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On Making Videogame Heroes, Villains Realistic
Thanks to the IGDA for its 'Culture Clash' column discussing the increasingly complex nature of heroism and villainy in videogames. The writer suggests: "The white hat/black hat dichotomy of heroes and villains (PC and NPC) in most games is no longer sufficiently believable to the player, but is still theoretically acceptable given the earlier limitations of the medium", and goes on to argue: "Audiences respond poorly to blatant noseleading, and increasingly demand escalating shades of gray." Do you enjoy stereotypical portrayals of good and evil in gaming, or do you find, as Daryl Zero needed to be told: "You realize... there aren't any 'good guys' and 'bad guys'... there are just... just a bunch of guys"?
Good characterization (making those shades of grey) takes time. The player's time. So it becomes a tradeoff. To make a good story, you have to usually cut into the time you're actually playing the game (cut scenes, etc). At its forefront, the game is still the most important part. Otherwise you're just watching a movie. The key to all of this is finding some way to integrate the character development/story development into the game action itself.
Karma: Excellent^(-t/Tau), Tau=Wittiness/Trollishness
Would that not depend on the kind of game you play? For RPG:s multi-shade characters would work very well, and I would appreciate the variation (not just grey, bring on the whole colour-spectrum!), but for shoot-em-ups, isn't part of the premise that the characters you are shooting by the dozen are totally evil? War-games would be different again, "enemies" in that sense are also just people, but there is a war on. I'm talking your average kill-everything-in-sight game where you would not necessarily be wanting to justify your actions other than by "but they're *evil*".
I've said it before, and I shall now say it again:
Evil does not think itself evil
While villans in cheap movies may rub their hands together and cackle about how eeeeeeviiiil they are, in the real world those who do evil do not see themselves as evil.
The pusher on the corner doesn't see himself as evil, "Yo, I'm just givin' folks what they want."
Saddam did not see himself as evil, "I am maintaining order in my country - this person is a threat to that order, and to prevent others from becoming threats I must make an example of him. Uday, turn on the wood chipper."
Darl McBride does not see himself as evil, "I am running a business. This is my chance to make money."
If you want your villans to be believable, try to get inside their heads and make their actions make sense from their perspective. It's taxing, it's scary, but it makes for a believable villan.
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Knights of the Old Republic did a decent job of portraying the NPC's in a mixed light. Of the *bad* guys, Canderous was the only one who came across as hyperactively violent, and that translated to an interpretation of his actions as *evil*. HK-47, while definitively evil, was a droid, so he was programmed as such, and his dialogue was mostly used as comic relief. The interesting thing about KotOR, though, is how the arrogance of the Jedi is portrayed. Bastila is so bossy and uptight when you finally meet her that, even though she's *good*, she almost seems like she should be evil. (I suppose that could be called foreshadowing of a sort.) I do agree with the article, though, that KotOR's method for *role-playing* as the PC is lacking. Having played through as light and dark, I found myself taking the over-the-top EVIL approach too often, to ensure my dark side status, as opposed to a more natural *evil* reaction. The problem is, as described with the kitten situation, there was always the blatant good option, the mercenary good option, and the KILL KILL KILL evil option, and I would have liked a more subtle method of being mean. I suppose I don't care would have been good, but picking that means not completing whatever task is at hand. I guess the ultimate problem is that in the choice between role-playing and completing a task in the game (be it attempting to do all the quests or maintain dark side mastery), I chose the tasks. Ultimately, that should not be such a visible choice.
The only thing I hate more than hypocrites are people who hate hypocrites.
Tolkien seemed to do just fine with caricaturized good and evil. I believe Sauron and Saruman were well aware that they were unquestionably evil.
It's bad story that gamers don't like. Characterization is part of that, but really, how characterized was a disembodied eye?
"lidless, wreathed in flame," was about it.
But the story (for most people) was captivating, despite its apparent 'simplicity'. 'Believable' villians are only a requirement if you're trying to craft a 'believeable' story.
and even then, self-delusion is not a set-in-stone requirement (Hannibal Lector).
As with any storytelling, there are no set rules, there are no silver bullets - there is only what works and what does not work. And no-one can tell you which is which by description alone. You must read the work to know where it lays on your subjective scale.
Trying to adhere to structure or processes that were defined via hindsight, doesn't guarantee future success - so why bother?
(You may argue with 3 act play, 9 part story, joseph campbell, et al. - but the overbundance of crap stories that adhere to those structures and the instances of good stories that don't use them already prove my point)
A storyteller should get inside every character's head, to make sure they're well-written. But self-justified evil is not a prerequisite of a well characterized Bad Guy.
it's also important to note the distinction between the disillusioned bad guy who thinks he's doing good, and the Bad Guy who realizes that his actions will be seen as evil, and perhaps are evil, but he still feels a compulsion to execute them anyway (the Borg, any Mob Boss, etc).
