[Editor's Note: We're not just a (rad) news site -- we also publish opinions/editorials from our community & employees like this one, though be aware it may not jive the opinions of Destructoid as a whole, or how our moms raised us. This article is part of our Monthly Musing series: this month's theme is "nothing is sacred." Want to post your own article in response? Publish it now on our community blogs.]
Like many of my fellow gamers, I’ve recently become addicted to the new RPG/FPS hybrid, Borderlands. My inner dungeon crawler has been out in full force. Along with my OCD; forcing me to searching every nook and cranny for loot, maxing out my skill tree and exploring every dungeon. But a little while ago, after I reached level forty-four and the game’s story came to an end, I realized how little my character had really changed.
I started out as a badass treasure hunter with a thirst for blood, and I finished the game as … well … a badass treasure hunter with a thirst for blood. My character hadn’t changed at all.
After dozens of intense fire fights in the rugged wasteland of Pandora, you would expect my character to be bruised, battered and actually look like he had done all the amazing thing that he did. Instead, he was exactly the same: both physically and emotionally.
The lack of true character progression is plaguing the game industry. If games want to be held to higher narrative standard, then it's time developers started to focus less on making their characters "cool" and more time making them interesting.
Take the Star Wars saga for example. Luke Skywalker starts out as your average, eighteen-year-old, whiny, power-converter buying, farm boy. But once he sets out on the "heroes journey" he starts to become a new person. He doesn't just change physically, he changes emotionally as well. During the first film, and a little bit in the second, Luke tends to whine and complain about how unfair life is. But after he discovers the truth about his father, along with a number of other revelations, including getting his hand cut off, by the end of the saga, he becomes a full-blown Jedi master. Skilled, wise and truly "grown up." If you compare Luke Skywalker from A New Hope, and Luke Skywalker from Return of the Jedi, they are two completely different people. That is true character progression.
Put Some Feeling Into It!
Now let's look at what some have called the Star Wars equivalent to videogames: Halo. Master Chief fights through an entire war, single handedly taking out swarms of Covenant yet he never once seems affected by the brutality that he witnesses. So many war games say they want to be like Saving Private Ryan, but it wasn't the explosions, or depressing atmosphere that made it great. It was seeing war, real war, through the eyes of five brave men, fighting for not glory, but personal enlightenment. When their fellow soldiers die, the men are horrified and disgusted at the savagery. But when Master Chief sees one of his fellow Marines shot down, he barley blinks.
Another game that is guilty of poor characterization is Kingdom Hearts: one of today's most popular JRPGs, and a game that relies heavily on its story. But you wouldn't know it, judging by the paper thin characters, especially Sora, the games main protagonist. Sora starts out as a plucky young adventurer, who is endlessly devoted to his friends and family. Want to guess what he's like in the second game? That's right. A plucky young adventurer, who is endlessly devoted to his friends. Kingdom Hearts has all the characterization of a meatball hoagie.
There are plenty of other characters like the two I just described, but I think you get my point. What I would like to see in games, is greater emphasis on characters displaying complex emotions outside of cut scenes. If one character has an argument with another character, the tone and banter between them, in-game, should change. Not only that, but if it's an FPS, they should react more to when a close ally dies. Don't have them just say, "Oh my god, what's his name got shot!" Make them angry; make them cry; make them emote! These may sound like a bunch of meaningless little things, but as any good actor can tell you, it's the little things make a character memorable.
Going back to something I mentioned earlier. Physical change is another thing I would like to see more developers take into consideration. Not just new clothes and armor, but things like scars after a fight, or limping after getting shot in the leg.
One game that did this right was Prince of Persia the Sands of Time. As the game progressed the Prince's uniform that he wears in the beginning of the game is ripped and torn. After each battle he gets more scars, bruises and overall, looks like he has actually been in a fight. By the end of the game, the Prince has gone from prim and proper, to rough and rugged. While this change didn't affect the game play, it made me feel like I had been on a long and dangerous journey. Going through that game was hell, and Prince reflected that.
Final Fantasy is the one franchise that annoys me the most. You've got a bunch of effeminate looking characters going on this epic journey. They fight countless monster, get snot beat out of them on more than one occasion, and to top it all off, they've been traveling through the freaking wilderness for weeks. They should be sweaty, buff and dirty. Instead, they get a few new pieces of armor and a sword and look exactly the same as they did in the beginning. This is something that almost every JRPG is guilty of and I'm sick of it.
An Old Hope
Notice that I said almost every Final Fantasy game. Final Fantasy III -- VI if you want to get technical -- is one of the few games, I've played, that has true character progression. Over the course of their adventure: Cecil, Rosa, Riddia and the rest of the cast struggle not only with the external challenge of their enemies, but also their own internal struggles. Some characters become older; some become wiser; some die. The characters in FFIII aren't heroes. They're real people, with real problems -- and that game came out in thirteen years ago.
