Tim Schafer"
One aspect of games and there designs I truly love is character design, and in regards to the above statement I agree whole heartedly. I personally find it easier to play a game where a character has been given such an immersive back-story motives, dreams, on-going character development – whether it is an NPC or the PC. It encourages – for me – interaction with the environment, and a feeling of connection to the story, plot, and world itself.
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| Clementine - The Walking Dead |
A way to express this point further would be to select a character from a game, so let’s go with a popular franchise in which the game produced many “feels” for those playing it. The Walking Dead. A game composed of 5 chapters revolving around Lee – the PC – and his survival in a zombie apocalypse. Within this game, there’s a female child character that features heavily throughout the story - Clementine. Personally, I struggle to connect with child characters in games, I dislike children in real life so why would I like one in a game where their scripted dialogue and actions revolve around an over emphasised childlike naivety and “innocence”? Clementine appears to compromise this view – she’s quietly composed, smart, driven to help the group whilst maintaining some aspects of nativity which add to her female person and humorous aspects of the game. As the game focuses on decision making through dialogue and point and click puzzle solving adventure game design, I found myself going out of my way to talk to Clementine before everyone else – making sure she was happy and changing decisions based on how it could affect her characters happiness or personality. Then, when a decision choice made me have no choice but to negatively affect her – causing her to either be grabbed by zombies, or for a text box saying her negative emotions in the top left corner of the screen – I found myself cursing at what the game was doing, wanting to go and restart and try again just to keep her happy. This aspect then compared with the moronic example of a kid in a zombie apocalypse – Duck – furthers her appeal and wish to complete the game in a way which would please a certain character.
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| Tiny Tina - Borderlands 2 |
Another example of a child character that’s just bad ass is Tiny Tina from Borderlands 2. Although not completing the game due to time management with work, her dialogue takes a good combination of adult-based humour and 13 year old girl-ness and creates an essentially awesome character who’s missions look entertaining to complete.
These aspects are mainly dependant on the script and voice acting quality applied to the character. Certain phrases – for example when you ask Clementine if she licked a salt lick, and she responds “I don’t know” – slowly introduce character traits, character development, scenery interaction and then later on when the same object is used to kill someone, makes you cringe when you think to the mix of emotions applied to a single object due to a child's curiosity. As both Clementine and Tiny Tina are female child characters – granted of varying ages – their appearances actually hold quite a few similarities which is interesting due to the completely different scenes. Both emphasise their femininity through clothing and not overly luscious eyelashes or any form of suggested makeup. Both have similar face shapes to emphasise their youth and their hair is both wild, linking with the environment, with the addition of ribbons or hair ties to keep in line with the fact they are female and that doesn't change due to the environment. Their personalities somewhat coincide in their aesthetic design which stimulates interaction with them more, both designs are pretty awesome if you ask me.
I personally find that stories are really influenced by the characters, I enjoy stories which involve and revolve around character interaction to further story and stimulate environment exploration. I enjoy the playable character either having a strong personality, which is developed on constantly dependant on the story and occurrences in a game, or essentially a blank slate of which I have complete control over. I enjoy decision making open world games which allow me to view every aspect of a games design, choose how I play and allow my short attention span to constantly be focused on the game. I like feeling the repercussions of my decisions in a story – like despite the fact I'm simply playing this pre-scripted design, it feels like I'm creating my own story and my own world and connecting with everything in game on a different level to say a game where everything is definite with the same outcome.
Even games with a definite outcome – for example Assassins creed is somewhat linear, more so than say a Bethesda game, it still has open world aspects to it with the decision to explore, collect and then the additional experiences of 100 percenting each memory segment. Then again this doesn't really rely on character design in a game… off topic a bit. Oops.
But all in all, character design is such a huge aspect of a game – in my opinion it motives a play through to be completed, and every other aspect in the game could simply be ruined by shoddy NPC’s or an incorrect PC for the environment. A lot of thought must go into the design of a character in order to make sure the production time of a game is correct, and it must coexist harmoniously with every small aspect of the game. Voice acting and dialogue must match so seamlessly with a character for it to fit so well, and it seems like it must be such a difficult task but it truly seems worth it in the end. Honestly, if I ever do get into an industry where I am influencing the design of a character I hope that I’d be able to produce the same or similar reaction in another that I have to character design.
These aspects are mainly dependant on the script and voice acting quality applied to the character. Certain phrases – for example when you ask Clementine if she licked a salt lick, and she responds “I don’t know” – slowly introduce character traits, character development, scenery interaction and then later on when the same object is used to kill someone, makes you cringe when you think to the mix of emotions applied to a single object due to a child's curiosity. As both Clementine and Tiny Tina are female child characters – granted of varying ages – their appearances actually hold quite a few similarities which is interesting due to the completely different scenes. Both emphasise their femininity through clothing and not overly luscious eyelashes or any form of suggested makeup. Both have similar face shapes to emphasise their youth and their hair is both wild, linking with the environment, with the addition of ribbons or hair ties to keep in line with the fact they are female and that doesn't change due to the environment. Their personalities somewhat coincide in their aesthetic design which stimulates interaction with them more, both designs are pretty awesome if you ask me.
I personally find that stories are really influenced by the characters, I enjoy stories which involve and revolve around character interaction to further story and stimulate environment exploration. I enjoy the playable character either having a strong personality, which is developed on constantly dependant on the story and occurrences in a game, or essentially a blank slate of which I have complete control over. I enjoy decision making open world games which allow me to view every aspect of a games design, choose how I play and allow my short attention span to constantly be focused on the game. I like feeling the repercussions of my decisions in a story – like despite the fact I'm simply playing this pre-scripted design, it feels like I'm creating my own story and my own world and connecting with everything in game on a different level to say a game where everything is definite with the same outcome.
Even games with a definite outcome – for example Assassins creed is somewhat linear, more so than say a Bethesda game, it still has open world aspects to it with the decision to explore, collect and then the additional experiences of 100 percenting each memory segment. Then again this doesn't really rely on character design in a game… off topic a bit. Oops.
But all in all, character design is such a huge aspect of a game – in my opinion it motives a play through to be completed, and every other aspect in the game could simply be ruined by shoddy NPC’s or an incorrect PC for the environment. A lot of thought must go into the design of a character in order to make sure the production time of a game is correct, and it must coexist harmoniously with every small aspect of the game. Voice acting and dialogue must match so seamlessly with a character for it to fit so well, and it seems like it must be such a difficult task but it truly seems worth it in the end. Honestly, if I ever do get into an industry where I am influencing the design of a character I hope that I’d be able to produce the same or similar reaction in another that I have to character design.
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