Story and Character

I have read many books and played many more games, the most memorable characters for me are the characters I could relate to. A good character is one that has a very detailed background and one who goes through so many emotions and experiences that the player can feel emotions for. For some characters that are going through hardships, you feel sorrow, whereas difficult enemy characters can stir hate in your soul.

•The character’s natural activities, as part of his or her job.
•The challenges that these sorts of actions suggest.
•The character’s primary emotional attitude, and how that is displayed visually and in language.
•The character’s visual appearance and movement animations, both voluntary and involuntary.
•Attributes and powerups that might affect the character’s abilities, and how they grow.
•The character’s natural environment and enemies that may be found there.

Game designers use the list above when creating a character in order to create emotional bonds between the character and the player. Game designers must ensure that they know their character intimately so that no detail is lost from the characters lifestyle.

Although a lot depends on the aesthetic appeal of a character, a lot more of the revealing the characters personal life depends on the script. A good script allows the player to discover more about character through gradual progression of the game. A good script also makes the character go through key points in their story that makes them feel emotions and this in turn makes the player feel emotions towards this character. Sorrow when something bad happens to them, joy for them when something good happens to them etc.

Personally I love a good RPG game that gives you a background story but allows you to play out the story of the character yourself. For instance, one of my favourite games is Fable for the Xbox. This is because you start off as a boy in a village, but then your family gets killed. Then throughout the game you make choices which decide the personality of your character. I find this amazing as you can play the game over and over making new choices and ending up with a character with a whole new personality. What makes this so great is that your personality around you so that if you’re evil, people will fear you’re whereas if you’re a good guy they practically worship you. Its having the power give your character its own story created by you that makes a game fun for me.