298: Who Needs Friends?

[LadyMint]

Depending on the game, forming friendships and other relationships are often a part of the gameplay. You're stumbling into a town that you've never been in before, nobody knows you, so it's time to put your social skills to work. But I definitely agree that it seems strange so many heroes are friendless nobodies. I like it better when (just as an example) my hero has a small village that they came from which was wronged by the greater evil of the world, inspiring them to go out and set things right. It at least gives them a toehold of why they even care that evil is taking over the world, instead of the usual, "I just happened to be in the neighborhood and the only one with the stones to pick up a weapon and do something" excuse.

 

[JamesBr]

Very interesting read. I am reminded of the Mother series (Earthbound). Now there is a game series that integrates characters into the game. Go to the club house in Onett and talk to other kids who recognize you and who you apparently hung out with before the events of the game. All the playable characters are like that. Everyone in Twoson is afraid for Paula's safety and is relieved when she returns safely, Jeff's roommate actually calls YOU, the Player, and asks you to take care of his friend. Mother 3 takes this to a whole other level with EVERY character (even the minor ones). All the dialog changes every time you progress the story, every character reacts progressively to the plot and your pcs affect real change in the game world. I've never seen that kind of characterization before or since. The difference it makes in the empathy generated in the player is simply amazing. You actually feel something for these characters, even though they are low-res, brightly coloured sprites.

I'm not really trying to make a point here, this article simply reminded me of this great example of character integration. If you haven't played them, for shame, they're some of the best RPGs out there.

 

[brick]

Firstly, AMAZING READ!

The Darkness has one amazing example that I always pull out of my ass. It concerns your girlfriend Jenny...and it's an incredibly simple yet emotional scene where you spend the night with her. You can choose to leave early, choose to tell her what you really do, or choose to sit down with her and watch an entire movie. It's epic, and it's what makes the game so powerful.

I agree strongly with this, The Darkness was fantastic for making you care for the characters and from the beginning I hated having anything happen to Jenny, and genuinely wanted to seek retribution for her/my sufferings (my as in the protagonists)

I think the best relationships in games are those that are formed from some sort of direct interaction from the NPCs. For example when your team genuinely helps you out on Mass Effect or GOW. I know GOW was mainly about your actions, but every now and then Baird/Dom/Cole would catch a locust trying to flank me, thus making me glad that they were actually there.

Halo was mentioned above, and i'm not sure if it's just my naive fan-boy love for the series talking but I genuinely think there are quite a few strong bonds in the game. The part of the article that talks about no interaction between the spartans is mainly due to them being the last of their kind etc, however the soldiers do look up to you and need you to suvive a lot of the time. A better example is probably when fighting alonside the Arbiter/Elites/Spartan IIIs, as they can look after themelves in a fight and will generally watch your back; couple this with the fact that a lot of scenarios set them up to be helping you in your mission (eg when the Elites drop down in Halo 3 to combat the flood) and add some witty/over-the-top dialogue and IMO you have a perfect reason to at the very least see them as an equal in the parametres of the current mission.

I think it's probably how 'into' games you get, if you get fully immersed into a AAA game's story, chances are you'll relate more to the playable character and the NPCs, but if you blast through it just for the gamerscore, then you won't take as much from it.

Or I may just be a sad young man that needs to get out more

 

[BlueHighwind]

Having played a lot of RPGs, it seems like video game characters to me ALWAYS have friends. Why else do all these guys follow you around all the time?

 

[Zydrate]

The New Vegas point is debateable. After all, some of the Companions you gain are very friendly towards you. Veronica comes to mind. You can even get her a dress!

 

[NobodyHereButUsTrees]

However I need to do what I always have to do when someone mentions the Courier. They are building up to something. Go visit the Caravan Waste in New Vegas and see the graffiti taunting him. The corpses with his name above him. Complete Dead Money right and you will see the scene about "Two couriers fighting under the old flag at the great divide." Don't get me wrong the fact that no-one remembers him is quite vexing but they are working on changing that by building up to something.

I believe there was a whole back story between the Courier and another courier named Ulysses who was supposed to be in Vegas, but got scrapped and planned as DLC.

http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Ulysses

 

[Shellsh0cker]

The classic excuse is that games make the main character a blank slate into which the player can pour himself (or, in those rare cases, herself). And in theory, this sounds good. But if I'm supposed to create a backstory, an appearance, a style, and a personality for my character... why aren't these games allowing me to insert it? There's no place for my tale to fit, and no tools to help me wedge it in there.

The game and its protagonist are missing flavor, and providing you no seasonings. It's the same trick restaurants pull with "rich people food." You throw down $50 for an appetizer, find it awful, and you're told it's "an acquired taste," implying there's something you were supposed to bring to the table. For $50, that shit better come with taste.

Well said, nice analogy. Allow me to expand: it's like this, developers. I am not a blank slate. I don't go through life never speaking or reacting to anything. Having the character go through life never speaking or reacting to anything makes them less relatable, not more. If you want me to impose myself on the character, that's fine, even commendable, but I have to have some means of doing that. Again, I point to Mass Effect. Perhaps I'm noble and selfless. Perhaps I'm a racist bastard. The point is that I can decide. Remember what a slate is: a writing surface. For it to work, I have to have something to write with.

Bringing this back to the topic, my character feels more like a part of the world if he or she has character and personality, whether they are defined by the developer or by me. To know others, we must first know ourselves.

 

[Neuromaster]

Parts of this article I like, parts I don't. My biggest issue is that it focuses mainly on storytelling & character, and not enough on the mechanics of a playable game.

