Alright so, tom foolery aside, lets get to the fun stuff, characters and how we design them.
Expect a few repeats of older posts, for those who haven’t read them would you kindly ignore this paragraph! 
(cheap joke I know!)
So with character design, we should design our character with dimension. Offering an emotional diamond that affects them. As well we should layer different aspects of relation that they have with other characters. Be it jealousy, admiration, or abject hatred.
Once we understand our characters emotion, we begin to sketch them out on paper (or our artist does this for us).
What position is our character in? What is their lifestyle like? Where they live, eat, breathe. What is the era they live in? Is it fantasy, or real? These are important questions which allow us to emotionally evolve the character(s).
So Night, how much is too much history? When do I stop?
The idea for this is that you want to write your character history so that your character is only slightly aware about himself. We think we know ourselves, but really we see ourselves the way “WE” want to see ourselves.
To help, take significant aspects of a characters life. These include the surrounding, traumatic events, and there place among society. We then look at there attitude, opinions, view of the world.
Characters should be explained through their actions rather than their words. Words help to expand upon them, but actions explain it best.
Characters development isn’t as much change, as it is disclosure. Generally we should know more about the character than the character himself. If a character has not grown or changed throughout the course of the story, it is an unrealistic character. Characters evolve no mater what happens, actions they make will affect them later in the story.
Without growth, our character doesn’t move forward, they stagnate, and our players playing them get bored rather quickly.
When we know a characters position, we know how to start their adventure.
If they begin in a victorious state, we should tear them down and then build them back up. If they begin in the gutter, we merely build them up.
An old epic movie which presented a character being torn down in society and then rising through the dregs of slavery back to his higher position. “Ben Hur” as a movie from 1959, I would still recommend people to watch it. As long as it is, it shows character progression and many elements that adds to his down fall and then return to glory.
As with any story, a protagonist, needs an antagonist. This person, this enemy, is a pivotal character. Since the start of the game, they’ve known their goal, they know what they want. They are determined to get what they want via any means necessary. Whether its world domination, corruption of innocents, or the destruction of the universe, it presents a challenge that our hero must overcome.
In some games the hero is the pivotal character. Thief, Garret is not what you’d call a “hero” he is not a good guy, he’s selfish, greedy, and devious. He has a code of honor though (that we are allowed to follow or not follow). He is not a good guy, but his actions and the manipulations form outside sources, make him a an unsung hero. He’s deeds go unnoticed by the masses.
Pivotal characters gives us a reason, they show us whats at stake, whats been put upon the betting table. They are willing to cheat if they can in order to win.
A hunter without prey is not a hunter, just a person with a club and nothing to do. As so, a hero without a villain is nothing. This is why so many comic book hero’s always have villains coming out of the wood works.
So then Player Characters, lets really take a chunk out of the meat of the story!
People have always complained about the Player Character (PC). Some don’t like the expanded history, while others hate the lack of background information. It generally feels like a no win situation.
The PC is the most complicated character to write for. Especially today where so many games have become open ended with character creation. No longer are you stuck to a “premade” persona, rather, you create your own persona whose eyes you live through.
So how, how do we allow for such a dynamic character, when in the end, its the person behind the controls who effects their decision.
We ask ourselves this.
Who is the PC. A living being controlled by the player? Or the player themselves?
Back in the days of yore, when games were merely text. We were the player, typing out our responses to a computer generated series of text.
Today were the eyes and manipulators of the character themselves.
Are we controlling a PC whose history created him? Or are we playing a PC whose creation is affected by our own progression and choices in the game.
This is the difference between something like Kings Quest, and Elder Scrolls (take your pic of the series). In one your a predefined character, in the other you make your character. In both you have your choices that you make, it affects the world, and leads to the eventual climax.
We usually empathize with the character whom we portray.
For those who don’t know it. Empathy is the ability owe have, it allows us to understand the feelings of others, even fictional characters. We feel for them and experience their actions almost as if they were are own.
For now we shall assume the control of a Character whose actions we control, but whose background was already defined by the story.
We obviously don’t need to just make a character out of thin air, we can opt to make something form the cookie cutter. This generally appeals to most audience expectations. When we break the ice, we tread upon thin ice, every step this character makes has a chance of breaking the immersion.
Once the decision has been made to create a character distinct from the player, its time to ask yourself.
How much background history should the player know about the character.
We must decide upon our characters ego, there flaws and talents. If a character is too well developed, there isn’t much room for the player to feel as though he can empathize with them. Like wise, if there is no emotion at all, there is nothing for us to connect with them.
