Giving Personality to Characters: Difference between revisions

This is an archived Game Theory Discussion started on 01 Sep 2003. Please do not edit it except to add to the end.

This topic has been dealt with several times on the forums, but it never got the full scope it deserves. It's rather basic, but I thought it would be nice to start from simple things - who knows, maybe we'll make a Designer's Compendium thanks to those threads? Shall you  find this topic not interesting, I still have several good subjects in plans.

One can argue that when the protagonist is a persona too specified in his/her tastes, traits, ideas etc. it is harder for the player to identify with him/her, simply because of differences that may arise (political beliefs, sexual preferences etc). Also, when the protagonist's personality is unrevealed players are more likely to impose own ideas about his/her psyche.

I'm far from saying that a protagonist with no personality ruins a game. Dreamweb was a great experience and at the same time gave us a character with no personality at all - its atmosphere was enough. Mourir En Mer, on the other hand, with its introduction of a unique (handicapped) protagonist instanly caught my attention from the first room right to the (very moving) ending, all this thanks to the protagonist's personal history and dreams.

All in all, whether protagonists need personality seems to be a matter of preference. Personally, I think that even a game with simplistic plot is much better when the protagonist is an interesting person.

That's it from me. Please add your own ideas for guidelines or comment on mine!   

Jesus christ Goldmund, do you realise you just posted nearly 2500 words!

I didn't have time to read much of what you said, but I will say my two cents: you say in your opening post that you found the character Jake Macurk in P:DA to be lacking. I would disagree with that for one reason: at one point in the game Jake's boss has to nearly beg him to give up the case for a day and go home. I thought, "wow, what a great guy. All this bad stuff's going down around him and all he can think about is getting to the bottom of this case and saving the day". From that point on I warmed to his character a lot more.   

Wow!! Thanks goldmund!!! I just finished reading it all, and after reading I can sure say, that this will help me alot making better games!!  

Well that was my addition! Again... thanks alot goldmund!   

'''Reported Character'''

What you said is true, and very useful. Just another thing - notice in Homer's writings that Helen, the supposed 'most beautiful woman in the world' is not described, not once. So how does it work? Well, the reactions of everyone are displayed. So we know what people think of the person - in many cases in real life, we rely on other people to help form opinions of people. Using this approach works well in adventure games, partially because we can actually use the approach of being told directly 'he's crazy', as well as the regular 'letting slip' and 'peripheral information'. We can bring in the characters of the person talking, and that which is being talked about. Also, as with Helen, the image of the character changes with each person. The same thing could be done with adventure game characters.   

Great post, Goldmund!

Of course, I'm not saying that character developing is a bad thing. Good character development is obviously very important , but it shouldn't be overdone.   

'''

Backstory'''

Think of Gabriel Knight.  Would he be nearly as interesting if it weren't for his family history?   

Amazing post Goldmund! THAT's the way to do it. The only problem is that you've covered everything, and I have very little to add  

Quoted from DGMacphee in the first GTD discussion: "As Tim Schafer once described in a magazine the difference between Bernard (DOTT) and Ben (FT) -- Bernard would have to unlock a door using a sandwich by taking apart the beard putting it under the door while using the toothpicks holding the sandwich together to push the key out onto the bread slice (like the old newspaper trick)."   

And Ben would just eat the sandwich and kick the door down.   

The Tex Murphy games -- All the games feature many humourous brushstrokes to paint Tex's character and his relationships to other characters.   

Because its hard to make that in a graphics adventure, and there arent much people making textadventures anymore.   

I think going outright and telling the player "This is YOU" is rather corny anyway. I'd take a well-developed character over myself any day.   

The game I was immedietly thinking of was Myst and it's clones, since it says "You find an old book" etc.

Though taking the Look message into account, for the Omikron apartment thing to work, some sort of protagonist I think would be required. Somesort of overarching soul rather than the direct incarnation of the player. Because I feel that there needs to be some sort of internal assessment of situations, and anyway, a narrative without a protagonist is...