You probably noticed that I didn't mention "silent" protagonists like Gordon Freeman, Chrono or Link. That's because they are not characters. They are narrative "vehicles" that are meant to help link the player to the game. The difference between a character that speaks and on that does not, is that they change the role of the player. If a character is a "vehicle," then they do not speak and let the player become the protagonist. If a character talks and acts beyond the players control, then they become the protagonist and the player becomes a contributor. Unlike movies, where the viewer is a witness, a player who controls a character in video game experiences the journey with the protagonist, but is not actually "in" the game him/herself.
As I said before: the lack of true characterization is plaguing the game industry. Developers need to realize that it's not trench coats, guns or muscles that make a character memorable. It's what they say and do that matters. I encourage my fellow gamer to raise their standards when it comes to they play as -- don't settle for some generic knight in shining armor, or a bald headed space marine -- demand characters, not, ugh... Edge Maverick. Now if you'll excuse me, I have a strange craving for a meatball hoagie.
Contest:
5:00 PM on 10.31.2009
| 
I agree, physical character alterations as a game develops is an interesting dynamic, but I don't see it as something that revolutionizes a game. Emotional development definitely does though, but I think that has been done a few times and I hope that it is continuing to progress.
The kind of change that you're describing is not easy to pull off, and it's very hard to affect player behavior in a game without scripting or limiting.
Fundamentally, and this sort of goes along with my own recent C-blog, you can't really change people with an RPG when the dichotomy is "good" or "evil" like it is in most RPGs. The distinction is far too entrenched, black and white, and just dumb. If you wanted to have dynamic character in an RPG, you would need circumstance and the human-computer interaction experience call for it... Something like, if you played Halo all along killing all the bad guys and leaving no survivors, etc. etc. but discovered later that your brutality was leading to harsh retaliation against civilians... well maybe you would start playing a bit more stealthily or try to find intelligent solutions to game problems instead of forceful ones.
Nice post man, we should definitely roll some Borderlands sometimes. Add me up: Kauza.
As for characterization, I totally agree, but things are getting better. I think voice acting needs to get a lot better, where actors are actually acting rather than simply delivering lines for a paycheck. They should have some sort of power to craft a character. I think Lost Odyssey's Jansen is a great example of this: he wasn't incredibly deep or original, but Michael McGaharn really took command of that role and turned Jansen into one of the more memorable characters of recent years. When great character writing can be combined with amazing voice acting, we'll be there.
Games are supposed to tell stories (usually) and yeah, character progression is a large part of any story.
Excellent blog!
Think about Fallout 3 for a moment to make the comparison: the story is presented to you as if there is this character within the game, and you are merely controlling that character; all of the events of the game are happening to that character, not to you. And that's something I didn't understand about what Fallout 3 was trying to do. They give you this fairly detailed "character creation" process, but it's meaningless. You are not the character, so why bother customizing it?
Borderlands takes a different approach, more of a WoW approach: pick a class, play as that class. You make the character what it is by the way you play the game. I think the focus of Borderlands is much less on what is happening to the character you are controlling, and more about what is actually happening to *you*, the gamer.
That being said, you make a good point about a lot of other games.
People don't change much in games now-a-days. Even games praised with original or fresh stories (one in particular coming to mind is God of War) doesn't see the characters progressing whatsoever. I think that's why I enjoyed Lost Odyssey so much; almost none of the characters are the same people you met at the beginning of the game by the time the end of Disc 4 rolls around. Janson, in particular, is a completely different person.
Great post, got me thinking.
Interesting article, but I'm only halfheartedly behind it. For me the game is everything and the plot/characters take a backseat.
FFXII, on the other hand, was much more subtle. I think you take it too far in criticizing that the characters don't physically change as that's probably the least important factor. Fable did the physical part and, frankly, it just dropped the ball in the end despite that.
I do agree that the game industry is REALLY holding onto things more now than ever before. FPS are being made all the time now because they are commercially viable options and not because they really bring anything innovative to the industry, and I say this as someone who likes playing FPS games. We can only hope that games like the ones from Team Ico and Okami and what we'll be seeing with say a Heavy Rain will continue to push the industry forward rather than this neverending quest for the Holy Grail of graphics...
To be fair, Fable did ONLY the physical part, and didn't really do it the way the author's talking about. Fable was basically "be evil: grow horns, be good: get a halo, eat a lot: get fat"
Not much of that really reflects what the character's been through, it was just a visual reward for the player.