Take the movie Batman “The Dark Knight” who was more fun to flesh out, Batman? Or the Joker. I would pick the Joker, he’s such a ruthless and psychotic villain, he just wants to “Blow it all up!” he’s insane. Yet we find him interesting, comical, and creepy. Batman, is cold, calculating, and serious.
Yet we put more emphasis on Batman because he’s the hero.
In a game we must balance how much the character knows, and how much we know.
People warn against using amnesia as a tool to hide character knowledge form the player. They say its cliche, its an excuse.
Me, personally, I believe that any form of character writing can be cliche if we don’t use them properly.
Generally a player and the player character should both be equally surprised by plot twist in the story. In film, sometimes a current scene is cut and the viewer is whisked away to a scene where something profound unfolds that the main character doesn’t know about.
As Game Designers, it is alright to do things like this, but don’t pour all the answers out, tease the player, make them want to find the answer to whats happening. The main reason why you would do such a scene is to create suspense.
Example
A squad was taken by alien creatures, the scene shifts to a radio shouting for the captain, whilst we see the movements of an alien and the twitching legs of some soldier amidst the crunching and chewing of bone. This shows but doesn’t tell. We can’t see the soldier, is it the captain? Did he survive or is he dead?
This is suspense creating an objective for the player. “Find out the truth of what happened at the battle site.”
What if Sherlock Holmes suddenly found himself upon a 24th century space station, where murder is afoot? His entire ideology and how he perceived to study crime would be completely broken. (Did you know that Holmes never knew nor cared about whether the earth circled the sun or the sun circled the earth!) He is a man of exact study, to know his surroundings and what he’s used to. Suddenly he’s in a position where the world has changed, new laws have been applied to physics, the impossible has become possible. How can he adapt to this!
With this characters position, we as the PC can then take control and experience the world and surprises as well as the characters ambition to survive and evolve through out this new world.
Another flaw in character development is the making of experts. If you play an expert, don’t make silly complicated puzzles that makes this expert inept.
An mechanic staring at millions of wires should himself offer hints via inner monologue. “Hmmm I’ve messed with these types of fuses before, as long as I don’t cross the red and yellow wires, it should work just fine.” This shows his expertise whilst allowing the player to play the minigame. Simply dropping the player into the puzzle with no hints makes the so called expert they are controlling feel rather inept.
Text - A nasty little thing isn’t it, it gives us information we need, but what gamer wants to scroll, or flip through a hundred pages of text just to continue on with a mission?
The more a player has to read, the less they are playing and this can cause some frustration. Game Devs supply a skip button of course, but then the players misses out on a lot of story immersion, and even important information. They’d miss great insight about there character or other characters, or even clues.
Thus designers have to find a way to show this same information to a player in a different format.
Unfortunately there is no right or wrong way to satisfy gamers, and reviewers. Put in cut-scenes, someone will complain, put in short text, someone will whine. We can only offer the best options to the players that we can. This I will touch upon in much greater detail later on!
So having other characters with you, in an rts you don’t care for their deaths, as its a statistic, in a final fantasy game, you have to option to revive them making it a mere nuisance. To actually have a close major npc die, effects the player greatly.
Sure we know Aeris of FFVII and the pain some felt at her loss. This is an example of emotional depth that binds the player to an npc.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle would write great descriptions of characters with a minimum of lines. These characters tie us closely to them and we like or dislike them just form the description.
Is it alright to break the fourth wall with our pc and npcs?
Awareness makes for small little chuckles.
Right before a huge battle you do a quick-save, thus the PC responds “I don’t have a good feeling about this.” Not only has he shown awareness of what the player has done, but he voices it with worry.
This is a widely used form of humor, even serious games have this happen once in awhile. Some characters asking the main “Ever feel like your just being used?” are they questioning there superior officer? Or the player? We don’t know but we feel a little chuckle on the inside as we hear this.
Its a comical effect, and as long as we make sure to use it lightly, its okay.
Matt Hazard did this plenty of times and I found it to fit the setting of the game where the PC knew of his position.
Remember that a little is okay and to much can be bad for you, or rather your games immersiveness.
As our player goes through our world, they come across many character types and personalities. Thieves give a conniving look, ready to filch your wallet. The a voluptuous second in command conscientiously catches our eyes. These become stereotypes, and that’s okay, but we want to be careful as well. Add a new dimension to these stereotypes. The simple thief is really an information seeker and he’s set his sights on digging up your history. The second in command is really professional in her presentation and unlike the scantly clad girls we see, she is more prim and proper, clean and sees skills as a show of position rather than looks.
