I think you kind of pose an interesting problem because not every game can simply have you meet every character and start you off as a blank slate. Playing as a character with an established history can work too. Take GTA IV for example. Niko doesn't meet Roman for the first time coming off the boat, but you as a player do. But he's a likable enough guy that over the course of the game, I totally started to care about him.

In God of War, it stands to reason that it would be impossible to get you to care about his family as much as Kratos himself does. The guy's been to Hell and back for them. I felt like I was supposed to sympathize about Kratos and not as much his family, by the time I got to that moment at the end of God of War. You've seen just how much he's sacrificed over the course of the last 10+ years at the hands of the gods, only to see his family, his one true salvation, paraded in front of him before getting ripped away again as a cruel joke. You see him literally giving his own life to save them. You don't need to care about his family for that scene to work. You just need to care about Kratos, and I think the game does a fantastic job in that respect.

I will agree that inFAMOUS fell flat because his girlfriend was just too much of a bitch for me to care about, but that moment where you've got to decide to save her or the doctors still absolutely floored me and made me pause and really think for a moment, so I will say that not all was lost for inFAMOUS.

Surprisingly well thought out rant compared to some of your others lately. You've had a tendency to ramble lately, but this kept on topic and didn't stray from it.

I have to say though, I'm surprised you didn't key out with that green shirt on.

Stop doing these, you don't have sufficient personality to be worthy of your own self titled "rant" videos.

Interesting. In very few games have I cared for the characters. I recently played Snake Eater for the first time (Never got around to it) and felt empathy for The Boss, not because I knew that much about her, but because I felt empathy THROUGH Snake to her. N.Snake feeling so down after killing her is what made me empathic towards her, because it was me watching N.Snake killing the person who taught him everything he knew, that he loved and respected for his whole life, watching him cry at her grave just sent it home for me.

Oh, and Pey'j as well.

As for suggestions, how about how bugs, glitchs and non-scripted events can be just as much fun and meaningful as the cutscenes and gameplay?

So, I finally felt the urge to post in this mug! I just wanted to second what Groovicron said. Jenny, from the Darkness, is the only character I actually felt a somewhat real attachement to. The whole TV watching scene, coupled with the various interactions with her throughout the game, really made her, as well as Jackie, feel like real people.

The turing point in the story, when she's offed, really made you want to just kill everyone thta had anything to do with it. That bitter sweet ending really made me cjoke up, too. I cried a little. Just a little, not even a full tear, but, like a percentage of one.

Also, Rev, I'll take you're word about blowing a guy off being awesome.

i think Final Fantasy VII Crisis Core really makes you care about the main

character because you play Zack as he helplessly dies trying to protect Cloud.

Floyd from Infocom's Planetfall was insanely engaging and sympathetic.

I'll take a stab at this characterization business.

You can't have emotional involvement with a character that you don't know or see. I'm guessing that you never seem much of Faith's sister, or Kratos' wife and child.

As a counter example look at MGS2. Snake an Otacon have this rapport from the first game. Hideo fools us into thinking that the game is about snake during the first bit of the game, but gives us some very necessary context about why we care about either of these two guys. He takes it one step further with Rose, and explores why we don't have any connection to her, and the game does everything it can to undermine the player's attempt to feel any empathy for her at all.

I consider the "The Boss" thing to be a Roy Folkerism. He's this ace pilot in Robotech, leader of the Skull Squadron. The main character idolizes him. That's all we need to know until the episode where he dies. The writer's take us way too far into his girlfriend's life in order to drum up some additional emotional impact when he dies.
This is transparent and dumb. "The Boss" has the same thing. Snake is so whiny when the game starts. "But you abandoned me..." whatever... good foreshadowing. Hideo needed to help reforge the bond, have The Boss help Snake, all the while dragging him over the hardest and worst traps in the game (there should have been two paths, listen to The Boss, and go through hell, don't listen to her and have clear sailing). That way we foreshadow, we get the characters closer, that way the betrayal HURTS SO GOOD.

God of War came out in 2005. God of War II came out in 2007. You've had time.

By the way, the gorilla dies at the end of King Kong, Jesus dies at the end of Passion of the Christ, and oh yeah, Bruce Willis was dead the whole time.

Spoiler warning.

Play God of War and God of War II anyway. Yeah, he spoiled a cool moment (over two years later) but the games are still totally awesome. Go to Amazon, go to GameStop, go somewhere and buy both of those games.

Damn. I REALLY should have watched this sooner, because Groovicron beat me to talking about the Darkness.

Well, I second everything he said. The Darkness is easily the single most emotionally involving game I've ever played, with Shadow of the Colossus coming in second place. I have never been so filled with rage towards a fictional character than with Uncle Paulie after the big moment with Jenny (which I will not spoil). That was the best moment, but there were several other emotional bits as well.

But then, the Darkness had Paul Jenkins (a comic book writer, mainly, who has written for the Darkness comic series) working on it, so it shouldn't come as too much of a shock that it had some excellent writing.

I remember playing Zelda: link to the past and there was a guy that wants you to bring his flute to him or something. Granted, I was like 12 when I played it but when I got his flute back to him and he plays it and then turns to a tree stump I was pretty emotionally upset for like a week.