// "Can't clowns and pirates just -try- to get along?"
Why else would I be shooting them? This isn't just about Good and Evil, but decent characterisation generally. Well crafted characters make a plot-based game better, without a shadow of a doubt.
But when your job is to shoot everything that moves, there's a lot to be said for "because they're evil" as a motivating factor. Mind you, I'm normally prepared to settle for "because you'll get a high score". Its why so many classic shmups involve Aliens; there isn't as much need to question why they need shooting, as they are just "the baddies". Intense moral dilemmas have their place, but vertical scrollers aren't it.
"I Know You Are But What Am I?"
(disclaimer: opinion, of course)
Characters, no matter whether good, evil, corrupt, silly, stupid, super-intelligent or whatnot, need to be believable and contextually relevant. Contrary to popular belief, characters need not be complicated, nor should they resemble human characters. That's because most of the people you meet and interact with are known on a very superficial level, like characters. The rare few, those you are close to, have many facets, and none of those are easily classifiable.
In a book, like in a game, the characters you have most contact with should be more than superficial, and the rest can be extremely superficial. The goal is the ease the reader's/player's acceptance of the fantasy you're spinning. The only problem is that really human-like characters seem a bit neurotic and wishy-washy. I believe that's why the main character's are always so driven in the plot. They're still polarized towards a goal no matter how deeply the character is described.
"The white hat/black hat dichotomy of heroes and villains (PC and NPC) in most games is no longer sufficiently believable to the player, but is still theoretically acceptable given the earlier limitations of the medium", and goes on to argue: "Audiences respond poorly to blatant noseleading, and increasingly demand escalating shades of gray."
Of course it depends on the story you are trying to tell, but if you watch most movies you will see "pure good and evil" in the characters. Why? That makes them more compelling. Take for instance, Darth Vader. Ultimate badguy, down to the outfit. If he were a "shade of gray" through the movies then his turn at the end of Return of the Jedi wouldn't have been as piviotal as it was. (It turns out now, with the prequals they are showing his "grayness").
Ultimate "Bad Guys" and "Good Guys" are more compelling because you don't see them in the real world. Even Ultimate good guys have their flaws, and ultimate "Bad Guys" usually don't believe they are bad in real life.
In the end, as a gamer I don't care what NPC's are like, they should be whatever the storyline dictates they should be. The "Ultimate bad guy" is a bit cliched, but it's still fun. I'm more worried about what I can do. If I start acting evil, I'd like to see NPC's react differently because of that behavior.
To make a good story, you have to usually cut into the time you're actually playing the game (cut scenes, etc). At its forefront, the game is still the most important part.
I think there is a key distinction that needs to be made... Character development does not necessarily equal cut scenes. Lunar had an awesome bit of character development at the end of the game where the player came across (the evil nemesis) Ghaleon's fairy garden. These fairies all thought their caretaker was the kindest man they had ever met, and was blissfully unaware of his dark ambition to rule the world. That didn't happen as a cut scene, that happened at a much needed heal-and-save rest stop. In the following game, Ghaleon joins your party for a short time, sacrificing his temporary reprieve from death to save the world he wanted to rule.
There are other examples, of course. When a key figure either defends / attacks a boss enemy, lurks in the trees following your character, etc. Hockey Mask guy (Rick) from Splatterhouse killed his own girlfriend, then went insane and jumped into the house's womb.
Most characters are tacked onto a game design... praying by ye-gods scroll boss then doing something original in the cut scenes. But they work much better when it is integrated into the gameplay. You could have Kain go into a lengthy diatribe against God and Able, and kill his brother in a cut scene, but you and your players would be better served if they were allowed to play a level as Kain fighting through an insane heaven / earth mishmash in his quixotic quest to dethrone an evil god. Perhaps the evil female love interest in the game takes good care of her mentally disabled brother (who helps her out in the fight), or the evil overlord's last words are to implore you to take care of his children (whom you kill in the next room). These things build original characters in a timely fashion that can be integrated into gameplay better than a 5 minute diatribe about their childhood. Want to show someone was abused? Give them a limp. Want to humanize the giant monster destroying Tokyo? Give them a Pukka charm bangle.
And if you want to flesh out a character's backstory in a cut scene... Don't. Think about your idea again and redo it in-game.
The ______ Agenda
Remember what TV series frequently do with multiple episode story arcs? They have a quick introduction to where the story left off when they resume. It'd be pretty easy to include an option to "brief me on the story". When you combine that with a Neverwinter Nights-style journal for more complex games and the ability to "look" or "get info" on something or someone and see a description and things that you've learned about it, you can pretty much stop and go whenever you want.
Remember that lots of people read, say, a chapter of a book a night and still enjoy it, and a book can't do the kind of "quick recaps" that TV episodes do and video games *could* do.
