Great Game Characters Compensate For Plot?

Thanks to the IGDA for their 'Culture Clash' column discussing why interesting game characters make for better games, even if those games have a weak plot. The author gives the intriguing example of Max Payne, suggesting the game is memorable, despite the "relatively cliched" story, because "...the first time we see Max, he's giving up smoking because it's bad for his baby. The second time, he's howling his misery over the loss of his wife. He is a human being with a broken soul, and an enormously compelling and emotionally engaging character." However, games such as Morrowind present the main character as "little more than a cipher through which we experienced the game's story", and it's suggested that this is less successful: "It can be an effective way to craft a powerful narrative, but it's also one that is more likely to fail if poorly executed."

Comments

Re:Avatars in the modern RPG

[LordLucless]

"I personally prefer characters as ciphers, this allows me to become that character."

Which is fine, until you come across a conversation essential to moving the plot forwards, in which there are no alternatives presented that match your envisioned character. Or you find that your character can't really toss in his lot with the Evil Sorcerer, as he would really like to do.

I commented on this before, waaaaaaay back, when people were bitching about the lack of flexibility in the Japanese-style RPGs like Final Fantasy.

Basically, there's a dichotomy in computer RPGs. On the one hand, you have the plot-driven games, like Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, etc. These are the ones that present the characters as mere ciphers. The problem is, even if you really get into the character, as you can in tabletop gaming, the system is not flexible enough to take into account your background. Why does my elven ranger, whose parents were brutally murdered by a bunch of bloodthirsty human peasants not treat humans like scum? Because the background you write for your characters has absolutely no effect on the game. In this sort of a game, the player can mould the character however they wish, but the character may not always fit well into the game.

On the other hand, you have the character-oriented RPGs like Final Fantasy. Here your choice is taken away from you - you can't play Final Fantasy 7 as a 4-foot black midget, you're gonna have to play as a spikey-haired white guy. But because the programmers know what sort of personality each character has, they can program the game so that Cloud acts like Cloud, Squall acts like Squall, and whoever the guy is in FFX acts like himself too. In this genre, the player is forced into the mould of a particular character, but that character fits in well within the game.

Now, with the advent of Neverwinter Nights, and such games, we are getting closer; the re-introduction of a GM brings back the flexibility of a human intelligence. But until we can make a program capable of understanding a natural language, and being able to rewrite the script of a game on the fly on the basis of deducations made from information inferred from a natural language, we're going to be stuck with this dichotomy in single-player RPGs. Whichever flavour you choose is based entirely on personal preferrence; would you rather choice in character design, or a set of smoothly integrated predefined characters?

Anyone trying to start a RPG holy war proclaiming one of these as the only true way just doesn't get this; each type of game is following a different subset of the RPG ethos, and with current technology, it is just not possible to combine the two totally.