Good side characters

Rev Rant: Character Empathy
Extra Credits: Amnesia and Story Structure

"In Medias Res" tends to leave little scope for character Development. If you start a story in the middle, then the past is always going to feel distant. Don't force "this is your brother, you care about him" down people throats, give the history. Fallout 3 worked well because you get an entire characters life up to that point, the important moments anyway, via mini sections that also act as the tutorial. You know about the characters friends and allies, and thus have some emotional attachment.

Agrro is a great example from Shadow of the Colossus, because he is both a character and a useful mechanic.

Other good examples I can think of are (in the sadly non-canon) Jin Sun-Kwon from FEAR's Extraction Point. In which she's your only ally. Situations where everything is against you makes your friends all the more meaningful. Again, see Agro, your only friend.


Another useful way of introducing and creating empathy with npc's is to make them meaningful to the character you play as. I'm not talking "this is your sister, you love her" stuff, but something deeper.

Say you character's a kick-ass fighter. Have it so the dad was the one that trained him, have flashbacks and cutscenes. Afterall, it's natural for a player to feel something for the protagonist they control, and to like certain aspects of that character. If in turn one of these aspects can be attributed to another character, that instantly creates an empathy toward that individual.

You like the mechanic, so it goes to reason you'll like the person that is responsible for that mechanic.


Brothers, sisters, parents and generally family are always good, because they're mostly universal.


Persistance is a good idea as well.

Fallout 3 mechanics: A brief over-view

Don't worry, this isn't a full in depth analysis of FO3, nor is it really a true WMGG in and of itself. I was doing my first entry in TWIP for FO3 and decided that it's really more an analysis, and better suited to go in here for all its brevity.

Upcoming

Right, not that I've finally vented my indignation at Bioware allowing EA to pressure them into producing a sequel inteded for an audience that didn't play nor really cared about the previous game (I mean seriously, when on the box the phrase "A good entry point" is one of the quotes it screams dumbed down) I can hopefully and finally get down to business.

I've got a few ideas in the pipes:

Expect a lot more expanded Extra Credits. In short that series is a tremendous resource for video game fans and aspiring designers alike. James Portnou knows his stuff, and Alisons art mixed with Floyds script and altered voice is a beautiful way of delivering this. I guess one really good thing came out of Zero Punctuation afterall, other than weekly trolling sessions.

I'm also going to do an in depth analysis of Sonic 3&Knuckles, Sonic 4 and Sonic Colours (I'm British, more accurately English). The reason being that Sonic 3 means a lot to me, being one of my top 10 games. Sonic 4 is the supposed sequel to such, and Sonic Colours is being heralded as being "the first truly modern feeling sonic game" so I'd be mad to not do a close cross comparison, given my experience with the franchise and my love of sonic. Don't worry, I'm as much a sonic hater as a lover, mostly because the recent stuff has been a shit-streak on sonics previously sterling face. I'll also be doing this on the Wii, using the wand turned sideways to eliminate controller prejudice.

I want to take a look at Magicka at some point. This is an indie title for digital download and truly a gem of a game, utilising a combo-system to generate a variety of spells on the fly. Mostly I want to focus on the god awful xbox controls. Being a primarily PC gamer I tend to stick with mouse and keyboard, which magicka delivers on briliantly, but my girlfriend prefers gamepads, so she was using it with her laptop so we could 2 play.

I'm also planning on doing some more in depth game-play on my other blog, The way I play, so expect some fallout 3 and some Dragon age love there soon.
Additionally, I might do a mini article on the use of themematic material, as well as HUD and menu design of fallout 3.
Also expect a side-by-side comparison of Fallout 3 and New vegas in the future too, and basically how they differ.

I'm also planning on doing an article on "difficulty sliders" and how they're steadily becoming a bit lazy in modern gaming, just buffing enemies rather than changing the challenge and the nature of the challenge.

That'll do for now!

teh_steve

Extra Credits in Depth: 1 "Playing Like a Designer Part 1"

It's official, I might as well not even bother pounding my brain with deep introspective thought, as the guys down at Extra Credits can SO COMPLETELY deliver exactly the conclusions I would have come to eventually...

But here's the thing, an 8 minute video can't compare to personal study and struggle. Even if all I'm going to do is greater internalise what was already said, and gain a practical or proximal understanding of their own golden info; that will be worth it.

So I'm going to perform a close analysis of what they're saying... And involve more pictures and embedded bits to make things more interesting. Additionally, I'll probably be doing this in reverse. Or at least do their vids as they come.

DA2 Finale

Right, here it is. The reason finally why I won't buy DA2, as taken from metacritic reviews.

DA2 Continued

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/6297/the_rise_of_dragon_age_ii.php

• "So there was no mandate, but I mean there were decisions that we made as a team that said, "Okay, this is, I think, more welcoming." Not "dumbed down" or anything like that, but welcoming. Like starting the game, your character walks up, says something kind of over the top, and immediately starts exploding Darkspawn. I haven't set my decks at all. I haven't spent points.
  
  What it does, is it lets you get into the game and go, "Okay, cool. This is what their combat is like. I get that." Then the next thing you do is build your character.
  
  Then you level up and you start spending points, and the RPG mechanics are introduced in a way that's gradual, in a way that welcomes someone who would otherwise maybe go, "Whoa! Too complex!" and shut it off immediately, and lets them slide into it without even recognizing it ‑‑ which frankly, ideally increases the overall RPG customer base, which means we can make more RPGs, which means I can play more RPGs that I don't know the ending to. I like that."
  
  From Mike Laidlaw.
  Dunno, dropping skills and making things less scary seems pretty dumbed down to me. I'm all for balancing mechanics so that they're more streamlined, but this seems too much.

  
  

  
  

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/editorials/reviews/8701-Dragon-Age-II-Review

"dialogue options inspired by BioWare's work on Mass Effect allow you to roleplay the voiced character of Hawke however you want"

http://www.cad-comic.com/cad/20071119

So one of 3 options...

The good

The bad

The sarcy.

Thing is, having an unvoiced protagonist allowed for 2 things.

From a game design perspective, you could have the following...

1) I will help you, but you must give me your youngest as an sacrifice to my gods

2) I will help you, but you must give me all your worldy posessions

3) I will help you, but you must give me a gold in return

4)haha, I shan't help you fool, prepare to die!

5) I will help you and look after you and you all my worth

Responses

1-3 "Steep, but I'll accept as I need the help!"

4 "maker have mercy!" *flees*

5 "oh, thankyou ser, THANKYOUTHANKYOUTHANKYOU..."

5 options, each with a variety of effects, but only 3 outcomes for a voice actor. Hell, each of the 5 choices could differently impact on allies. They've hammstringed themselves out the gate by forcing themselves to pre-record everything. 

And why the hell does it need to be more clear what each sentence does? In DAO, you KNOW what your character's going to say, in this you need 3 cookie-cutter sentence types repeatedly used. Plus each phrase doesn't necessarily reflect what you've chosen.

Again, the morality of DAO was impacted on by your allies. In DA2, there must be an overarching aspect instead, which seems a tad reductionistic.

As a grey warden your choices didn't have to be "good". That's why murdering people was ok, so long as you were building an army up against the darkspawn. Hence why killing the dalish might be a good idea, to get the awesome werewolves. Keeping the golems around, allowing demons to posess children etc. All built the army against the bigger problem, the darkspawn.