Novelists (or perhaps their editors) talk about wanting to achieve character identification, that moment when a reader decides she buys into the main character's want, will be invested in the struggle and want to see things through to the end.
I think the goal in all story-heavy games, especially role playing games, is to get gamers to click with the main character and to feel invested in the adventure that's to come. That's character identifiction in the context of video games. And for me that's happened for different reasons.
In
Icewind Dale, I probably enjoyed coming up characters, picking the portraits and writing their biographies more than I ever did the game itself. I didn't just come up with the characters out of thin air. I had party composition in mind. I might even have been inspired by some portrait art that I saw on all those portrait sites there were back then. And then the descriptions of the kits on the boards for Icewind Dale II had an impact on my designs as well--even if kits ultimately never made it into the sequel (as they shifted to D&D 3 in the course of development). So there the games or the community gave me something, and I in turn created something. And my having created something ultimately made the game better. Losing race selection would have been terrible in a game like Icewind Dale because it would have cut into my way of getting into the game. Having only three classes would have been terrible because the variety of classes served as a catalyst to ideas for characters.
But for me, losing races and having fewer classes in a game like
Baldur's Gate II wouldn't actually have made any big difference. I'm glad they're there, as more is always good. But, for me, they weren't essential. What got me into BGII was Viconia, Jaheira, Edwin, Jan, Minsc, Keldorn, Nalia...you get the idea. It's was how I felt about the party members that defined my character. It was those intraparty relationships and how I felt about them that were the decisions that informed how I thought about my character.
It was the same way in
Dragon Age: Origins. The origins were very cool, no doubt. And I had a character concept that informed the kind of face tattoos I picked for my first Warden. It impacted the spells I chose to focus on. And that was cool. But it wasn't the coolest thing about DAO. The coolest thing was that the way I thought about my character evolved because of how I reacted to the different characters in the party. "Alistair's not a good leader and always wants to defer to me. I'm not really some obvious leader either here. And Morrigan's too obviously contrarian to lead anyone. So, I guess I'll be...what...positive? Ugh." Or "Well, the party's suspicious of Morrigan. How do I feel about this person?" "My first instinct is to spare Loghain. But how will Alistair feel? Would I really let my feelings for someone else's feelings impact a life-and-death decision? Is it possible that Alistair has a point? Is mercy sometimes the easy way out and not the right thing?" For me, a Bioware game is about the game and the characters
in the game. Role-playing possibility isn't front-loaded in Bioware games as in games like Icewind Dale (or Elder Scrolls or MMO's), where, as a result, character creation options matter a lot more to me.
Ultimately I have to be able to make decsisions. Race is one kind of decision. Decisions at character creation are another kind of decision. Decisions made in the course of a game are another. I try to step back from things and look at a game and go "What decisions are there for me, and are they cool?" And so there's a variety of ways to go about letting people have choice and get into a story and have that writer-gamer collaboration that is part of a single-player RPG. I obviously don't want games to become an increasingly passive experience where I don't get to be a storyteller as well. I don't, though, think there's any one essential feature (race choice, gender choice, silent protagonsit, party size) that's required for that character identification that gets me invested in a role. Ultimately, I want to contribute to a story in an environment that facilitates that. They do that by giving me conflict--something to struggle with and resolve. And so they're going to have to fuel those conflicts with their stories and their characters. They'll just have to find ways to leave room my storytelling as well. In general though, by necessity, it has to be a collaboration.
Modifié par Giltspur, 30 novembre 2012 - 12:51 .
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