TMNT (2012) Story telling and character traits

So since something big happened to me recently concerning gaming to a deep personal level I decided I want to not write my big subject for a while. Instead let's speak good words for something else I like. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. The newest series of course the one running on Nick

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Basically I am going to praise something this series does very well, character traits. But wait, I can hear you say, aren't the character traits basically the same as every other tmnt ever? Well on the surface,yes , their main traits are the ones on the ads and the (very good) opening song. Leo is the leader,his main concern being to get through the mission. Raph is the strongest ,fuel by his rage. Don is the smartest, building machines and  getting excited over a centrifuge. And Mikey is the party dude, a happy go lucky person,but lacking in abilities. However through great and, more importantly ,consistent storytelling it appears that they are much deeper than that.

Alright before we continue, SEVERE SPOILERS UP TO 2ND SEASON FINALE.You have been warned. Let's start with Leo. For starters he is a huge nerd, in a "one of us" kind of way. He watches an animated version of something like Star Trek and kinda Power Rangers almost religiously, has first edition comics in plastic bags and he cracks one liners against his enemies,to the despair of his brothers. And the supposedly nerdy Don has shown no interest to such things,only caring once, when the story talked to him and picked him up. Leo is also the one that works the best by himself, something you would expect to be a thing Raph did. But no, Leo's solo feats are the most impressive , defeating monsters that kicked the whole team's ass, a bunch of Footbots when they mattered, and an even bigger bunch of them AND Shredder's best men (while the entire team had trouble with them separated) before Shredder himself took him down.

In fact Raph is the one that needs his brothers the most, as his only solo feat was to beat Slash. In fact he usually loses alone, the most embarashing of these losses being against Cassey Jones, a random kid that only fought bullies and small criminals , while Raph is A TRAINED NINJA! On the other hand, Raph is shown to be the most emotional. Not just anger, but every emotion. He is always the saddest, he freaks out the hardest( even thought Mikey tends to be afraid more often) and he is the only one that we have seen to stop and think about his emotions , besides Donnie and his crush with April. Raph is also the one that shares the deepest bond with one of his brothers, and that brother is Mikey. Thought one might assume the opposite as they are always fighting , Mikey is always the first one to stop him, to hug him, to support him , anything.

While we are on Mikey, he is the most surprising one. He is the most creative, thinking catchy names for his opponents. He might also be the one with the most potential as his feats are second only to Leo's. He was shown fending for himself and a downed Raph without even looking at his opponents, held against several enemies including Razhar,a boss kinda character, even thought he could die at any second from some sickness, held against mind control much longer than his brothers to make an antidote to save them and even managed to not only survive but learn the ins and outs of another dimension by staying in it for only a couple of weeks, taking down giant monsters in the process. All those feats are way out of character for Mikey, but they all had one thing in common: Mikey was in full focus. When he focuses he is amazing, to the point that one wonders what would happen if he focused all the time. He might have been better than any of his bros.

Lastly Don. He is the one with the least of those hidden traits as most of his actions revolve around either sciencing something or being in love with April. Sad really. But , probably as a byproduct of his intelligence , he is extremely flexible. He was the first one to find a makeshift weapon when Splinter took them from the turtles, and the only one to defeat a psychic enemy by thinking a way around it, by not thinking his moves. He is the only one willing to think up new weapons or upgrade his old ones. 

So how are all those traits given to us?  They are shown to us consistently. These traits are always present  , even being the main subject of the episode. And we are let to discover those traits without the characters themselves point them out to us, as we don't need it. How could such story telling be given to us throught a game thought. Well through the story is one way. But ,depending on the genre, these infos can be given through game play. The most interesting and perhaps easier genre would be an RPG. Let's imagine a classic RPG party with the turtles as its members. Now let's say that Leo is a support character that helps the others strategically through buffs, but when they are out he gets buffed, being faster and stronger, even moving more per round. Raph could have a rage meter, that goes up as he is hurt , making him a risk-reward character, but if he is alone that is locked away from him,making him almost helpless. Mikey could be a chaos oriented character, more luck less strategy, tons of criticals and random buffs. And Donnie's abilities would be build related ones, being able to swicth equipment in the middle of the battle, drastically changing his role. None of those things would need to be told directly to the player. The player would find these throught experimentation. And of course strategizing with them in mind. Try to keep Leo alive, ensure that Raph is never alone, change Donnie to a healer or tank to avoid the last situation , get happy by Mikey's criticals etc. 

Having such a  would allow the player to verify what he was told,that Leo is the leader,that Raph is always angry,that Mikey is the most unreliable, and give deeper character traits open to interpratation, like Donnie is flexible, Mikey can be good when he wants to.We really could learn a lot from other forms of media, especially the good ones.