HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT GAMES WITH A LOT OF SECONDARY CHARACTERS?

I guess it depends on the game and the story. You seem to include NPC's as well as your main party. I know that names are hard to follow in games like Xenogears, Chrono Cross, and Suikoden. I'd say for the NPC's that are recurring and are important to the plot, character development can be limited to their immediate involvement and perhaps whatever their motive to support (or defy) you is. Any character that doesn't require more than a single mention or appearance, probably would avoid even giving them a name. Names make players feel they might need to remember them. I think it's ok to have a lot of names, but I would take care in how they are presented (introducing one or two at a time). Otherwise, I'm comfortable adding as many characters as necessary to move the story forward.

It's hard to put in to words, but I think cast interaction comes naturally based off of a) characterization and b) character purpose in the plot. When an event occurs that directly affects a character's purpose in the plot, the resulting character development will come naturally. When there's no longer an active purpose for a character in the story, send them on their way.

Well Xenogears did it right. There is nothing to compare here because it all depends on the execution. You can have as many characters (secondary or not) as you want.

Let's take Xenogears for example, though. In the beginning, you start off with just Fei really. Sure you have towns people and all of the key characters in that town, but they are quickly finished off and are really just there to provide motivation for the player and Fei. About 2 hours into the game, you really only have 3 key characters to follow (Fei, Citan, and Elly). As you get more involved in the conflict in Xenogears, the plot begins to develop a lot. In return, more characters are introduced to keep things going. It's kind of like a timeline. If you introduce too many characters at once, it's like trying to take jabs at different spots on the plot timeline at the same time. It gets confusing, and things begin to fall apart. And even though the creator has this whole timeline in his/her head and knows what the purpose of each character is, he or she still has to know where those characters should be placed on the timeline. Within the gaps of the timeline (between the introduction of one character and the next), that time is generally used to develop the character that was just introduced. Of course that doesn't mean you stop when the next character is introduced, but the gap is there to give the player some insight on who that person is.

But yeah if you have too many at an introduction, it's tough to develop them at the same time. You can't expect them to be great characters within that time frame, but there needs to be set times or points in the game (the beginning is best since it is the most important part of a game really) where you can focus specifically on a character. And you absolutely have to show the difference between a primary character and a secondary, which can get difficult. Secondary or not though, you have to set the correct pacing between all characters, no matter how minor they are.

Secondary characters don't bother me so long as they are characterised in a half decent way. Using the excuse that someone isn't a major character to defend having a badly thought out characterisation just isn't good enough in my opinion. Also, the secondary characters have to have some sort of relevance to the storyline or need to somehow drive the storyline forwards otherwise they are completely useless and annoying. Why have them if they don't serve a purpos

I have to agree with Fallen-Griever on this one. As long as the secondary characters are developed, and not just poorly characterized, or even worse, not characterized at all (see pale stereotype), then the number of secondary characters can be great or many. Authors do this all the time (cite Rowling's characters in Harry Potter or Tolkien's characters in Lord of the Rings), and so can game designers.

I'd rather see a few number of well-developed characters than a truckload of undeveloped characters. A good recent example of a game with a lot of well-developed characters is Eternal Sonata. While it's by no means at the character counter of Shuikoden, there are a hefty number of well-developed characters for you to love and hate. A good recent example, however, of a game with poorly developed characters is Grand Theft Auto IV. With the exception of the main character, his cousin, and maybe two others, most of the characters in that game are really bad stereotypes. And some of them stay, annoyingly, in your character's sphere of influence for the entire game.

You can rely heavily on conventions to flesh out secondary characters. If you have a soldier type, make him gruff and a bit slow. It is what people expect, so exploit that.

I think you could learn a lot from short story writing, too.

Previous posts making correlations between games and books also makes me realize that it largely depends on the player, too. The presentation of the game's plot also affects players' abilities to absorb the names and personalities that go with them. A low-key plot (say, Secret of Mana) doesn't require many names, whereas Xenogears (with its tens of thousands of years of plot depth) could publish its own baby names book.

If the story is bad, no one will care anyway. Too many names can hurt pacing, and thus, hurt the story. I agree with Neophyte's take on pacing and character introduction. I think this also provides the player with enough time to get comfortable with existing names, while you could develop some personality for new characters you introduce as you progress with making the game (i.e. when planning ahead, just know you need a character to perform a certain function in the plot, then when the time comes to actually create the maps and events for that game segment, take some time to flesh them out).

I don't mind games with a large cast as long as they have their own individual personality. Most of my favorite games have a large cast of characters.

I don't like having a crapload of secondary characters just piled on at once. I need to get a few, let the story go on for awhile so I can get used to them, then they can add some more characters. If there's a ton of characters right off and I'm supposed to know who the heck I'm supposed to go talk to just by reading their name once, it becomes frustrating.