Do you have Parkinson's?

I think he may just be hitting the sauce.

Was it too hot for the beard too?

I think one point that you sort of hinted at but didn't make explicit is the fact that the most potent way to make a player care about a character is to make that character have a very real influence on gameplay. Like with Alyx Vance; she's a very real aid to you in a lot of situations in that game, so we really care about her. But again, it's not completely idiot-proof, since Prince of Persia was obviously going for that angle with Elika, and that didn't work out.

I totally care about Dom's wife, Maria...ya know, just to be different.

fuck him in his non existant beard
i wish i could maintain my train of thought as long as you

Son of a bitch. You've came to this conclusion when I have. And I'm in the middle of writing my blog explaining it!!! RAAAGE!

The character in a game I probably felt most of an emotional connection too was the girlfriend (so connected I forget her name) in The Darkness. I think some very good writing and acting combined with some pretty masterful use of the first person perspective made the scene in her appartment really immersive. When watching the telly and she falls asleep in genuinely didn't want to get up and disturb her. I got the Romantic achievement without knowing it existed.

On my first play through a game a pretty much always play the good guy, take the good options, it's what I naturally do. But at the end of that game when I had the option to spare Uncle Paulie or kill him and damn myself I felt conflicted. I took a while to make my decision but in the end I felt I had actually had no choice; for what he did to Jenny (that's her name!), the fucker had to die. That combined with the final cutscene I found very emotional.

I may have even cried a little. Like a little bitch.
Long first ever post this.

Don't forget The Boss death, that sequence was pretty much emphatic.

genius, absolutely genius.

Reminds me of Fable 3's ending. ////SPOILERS//// When your dog dies and you have this choice at the end to get tons of money, revive the people you loved or gain immense power (I think) and by the end of that game I was too attached to that motherfucking dog that I chose it over 100k and unbelievable strength. ///// END /////

Probably the only time I really got attached to a game character. and it was a fucking dog. GG myself.

Golden Avatar:
What, because I move my hands a lot?

PrinnyMedic:
I think it's an extension of this unfortunate thing I do where when I'm talking and making a point, I sort of close one eye and cock my head a little bit as if that helps me gather my thoughts better. In reality, it just makes me look like I'm trying to be condescending or something.

Mavek:
I'd actually use that as a pretty solid example of how NOT to develop a character, as much as I've learned to enjoy aspects of MGS3.

Snake and The Boss have this incredibly complex, deep relationship that is only hinted at in the game. We only glimpse it from a distance, and only for like two minutes before The Boss turns and all of a sudden she's our enemy. That feeling of having to fight, and eventually kill a woman who is both mother, lover, and mentor could have been absolutely incredible if we had known her in the exact same way that Snake had. Instead, we sort of have to pretend to care about her just because Snake says she means a lot to him.

I really, really wanted to feel something when I hit the square button in the game's final moments, but it just didn't ring true for me.

@Burch - I too am afflicted with the over movement of my hands while I talk. Hell, I'm so bad, that when I'm trying to explain something to my wife while we're driving, I take my hands off the wheel and use my knees to steer. She usually yells at me to put my hands back on the wheel. Women.

and another thing...

The biggest problem with games is that they always want the player to feel like a complete badass, but it's difficult to feel empathy for somebody if there is no vulnerability. I was playing Prototype the other day and I just couldn't bring myself to care about the main character, Alex Mercer. Why should I be worried about a guy who can destroy 42nd street with just one bladed arm?

Rev Rant, Casual Edition.

I think The Witcher was pretty cool about this since you had prior relationships with people, but you conveniently had amnesia so neither you nor Geralt really cared about them too much aside from them being useful toward your mission. Eventually you start to care about some of them, and then the history you share with those characters starts to mean something.

Granted amnesia is a pretty big cop out, but it got the job done.

Very true rant this week, I have to agree, stories in games are not stories in any other media, and I'm tired of stories being written where it is assumed I feel how I'm expected to feel.

I find games with multiple characters you control, let's say Final Fantasy VI for example, a lot of people tend to love certain characters, but usually never all of them. Personally, I find Locke to be boring, some love his antithesis thief role where instead of being the shady thief who will steal your shit while you sleep if he feels like it, he's the upstanding knight hero with a heart full of pure intentions, but I really never cared for him. I like to see developers take the road less traveled, for the sake of originality or at least a change of pace (does the princess always need to be in the last castle?) but sometimes it feels too forced and still doesn't come out right.

