Week 10................Ima character, aint i fancy

It’s difficult to say what makes a good character, what makes them interesting, what makes them real? Because my actual reflex answer is to do with realism in speech and body language, but then that’s just describing real life interaction, the interaction you see in the cinema, and as ever the game industry sits in its unknown void where no one is sure what exactly works, or even why it works, but when a little nugget of heaven lands on their desk, they milk it dry with as many game titles as possible!

Because if I was asked what I would want to see in a character to make them interesting, I would exclaim

“well you can’t have a character without having a back story, something that’s interesting but unknown, that is unveiled or at least hinted at, interesting characters are usually subtly teasing you, you wouldn’t call it teasing but it is”

Each character serves a purpose, whether its the unnamed guy who gets blown up or ran over within 10 seconds of seeing him or the main love element, they all have to balance out, you can’t have every character you see get blown up, you can’t have every character be the hero, there’s a system, and the general public like the system because they understand it.

The usual Mario-Bowser-Princess situation is a well known one and with most films if you look at them closely enough you will see the systems and not only will you see them, but if you look back through old films you’ll recognise them, its repetition!

But thinking all this through in relation to games, it seems almost impossible, a high relation to graphics, animation, sound and gamer interaction......but then I pause, wasn’t my favourite game of all time due to its amazing immersion, loving the characters and situations..............wasn’t that Final Fantasy 7!?! One of the ugliest games I can think of? Yeah it was......so what’s the missing element?

Well it was text based, they never had what all these current games seem to rely on, and when a game does use text it gets flamed by the press an users because they don’t think it’s now an next gen enough, but with FF7 and all those other old games, you weren’t spoon fed the realism, you weren’t spoon fed the characters and situations, YOU made them, imagination had a part to play in those days where as now people expect to be given the imagination and that is where the divide comes into play, recent games are struggling to immerse the player, graphics aren’t the big seller they use to be an the people with the cash are wanting the game to hold their hand and give them fun, the numb brain pressing buttons because it feels its advancing or learning, but however good a character is, however interesting the story, it all depends how open minded the individual is.