May we never see th
I think that if I had to summarize the reason Marathon's story made such a huge impression on everyone (and spawned the massive Marathon Story) site and many thousands of posts of sophisticated discussion in two words, I'd use "subtle" and "deep".
Marathon made a number of very subtle, minor allusions, clues to figuring out the full story. It did not come out and simply say "Durandal is a bad computer who is insane. You need to work with him." or something like that. It let you discover the plot as you went through tidbits dropped. You couldn't just read the story by going through the terminals and appending one to another -- each is a non-chronologically sequential piece of information that generally fits into the story somehow. It's quite Myth-like, though with a far more complex story.
Marathon's plot is very deep for such a subtle one -- there are a *phenomenal* number of references to literature, history, mythology, contemporary weapons technology, psychology, etc, that you need to look up to understand fine points of what the authors were getting at. You might find yourself reading a news article on the sociology of a Martian political group that gives some insight into the background of what happend and the reason things occurred. Because it took such expertise to figure the story out, it spawned a vast number of (sometimes occasional) players who wrote interesting analyses from their own area of expertise to help the community figure out what Bungie had written.
Even better, you didn't *have* to pay attention to the story if you didn't want to. You weren't forced to rely on the story much to figure out what to do in the game. You could play Marathon as a straight action game if you wanted to, and weren't interested in the story, but if you wanted to get into the story, it was appealing and there. This made the game appealing to a broad audience.
If I could choose two more elements, probably less important, that made Marathon good, it would be darkness and plausibility.
The Marathon comments were frequently very dark (a trend that progressed as the series continued). They referred to deaths and killings quite seriously. They referenced massacres and insanity, and not in a offhandish way in the least. They also did not generally say "someone is insane" -- they let you figure it out for yourself, by reading their thoughts or what happened. One of the darkest is the infamous Gheritt White terminal. This is one of the darkest and most disturbing texts that I think I've ever read in a video game -- much more intimidating than the short and violence-glorifying snippits in Postal. That single terminal alone spawned *vast* amounts of discussion and analysis. When elements in Marathon II and Infinity (like the pocketknife/broadsword terminal) start their own story threads that start out reasonable and get darker, you can really feel a kind of shocked surprise. If you're playing by yourself, late at night and in the dark, (and have just survived creeping through dark hallways with silent things drifting down them and around corners and out of the darkness) your words are probably much like mine -- "Oh, *man*". The only games that I think have competed with Marathon in terms of slowly, horrifyingly uncovering what happened are adventure games -- like Myth -- and I've yet to see an adventure game with the subtlety of Marathon.
Marathon is also plausible. There were, to be fair, errors. However, Marathon's story underwent the most extensive analysis I've ever seen a story undergo. I doubt that books undergo such work, especially given the size of the crowd looking for errors. Like Snow Crash, much of the computer technology in the series is at least acceptably plausible. Real terms are used, references to current technologies are used. It means that programmers don't have to constantly wince when playing the game, which is truly wonderful and unusual for a st
May we never see th
I do not pretend to believe that my view on this subject is at all representative of the gaming populace in general but my favorite hero has always been that of the ordinary hero. Phillip K. Dick was the master at creating these characters, these ordinary-to-sub-ordinary heros are what made Dick's stories so wonderful. It wasn't superman, it wasn't "the one", it was just an ordinary individual placed in an extraordinary situation. Dick did this so incredibly well, look at books like "Do Andriods Dream of Electric Sheep", the book Total Recall was based off of (I forgot it's name, but he was not supposed to be good ole Arnie, if my memory serves me he was a hair stylist ... just an ordinary man), "The Three Stigmata's of Palmer Eldrich" and a variety of Dick's other stories. These heroes were often amoral, they did not have some cause of moral righteousness to fight for, rather they were besieged with the existential question of how do I make life authentic and to survive.
To me these are the fascinating stories that compel me to continue reading/watching, unfortantely I can think of no games that transfer this notion over and quite possibly it's not indicative of the medium but mono-shade characters are boring. They do not force me to contemplate the nature of the character and understand who they are and why they do what they do. I've always been fascinated by what makes us human, and what constitutes humanity. Are we merely the sum of our parts or is there a greater unseen entity that influences who and what we are. These characters offer an opportunity to explore the intricacies of human nature and I believe to come to a better understanding of who we are.
That being said, the unfortante truth is I do not believe the majority of video game players agree with me, a game of this nature would be slow to develop and focused on story and not flashy effects. There's nothing wrong with this, I often play games such as FFX-2 just to see the cut scenes and where the story goes even if the characters do not interest me. But I would love a game that delved into the plight of an average individual struggling to survive, something that stimulated me intellectually and forced me to take a look at what makes us all human. If any one can think of a game like this, please respond with the title.