Trap's post reminded me of something I may as well bring up.  I don't know if I'm in this attitude to adventure gaming, but I have never thought of myself as "being" the characters in the adventure games.  Even though the games are usually described with sentences like "You are Ben, a tough-as-nails biker who's just been double-crossed" (or things to that effect), I have always had the attitude that I am simply facilitating a story in which I am nothing more than an observer.  If this were not to be the case, many common facets of adventure games would not make sense.  "Meanwhile..." scenes are a prime example, and certainly pop in many adventures.  If you truly are "playing" the character, how would you have any idea what's going on anywhere else?  In games with a humourous tint (and even in some without), the character will speak directly out from the screen.  Who's he/she talking to?  I do not interpret this as the character thinking to him/herself; I think it is most certainly the character speaking to the real-life player.  There are plenty of other examples, including the ability to see an entire room at once, including areas the character could by no means reasonably see.

P.S. Obviously, this only applies to 3rd-person adventures, but in my case those are all I play.     

good thread, very helpful.  Dialog and character development is what I'm having the biggest problem with at the moment in my 'bear' game.  I originally was going for a simple 'down and out' protagonist, who'd double as the comic relief, but soon realised I'd need a seperate character to serve this function.   

arrrg, gotta go...   

There's a set of archetypes used in most narrative fiction that sets the fundamentals of relationship:

There are numerous others, but these are the main four.

And that it the purpose of this particular GTD -- to fill the many blanks of character.   

"And the inevitable fifth: the keeper of his conscience, and the keeper of the stone."   

DG - To specify, Manny for example isn't the UP. He's the Protagonist. The Uber Protagonist is developed between the player and the protagonist, and thus changes depending on the player. It can also be the sub responder if you will.

I thought I should make that clear.   

restraint. very important that people restrain themselves, as minimi i believe brought up

eric   

This is an absolutly excellent post, Goldmund.

Interaction is really the key to understanding a character.  I don't know if Chrille meant to do this, but there were clues to Jake McUrk's character thorughout P:DA.  For example, if you look at his bookshelf you find he likes to read mysteries.  You know he has particular tastes in art, because he always has a comment whenever you look at a painting.  You know he isn't very domestically inclined- there were various comments in the kitchen about how underused it was. You know he is a loyal customer- they knew him by name at the store.  But there was never a message that popped up saying "You are Jake McUrk, a mystery loving, art criticizing, domesticaly impaired loyal customer."  If there was, I would probably ignored it.     

<blockquote>This is an absolutly excellent post, Goldmund.

It was Robertson Davies, actually.  But both are Canadian authors.   

Quintaros:

And from your description above, does this mean the UP basically represents the relationship between player and protagonist?   

Argh! I knew I'd gotten it wrong.  Richler is "Apprenticship of Duddy Kravitz" and "Barney's Version." I should know better, I'm a Canadian English student!   

Ugh, I even spelled it wrong!   

I think one of the most important tools to create a sense of identification is the character development, which is more or less absent in most ags games, and perhaps most adventure games...

I know that was my problem in TW3...I wanted to make the main character really brave and intrepid, and when he got his really tough mission, he just said something like "yeah sure I'll do it"....

the player most have wondered "how can you be so bloody sure, Artram?"  

I know it wasn't a RPG or a true adventure game, but Ultima 9, for all its faults, did this pretty well.  I liked the Avatar.  He was a cookie-cutter prettyboy hero, his house filled with stuff from Britannia, no apparent responsibilities, no life.  Once he begins his adventure, though, he begins to take shape.  You know he has saved Britannia 8 times, helping countless hundreds of people individually along the way.  He is the embodiment of good to them, but when he is absent, they begin to lose their goodness.  This tortures him, because he knows deep down that he brought them their greatest foe.  When he must finally bid farewell to his adopted world, to move on and take away the Guardian, he looks back with regrets that he never knew how some of his past companions there felt, wondering about what might have been.

Now everone might disagree, of course.  That's why Adventure games are cool, they aren't determined entirely by writers.  Its like a good book.  The writer writes a person, but you get to LIVE him, by reading through his eyes.  This was longer than I thought it would be, but maybe you all will get something from it.   

Ah, I appreciate this thread because a lot of people ignore the possibility of injecting life into their characters.. just a linear type thing.. I like depth and therefore love it when a character has a past you can identify with, or one so terrible (as for a villian, but who knows) that you just can't stand the person.  I always try to instill some sort of personality or whatever.. because otherwise things become too flat and you can't play off of them for later scenes or whatever. Ah well, just my insight on the topic.