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NOW A TOPIC ABOUT CHARACTER DESIGN.
Posts
maladroithim
1495
maladroithim
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Closeauthor=Craze link=topic=683.msg9376#msg9376 date=1203440595
brandon, you have no right to complain about prettyboiz or metrosexuality.
But I don't wear makeup anymore :(
Shinan
4314
I like side characters that you can immediately identify and if/when you learn more about them you learn more about them.
I'm also a big fan of the "trickster" character. The kind of character that Jack Sparrow basically is. Of course they should rarely be main characters because main characters are determined by their... Regularness.
Well some of my favorite computer game characters.
Vladimir Lem from Max Payne 2. This Russian just had that lovely thing going, it also helps that Max Payne himself is an awesome character. Though I've only played the second game in the series. It might be that he sucks in the first one but I don't care.
Morte from Planescape Torment. Most characters in Torment are pretty funny. But especially Morte ("Talk about beating a dead horse") and Annah. There's something great about a wise-cracking floating skull. And once you get past his wise-cracking (and thus serving perfectly as the sardonic trickster character) you find out that there's more to him after all.
Adventure game characters. I mention them because to be honest the writing in adventure games have generally been some of the best in computer game history. Sure it isn't done anymore and sure there were loads of those older adventure games where the character hardly existed. But people like Guybrush Threepwood, Purple Tentacle or Larry Laffer are well done.
Smiling Jack from Vampire - Bloodlines. Apparently this is a character from a number of novels too but I love this character in Bloodlines. I don't think there's any better to pick to introduce the player to the concepts of the game. Not to mention his other appearances. There's plenty of other good writing in that game too. Therese and Jeanette is one of the obvious examples.
I've found more and more lately that characters that really stick in my mind are usually characters that are well voice-acted. Or if not well voice-acted then at least voice-acted in the way to be expected combined with fairly good writing. Appearance is obviously a big part in characters but really it's the writing that sells them in the end.
I'm also a big fan of the "trickster" character. The kind of character that Jack Sparrow basically is. Of course they should rarely be main characters because main characters are determined by their... Regularness.
Well some of my favorite computer game characters.
Vladimir Lem from Max Payne 2. This Russian just had that lovely thing going, it also helps that Max Payne himself is an awesome character. Though I've only played the second game in the series. It might be that he sucks in the first one but I don't care.
Morte from Planescape Torment. Most characters in Torment are pretty funny. But especially Morte ("Talk about beating a dead horse") and Annah. There's something great about a wise-cracking floating skull. And once you get past his wise-cracking (and thus serving perfectly as the sardonic trickster character) you find out that there's more to him after all.
Adventure game characters. I mention them because to be honest the writing in adventure games have generally been some of the best in computer game history. Sure it isn't done anymore and sure there were loads of those older adventure games where the character hardly existed. But people like Guybrush Threepwood, Purple Tentacle or Larry Laffer are well done.
Smiling Jack from Vampire - Bloodlines. Apparently this is a character from a number of novels too but I love this character in Bloodlines. I don't think there's any better to pick to introduce the player to the concepts of the game. Not to mention his other appearances. There's plenty of other good writing in that game too. Therese and Jeanette is one of the obvious examples.
I've found more and more lately that characters that really stick in my mind are usually characters that are well voice-acted. Or if not well voice-acted then at least voice-acted in the way to be expected combined with fairly good writing. Appearance is obviously a big part in characters but really it's the writing that sells them in the end.
maladroithim
1495
author=Shinan link=topic=683.msg9380#msg9380 date=1203445173
Adventure game characters. I mention them because to be honest the writing in adventure games have generally been some of the best in computer game history. Sure it isn't done anymore
Actually there are lots of Adventure games that still come out on PC. They aren't the #1 genre anymore, but they sell a few thousand copies and cost almost nothing to make.
http://pc.ign.com/index/reviews.html?constraint.game_genre_name.game_genre_1.game_genre_2=Adventure%3A&constraint.return_all=is_true
Some of the games are questionable in being included in the genre (Pirates of the Caribbean was a brawler guys), but there's usually at least one major adventure title released every month. They frequently score 7 and 8 also, so they aren't throw-away Eastern-European titles either (a lot of PC games are).
And speaking of funny, wisecracking characters, Jansen in Lost Odyssey is one of the funniest characters I've ever seen in a jRPG. He might actually be the only effective comedy character in a jRPG ever.
