all have access to similar substances that grant them the powers needed to classify them as Elemental Users. In the BioShock series, serums derived from a substance called ADAM grant special abilities to the user. For residents of the underwater city of Rapture, this takes the form of injectible Plasmids, but for Booker and the residents of the flying city of Columbia, this takes the form of drinkable Vigors.

These items can grant different abilities, but among them are variants that can let the user fling fire or lightning from their hands or manipulate water in a limited capacity. These abilities can be strengthened or combined with elemental conditions for extra effect. (There are also side-effects to over-consumption, but that’s beside the point for this entry.) Combine these with the expert gun usage from a former soldier and Pinkerton agent turned private detective and you have a lethal fighter ready to take on anything in his way.

For being able to harness the elements to combat his enemies (and expressing himself more than any other protagonist in his series), we now add Booker DeWitt to our roster.

ADDED!

=

What did you think about this article? Want to see what other characters get picked for our roster? Do you think someone would fit this role better besides whoever got picked? Make your voice heard in the comments below. 

Thanks for coming!