GameRx Diagnosis: Soldier

Continuing with our foray into the deeper psychological aspects of the stars of Valve’s popular title Team Fortress 2, we look at the case of the Soldier. While a very simple man in outward appearance and behavior, a troubled soul lies deeper within. The diagnosis is straightforward, but his history and background material weave a tapestry of mental instability surpassed by few humans, in-game or not.

If you haven’t seen the short yet, here it is.

Remember, the article spoils the short. Go ahead and watch it.

Before we start, let’s get the initial diagnosis out of the way. The Soldier is essentially a psychopath with elaborate delusions of grandeur, forming no attachment or empathy for other humans or animals to heighten his own worth in his own heroic context. It’s by no means perfect or complete, but it’s a good start nonetheless. Since the video itself doesn’t tell us much aside from the fact that he’s a killing machine, we need to take a closer look at what backstory is provided.

To begin, let’s take a look at the other details we know and piece together a more comprehensive history of the character. If we look at the official biography from Valve material, we find the following:

Though he wanted desperately to fight in World War 2, the Soldier was rejected from every branch of the U.S. military. Undaunted, he bought his own ticket to Europe. After arriving and finally locating Poland, the Soldier taught himself how to load and fire a variety of weapons before embarking on a Nazi killing spree for which he was awarded several medals that he designed and made himself. His rampage ended immediately upon hearing about the end of the war in 1949.

We establish pretty quickly he is not at all in his right mind. We get a pretty immediate picture of his delusions as well as some unresolved personal conflict. We know that he never was a professional soldier, and what knowledge he had was largely “self-taught” in Poland. My best guess is he seeks to fulfill some sort of personal hole, ranging anywhere from fancying himself to be a TV action hero or a burning desire to live the experiences of a veteran relative vicariously. Regardless of intent, he goes in with nary a clue of how to handle himself in combat situations. His medals and awards he designed himself are likely part of his delusions, likely constructed as a defensive mechanism to stay his doubts regarding his actions. This idea is reinforced by talking to the severed heads of his enemies in the short.

What the bio doesn’t tell us is what years he tried to join the war, why he was turned down, when he flew over, or when he began his murderous rampage through the Polish countryside. Given that the Nazis withdrew from Poland in 1944, there’s at most a five-year window where any casualties would be largely civilian and decidedly not Nazi. Does this mean he killed some Nazis earlier? Did he kill Russians assuming they were Nazis? What made him think the Poles were enemies? Any of these omitted details would help paint a much more detailed picture of his actual delusions.

Delving a little deeper, we see the development of a collection of paranoid delusions and insecurities as we explore the update-canon. In the Soldier/Demo update, we find the Soldier holed up in a small apartment armed to its proverbial teeth with weapons and traps, even going as far as to register under a fake name (I know a lot of people fancy his real name to be Jane Doe, but I don’t buy it). We can also tell that he trusted the Demoman with sensitive information judging by his reaction when he hears the digital Demoman that he “wasn’t a real soldier.” Clearly he has significant insecurities over his public image. Because of this, there are probably now considerable trust issues if there weren’t any already. In any event, after he breaks ties with the Demoman, he shows no visible empathy towards any other character in the game.


So far, my favorite theory is that he had a relative who was a veteran of World War I who died in action. When the Solder was younger, they drummed up his relative’s bravery and honor for going his life to fight in France. However, the soldier later finds out his relative was actually captured by the Germans in his first week on the front lines and later put to death as a POW. Unable to accept or cope with reality, he acts out to make up for his relative’s lack of valor through any means necessary. His actions in 1949 as well as his actions in the game seek to live the way he thought his relative should have: as a ruthless killing machine showing no quarter for his enemies.


But yeah, that’s about all there is to the Soldier. He’s more or less a psychopath with a whole basket full of  personal delusions. Since I’m still not an actual psychologist, I could easily be wrong. If any of you readers think of anything I can include, leave a comment and I’ll add or change it in an errata article later.


Doc Watson is an editor for The RedShirt Crew and is the founder of The GameRx Clinic. He normally writes something witty or clever here, but he actually can’t think of anything this time. Come on, Doc. Get your head in the game. If you have questions, corrections, or other input, leave a comment or send a tweet to @DocWatsonMD.