As much as I hate to support the Tales Of series, Mieu in TotAbyss was pretty amusing as a comedic character. Maybe I'm just not used to little Japanese creatures with big eyes that get consistently abused. It could also have been because he is an actual character with actual emotions/feelings/actions/story time and not just Funny Fire-Breathing Creature With High-Pitched Voice That Lets You Solve Puzzles.
I don't really play enough jRPGs, though. My comments aren't worth very much since I only really play FF, DQ and Xenosaga.
For those of you who have played Xenosaga 3 (...brandon and I?), please answer this question: Was the ultimate villain (the person, not the final boss) ridiculously awesome in their methods used to be the ultimate villain?
I'd come right out and say such methods, but I don't feel like spoilering anything and I'm not sure the game has been out for long enough to be throwing out major plot twists. :<
I don't really play enough jRPGs, though. My comments aren't worth very much since I only really play FF, DQ and Xenosaga.
For those of you who have played Xenosaga 3 (...brandon and I?), please answer this question: Was the ultimate villain (the person, not the final boss) ridiculously awesome in their methods used to be the ultimate villain?
I'd come right out and say such methods, but I don't feel like spoilering anything and I'm not sure the game has been out for long enough to be throwing out major plot twists. :<
Design rule #47... that made me laugh.
And, Reives... it can be a lot of work making all those sprites, especially if you're making them really big! (not so much work with 3D animation, especially if all you have to do is some basic mesh-molding and a new texture) But I'm glad you mentioned it, I was actually planning to include something like a bath house in Jasmine....
The game I feel did the best with characters, (And a lot of other things, at that,) was Chrono Cross.
The characters in Chrono Cross stole my heart away one by one. Nikki, Pierre, Kid, Serge, even the obnoxious Peppor and Solt. The only one I ever disliked was Kortcha, he came of as a bit of a whiner. A LOUD whiner. And even though this game was, for some, nearly impossible to beat due to it's vastness- I loved it. I never beat it, myself; it has so much gametime and so much replay value, (and such an amazing soundtrack!) that it's satisfying enough just to play through the first four hours over and over again. Five minutes of Chrono Cross is worth five hours of ANY major franchise out there. It's just a beautiful game, and I'd never get tired of hunting Komodo Dragons at Lizard Rock.
And, no, that's not where my name came from.
And, Reives... it can be a lot of work making all those sprites, especially if you're making them really big! (not so much work with 3D animation, especially if all you have to do is some basic mesh-molding and a new texture) But I'm glad you mentioned it, I was actually planning to include something like a bath house in Jasmine....
The game I feel did the best with characters, (And a lot of other things, at that,) was Chrono Cross.
The characters in Chrono Cross stole my heart away one by one. Nikki, Pierre, Kid, Serge, even the obnoxious Peppor and Solt. The only one I ever disliked was Kortcha, he came of as a bit of a whiner. A LOUD whiner. And even though this game was, for some, nearly impossible to beat due to it's vastness- I loved it. I never beat it, myself; it has so much gametime and so much replay value, (and such an amazing soundtrack!) that it's satisfying enough just to play through the first four hours over and over again. Five minutes of Chrono Cross is worth five hours of ANY major franchise out there. It's just a beautiful game, and I'd never get tired of hunting Komodo Dragons at Lizard Rock.
And, no, that's not where my name came from.
author=Craze link=topic=683.msg9204#msg9204 date=1203218006
He also states that you can take any two FF8 PCs and imagine the conversation that could happen between them.
To expand on that, I recently began replaying Xenosaga III. While I'm skipping most of the cutscenes, I've been watching enough to remind myself of several neat dialouges between unexpected characters: Jin and Allen, for example, have a series of discussions throughout the game. In most RPGs, Allen would talk to Shion and Shion only since she is the love interest/protagonist and he is just a silly NPC. Instead, he actually talks with the PCs on a regular basis. Other random yet somewhat important NPCs get scenes with random characters, making everyone seem much more alive and realistic. The exception is KOS-MOS, who really only talks to Shion and chaos (and only a little bit to the latter). This works, though, since she's an "emotionless" android with a really high STR stat.
Continuing on this, I really think the social network side of things gets neglected far too often in games. Seeing characters interact with each other instead of just them with the main protagonist gives them all kind of life a dark past and giant swords can't hope to match. People interact with each other, and not just the Chosen One That Will Save the World and possibly one other person in the entire world.