A character and non-player character are defined by personalities, professions, physical mannerisms, phrases, quotes, accents, clothing, and specific attitudes/opinions. These build layers upon our characters that make them unique.
A thief is just as likely to be a ragged beggar as he is to be a rich playboy merely in it for the thrills.
NPCs help to give the world atmosphere, a ghost ship in space is justified with being empty and derelict. A friday in New York should have no excuse with being completely empty. We fix these situations by stamping themes to them, “Post-apocalypse, Armageddon, alternate universe,” all of it used to expand upon the players imagination, pushing aside simple logic.
Many npc’s are just bit-players. They offer a single or small line of dialogue and usually its to brush the player off, “Oh, I can’t help right now, I’m busy,” or “Go bother someone else, can’t you see I’m in the midst of a discovery!”. They inform the player that they have nothing to offer and are merely there to expand the world ever so slightly.
Innocents in GTA are examples of a bit player, they seemingly offer nothing, and are only there to add to the real-world setting. Yet they do offer something, a challenge, by harming them you in turn get the police upon you and then some.
Even then, some npcs don’t need to have dialogue, they can be the mechanic in the background working on a tank. That child upon a swing having fun. They are just as important to atmosphere as is a quest giving npc. Though the quest giver advances the plot, the world would feel empty without the addition of simple people living in it. These “pantomimes” merely repeat what they do.
Some games offer realism by making it difficult to find a major npc, like in real life, they don’t have massive glowing question marks above their heads, but at the same time, finding such a person within a large crowd would be rather difficult if not frustrating to the player, thus a little bend of the immersion law is okay if it avoids complications.
Even worse, for those who create large and innovative stories, it would be rather sad to see players stumble pass these important quest givers all because they didn’t know who they were!
Stereotypes, a dangerous ingredient!
Stereotypes, this is something we learn ourselves either form others, form world views, even peer influences. As Game Designers and writers, when do we recognize such a flaw in our characters?
-Sometimes we don’t, as we write our world, get get drawn into it, involved in every aspect. Some of us follow a known genre or theme that were used to, whether it be from reading sci-fi novels, or detectives books. We add in what we learn and feel is the general theme without knowing it.
-They are easier to write, saving much work for us. These characters pretty much explain themselves. The big burly sarge is rather obvious even before he starts shouting at you into oblivion.
- Time and deadlines sometimes force us to put in stereotypes, we drop them in and pat our backs, saying we can expand upon them later. Some of you have learned this isn’t the case, that once your done with once description, you face plant yourself into the next!
Such stereotypes have a major flaw with our story, it makes it seem rather meek, unprofessional even. We begin to cross the line or “story” and enter “fan fiction” where we all want to have a part in Star Wars with Luke on our side.
Another dangerous trap that follows closer to the newer writers and designers, are games that we place our own avatar as the main character. Sometimes you can get away with it, making something others attach to and can develop with just as well. Sometimes were caught, actually a lot of the time were caught. These games are then coined “knock offs,” and “expanded fan-fiction remade into a game.” We all want ourselves to feel like a hero, but we have to remember, that its our audience who plays the game in the end which makes us the $$$ not ourselves.
So for these supposed cliches, how do we recognize them. Ask yourself this, "Do they look, talk, and act exactly as you’d expect? If you don’t feel any suspicion, any surprise by the characters actions, you might very well have a stereotype indeed.
Sargoth, a walking tower of man and muscle, wielding his sword, he is a berserker, letting loos a war cry as he charges into battle, Conan the bar-- er I mean Sargoth the berserker is…
Notice how obvious this is, its a stereotypical character, a near or exact rip of a character we know.
Outside critique from friends is always helpful, if they spot a stereotype, than its good to get insight and opinions on how to morph this “stereotype” into a unique pc or npc.
As a note, many PC’s are simple stereotypes, because a player soemtimes wants to play something simple. The Marine, Masterchief, Duke Nukem, and more. These characters are a simple stereotype to let the player “get into the game” and blow stuff up! Even role play games offer a rather stereotypical character in order to merge the player into the game faster.
Our goal is for us and the players to know our characters better than they know themselves. We give them an objective or role to fill out. Whether it is the fabled hero who shall one day save the world. Or the veteran marine willing to save his band of brothers from doom at the hands of their captors.
I’ll hold off here for now, and hope you all learn something from this, just as well, I’m always hoping to hear from you all!
Next time since no one chose a topic for me to write on, I’ll continue more with characters and yes at one point I will hit upon fashion!
For now take it easy and enjoy the Easter holiday!
leaves to soak his fingers in a bucket of ice water[/b]
