Characters with character

My recent foray into character design got me thinking about characters in general. I made a statement something to the tune of "most space marines suck because you can't see their face." That really got me thinking about characters, and how we come to care for them, because a face isn't everything.

Lets try an exercise. Picture a game with great facial animation, say Heavy Rain. There are some spectacular moments in that. It was a game that's real purpose was to make you feel the emotion. I can say that I grew attached to most of the characters over my play threw. Now think further back, picture a game from your childhood that resonates with you, like an early Final Fantasy (if you were into that). NES and SNES games had a very limited emotional range, yet we could still get attached to the characters.

Only one of these characters can suplex a train

There is a simple answer to why we resonate with these pixelated jumbles, it is the relatable humanity injected into each character. The game uses our experiences to guide us through this fantasy world emotionally. That said, this relies heavily on characterization. If the character doesn't have a clear face, give them a voice, no voice? give them emotion. A good Dev could make you care about a tiny square by giving it relatable a quality.

This really fascinates me, we are such emotional creatures. We want things to connect, feel, and in the end be right and happy. Give that square a problem and the player will want to solve it. Make the square experience something that by chance the player has, say, heartbreak, and you instantly create a report. As humans we tend to want to project our emotions onto just about anything, and we can if the person/animal/object etc lends itself to this.

That said, looking at today's market it's pretty pathetic. I mean, by those standards over half the games on the store shelves have characters that are complete and utter failures. Characters so hollow and devoid of life the only thing they can do is let you puppet them and kill things vicariously through them. Sometimes it's because the writing falls short, other times it is literally all the developer is shooting for (no pun intended).

I do not think the industry really needs to grow past this, honestly there is mindless fun to be had (look at the movie industry). What I want to see is the games industry to try harder, and I want to stop hearing fanboys talk about how amazing their favorite Space Marine is (yeah, looking at you Halo fanboys). There will always be that immature aspect to gaming, just like in film. I really want to stress that, games and movies share many elements and honestly games aren't going to rise above and be placed on some holy artistic pedestal. We just need to work on the ratio. How about this: for every Expendables let there be a Scott Pilgrim, for every Piranha 3D let there be an Up, for every Last Airbender let there be an Inception. The movie industry has balanced itself, now its time for games. The important thing is not to step backward but to keep striving forward. Find new ways to make people connect with characters in games. The industry can't rely on Gordon Freeman forever.

On Modern Character Design. Or, Who Needs a Neck When You Have Biceps Like This?

My good friend Jeremy recently wrote an awesome blog about graphics (check it out here: http://vanillabeans320.blogspot.com/2010/08/everything-is-bulky-and-shiny.html ). He touched briefly on the current state of character design and since I just posted a blog on a specific character's design (Cole, InFamous) I thought I might delve deeply into that subject. Plus I don't have any Scott Pilgrim or Walking Dead to review at the moment, and I'm still about two scenes away from beating Heavy Rain.

There is certainly a split when it comes to character design in the industry. You have those in favor of the slender everyman hero, and those in favor of the industrial machinery sized god-like hero. Unfortunately at the moment it seems the majority of studios are saying viva la industrial revolution. The western ideal of macho manly men do many manly things is as hot as Space Marines (but I'll touch on that character gem later).

I know Jeremy and I have had this discussion before, but in case you don't know, the east and west have very different opinions on what makes a guy tough. The east looks at skill, the heroes are often slim, fit, and highly skilled. Whereas in America the hero is big, muscle bound, and relentless (he'll take a licking and keep on ticking). The western image comes largely from 80's and 90's era action films that we are still growing out of. Now the children that watched those movies have grown up, and they're making video games.

When the Japanese dominated the market it was saturated with androgenous leads and wacky hair. Things have changed though, and western developers are starting to dominate the market. You can now walk down the game aisle and see dozens of covers with characters that all looked like they popped straight out of WarHammer.

For a bit of personal opinion on the subject, I hate it. I absolutely loathe the over grown machismo sweating, spinal cord flossing he-men of the current gen. Not only do they look disgustingly disproportionate but the character development is usually somewhere around the lines of KILL BECAUSE SAVE WORLD and KILL BECAUSE REVENGE DEATH. I am much more in favor of the Nathan Drake-esque characters. I find that funny, smart, human sized characters with flaws and fears are much easier to relate to.

This is getting into gamer conspiracy theory but honestly this shift in design is thanks largely in part to Micro$haft. Now, I'm not a Sony fanboy, and honestly I try to avoid that whole fanboy scene like the plague. The 360 has had some good exclusives, but it also has this strange cult like following (like Apple ironically). The console's run away popularity helped bluster the American market. Unfortunately it left us with a huge gap between intellectual gaming and hardcore gaming. Right now, the term "hardcore" is quite a buzzword. Devs want to make an awesome experience but they have to make sure the publisher is ok with it. The marketing team from the publisher won't like it unless they can go to gamestop and see a game with the same character, setting, and mechanics. I swear that's how Triple A titles are made nowadays. The creative Dev might say "It's going to be great, this game is an introspective character piece with a backdrop of a fictional war". The publisher (or even another, more brotastic employee) would say "Nah, let's make it like Call of Duty, that game has such great drama and characters!" No. It has great action and sequences, but that does not lend to story and character, this is not Half Life.

That brings me to my next point. Now that I've touched on soilders I can upgrade to the next pile of slop we are continually served. Space Marines. Space mother effing Marines. They are one of the worst things to happen to games since the advent of the Quick Time Event (Note: Not all QTEs are bad). It's as though they strive toward zero innovation, characterization, and relatablity. The first offense often committed by these grunts is the Face Effect, this is when you can't really attach to a character because they are wearing helmet that masks their face the entire game. Not because they are a robot or have some hideous scar they want to keep covered, no no no, that might actually lend to character development. The only reason they never remove the mask is because… science! or maybe they're just afraid of the helmet hair. Thank you for helping games not be taken seriously as an art form.

Other offenses include: Over population, sequel syndrome, ridiculous body mass index, Star Trek talk that would make Trekkies guffaw, monochrome pallets, pseudo intelligent "sci fi" stories, and making the player (think they) sweat machismo. Honestly that is why I found Resistance: Fall of Man so refreshing. The story was told through narration, as though watching a History Channel special. The colors were monochrome (fixed in the sequel) but that's just the World War 2 we've all come to know and love (or loathe). Insomniac spaces the sequels out pretty drastically to avoid sequel syndrome.

So as it stands it seems as though the industry is going in two different directions, one toward innovation and the other toward shoveling out more guaranteed Triple A titles for the gorillas on Xbox Live. While I love a good triple A title, they generally lack the innovation I yearn for. Honestly it may be nit-picky, but character design plays a huge part in the overall presentation of the game. Look at Gears of War, God of War, even many of Capcom's latest games. The art leaves a bad taste in my mouth. God help the Japanese game industry if the next Devil May Cry stars a steroid ridden Dante. We need to encourage the industry to try to make some more relatable characters, that will lead to better stories and better experiences. Let's try that, and leave the machismo to Arnold and Sly.