Oh, Travis, you sociopath otaku, why do we love you so much?

Is it your shiny lightsaber?

Is it your terrific fashion sense?

Is it your expansive knowledge of wrestling moves ?

Is it your ability to make it with saucy French hotness ?

Well, yes.

But, it's more than that. There's something else about you, Travis. There's a reason you've captured the hearts and imaginations of gamers everywhere.

You, Travis, are us.

You live in a small, messy hovel coated from wall-to-wall with anime figures and wrestling masks.

You habitually rent porn and pickup videos.

You're a 27-year-old single white male with no career aspirations to speak of, forced to take dead-end jobs and run errands to make ends meet.

You, sir, are the collective sum of everyone who's ever picked up a controller.

How could we not love you?

How could we not feel a visceral chill every time you throw your lightsaber way up in the air, powerbomb some jerk right into the ground, and have the blade land straight down in the middle of the sucker's chest?

How can we not celebrate every time you carve apart a stage magician, a wannabe superhero, or a Charles Bronson look-alike?

How can we not feel a wonderful little tingle every time you get a little closer to that flirty tease Sylvia?

It's because you are every one of us, Travis, the most perfect player surrogate since Super Mario.

Few of us will ever be badass engineers, or buxom archaeologists, or brooding vagabond warriors. There'll always be some disconnect between the likes of Link, Sub-Zero, and Niko Bellic, and the people who play them.

But you?

At the opening screen, we've already done everything you've managed to do in life, short of buy a lightsaber in an online auction and start cutting down faceless hordes. The entire useful portion of your life starts at the moment we pick up the Wiimote and get to work.

And as you hack and slash through a complex allegory of ththere e pains of a quarter-life crisis, trusting your force and heading toward the garden of madness, we're right with you along the way.

Of course we love you, Travis. We wanna kill our heroes, too.