GameRx Diagnosis: Medic

After generally positive response on last week’s piece Diagnosis: Pyro, it seemed logical to follow up with some similar pieces regarding other characters from not just TF2, but other games, movies, and what-have-you. It took me a while to find a good character to continue the column with; the Pyro is definitely a tough act to follow. Eventually, it looked like it would be best to continue with TF2 characters and branch out from there. I don’t know about you, but I think the Medic is long overdue for a peer evaluation — if not for science, at least for the sake of the rest of his Team.

If you haven’t seen the short yet, here it is. Go ahead and give it a look. It’s definitely worth the watch, keeping that signature TF2 touch of “Pixar gone horribly wrong.” Even if you don’t play the game, it’s still worth four minutes of your time.

Okay, got all that? Fantastic. Note that the following article will spoil the above short. You have been warned.

Generally, we can look at the psychological profile of the Medic through the lens of antisocial personality disorder (ASPD). According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, ASPD is Axis II personality disorder often characterized by social disconnection and irritability, rampant disregard for rules and regulations, and deferral  of the subject’s accountability for his/her actions through blame or rationalization. In more simple English, it’s a intellectual personality disorder that can be easily generalized by the mad scientist archetype. Given this frame of reference, let’s take a look at what may be afflicting the Medic.

Right off the bat, it’s safe to suppose the Medic has delusions of grandeur. As Valve aptly states in fluff material, it’s pretty clear the Medic “interprets the Hippocratic oath as more of an optional Hippocratic suggestion.” From the short, it seems that this could go one of two ways. Either he could think himself smart enough to bypass the entanglements of ethics and rigorous scientific procedure, or he might think his work is far too important to human progress to be hindered by such trivialities.

To get a closer look, let’s take a look at the status of the operation in progress. We see the Medic is rather casually performing surgery in the chest of an seemingly conscious Heavy with nothing more than bare hands, all while making casual banter about the hilarity of his previous malpractice shenanigans.His hands-on approach to his own brand of “science” also involves little to no measurement or calculation, relying entirely on guesswork. He completely obliterates the original heart through excessive overvolting, a procedure he clearly left untested. and replaces it with the heart of a mega baboon. This is a bad plan in so many ways that it’s worthy of its own article, but I’d keep this article about the Medic rather than a discussion of bioethics. Regardless of the cause, his reckless behavior is clearly a key part of his persona.

From the nature of his procedure, we can also consider his other potentially psychopathic tendencies, which overlap with (but are not congruent to) those of ASPD. These can most readily be seen in his failure to empathize with the pain of his patients. When the heavy snaps a rib holding his own rib cage open during heart transplant while still conscious, the Medic shows no real concern for the well-being of the patient, feigning sympathy to keep the Heavy in the dark on the exact nature of the forces at work. Granted, the rib does presumably grow back during the healing process, but the root of the issue still lies in the realm of poor ethical choices; he’s willing to take incredible risks at the expense of his patients with little consequence to himself.

Moving right along, the next thing that stands out in this unusual case is his relationship with his avian associate, Archimedes. Now, assuming Archimedes is nothing more than a common pigeon, it’s rather odd that the Medic spends so much time intently talking to it. Granted, it isn’t terribly unusual to sort of “think out loud” to your pets, but the Medic seems to be communicating very directly as though the bird were some sort of apprentice or nurse, expecting a higher level of cognition and understanding than present in the mind of a pigeon.

So, here we come to a choice. Is the pigeon’s projected personality a delusion or a hallucination? Here, the key difference lies in the degree of interaction between the subject and the object. If the Medic is delusional, then it would suggest that he thinks the bird is able to understand him, thus establishing a one-way stream of communication from Medic to pigeon. In contrast, a hallucination would suggest the Medic is receiving false sensory input such that he and the pigeon are engaging in a two-way conversation. In the short, we only see him talking to the birds rather than with the birds. This leaves both open as options, but his treatment of Archimedes as a pupil of sorts seems to fit in with his other conditions.

In conclusion, the story of our eccentric German doctor is not nearly as heart-wrenching as the story of the forlorn Pyro, but it still does a brilliant job of showing us who the Medic really is. Given the information provided in the short, I think it’s quite safe to assume that the Medic suffers from ASPD among other lesser complications. However, I’m still unclear as to the specific differences between ASPD and psychopathy; I’m more than happy to consider the points of people perhaps more knowledgeable than myself. If I’m completely off-base on my guesses, go ahead and link a source below, and I’ll give it a second look.

Doc Watson is an editor for The RedShirt Crew and founder of The GameRx Clinic. The Medic was his second-most played class before the F2P days. If you have input, comments, or anything else you’d like to add, leave a comment below or send him a tweet via @DocWatsonMD.

