Re: blind characters in games of any media, present and discuss.
I'm going to take us further afield with my next example as it is from a book, but a blind villain I have come closer to liking than any other in classic lit is "blind Jake" from Edgar Wallace's "The Dark Eyes of London."
Again, he has some major stereotyping, but sadly, as far as blind villains go in my experience he's still probably the best, which is really sad.
"The Dark Eyes of London" is an early 20th-century book by Edgar Wallace where a clue in a seeming murder is a piece of paper in the man's pocket written in Braille. The heroine of the story used to work at an asylum for the blind (yes they actually call the thing an asylum.) and so she can read it. Over the course of the story, They find that a series of murders is being perpetrated by a set of criminals, one of them an infamous thug called Blind Jake, who works out of the asylum for the blind but who is basically a mob enforcer in terms of how good he is at beating the living crap out of people. It is never explained how he gets around, other than that he is actually very mobility-skilled as he usually does his dirty work alone.
They eventually find out he's working with two other people connected to his asylum, in a weird twist one of them is pretending to be blind and runs the place. Something about him extending a hand too early when he shakes hands, before others have made an intention to do so, directly reaching and grasping the right hand of the detective tips them off to that his isn't actually blind.
Jake has disgusting childlike devotion to his boss which gets him shot after he's outlived his usefulness. But he captures the heroine on his own at one point (threatening to throw vitriol in her face (because that's what sick melodramatic sensational novel bad guys do at this period) and even beats the detective to within an inch of his life. He is cornered in an attic that he knows well by the detective. There is a low-hanging lightbulb and the detective is yelling for Jake to surrender. Jake is wearing gloves, feels the heat coming from the bulb and reaches up and crushes it. In the sudden darkness the detective is disoriented and Jake comes down on him like a ton of bricks, beating him to a pulp before making his escape.
Again, sadly one of the better representations. They have the childlike mind, though he shows surprising cunning frequently, the calling attention to his blindness with his street name, and the view of many characters he could only get his living selling matches or begging, which is what most of the asylum inmates do. However, he is a credible, often cunning, and in some ways more realistic evil blind character threat. He is capable but Edgar Walace doesn't turn him into evil daredevil as his blindness saves his ass a few times but it is a hindrance to him as well, ultimately resulting in him not seeing his boss pointing a gun at him.
To be honest, I hate both the childlike super-innocent and the super-bitter sadistic blind psychopath stereotypes, but I hate the childlike innocent much more.
Also, wish I could remember, there's a book from I think Isabelle Ister from the 1920s that features a very capable blind detective called Mr. Gaunt. I can't remember what the book is called but because of the time period I was very surprised as to how competent he was.
He frequently used other senses to investigate crime scenes (contaminating them by today's standards but I'll let it slide) for example he touches a spot of blood he is directed to at a murder and knows that this blood near the window is spilled much more recently than the actual blood that came from the murder itself, thus leading him later to find some of the crime scene was staged. Also as the movements of several women throughout the story in this house becomes important, he comes to recognize their perfumes, and by smelling remnants of it in places where a couple claim never to have been he is certain a couple are lying to him.
He also is super-smart so he's able to put his senses to best use and also interrogate really well, also being able to pick up on things like if someone answers too quickly or too slow (something a detective with sight could still do) which helps him check the sincerity or completeness of who he interviews.
He isn't daredevil though. For one, when he enters a building for the first time to perform an investigation, he does have to be shown the layout of the place and where major things are. He also notably misses visual signals made between characters trying to hide a secret from him which he doesn't pick up on directly at any point though evidence he gets over the course of the investigation allows him to get what he missed, though it takes him a while.
The only thing he does that I think is too hard to swallow is he claims he can tell the color of a person's hair by touching it. This might be a ploy but he finds a hair at the murder site and wants to match it to someone, at one point testing a temptress character's hair. I can't remember if she announces that it is red or he does, though he finds a match I think either way. I think it also might have been an excuse to get Mr. Gaunt in close proximity to an attractive young woman who drives him crazy, oddly with a lot of description that never goes into visual details but involves non-visual details I tend to look for as well, which either says Istor had help or she was just very insightful.
Sadly like most Blind characters in old books (can't say much for new ones) Mr. Gaunt doesn't "Get the Girl" in the end. Seems no matter how brilliant, kind, and wonderful a blind character is, at least if they're men as Miss finch mentioned above does get the guy, they tend to continue to be alone at the end of the story.
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