Here is a template for creating the documentation, for individual parts of the artefact creation.

This will be useful when it comes to later iterations of the build. Plus, if our build ever breaks on us, it will be possible to know which iteration we need to go to, in order to fix it.

Also, if you don't have any specific tasks for the build, you can always be designing gameplay elements and features. Once there's some documentation up, it will be very easy to design things around what's already there.

You can find the template here.

Considering the nature and intention of our test I thought it may be useful to examine examples of betrayal done well in video games. To this end I decided to do an analysis of betrayal through looking at the Legacy of Kain series, which can be found here.

Considering that we want our betrayal to work out, having a realistic one to draw from may be useful.
If this one turns out to be useful there are plenty more examples in the series that can be analyzed later.

Defining important characteristics of NPCs can be difficult, Alistair from dragon age could be characterised as a snarky wimp or a reluctant hero. Patrick O’Luanaigh opens his character design section of his book Games Design Complete, with the statement that characters need to be unique to be interesting. While seemingly an obvious point to make, it is hard to make a truly unique character. His main point in the section seems to be to just not make a bald hard man marine/space marine nowadays, which sadly is probably true.

Elaborating on this comes a section detailing how a hero or characters imperfections make them; the mistakes they make, as well as personal quirks that make them interesting. Although he doesn’t give any examples of what these flaws might be, the questions raised are no less relevant. For example Alistair’s flaws are that he is weak wiled and easily led, these are believable flaws for a realistically human character to make. It is important to note that characters traits and flaws need to be believable in the context of the character. An anthropomorphic rabbit jumping 20 foot is believable, Alistair jumping 20 foot is not.

Next the author moves on to describing some of the character designs he considers great, and why he things so. The character for me that stood out from the list is Solid Snake from the Metal Gear and Metal Gear Solid series’. Snake is by all definition a nameless soldier, completely clichéd at a superficial level. But snake is also a person with flaws, a character, and an entirely believable and heroic personality.

“He smokes, he’s rude to people, and he’s a ruthless killer. Yet as a player, you want him to win, and he makes a great lead character.”

The characters graphical design is also important, in order to define a players first impression of a character, how they look is going to be every bit as important as the first thing they say. O’Luanaigh describes a few of his favourite characters 2 of them, the lemmings and sonic the hedgehog, initially had very little personality outside of their appearance. It is the unusual, strange characteristics that are picked up on the most, such as the lemmings green hair or Sonics athletic appearance. For our project the importance of character design will be looked into, remodelling the characters where necessary to fit our purpose.

Moving on to the next section the author starts to discuss the different types of characters that can be used, categorised as animal, object, weak human, superheroes. Animals and objects don’t help us much, for our purposes though there is a lot of good theory in the weak humans section. One of the examples used was the secondary character, Yorda, in the game Ico. Yorda is a weak , pale girl the main character Ico has to protect constantly. One of the primary mechanics in combat in Ico is to save Yorda from the shadow monsters that are dragging her away. Subtle touches such as the ability to hold her hand to make her speed up, while doing this changing direction will cause her to stumble and try to catch up to Ico. As a result the player takes on the role of her protector, without meaning too. While the fact that she is largely useless may annoy at times, because the player feels they are her protector, they are automatically endeared to her.

Next is what I consider the most section of the creating characters chapter, Incorporating Unusual Emotions or Goals. This chapter details how to give characters a three dimensional character, using unusual emotions or goals. Fear is an interesting one, initially remarking that fear is rarely accurately portrayed in video games. The example he uses is a character firing a gun, instead of shooting two guns at once, shooting enemies in the head etc. Actually game examples he uses is Yorda from Ico again, while I can kind of see it I believe a far better example would be the protagonist of Silent Hill, Harry Mason. For one thing Harry is the character the player is controlling, Harry is a bad shot with guns by design, most of the time the best way to deal with enemies is to flee from them, as a result the player is also dreading every interaction with enemies as a result. From a characterisation point of view the animation of nervousness and inability to shoot accurately in Silent Hill makes it clear that Harry himself is terrified.
The example used for revenge is far more appropriate, Fable. The story of the first Fable game revolves around the main characters quest to get revenge on the bandits that destroyed his village and killed his family. Although past the first 15 minutes of game play there isn’t a lot of story that reinforces this, it does serve its purpose early on, it gives the player the motivation to get past the tutorial areas and find the person responsible for the families’ death.

Important Questions to Ask in Designing a Character, is the title of the next section. For us this is a very interesting section, as this is exactly the kind of question to ask. Although it doesn’t really move into any areas we haven’t looked into before, it does give a decent description of some of the things that should be looked into, such as how a player reacts to being chased or moves. There are only a few brief points that actually help our project in a meaningful way. Most specifically Non Controllable Teammates, the author describes the importance of having the NCT not annoy the player by being mechanically useless, or have pathing errors etc. This is all stuff we have already said for the project but having a source corroborating it is always helpful.

While this book is largely on things we already know, it is a good source of new information, because it covers all aspects of games design I may do a source analysis of the level design chapters.

For the purpose of our project I will be looking at a standard party members, done well, in the game Dragon Age Origins. In the interests of staying relevant to the subject matter of interesting and believable characterisation, I will be looking at his character through the lens of how his character design and choices effect me as a player.

