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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"?
Conker's Bad Fur Day was an execellent example of this. Though it's shades of grey had more to do with winning and losing than with good guys and bad guys.
For those who aren't familiar, the game ends with Conker "winning" by defeating the bad guy, but his girlfriend died in the process, so the game ends with him at a bar, asking for a bottle of whiskey...
You can forget all of the dick and fart jokes, what made CBFD a mature title was it's thoroughly morose ending.
a good example of bad guys who really weren't all that bad, save one is almost every character in Knight's of the Old Republic. A game that can be played in under 40 hours by me and takes the time to set up believable villians, most of which have very human sides to them. Another good example IMHO is Max from Max Payne. He could be considered a villian through the eyes of some but his motivations for what he does are so understandable that he's the hero in the games. This is a question of where do you draw the line between good and evil?
Pretty widgets? What pretty widgets?
The idea of a flawed hero reminds me of something Kevin Spacey said:
"'So in this film you play a flawed character,' and I go, 'as opposed to every human being in the rest of the world?'"
Gray characters are more interesting not only because they're more believable, but because they cause the player or viewer to reflect more on life itself. A movie or game which serves as a ringing endorsement for the status quo is really quite boring.
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
(spoiler alert:) The Nameless One faces three "end bosses", a purely good one (an angel), a purely evil one (a hag) and a purely neutral one (a previous incarnation of the Nameless One himself IIRC). Just like the alignment system of 2nd ed AD&D. However, every one of them behaves in a manner atypical of "their" alignment. The hag played around with Nameless because she loves him and the angel has been corrupted into imprisoning an entire plane of existence.
Other incarnations of the Nameless One were either very good or very evil (one of them taught Ignus to burn haha).
Of course, finding out about the Nameless One's history was the point behins the whole game, and it is still the single best game I've ever played.
Geek runner, motorcyclist and professional know-it-all
there's no reason why the cutscenes couldn't feel like they were a part of the game(well, they wouldnt be cutscenes then I guess).
in truly immersive(from story point of view) game there's no cutscenes, you're 'playing' the game all the time, not solving a puzzle after another to see some video clips(wing commanders being prime example of play a mission, watch a cutscene genre).
if the cutscenes are worth watching then they're ok. but the good thing about that is that the game can still be good even if the cutscenes totally suck(a sucky game can't be salvaged with bunch of cutscenes though, even if they had porn).
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Disagree. Saruman had lots of excuses for what he got up to. At least initially, he was doing the "we need power to fight power" argument.
Another aspect would be: how much time do you want to spend in one go with the game? If it's to fill a gap here and there (lunch-breaks spring to mind), then a completely developed story will be wasted, or even get in the way of the quick-fix game. How much do you remember of a detailed story, where the slightest detail matters, a week later? Perhaps not as much as you would need to fully enjoy a chromatic game. For the dedicated all-nighters and RPG-addicts, a fully developed story with believable, though-out and -through characters and as many choices as possible is a no-brainer. Of course we'd like unlimited choice and NPC:s who matter to us!
Yeah, 10% is pretty high. But it depends on the game itself. Vice City is a good example. I'm not sure on it's entire length, but there is a lot of complex control there, with all the different weapons and autos/cycles. Probably takes a good 2 - 2.5 hours for a non-casual gamer to master. I guess that's probably more like 5%, figuring that the game is 40 hours or so. However, for Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, I'm about 15 hours in and I'm *still* figuring out little bits of the control mechanisms on managing the party and such.
On the other point, Payne is a great example of how to do character development in-game, without removing the player from the experience. I think another excellent example is Metroid Prime. The only game I know of that has good character dev *without* characters. If you scan all the computers, which you do while playing, there is a huge story that you are finding out about along with Samus. That gives the game a great feel of investigation and suspense.
-- I have fans? Wow.
(a sucky game can't be salvaged with bunch of cutscenes though, even if they had porn).
Ever look into the stunning array of Japanese arcade/console games that feature what amounts to soft porn? Or how about anal intrusion as an entire *game*?
-- I have fans? Wow.
Actually, in many Asian countries, like Japan and especially Korea (oddly enough, big "story" video game producers), they do not have the simple black and white notion of "good" and "evil" that we have. Instead, it all just comes down to a difference of opinion, or rather, that difference creates evil This thought process actually is a theme in some games, one off the top of my head being Final Fantasy VIII. For information about the Korean mindset on evil, read "Think No Evil" by C. Fred Alford.
--Stephen
Did you ever notice that *nix doesn't even cover Linux?
> To make a good story, you have to usually cut into the time you're actually playing the game (cut scenes, etc).
;)
Not always. Think back to Marathon. The terminals were part of the game, and were the major source of all the characterization. They were for the most part the "cutscenes" of the game, but they never EVER felt like one. Your mission info, the story line, the reasons the player should care about the story, everything, game from those simple text terminals. Finding a terminal was like a breath of fresh air, in the back of your head you were hoping THIS one would finally answer all the questions. But no, it just presented new problems.
Marathon was also amazing in the sense that it never really told you who you are. There were hints, which fans have since endlessly debated, but it left wiggle room for a player to assign his own values and virtues to the character he's playing. Marathon's sucessor in spirit, Halo, gives a decent example of how easy the balance is to screw up. Don't get me wrong I had a blast running through Halo the first time, but it is nowhere near the caliber of what Marathon was.
It's quite simple to summarize: Games cannot be missions with an obvious point A to point B. Even if there is only one route through a map, the player needs to be able to feel like he's charting his own course and cannot be aware of what is around the next corner. Marathon did that, Halo did not (well except in that map where you first discovered the Flood, that was an amazing mission).
Games these days are too commonly a narrative. It permits you do take care of the details of running from room to room but the story always tells you who you are and what is going to happen in well defined doses. The mark of a great game is one that does this, but doesn't reveal that it is doing so to the player. Games have to leave the "cutscenes" to dictating the problems of the current situation, and leave the resolutions to the actual play. If a game finds itself finishing a mission with a "tells all" narrative, it has failed.
IMO that is.
A lot of the Zelda games have had your typical "muwah ha ha" type of bad guy, completely removed from any real humanity. I thought that the Windwaker had a nice touch in the confessional speech by Ganon near the end. "I suppose...I suppose I coveted that wind." Didn't stop him from trying to kill you or from being a nasty bastard, but for a moment you could see things from his perspective and it was a lot more interesting than the end boss in most games as a result.
Really.