I had a great chat with Shane today about protagonists in video games. Basically one of the most important aspects of game design, yet one I don’t like to work with academically because everybody else already has, and I don’t have a Ph.D. with which to back up my analyses. Our debate revolved around the two main approaches to game protagonists: The established character and the empty avatar. The former is a character in the world on par with any other NPC (except usually more important), the latter is a name and a pair of floating hands – the rest is filled out by the player and his or her imagination.
It was a good discussion, because it’s a topic you can debate endlessly: Which is better? It’s a matter of taste and context – either solution is valid, but either way has a tremendous impact on the nature of the game. But there are so many other topics to discuss about game avatars. In fact our debate originated from a quick discussion about whether or not it was worth the trouble to add a black skin to Trestkon in TNM, and why we never did it to begin with (we’re not racist, the thought just never struck us – we’re all white guys, and more importantly the real Trestkon is a white guy). Now Gelo just linked me to a really great little article about the stereotypical Tough Guy – in fact it’s quite possibly gone beyond stereotypical by now, it’s become a damn institution.
And this article is just so right. It even mentions JC Denton very unfavourably and yet I still think it’s just so true. Being a great fan of stealth gameplay (ie. a tremendous coward), JC’s badass personality never really lined up with my play style. I would creep through vents, hide in dark corners, quietly knocking guards over the back of the head and dragging their bodies away to locked rooms where they wouldn’t be found. And then I would go up to an important NPC and make like Rambo. It was inconsistent.
Shamus mentions Garrett from Thief as a good protagonist, one whose personality matches the depth of the gameplay, and who isn’t just a cardboard badass. One of the reasons I loved Thief 3 so much was that Garrett just resonates with me. He’s quite a bit more audacious and selfish than I am, of course, but an avatar doesn’t need to fit you perfectly to establish identification, it just has to get a few things right for you to build on.
So let me hear about your favourite game avatars, if you’ll take a moment to comment. Established characters or empty avatars are both accepted. Garrett ranks pretty high up the list for me, but the top spot is taken by The Nameless One from Torment – he was an established character in a way, but his personality was really up to the player. My TNO was a very sensitive and curious man with a helpful streak.
(This is quite unlikely to be the last post about avatars you’ll ever read here. It’s a good subject with plenty of room for discussion so I’ll probably talk more about it later. Especially when I take some time to analyse the way we’ve used Trestkon in TNM, which will doubtlessly be interesting as it seems to have changed a lot during the course of development.)
I think I usually am happiest when there’s some degree of hybridization. Mass Effect is a good example — your custom character having a service history and psychological profile you choose from a couple of lists helped flesh out the character while still offering freedom of choice. I’ll probably comment more on this later when I’m not tired and hungry.
Ooh yes Shepard works well I think. He or she is implemented somewhat like TNO, except with more appearance customization but slightly more limited dialogue options. I’d probably pick more dialogue options if faced with the choice, but I enjoyed the way Shepard was implemented
Manuel Calevera (Grim Fandango) is the one I like best, closely followed by Max from Sam & Max. And Sam of course.
I very much like the story behind the Nerevarine in Morrowind, so add that to my top 5 as well. And even though I don’t really like the games, Lara Croft can not miss out on this list if only because she has focussed the attention of the Video Game industry to the protagonist in the first place.
Oh, and Lo Wang (Shadow Warrior). I love that game and it’s political incorrectness
You’d seriously put Lo Wang on your top 5? That’s crazy talk, man! Crazy talk!
Never gave much attention to this topic but now that you mention it I liked Riddick, the way he talks is amusing.(it’s a tough guy but in such an extreme way that it manages to be funny)
On the other hand I prefer an empty avatar that I build as I play, but to enjoy these avatars the world must be very responsive to my actions/choices. The cartoonish way fable did this worked more or less, however I prefer more meaninful responses, like torment/fallout where your dialog options are influenced by your previous actions.
I idly wonder if Starbreeze actually intended to make Riddick a little over-the-top, a little self-parodying. I’m guessing they didn’t, though their writers may just not have been able to help themselves.
You bring up another good point, Milton: An avatar can be empty in two ways. It can be like Gordon Freeman in Half-Life where all you have is a name and a picture on the box. Or it can be like typical western RPG’s from Bioware, Black Isle, Obsidian, Troika, etc. where you just get a plot hook at most and then thorough enough character creation tools and in-game dialogue options that you can pretty much create the protagonist yourself.
Personally, I’d love to try to create a perfect blank-slate avatar. No make believe name, etc., and in conversations, how you respond about your history results in NPCs treating you as a result of your responses. In The Longest Journey, there’s a point where a character asks your avatar, April Ryan, wether or not she is a virgin, which for some reason was really impacting to me, since I had to make up this important piece of the character’s life. If I recall, the NPC’s response was the same no matter what you said, but I’m willing to bet that if you had a scenario where NPC’s asked a lot of similar questions of your avatar, and then related to you based on the history you chose it would have a moving affect on players, especially those who chose answers that corrolated to their actual lives.
That could be a very very interesting way to handle it, yes. And hey, it would probably fit right into the Sindre Burning concept
Oh hell yes, I am RIGHT THERE with EER on this one. Manuel and Max are two of my favorites for sure, but I’d also have to include MURRAY! (The Evil Talking Skull version, mostly) from the Monkey Island series. Lo Wang and Duke were both greats too, but there’s lots from RPGs that I just can’t decide between. (Archibald from the Might and Magic series is probably the best.)
And how about Brad Dourif in Myst III? Or Ben from Full Throttle? And of course there’s the Pitfall dude. Anyone who can jump across a lake on alligator heads is OK in my book!