Linearity & Player Choice

[Volz Rocksti]

When playing an rpg, do you find it hard to connect to a main character that is not a blank slate? I've been story-boarding out a new game and initially started off with the aforementioned "blank slate" character. While the character wouldn't be silent (like Link), his (or her) dialogue would be kept to a minimum and the player would have more control over how the character responded to the situation/conversation.  However, as I was writing, the player character developed a personality and history, and I find it hard pressed to divorce one from the other.

If a character is well written and still offers the player some, albeit less, choice regarding conversation and relationships can that character still be an engaging surrogate for the player in the game's world?  I still plan to have the player choose to make the character male or female and neither of these choices will lock them out of any of the romance plot lines I'm cooking up.

Thanks in advance for your feedback - let me know if you want me to speak deeper on any aspect.

 

[stupid enough to like FF13]

There are many RPGs with characters with developed personalities of their own as opposed to being complete "blank slates" for the player. Of course it can work. As with most things, it depends on how well it's written.

 

[Zoltor]

The concept that characters need to be blank slates, thus setting it up so the player super imposes them selves on a char for a character to be relatable, is a load of BS.

It's nothing but lies that lazy developers, and crappy writers came up with, so a lot of people would lets them get away with such.

Unless It's like a dungeon crawler/RPG, where the player literally creates their character's from scratch, there is no excuse for not giving characters indepth stories of their own. I'm not even just talking about back story either, but in the main game as well, including their interactions with other characters in the game.

Making the character silent or making the choices be mainly up to the player, is nothing but a cop out sigh.

 

[Token]

I often find silent protagonists more likable than the alternative. It's not about the character being a blank slate for the player to project on. It's about developing a character solely through their actions and the purity that comes with that form of expression. Dialogue and internal monologues introduce a lot of baggage. If a player doesn't like the main character's personality then they won't relate to his or her plight. This can undermine the emotional impact of the story as it relates to the protagonist. 

But as lilyWhite said, ultimately what matters is the quality of the writing. If it's good then there's no reason not to include it unless the plot demands a silent protagonist. You can do anything you want as long as it's good. 

 

[Token]

The concept that characters need to be blank slates, thus setting it up so the player super imposes them selves on a char for a character to be relatable, is a load of BS.

It's nothing but lies that lazy developers, and crappy writers came up with, so a lot of people would lets them get away with such.

This is way too broad a generalization. Some silent protagonists work very well for their game, to the point where you wouldn't want it any other way. Does anyone want to hear Gordon Freeman speak?

 

[Volz Rocksti]

I think the thing I struggle with the most regarding silent protagonists is that they often feel removed or recently introduced to the history and culture around them. Can anyone think of a game that successfully hafa silent protagonist that didn't feel alien to the surrounding history and culture? I'm tired of the amnesia/orphan/etc approaches but fear that giving a 25 year old character a history that includes a large, diverse family and grouo friends may strip too much player autonomy away. After all, the player character wouldn't need to be reminded of their own history, but large expository sections to catch a player up on the protagonist aren't fun either.

 

[Token]

I think the thing I struggle with the most regarding silent protagonists is that they often feel removed or recently introduced to the history and culture around them. Can anyone think of a game that successfully hafa silent protagonist that didn't feel alien to the surrounding history and culture? I'm tired of the amnesia/orphan/etc approaches but fear that giving a 25 year old character a history that includes a large, diverse family and grouo friends may strip too much player autonomy away. After all, the player character wouldn't need to be reminded of their own history, but large expository sections to catch a player up on the protagonist aren't fun either.

The aforementioned Gordon Freeman. If you're looking for examples from RPGs, the protagonist from Suikoden II, although he is much more of a blank slate type. 

