South of Midnight’s nasty-looking, dinosaur-sized alligator boss already has the potential to become my favorite villain ever

Xbox exclusive South of Midnight just released a new gameplay snippet showing off more of its supernatural swamp world and a megalithic alligator in it named Tom. 

Sorry, I didn't mean to sound so familiar – Two-Toed Tom. Are we cool Two-Toed Tom? Please don't eat me, Two-Toed Tom.

There might have been a time where I wouldn't have cowered at the sight of, as first revealed by South of Midnight's gameplay trailer, an evil alligator abomination with several tetanus-encrusted, rusted spikes and full-grown trees popping out of its scales. Tom was chill, once. 

"Two-Toed Tom wasn't always the terrifying giant that the people of [fictional town] Prospero knew and feared," developer Compulsion Games explained on Twitter. "He started out as a tiny little thing, raised by Farmer Swopes, a cruel man who starved his animals for entertainment and profit. But Swopes' cruelty became his own undoing: when Tom was finally freed from his captor, he did everything in his power to ensure he'd never go hungry again." 

Now, Two-Toed Tom apparently can lunge, thrash, and chomp at South of Midnight protagonist Hazel with his excessively large maw, kicking up mud and retreating into swamp water when he wants to. He looks exactly how American folktales describe him; according to legend, the monumental reptile Two-Toed Tom drifts through the Florida panhandle eating cows and women, impervious to whatever bounty's on his head. He's also the namesake for a Florida festival that sometimes features roasted corn. 

South of Midnight's take on Two-Toed Tom reminds me a lot of Rotjaw in Hunt: Showdown – another game that embraces Southern Gothic macabre. 

Like Two-Toed Tom, Rotjaw is an unrelenting alligator who broke free from her confinement and decided to inflict oppression on other people instead. I love her and animal bosses like her, who, to me, represent the nuanced brutality of the world better than a Calvin Klein model like Sephiroth. 

But Tom has the benefit of demonstrating the size and decaying majesty of a FromSoftware villain, too, so his demonstration of how nature conquers us all might make him – visually and ideologically – my favorite video game villain ever. I just have one question: can you pet the alligator? 

South of Midnight's historical-meets-magical realism doesn't just create "imaginary nostalgia," it spotlights the game's toughest themes.