I'll accept games where true character progression exists and the character is not the vehicle, but I need to e given a lot in exchange to enjoy the game for that. Simply having a good story is not enough.
I do think bringing up Kingdom Hearts is contradictory, though, because things do happen to Sora. He does age, people even forget about him. I'll admit he's not as interesting as the world around him, though. A character like Riku or Axel got a lot more progression, even if it was years of jumping back and forth in continuity to accomplish it.
Characters in games like FFIV, FFVI and Persona 4 show great emotional growth and even change over the course of a story. P3 and P4's characters will change wardobe to even reflect the time of year and weather climate. The player even gets to personalize the experience by choosing what relationships that character develops.
Although DA:O don't give the PC dubbing, I think.
i was to blinded by shiny plastic coating to notice Edge was a character.
Similarly, Borderlands is not really about the characters. They really fit the vehicle role you described at the end. The entire focus of the game is getting items, with a loose (but I feel still pretty interesting) plot to drive some progression. Still, I'd like to see a sequel to the game, on a different planet perhaps, where they explore more of the very rich and detailed universe they have created, and give more time to the characters (both the player and NPC's).
Of course, in general I can't disagree with you. More feeling in a game is just plain better. I agree that not all FF games do a good job, but I think X can be added to the list of ones that do, as I've been playing it again lately (until Borderlands came along...). Tidus and Wakka especially go through some big changes throughout the game. It would be nice if it was actually shown physically in games more often, the Fable games being the only ones I can recall that genuinely make an attempt (in that respect).
Also Pitfall: the mayan adventure has a boomerang in it too, so it is my favourite video game as well, upon review of my favourite game criterion. Bat-arangs don't count.
But really what I'm trying to say here is that I've found with games and indeed with all media, my level of enjoyment is very highly associated with my expectations. If you want a shiny car with realistic handling, Borderlands is not for you. Likewise, if you want a game steeped in rich characters who grow through intense life experiences, perhaps nor then is Borderlands for you.
As for Borderlands, its story gets a lot of shit, but it's actually quite nice. Yeah, it's paced kind of wrong (with the journal quests giving you...most of the plot, and they're optional), but especially the characters, I think you get a good sense of them. They don't change, sure, but...that's because you don't really change. It's hard to force changes and emotions on a character when the player is intricately connected to how they evolve each situation. Other characters have to give that, and I like a lot of Borderlands NPCs.
Also, if you didn't get that FFIV was a story about redemption and didn't see characters progress emotionally, I think you had to be asleep half the game. There wasn't much character development in FFVIII at all, Squall just reached a point where he decided "Hey, maybe I'm not totally surrounded by idiots." I'll grant you that's more progress than Cloud's ever had, he's still looking for his reason to fight :P
Also, I remembered something while reading this article. Snake in MGS4 will feel bad (and vomit if I remember well) if in battlefield you shoot as many soldiers as you can nonstop. I think this has to count as something.
But then, not every game needs a story just not like every movie we watch doesn't have to be an Oscar winning drama.
Like Uncharted has a fun and loose story, but it's true strength is in it's characters personalities more than where the story went.
And Heavy Rain seems to be taking it emotionally to levels you're talking about.
Me, I'm a fan for both styles. But the Halos, Half-Life and even Borderlands...for what they are about I think too much plot would just be a distraction. They are the equivelent of Movies For Guys Who Like Movies.
Not about growing as a person, it's about blowing s**t up in fun and fast paced ways.
We need all types. And as someone pointed out, written emotional growth in your story is hard, ESPECIALLY in a video game. Most simply aren't that talented in the writing department.
hero. A hero that transforms others without being changed him/herself. But i
guess he really doesn't change that many people in the story anyway.
let's see who bites the bait.
What you don't realize is that even while you/others don't realize it many people get turned off by little things like annoying characters and story rather then the lack of a certain feature or some annoying control mapping choices.
At the same time, I don't know if Borderlands is the best example to use. Borderlands is primarily an FPS (I love the roleplaying elements, but it's just not a roleplaying game the same way Fallout 3 or Mass Effect are). Since FPS' are historically the worst game genre in terms of character development, it's not much surprise that Borderlands is lacking in that area. If I did try to view Borderlands as primarily an RPG, I would be thoroughly disappointed in this feeling of stagnation. Actually, if Borderlands had more customizable traits and stronger character development, I'd say many reviewers would have changed their tone and suggested it is primarily an RPG with FPS elements (like Fallout 3).
Anyway, I just thought I'd throw in my two cents since I'm right in the middle of Borderlands.
I do.
I think you took an unfair jab at the FF series for not depicting physical changes that reflect what the characters go through. The vast majority of games is guilty of what you claim FF claims to commit. And I use the term "guilty" lightly because I don't really think they need to.