 

[Zoltor]

I think the thing I struggle with the most regarding silent protagonists is that they often feel removed or recently introduced to the history and culture around them. Can anyone think of a game that successfully hafa silent protagonist that didn't feel alien to the surrounding history and culture? I'm tired of the amnesia/orphan/etc approaches but fear that giving a 25 year old character a history that includes a large, diverse family and grouo friends may strip too much player autonomy away. After all, the player character wouldn't need to be reminded of their own history, but large expository sections to catch a player up on the protagonist aren't fun either.

You could make char profile pages to handle such, here's a example:

 

[Milennin]

A silent protagonist only works for me when I have a lot of freedom in a game.


In a more linear game I prefer a character that has a personality.

Can anyone think of a game that successfully hafa silent protagonist that didn't feel alien to the surrounding history and culture?

Pokémon does?

 

[Matseb2611]

From my experience playing RPGs, I can easily get immersed in games that have main protagonists with fleshed out personality, so I don't think you need to make them a blank slate. The player is experiencing this character's journey, and hence they're playing the role of this character.

There is one important thing, however. If I am starting to find that the character irritates me to no end or makes way too many unrealistic decisions, then I lose immersion and no longer care for that character. So it's all about making the kind of character that the players would want to care about and someone who acts in step with the rest of the setting (as opposed to being some Mary Sue).

 

[Volz Rocksti]

@Milennin

While Pokemon meets those criteria (I had a good chuckle here) the player doesn't really make any decisions in the game that aren't 1) scripted and immutabale or 2) driven by their own personal history/family situation/cultural biases.

Y'all have given me a lot of good food for thought. I feel like I'll go the route of have a protagonist with a prominent personality. That said, what are some personality tropes/characteristics that really annoy you and get under your skin? I'm just curious at this point, seeing as how I have way different thresholds for some personality types over others.

 

[Uzuki]

@Zoltor I wouldn't say it's lazy or BS. The fallout games work great with a silent protagonist. It allows the player to build their own character out of the silent protagonist. IE Me and my friend are playing Fallout New Vegas at the same time. I'm playing as post-apocalyptic Jesus while he's just gunning everything that pisses him off. If the protagonist already had a personality, it would be weird to do certain actions or pick certain dialogue options. It could completely contradict the character the game had already created which can take you out of the experience. A example of characterization that contradicts gameplay is Grand Theft Auto 4. Niko is someone who moved away from his country so he could get away from the violence of war and live his life in peace. As we know this is GTA, a game where the first thing most players do is steal a car and run people down on the sidewalks. What ever violent act the player commits completely contradicts the character of Niko for most of the game until you get near the end of the game. There Niko realizes that he can't escape violence and he embraces it. But until then whenever a violent mission starts Niko is reluctant to do any of it.

 

[Matseb2611]

That said, what are some personality tropes/characteristics that really annoy you and get under your skin? I'm just curious at this point, seeing as how I have way different thresholds for some personality types over others.

I really really cannot stand playing as a character who acts like a jerk to everyone. Now a bit of brooding or shying away from people or acting badass is fine, but if the guy is just being nasty to every person, even those who are nice to him, then I just want to punch him in the face.

 

[Volz Rocksti]

Now a bit of brooding or shying away from people or acting badass is fine...

I dont think it's possible to create a non brooding protagonist! That's an RPG staple!

 

[Wavelength]

I don't think there is really a "right answer" to this question - only a series of unequally wrong ones.  It's damn near impossible, in any narrative-driven game, to create a character (whether "blank slate" or not) that will be able to make the same decisions that a player would make, and I think it's this dissonance between "what would I do here" versus "what did the main character actually do here" that makes it harder to fully connect.

On the whole - and it does vary by game - I've found it easier to connect with fully-developed main characters (rather than blank slates) but where I am occasionally given the option to make important decisions about how to approach a situation (such as which side to take in a conflict between kingdoms, or whether to give priority to a rescue mission or a revenge mission when one would endanger the other).

The main character needs to be likable, though (kindness, spunk, wisdom, vulnerability, intelligence, humor, and optimism tend to be traits I've found work well in creating likable characters), and they shouldn't ever make obviously bad decisions that a majority of players wouldn't make on their first time playing through the game.

