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An amateur application of Freud's psychic apparatus to Just Cause 2
Wednesday, May 26, 2010 |
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Sometimes video game heroes need to just shut up and save the world.
Saturday, May 22, 2010 |
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"@Karli- I fully agree that the pendulum can swing the other way with silent protagonists and understand why many people find their silence jarring. But as geeky as it sounds, a character that is fully silent lets me imagine what I would say when presented with such situation like the example you give of a character pouring out their feeling. And games like Fallout 3 or Dragon Age or Oblivion provide you with options to say in various situations allowing you to feel more involved in the story but eliminates some abstraction and room for imagination. But like your feelings about a silent protagonists, I have a similar jarring reaction to the fully defined characters of Final Fantasy 13. You mention Vanille, now I have a couple of friends who grew a strong attachment to her. However as an earlier comment suggests, I just found her kind of annoying, and that’s a risk you take when fully fleshing out a character. Yes she does have a mind of her own, but she's still a bubbly, scantily clad girl with a high-pitched voice and a semi-Australian accent. She was what she was, and the game designers made a definitive leap in creating her, but I didn't much care for her because it was hard for me to put myself in her shoes. I think what I’m getting at with the article is that you take a major risk when creating well-defined characters because you have very specific characters for players form attachments. I just think a little abstraction can go a long way and its up to the player to determine the amount of abstraction they are comfortable accepting as far as story and characters are concerned.
@Eli- I agree that it's good to be a bad-ass, and a character like Master Chief allowed for a definitive sense immersion while the “Rookie” kind of lacked that since you didn’t really feel like part of the greater struggle of the Halo world. But even with Master Chief, even though he’s voiced, you still have those gray areas for the players to establish an attachment, this why I think you never see Master Chief outside of his armor, there’s still a bit of mystery of what’s under the armor leaving you room put yourself in the character of Master Chief."
@Eli- I agree that it's good to be a bad-ass, and a character like Master Chief allowed for a definitive sense immersion while the “Rookie” kind of lacked that since you didn’t really feel like part of the greater struggle of the Halo world. But even with Master Chief, even though he’s voiced, you still have those gray areas for the players to establish an attachment, this why I think you never see Master Chief outside of his armor, there’s still a bit of mystery of what’s under the armor leaving you room put yourself in the character of Master Chief."
Sunday, May 23, 2010
And I disagree with your logic that if in-game characters have real voices then the main character must have a real voice. In games like Persona 3 and 4 where the rest of the characters have voices and you don't, I think it works amazingly well. Instead of controlling every aspect of gaming medium consumption, it was a deliberate design choice to keep him silent. Because if he had a voice, then he is much less my protagonist and is, instead, much more the same protagonist for everyone. I don't need to pick a dialogue choice in text, then have a voice actor repeat back to me. Designers have a choice on the amount of player participation they wish to give."