GameRx Diagnosis: Pyro

As many of you are aware, Valve recently released the final short of the “Meet the Team” series, featuring the much anticipated Pyro backstory. I’ve been looking forward to “Meet the Pyro” since “Meet the Sniper” was released, hoping each new installment would feature my favorite class. Although I was somewhat crestfallen whenever it wasn’t the Pyro short, I new that patience is almost always rewarded with Valve products. As usual, Valve delivered quality material in the short, but I got way more out of the video than I could have predicted.

Of course, this essay completely spoils the short. If you haven’t seen it yet, watch it now before going on. I’ll even provide you with the video right here. You’re welcome.

The first time I watched it, “Meet the Pyro” surpassed my highest expectations. It was well-directed, well-written, and had that unmistakeable twang of dark humor that makes Valve’s work stand out from the crowd. Having been lifted in spirits upon seeing the short featuring my favorite class, I went in for an enthusiastic round two, but I left with a much different feeling after doing so. After finding the video uproariously funny the first time, I expected similar results. However, the second viewing was, if you’ll pardon my French, fucking terrifying. Giving such a deep plunge into the psychology of the Pyro was so bizarre, so grotesquely intriguing, that I couldn’t help but watch again and again as I tried to piece together what exactly was going on.

The main quandary of the Pyro lies in the dichotomy of perception and reality. If we try to fit the actions of the Pyro into the old D&D alignment chart, we get a bit of a problem; the Pyro’s perception seems to be framed as Lawful Good, while the actions in reality are decidedly Chaotic Evil. In the Pyro’s perception, there is only happiness, candy, and music; he’s the lord of this realm of happiness, and his duty is to spread good cheer to all of its adorable baby population. Granted, we could write a short book on the flaws of the old alignment system, but the contradiction still stands.

Assuming the Pyro is human and that this duality isn’t directly caused by the Pyro’s optical mask, this leaves us with a bit of an ethical quandary. When reacting to the perceived world, the Pyro is doing good. However, this does little to alleviate the nature of the heinous crimes committed. I don’t know about you, but the carnage inflicted by the Pyro in the short is much darker and more brutal than anything Valve has made in Team Fortress 2 or any of its other franchises. Do we judge the Pyro by his actions or his intent?

Things get really interesting in the final scene, immediately after the TF2 fanfare. At the end of the short, we see the Pyro walking into the sunset. In the perceived world, the Pyro is dancing down the road with a jaunty gait as he steps in time to the Lovin’ Spoonful. However, panning out through the now-vacant chest cavity of the blue soldier, we see the Pyro in a solemn dirge, head turned down, trudging away from the destruction. Knowing these two states exist simultaneously, it becomes fairly obvious (to my logic, at least, and I’m no psychologist) that the Pyro is well-aware of what is happening but refuses to accept the harsh reality of it all.

The saccharine world of happiness in which the Pyro frolics seems to be a defensive mechanism, denying reality by finding convoluted means of justifying his actions. He refuses to be accountable for what he does by choosing to lie to himself about what he’s doing, although why remains unclear. It could be as simple as dealing with combat stress through a personal construct to justify such evil as occupational necessity, or a means of coping with past trauma by projecting his deepest desires on the grim reality. Regardless, I think we can say the Pyro is well within the realm of post-traumatic stress disorder, whether his sanity is already suffering or circling the drain.

As I said before, I’m no psychologist. This whole analysis is based off an amateur supply of knowledge, — namely Psych 101, Wikipedia, NOVA, and a (short) lifetime of reading science material. I apologize in advance for any major oversights I may have made and would welcome a more experienced diagnosis or critique. If there are enough good points in the comments, I’ll write a follow-up article expanding this diagnosis. Deal?

Doc Watson is an editor for The RedShirt Crew Blog and founder of The GameRx Clinic. He always refers to the Pyro as “he”, maintaining the Pyro is not only male, but a “flamer” as well. If you have questions, comments, suggestions, or other input, don’t hesitate to leave a comment here or to send a tweet to @DocWatsonMD

Red Shirt Podcast #6: Valve!

Hey guys. This week, it’s all Valve, all the time. Panda Hat Girl (Elena), Junior Varsity (Jason), Doc Watson (Stephen) and MaristPlayBoy (Chase) discuss Steam and Portal. Later, Stephen and Chase are joined by Justin (Cyrus) and Michael to discuss Team Fortress 2, Left4Dead, and Half-Life.