Watching the MC do something idiotic and obviously wrong just makes me as the player want to disconnect myself from everything that's happening - the most arresting example of this that I can think of is Edge's decision on Earth in Star Ocean 4.  Up to that point the game had me enthralled - afterwards, it lost me.  I was no longer living a narrative, I was merely playing a game and watching a narrative.

I dont think it's possible to create a non brooding protagonist! That's an RPG staple!

Yes, the extremely brooding Lloyd Irving, Mag Launcher, and Maximilian prove this true.  No such thing as an optimistic, energetic RPG protagonist!

 

[Accendor]

When playing an rpg, do you find it hard to connect to a main character that is not a blank slate?

I would even go so far to say that I find it difficult to connect to a main character that IT a blank slate.

For me a character has to have a personally or I am not able to empathize for him.

 

[Schlangan]

My personal choice was to see the character you play respond, as if you're following a story. You are given some choices of action in given scenes, but typically, the personality will evolve as I designed it in the story. That way, you can really see the character evolve through the play.


Concerning the question of a character needing or not to be reminded of his past, in my game many characters have the ability to show past events. In that way, the story from birth of the main character will appear later on for his teammates who do not know everything about him. The main character himself will then remember things he forgot since then. Not really a case of amnesia, but only things he didn't come back to for a while, as he was preoccupied by many different things.

 

[BloodletterQ]

If there's freedom involved with the scenario, then the PC can be a blank state, otherwise it doesn't work with a heavy story. Whether silent or in the case of Robin in Fire Emblem Awakening, having customizable looks. Geralt in The Witcher, a game I'd describe as somewhere in between, is done right even if you can change his hairstyle.

 

[Kyonko802]

You don't need to make the PC a blank slate to allow freedom of choice in an RPG. You can, but you don't have to, and don't let anyone tell you that you do. Need an example? Look at The Witcher series. On the other end, don't think you can restrict the players freedom with a blank slate without some drawbacks that need to be accounted for.

 

[NichG]

For me, it comes down to what the game is going to be about. Both extreme ends of a fully blank character and a fully fleshed out but 'fixed' character can end up making me focus more on the game mechanics than the characterizations. A fully blank character just doesn't give me anything to go with to get engaged in the first place - there's no context to inspire me to imagine the character in any particular way. A completely 'fixed' character can be interesting if I like the character, but my actions in playing the game are now separate from the very things I found interesting - I'm playing the game to see the next bit of the story, not to actually engage with the character.

But between those two extremes, there's a lot of potential. I think the best is to give the protagonist a lot of context, but have one or two questions about the protagonist which the player's choices will help resolve over the course of the game. A good example of this is 'A Wolf Among Us'. The main character is pretty strictly defined from the beginning, and the plot is pretty linear, but the entire game is asking the player about the main character's motives and intentions - is he violent because his job and the situation demand it, or has he put himself in a position where an innate desire to be violent can be easily excused?

So the player has a choice, but its not a random arbitrary choice, its one that's built into the structure and plotline of the game at a deep level. I think this is important because games that try to cater to the 'random arbitrary choice' usually can't actually model the consequences of anything the player could choose to do - if you, e.g., decide to just kill everyone in Skyrim, sure, you get a bounty and such, but the world doesn't actually change or react to the fact that someone is single-handedly going around and slaughtering the population of a nation. If you decide to dump tons of money on a merchant, that merchant doesn't end up moving to a bigger house or getting branches in other cities. Since the game can't really render out every choice as clearly as the choices it was designed for, there's a sense of the player's attempts to self-characterized being ignored, and that decreases the impact of those choices.

But if the game knows what questions it is asking and asks just those questions, then every choice the player makes can be resolved to an equal degree. So then it feels that, out of the choices you do have, they're all legitimate choices you could make, and they can all have equally significant consequences.