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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*".
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.
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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I think I agree with the point being made here. Deus Ex: Invisible War did a wonderful job of providing you a story with nothing but shades of grey. Technical difficulties aside, this is the only game I know of where there is no clear right/wrong path (feel free to suggest others). Even the first Deus Ex didn't do that. Playing even the first few maps of this game, you are confronted with a lot of possible paths you can take, most of which conflict with each other. I actually had a difficult time making decisions (as I probably would have if presented with similar choices in real life). So, yes, I believe that the future of gaming (or at least more realistic gaming) lies along this path.
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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?
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.
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
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?"
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?
(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.