Your Character Could Be Anyone

[Yahtzee Croshaw]

Your Character Could Be Anyone

The trouble with games like your Dragon Age or your Skyrim is that you choose every action, every line of dialogue, and every moral choice that your character makes, as well as their appearance.

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[Evonisia]

Interesting metaphor for the series, I think the Aliens thing was just done because they had to get wackier than Saints Row: The Third somehow.

Fitting that Saints Row got it's own identity just after GTA IV, shone brightly then crashed down and neatly essentially ended just before GTA V.

 

[Yahtzee Croshaw]

I never thought about recreating my SR2 character in the Third... maybe it's time to play it again.

Too bad SR 2 while being the best didn't have a Russian female voice, so I can't retro-update my character.

I agree that the customization was the best because once you created your character, you barely had any choice, the character play themselves. I wish sometimes newer Fallouts could have some of this. Not all, just a little.

Interesting metaphor for the series, I think the Aliens thing was just done because they had to get wackier than Saints Row: The Third somehow.

Oh, they could tried with a grasshopper species coming from the inside of the earth, it'd be as wackier, but yeah, I agree with the "only way forward is way out of line" theory.

 

[Ryan Hughes]

Great Article. I think Yahtzee is right here.

When you get right down to it, writing is about characters. And you risk paralyzing your own story if your main character has no character. The silent protagonist is something I have grown quite tired of, despite how many good games feature them.

I find the difference between what we call 'immersion' and 'projection' interesting too. In a game like Half-Life 2, you are clearly called to project onto Gordon Freeman, a character that -when you think about it- has never actually appeared in any of his games. Same with games that let you customize your own avatar, essentially, you are called to be more projective onto them.

However, a game like Silent Hill 2 is tremendously immersive, without needing to have a blank slate for its character. We are not really called to project onto James Sunderland, and we can observe his actions and flaws from a certain distance, but it is still as impacting as if we had created him ourselves.

 

[nin_ninja]

I think the reason the Saints Row series isn't considered an RPG or anything similar to it (even though you can choose the look and upgrade of your boss and gang) is because the boss is his/her/its own character. The identity of the boss isn't the looks or voice, but the personality displayed. A personality which only changes slightly depending on the voice option chosen.

 

[Diablo1099_v1legacy]

Might I be the first to say, Yahtzee really missed out on something by not posting an appearance of Spider.

 

[Worgen]

Actually your character did talk in the first saints row, it only happened like three times though. Once for each gang and it happened on the last mission if I remember right. The only one I really remember was going up an elevator and Johnny Gat was saying he was going to skull fuck someone who had Meg Griffins voice, your character tells him he will get herpes or something, everyone just looks at your character.

 

[shintakie10]

Actually your character did talk in the first saints row, it only happened like three times though. Once for each gang and it happened on the last mission if I remember right. The only one I really remember was going up an elevator and Johnny Gat was saying he was going to skull fuck someone who had Meg Griffins voice, your character tells him he will get herpes or something, everyone just looks at your character.

The only line I remember was the very last one. Think you were talkin to some guy and you say "Can we hurry this up? I want to go to Freckle Bitches." Then the boat explodes, the end.

 

[FallenMessiah88]

That's a pretty interesting way of looking at the Saints Row series. It also makes for a rather epic journey. Something which I find very interesting.

 

[BrotherRool]

I think this might not have been their initial idea, but identity did indeed become the main franchise focus. The idea as celebrity as a form of super-ID where you're yourself to a much larger degree than anyone around you was definitely present in 3 (and what I liked about 3) and it fits well with the idea of a sandbox where you're free to do whatever you want, so what you do says something about you. And then we live in an age where Obama is a super-celebrity and projects the same force of will and personality that's an evolution from a normal celebrity. If you look at all their posters, it was clearly what they were going for with this one.

And in each game you can customise yourself more and do more and more outlandish, stylish expressive things. From jacking car, to jumping through the windscreen to tossing the cars hundreds of feet in the air.

...but I disagree with the story. Maybe it's about being lucky with who you choose, but the story often really clashed with my personality in an unreconcilable way. I couldn't figure out how torturing people in Saints Row 2 fitted in

 

[Evonisia]

Actually your character did talk in the first saints row, it only happened like three times though. Once for each gang and it happened on the last mission if I remember right. The only one I really remember was going up an elevator and Johnny Gat was saying he was going to skull fuck someone who had Meg Griffins voice, your character tells him he will get herpes or something, everyone just looks at your character.

"I'm gonna skullfuck that *****!"

"Hope you don't mind hepatitis"

Yeah, but the best line he has is when Dex asks Luz what's in her bag, she says that it's the latest shoes and your character goes "Bullshit, that's last season's heels!".

 

[DataSnake]

Let's continue the analogy a bit further: the alien invasion represents THQ going under. It's a problem on a higher scale of abstraction than the individual game, just as an interstellar empire is on a higher scale than an individual planet. But just as the alien invasion gives the Saints access to weapons, vehicles and superpowers they never would have had otherwise, the demise of THQ gives the Saints Row series a chance to do things it was never allowed to do before, like explore Shaundi's struggle with survivor's guilt and openly support modding.