Alistair is the former Templar in training, recruited into the Grey Wardens. His character is initially portrayed, as somebody who is happy with the lack of control he has over his life, to the point that he will follow the players character with almost any choice he makes, despite being technically his senior in the organisation they are both a part of. His reaction to most awkward situations and in fact most situations, is to make a sarky joke about it, this implies to me that he is the sort of person who just goes with the flow and would rather make a joke than deal with what’s happening. This contrasts with his obvious determination to see his mission through to the end. This may be a contributing factor for him to be interesting to the character

Aside from his personality, Alistair has a mechanical reason for players to like him, unless the player starts as a warrior class and aims to have him be the party tank (the character aimed at taking damage and keeping enemies attention on him) Alistair can fulfil this roll from the outset quite aptly. For our project the question this creates is, does having a mechanically beneficial character in the party effect how a player perceives that character. While it is defiantly possible to have a character who is interesting, by simply being interesting, in the scope of a video game, players are just as likely to take a player along because they are useful, as they are because they like then.

As with all characters in Dragon Age, Alistair has a myriad of flaws and quirks that characterise him, it is one of the strengths of the game, and Bioware games in general, that they give their characters such depth of personality beyond the usual tropes. Alistair’s purpose in dragon age is to be friend and confidant for the players character, he is the hardest character to make abandon your cause, to the point that you can get away with almost anything except one choice at one specific juncture over the course of the game.

Physically the characters in Dragon Age are far from perfect, while their designs are top notch, giving implications about the characters personality traits. There are certain graphical glitches that can be extremely jarring during the game, such as characters eyelids warping through their eyes. While purely a technical complaint it is an example of the uncanny valley, we accept the character to look as it should then when the graphics cause the character to break that expectation it looks strange.

A lot of the faults and traits that Alistair possesses are characterised through back story, this enhances the perceptions of these traits, and allows the developers the ability to alter and control how these perceptions work. For example Alistair’s unwillingness to become king, initially all the player has to go on is his initial reactions, through random events, and the natural evolution of the story the reasons for Alistair not wanting to become the king become clearer.

Throughout the game all of the characters evolve their personalities, or at least have ways of imposing their personality more on the player, as the story progresses. Most of the time, this takes the form of a personal task done at the behest of the character. Talking to Alistair enough will grant you insight into his relationship with his adoptive father and the regrets of his past, at one section of the game it is possible to discover the item he smashed in an act he mentions regretting, rebuilt by his foster father. It is interesting to note that this act of resolving past issues for a character usually endears the player to them to a greater degree than most other factors. Is it because they are having an effect on the characters personality and being involved in their life, or is it a side effect of helping a character that makes the player want to keep them around.

Throughout the story of Dragon Age: Origins, there is only one point where Alistair completely disagrees with the player’s choice with no chance of convincing him otherwise (only the possibility to make him forgive you for it later). This event comes when it is time to choose the fate of the games main antagonist, in practice forcing you to pick between taking the antagonist in your party and loosing Alistair or vice versa. For me this choice rang hollow, because Alistair had effectively gone along with my every whim for the entire game, making him leave if I took this character felt like a way of avoiding having 2 mechanically similar party members. There didn’t seem to be any real reason why both couldn’t be a part of the party at the same time, some of their interactions from my point of view would have been very interesting. But it does work as an example of how a character, acting in a way that does not seem completely believable compared to their previous actions, can be detrimental to their character, in this case on a very small scale though.

Relationships between characters adds depth to their personalities, it is an opportunity to show the player what a character is like without their interaction. Alistair’s most interesting, or perhaps most volatile, relationship is with the witch Morrigan. Both outwardly hostile towards each other, having both in the party can create quite entertaining. In the way these characters argue and the nature of how petty and childish some of their arguments are players gain insight into how these characters view each other, as an outside observer we are given a greater idea of what these characters are actually like. In this case Morrigan comes across as quite unfeeling and mean, where Alistair seems a bit slow witted and easily led to an argument he isn’t capable of winning. While they may not necessarily seem more interesting as a result the depth of character this lends to them does allow players to emphasise more with their decisions along the way, this is not something unique to Alistair and Morrigan, all of the characters have some degree of interaction with each other on this level. How it effects a players reaction to these characters is difficult to gauge but undeniably profound.

It is possible later on in the story to have quite a dramatic effect on Alistair’s personality by treating him roughly and showing him the harsh truths about people it is possible to make him stop being such a follower and actually take control of matters, culminating in his becoming king of Ferelden without complaint. Not having done this myself, I have no way of knowing the effect it has on a players perception of Alistair. I would assume that having the ability to illicit such a drastic change on a character, gives players an immense sense of power over them, more so than the usual ability to control their every action. Does having this effect on the personality make the character seem less real or does the player feel more a part of their existence as a result?

If there is anything to learn from Alistair in terms of character creation, it is that flaws are as important as traits. How we portray these flaws is also important, do we do it simply through the characters actions, or will it be more appropriate to give a character back story. If we give the character back story how will we present that, will it be through a short play section or the character explaining it himself.

While it is good to have this much written this soon it is a fact that most of these case studies are for our benefit more than the lecturers'.

What we are looking for in these character studies is not details on the character but what traits make them interesting to players. If it gets to week 10 and we have to trawl through 12k words for a few useful lines about what makes interesting/believable character we're going to regret it.

It's really good work thats been done so far though, it's just a little bit too much good work.

Any thoughts?

PS. This is being posted here because I will be far too tired to say this in any meaningful capacity tomorrow and it will be nice to show us using the blog for meaningful discussion.