Keep in mind that, if we're talking about art (or at least high-level entertainment - the kind that would use characterization), realism is only a style. Not every product of every medium needs to strive to be realistic.
I agree, especially your point on style. Some games do not need character progression, and the desire for more character progression would not fit in certain games.
That being said, I'd love for more character progression to exist, but I do not want fake character progression that is treated as real progression. The article talks about physical change representing Character progression? Physical change in gaming is almost always pedestrian. You traveled and got beat up and now you have scars? Who cares? Does that actually change your character? No, not really. Does it serve as a reminder to the player what that character has been through? Yes, but that's not what we're talking about.
We're talking about character change. If the character doesn't behave any differently after he's been through immense physical and emotional trials, and all he has to show for it are scars, what is the point? It is like Master Chief's armor getting scarred up by the end of each Halo. Would that really change Master Chief? The answer is no. He'd still be a shell of a character we'd all like to see more fleshed out, even though Bungie is far too scared to do anything like that. The Arbiter in Halo 2 was a moment of humanizing(lol an alien acting as a humanizing element, District 9 did it too...) in terms of character design, but it all fell through when the Arbiter does not change whatsoever and by Halo 3, he's a shell as well. It is these moments when the game could become SO much more engrossing, but developers either do not care, are afraid of taking a direction that some people might dislike, or they just do not understand how to do it.
I think the real problem with character progression is the general public's understanding of it entirely. Most Final Fantasy games have AWFUL character progression. I've played/finished every single FF from IV to X, and there are very few moments that stick out as actual character progression. There are great stories, and some of the games have fantastic characters, but the directions these games take with them are, for the most part, mediocre. I love Final Fantasy games to death, but as someone who reads and watches films that possess actual character progression, I cannot delude myself into thinking that Final Fantasy can match books or films that do it so much better. Can any game match American History X in terms character change and development, and how it affects the world around that specific character? I could list more, but I cannot do it with gaming and be serious.
I just wish game developers were interested in character story as much as plot. Some big games try it and fail (GOW2 and Dom's wife, what a fail at trying to evoke emotion), which does not help. I mean honestly, if a developer is going to do something that involves delving into a character, taking such a simple stab at it with **Spoiler alert** "Character B misses and wants to find his probably dead wife, when he finds her, OMG tears everywhere, sad moment BOOM HEADSHOT" is a travesty.
It is a problem that needs to be fixed by actual writers. Not bad video game writers.
Though it does sound like we're playing with virtual dolls when I type it out like that...
I'm not as concerned about the details as much, as a kid I assumed they washed up pretty well when your character stays as the Inn. Overall, I'm looking for a more epic feel to my RPGs, I fill in the character develpment myself if I find it lacking. Considering most of the game isn't the scripted cut scenes, I don't seem to notice it. If this was a movie, it would drive me crazy.
While the karma system in inFamous was pretty ridiculous, whichever way you decided to turn did proffer physical change to Cole and, at the end of the game, you feel--or at least I felt--that I'd gone from an ordinary dude struggling with weird powers to the bonified birth of a superhero. With Fallout 3, while the character is a vehicle, I decided to delve deeper into one of my characters and started writing as that character on my C-blog. I found that the investment of this time in her, finding her voice, hearing her in my head, changed my decision-making process while playing the game as this character, and I really became absorbed in her development. I'm now pretty obsessed with throwing out different types of characters with differing traits and skills into the Fallout environment to see what happens.
I know the above is mostly due to my personal, extra-curricular investment, but the game itself provided that for me. I also look forward to Heavy Rain and am impressed with Uncharted 2 for Drake's complex emotional reactions (along with, uh, everything else0 and the ways in which his mechanics change when he's severely wounded, but this development doesn't come from the player--it's from the script. While admirable, what does it take to create a game with TRUE character development that comes from the player, not the story as provided. Is it even possible?
Again, it truly depends on the game and what's to be expected from it, but I hail your calling out of pathetic character development among most games, which seems to come from the assumption that gamers are all just out to shoot-n-kill or be sated by a bunch of cut scenes. Investment means feeling the impact of what happens around your (the character's) environment, the people around him. When was the last time your character slipped on the floor s/he was running across because it's so slick with the blood of all those enemies you just took out? Hesitated before an action because of its possible ramifications?
Human behavior--even animal behavior--is complex and multifaceted. We may need more developed AIs before we can approach the kind of development that feels natural, and I've no doubt plenty of R&D depts. are hard at work on such progression, but for now it's mostly incumbent upon the player to invest him/herself in the actions and the character s/he chooses to play to FEEL the game and the circumstances as they unravel on a personal level.