 

[Something Amyss]

Isn't that the point of RPGs? To role-play? Be it in videogames, tabletop games, or in the bed room, it's still you who's playing someone else. Of course they can't surprise you since it's you who's making the decisions.

Games like Skyrim are bland, open, and meaningless. Little you do is of consequence outside of superficials, and they even go out of their way to make sure you don't close off paths.

Playing a character doesn't generally mean ultimate freedom and the like.

I mean, if that's what tickles you fancy, go for it. If that's what you think of when you think "role-playing," though, you're not really using it in any conventional sense.

One of the best things about other forms of roleplaying (both tabletop AND the bedroom) is that you bump up against the characters and actions of other people. RPGs give you a sandbox to run around in, but not much real chance to develop character or to have your actions tested. VRPGs are so scared of making you do things that they'll let you meander on even the most urgent of things until you accept the latest mission, if even then.

"The fate of the world hangs in the balance! But only if you take this quest and follow this marker."

And I daresay, in other forms of roleplaying, there's an outside imperative. Whether it be your GM or your lover, if you decide that your character is going to go out and chop wood for 37 hours, someone's not going to stand for it.

In a sense, "have it your way" can actually hurt a roleplaying experience. But then again, in a world where most of us live in insulated bubbles and don't even get news that doesn't speak to us, in an on-demand world, is it any wonder that the minute we're asked to do something we don't want to we whine like entitled kids?

Roleplaying a constructed character is valid as roleplaying, often times more so than the so-called "open-world" RPGs that have become the hallmark of the "true roleplayer[sup](TM)[/sup]" which is less about roleplaying and more about self-gratification. To continue your bedroom reference, it's less roleplaying and more masturbation. And these games tend to be carefully crafted around stroking your ego as the Messiah, the Chosen One, The Next Big Thing, whatever.

And OT: I think Yahtzee's trying too hard to force a metaphor here. But then, Saints Row 3 was a hollow, shallow experience and from what I hear, SR4 is more of that but "zanier." Maybe it does reflect "us."

 

[LordMonty]

I missed the russian voice in creation but in many ways my character just wandered her way to then edn of the world and it does feel a complete story

 

[Psychobabble]

Can't say I feel the same. For me the rise of modern game narrative has driven a large wedge between between the game and myself making immersion into these kinds of games with a heavy emphasis on dialogue and plot, unpleasantly difficult. If I wanted to enjoy a story where I didn't have control over what the character was doing, I'd just watch a movie.

When I play a game I want to be in total control, and not some impartial or at least semi-partial observer. When these modern games start dropping plot device roadblocks in my way in the vain attempt to make a rather shallow form of entrainment feel far more grandiose or meaningful than it actual is, all it does for me is make me is to unimmerse me from the game in the same way an outside distraction such as a phone call or an annoying commercial during an exciting television show would have.

Maybe it's because of the games I played in my childhood and teen years. I don't remember suffering from existential ennui when playing games such as Space Invaders or Asteroids. I don't recall feeling existential dread when controlling the space marine in Doom to blow away hoards of space demons without any cut scenes where he pauses and reflects on what this all means. For me none of that was needed.

Personally I find this attempt by companies for the past few years to add drama and semi-interactive story to these games, feels about as silly and immersion breaking as having breaks during a sports event where the players reenact scenes from Shakespeare to try to add a bit of class to the event.

Sound and furry signifying nothing, indeed.

 

[Darth_Payn]

I'm down with bringing back Riddler-chic. But it needs the cane. The Riddler's style is NOTHING without the cane!

But back to the discussion of character: With sufficient room (the game's not railroading you from Points A to B to C etc.), you don't need your main character to be a complete blank slate (the nameless, voiceless, faceless dork) to have your decisions and actions define his personality. Take Desmond Miles, in the present day parts of the Assassin's Creed saga. Not just reading his teammates' email messages, either. You could choose to make Desmond talk to them, or not. You could choose to let him out of the Animus to stretch his legs, or not.

Spoiler: Assassin's Creed II/Brotherhood spoilers

At the end of AC II, when Dr. Vidic leads that Abstergo raid on the hideout, I chose to have Desmond not kill any of the soldiers, so that meant he was still hesitant about his Assassin heritage and using death as a means to an end. But that made it all the more poignant at the end of Brotherhood, when Desmond was forced to assassinate Lucy, making her his first confirmed kill.

Mod Edit: Added spoiler tags

 

[Kenjitsuka]

"I'm not sure what the aliens mean, in that case. It's possible they just got bored at that point, kind of like I am now with this argument."

Har har! ^_^
Good argument as always, thanks!!!

 

[mjc0961]

In the first game you're a new member of the Third Street Saints, and it was the only game in which your character could not speak.

That's not entirely true. "Hope you don't mind hepatitis!" is still one of the best moments of the entire series.

I think the reason the Saints Row series isn't considered an RPG or anything similar to it (even though you can choose the look and upgrade of your boss and gang) is because the boss is his/her/its own character. The identity of the boss isn't the looks or voice, but the personality displayed. A personality which only changes slightly depending on the voice option chosen.

I know for a fact that the reason Saints Row isn't considered an RPG is because it's not an RPG. It's an open world third person shooter.

I mean really, you're just trying way too hard here. I look forward to your detailed explanation as to why Gran Turismo isn't an RPG.