if one looks at the Space Marine inDoomor Gordon Freeman inHalf-Life, one will find
no personality whatsoever.
The reason for this is simple: when players want to play games, often they want to
play themselves. If the character they are controlling has a very strong personality,
there is a distancing effect, reminding players that the game is largely predetermined
and making them feel like they are not truly in control of what happens in the game.
Particularly frustrating are adventure games that feature strongly characterized player
characters who keep speaking irritating lines of dialog. I remember one adventure
game in particular where players had to control a spoiled brat who constantly said
annoying, idiotic things to himself and to the characters he met. Who would want to
control such a character? The dialog for the character was actually amusing and quite
well written, but not to the players who were forced to go through the game using that
obnoxious character as their game-world surrogate. It would appear that the game’s
writer got carried away with this interesting characterization without realizing the det-
rimental effect it would have on players’ gaming experience.
Of course there are a number of popular games that have succeeded while having
extremely well-defined main characters.Duke Nukem 3D, theMonkey Islandgames
with Guybrush Threepwood,No One Lives Foreverwith Cate Archer, any game featur-
ing James Bond, theOddworldgames,Max Payne, and any of the laterFinal Fantasy
games all contained extremely well-defined player characters who had piles of dialog in
cut-scenes and during gameplay. When gamers play these games they are definitely
acting as the guide to another character instead of becoming that protagonist them-
selves. Thus these games focus less on immersion and more on entertaining players at
a simpler narrative level and do that quite well. In these games, players feel more like
they are playing the game to unlock a predetermined story, that the adventures of these
strong characters are already known, and that they are just uncovering them by playing
the game. The most recent game in thePrince of Persiaseries,The Sands of Time,
defined the main character more than any of the previous games in the series, and took
the “player discovering a story” concept one step further. In the game, the main charac-
ter acts as the game’s narrator, and each time the player fails to accomplish an objective
Chapter 11: Storytelling 219
Despite being perhaps
the most famous
computer game
character in existence,
Mario has a relatively
undefined personality.
Pictured here:Super
Mario Sunshine.