James Sunderland's character design is beautiful done. I donāt mean in the way āoh my god, heās hotā, but in the way his design is just perfect to gaining what I think is one of the major objectives of the game: the conflicting feelings at the end when you discover what James has done; you are divided between feeling outrage for the evil nature of the action in itself and the feeling of sympathy toward James, who was clearly driven to do such a horrible thing by the psychological torture that must be to watch someone you love so deeply slowing dying.
When thinking about someone committing murder, it comes more naturally picturing someone big, imposing, or even someone small, but with crazy eyes, or someone who just pours anger with his posture, actions and words. I mean, you donāt usually think about someone like James. James is not a big guy. He has some delicate lineaments. The game often shows his eyes, always full of raw sadness. His voice is low and soft and he only raise it when fighting (and since heās basically fighting his own demons, itās like heās screaming and getting angry with himself); he raises his voice a couple of times with Angela and Laura, but as soon as he does that, he regrets it and he lower it down again, asking for forgiveness. Mary describes him as someone who, on the outside, comes out a bit gruff, but inside heās just a big softy. The game seems to imply he was always faithful to Mary and never actually strayed, even during her illness. Ironically, if he had done that, he would have probably found some release, and maybe he wouldn't have had a breakdown that ended with him killing his wife. But instead, he put his life on hold, because even if he ended up resenting Mary for it, even hated her, he still loved her so much that going on with his life when hers was ending was just unthinkable.
In other word, for almost the entirety of the game, James is represented like a good man and a loving husband grieving his wife and desperately searching for her, in the hope that she could be alive. And then the player watches the tape and sees for the first time what really happened. The reality of what James has done clashes so hard against the portrait of the character that the game has built, resulting in those strong, conflicting feelings that the players end up having toward James, a character he has played, and, because of that, he identifies himself with him to some extent.
So, in conclusion, whoever designed James Sunderland is a goddam genius.
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