You don't need to have a ton of screentime to make a character INTERESTING. You just have to get the player caring about the character, either as a person or caring enough to be asking questions.
Otherwise you are saying that a character can't be interesting until after he has existed in the work for a significant amount of time, and I guarantee that isn't true. There are plenty of characters that I find interesting almost the moment they start talking, because something about them makes them worth paying attention to.
There is a difference between a good character and an interesting one. An interesting character means that I'm paying attention, a good character is usually then fleshed out and I'm glad I was paying attention. FFXII characters didn't even make me want to pay attention.
And it wasn't about the stereotypes, its the fact that all of them are JUST that, and have very little else going on. Nothing to capture the imagination. Just meh.
And as I said, I disagree. There is no "true" or "untrue" to that statement, as it's a statement of perspective.
There is no one screen or two sentence expression of a fictional character that is ever going to get me to feel as if a character is interesting.
What you're talking about here, sounds to me like bait, intrigue, or fascination - "wow, look at this guy/gal, something's going on here". But, don't you think that sounds kind of, I don't know, superficial? Would you use the same words when talking about how you describe actual human beings? do you think you can determine whether someone is actually interesting based on a glance, or 5 minutes of dialogue? Maybe you can. I definately can't.
In either case, I find emotions of intrigue to be short lived, and to me (who recognizes how irrelevant that first emotional reaction is to how characters turn out in the end) it simply doesn't have much, if any, relevance at all to how I relate to the narrative.
The point I was trying to make, if we look away from the word "stereotype", is that all characters are essentially made up of a premise, and a narrative, just like stories are.
You have the premise, the broad strokes, of the character, and then you have what the character truly is - namely the sum of what the character says and does.
The less a character says and does, the harder it will be to see that character as being a close approximation to a real human being. Consider that the average human probably has 50+ years of doing stuff and talking before they die.
Most fictional characters don't even fill 1% of that. Now, is it possible to give small amounts of screen-time and still convey a lot of information if you know what you're doing? Yes.
Still, that's a really a moot point, if you consider that if a person who's capable of doing the above spent even more time developing scenes for the characters, they'd be even deeper.
Still, there is room for subjectivity. I prefer characters that seem human, and thus I prefer characters that are fleshed out. Some people just like characters that have sizz-bom-bah. I respect that, it's just that I find that boring.
I believe that if the characters in FF12 had been given a proper script, that would have saved the story of the game.
Yes! She is exactly what we are talking about with an interesting character. She has probably 3 minutes of screen time but standing up to Vayne made her so much more likeable than Ashe or Penelo. Not to mention we could have our strong female character trope if she somehow made it to the party.
My overall point is look at Silence of the Lambs. Anthony Hopkins (hannibal) gets less than 17 minutes on screen. Yet he is what everyone remembers, not Jodie Foster.
Interesting, I didn't even remember that character until you guys mentioned her...
I disagree with your sentiment though.
While Anthony is certainly emblematic of Silence of the Lambs, one has to remember that despite his lesser screen-time, Hannibal is the actual central character of the Hannibal series, not Clarice Starling.
Hannibal persists in all the books, and all the movies - the agents he works with do not.
This itself betrays a difference with which the narratives treats the characters.
The narrative is about "Hannibal the Cannibal", and the entire franchise is set up around him.
That people don't remember Jodie Foster however, is just absurd, unless by "people" you mean those who haven't actually seen the movie, or who only saw it once while not really paying all that much attention.
The assmption that people remember Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal because Hannibal is an interesting character, is pretty shaky too, in my opinion.
Hopkins portrayel of Hannibal, and the nature of Hannibal himself as a creepy Serial killer that eat humans, is pretty much what makes everything rememberable I.E Shock-value and acting skills.
Can shock-value and acting skills I.E presentation make interesting characters?
I suppose you can argue that it does, at least for some people. Not for me though.
Personally, I found Clarice Starling to be a better character than Hannibal Lecter, in Silence of the Lambs.
Secondly, as I said in the first part of my reply - imagine the difference then, if you give the character more exposure. What if Hannibal had more than 17 minutes?
We see the answer to that now in the Hannibal series, and personally I think the character of Hannibal there is so much better than the one in the movies.