In some cases, it seems like less is more, too. But sometimes not! Gau, for example, fuck him. He bugs the shit out of me, never talks sense, never contributes anything other than a unique play style (which, apparently, was rare to find someone who actually utilized him), but from a story point, he is his own unique character. I love his story (mom died, dad went batshit crazy, he was abandoned in the wild and has survived by learning to mimic predators and fight back against them). So while his story is solid, and you are given opportunities where you can empathize more with him (meeting his father), in the end, his gameplay is usually what stops many from caring about him.

But Shadow, however, I think he was my favorite character despite being one of the characters with the least amount of background covered on him. He was a thief, some shit happened, he's now a mercenary ninja with a dog companion who can bite faces off. Square hinted at a lot, and some of it may have been lost in translation through censorship, but we never really know exactly who he is and what happened so long ago. The answers aren't defined in a solid manner as with other characters. We know his name was once Clyde, he once stole a million gil, his heist partner died, and he may be Relm's father, but there is so much mystery enshrouding his past that while we don't know everything about him, it was enough to start super lengthy fan debate on websites that wasn't trumped in quantity until fans got ahold of Final Fantasy VII and were given shitloads of pieces of Cloud's past to piece together.

It definitely is an art to creating empathy with characters in a game. You can't continually expect the player to believe or feel how you want them to, but you can always give them choice. Does the player wait until the last second for Shadow, despite the game urging them along with a time limit to get the fuck out? Does the player spend the time to continually catch healthy fish after healthy fish, despite it being a more arduous task than just feeding Cid any fish to get off the island? Empathy in games really is a lot more 3 dimensional.

I think for me, personally, Team ICO's games have managed to crack the code on emotional involvement in games more consistently than most other developers (admittedly not all developers need to achieve that for an enjoyable game).

In Ico, you meet the girl at the beginning of the game, and you only slowly learn things about her as you escort her around the castle. That mystery about her and her helplessness are important, I think, to how the player feels about her. Even the times when I got frustrated with her, I would feel as though it was a result of her personality and not her AI.

Then SotC has been talked about so much I don't even need to mention all the ways it manages to twist you up inside. But I think the most important thing it does (which relates to the Rant) is it doesn't try to complicate your feelings for the girl. The game presents you with a simple motivation: she's dead, you want her back. It's easy to accept this goal from the start, and then the game just leaves you with that, and attempts to build from other characters and other aspects of the story.

And it's already apparent just from watching the trailer for the Last Guardian that we're going to feel a bond between the boy and the griffin. No two ways about it.

@ wanderingpixel,

Not sure about Prototype, but generally speaking, when a game makes you feel like a badass it's not you that your supposed to worry about, it's the weaklings you are trying to protect/save or whatever.

I agree with what you said and found it very interesting. That's my feedback, sorry it's not more constructive.

Hahah, green shirt in front of a green screen? That is the rookiest of all rookie mistakes.

Leave comments below? Holy hell that tiny rev anthony became self-aware in by youtube player! I think an interesting turn on your idea is found in lost odyssey rev. Assuming you beat that game or atleast got to the end if disc one. That raw emotion you felt when that scene happened was still there, you don't meet lirium at the same time kaim did (as this is pretty much impossible unless you want to see sarah giving birth) the emotionally attachment is still there, I think because you as kaim don't have any emotional attachment to lirium except for some nightmares and you see how that makes Kaim really emotional and you can sympathize with him.
Once you finally find Lirium I feel like their is not an emotional disconnect because although he has prior memories that come rushing back to him. You are able to make that emotional connection through realizing the situation as whole (You are completely lonely, you find your supposed only relative and that thing happens).

So I paused the video to let it buffer...



Haven't watched it yet because I was too busy uploading your silly face.

I don't think it's true that for all the games the player sees themself as the character. Perhaps this is just me though. It seems that in games that are either first person or where the player controls a single human character I have a greater tendency to "be" the character while playing the game. In games where the player controls a party (like most RPGs), or in games where the character is not human (say, Sonic Adventure), I don't really tend to "be" the character while playing it.

So I think that for some games what you are saying makes perfect sense, and that for others the player can see the main character as a character, not as themself.

Holy crap, that was a really good one. I had the same issue with infamous, though interestingly I actually felt something towards Cole rather than his girlfriend. From choices made in the game, I had to have Cole deal with the consequences of my choices, and while they were pretty hamfisted decisions and I didn't care about the person most affected by my choice, I did care about what happened to cole as a result.

With that specific choice I honestly didn't give a shittle about what happened to the person as a result, but as a result of this it was actually my complete apathy which had the greatest effect against me because Cole really does care about the person and to make him go through what he will because personally was being a selfish dick of a spectator really threw me for a loop. The choice was the easiest thing to make at the time, but if I were to do it again I think I would try to stomach my own disinterest for the sake of the guy risking his life for my own entertainment.

I never really thought about this idea, but you hit it right on the head. Good job sir.