In a FPS, I see some room, but the story usually isn't played out through dialogue and people tend to dislike AI teammates. There's some room there granted, but I'd venture to say that players are more interested in exercising agency by affecting the world than listening to pre-scripted dialogue.

In a RPG there's quite a bit of room, and I'd argue some games do it quite well. Bioware and Bethesda come to mind immediately because those are what I play. New Vegas's blank slate issue a inevitable consequence of choosing an "in media res" introduction - if you want to allow players to choose if they like someone, everything has to start after the player begins the game. I don't want an "old buddy" with an irritating accent popping up and my only two options are "Hey, buddy!" and "Great to see you again!".

Action games are maybe one of the trickiest but most potentially rewarding places to think about how to expand friendship within the narrative of a game. Players tend to expect less personal agency over their character's personality and relationships than in a RPG, and are more willing to listen to scripted dialogue than in a FPS. An example that I've played might be Prototype. With relatively few minutes of cutscene I actually became somewhat attached to my sister Dana, and I was enraged when

Spoiler

she was abducted by the Leader-Hunter

I think that kind of thing could certainly be done better and more frequently, especially in action games.

 

[mattaui]

Another excellent read by Mr. Wendig. He spouts vast amounts of equally madness-inducing genius over at his site at terribleminds.com, though more about writing in general and less about games.

I see a lot of replies in this thread that seem to be confusing making friends with already having friends. Most characters in a novel or a movie, for instance, make mention of their past and with friends they had, and quite often the story itself draws on that past and those friends, even while they're making new friends (and enemies) and setting the stage for the story to come. Far too many video game characters seem to have been disgorged from solitary confinement or returned from a twenty year trip to Mars, so that they've got no support or allies and must start anew.

Certainly, some games are tailor made for such a setup, but when it's the default in so many of them, it begins to feel a little lazy on the part of the game's writers, unless the game demands it. I've already seen mention of people disliking their in-game friends, and that's always going to be a matter of taste. GTA IV, for instance, made you feel less like your cousin was a friend and more of a liability, while Alyx, whom I enjoyed, was annoyingly cloying or chatty for some people. Every so often someone does just want to play Mr. No Name Loner Killer, and that's all they're interested in. I had a friend who never wanted to play games where you had to rely on a party or a team, for instance, much less have people from your past come bugging you.

What Chuck is really focusing on is making the game's narrative more compelling, and that requires both an interesting story and interesting characters. A person's past and their previous relationships is a large part of who they are. A secret agent who comes from a wealthy mercantile family and has friends throughout the business world compared to a secret agent who grew up in the slums and spent time in prison are both secret agents that can shoot a gun and save the world, but their stories are going to be so very different for where they came from and who they know.

 

[manaman]

I would love to see a larger emphasis on story telling in games. It makes the experience that much more amazing. Noticing things like this however shows just how much games can still develop as a storytelling medium. It's been a long road for sure, but we have longer still to go.

Good points, but it's worth noting you can have great games and a decent story without playing the most sociable character on the planet. Portal, Hitman series, Prince of DouchePersia...if it fits, it works.

So while their is a loner theme (though not the most prevalent in video games), I think it has to be looked at in a case by case basis...I always thought the argument could be made that Mass Effect's Shephard could be more loner while still interesting...

Still quite amazing though what can be accomplished with such minor changes as you mentioned earlier in the article. What a difference it made in Half-Life just to have a few people call out your name and another to say he wants to meet up with you after work!

In portal a relationship is established with the computer. The computer obviously knows you from before you awoke in the test chamber. It may have turned psychotic and bent on destruction, but it's obviously not the first time you have been a test subject.

Hitman as well has allies. You have a relationship with the women on the other end of the comm, and in the first game several characters know the protagonist, he even enlists help from one.

I don't have a lot of experience with the new PoP games, but the old ones had a fair amount of story laid out in the game manual. Which for all the limitations of the time was as good as it was going to get.

The New Vegas point is debateable. After all, some of the Companions you gain are very friendly towards you. Veronica comes to mind. You can even get her a dress!

I got her so many dresses before I found out she wanted formal ware. I killed for a dress once. It made it that much better when she got excited about it.

 

[Broken Orange]

One of the most memorable moments in Half-Life 2: Episode 2, for me at least, didn't include the creepy robots that shoot exploding needles at you or Dog ripping apart a Strider. It was when Dr. Dr. Magnusson said that he would forgive Gordon for the "Microwave Casserole" incident if he was successful in his job.

Also, the scene with Alyx's near death was heart wrenching.

 

[ZeroMachine]

I have to say, I disagree about Desmond Miles being an example of a disconnected character being a bad thing... because he is. He was kidnapped. Considering that in the first game all he could do was walk from room to room, and in II and Brotherhood they were trying to stay hidden, it isn't that far fetched that he wouldn't come across any childhood friends.

Now, with that said, your article is dead right. I think that's why I've recently fallen in love with Dragon Age. No matter what origin story you start with, you have a friend, and when you come across them again in the world, depending on the type of character you're building, it'll be touching, hate-filled, or something else.

If more games put that into the story, instead of just blank-slating it (I fucking hate the complete blank slate) I think that stories in games would be a lot more immersive. Hell, look at Alan Wake. By all other standards, it's just a "good" game, but because of the fact that a couple of the characters know him, and he knows them, it feels real. Well, as real as a game about an author that fights possessed people can feel...

 

[Dice Warwick]

this is true, and even if you don't have friends, you do have people that know you. Like people you work with, or the people that work at you favorite lunch spot, or a bartender at the bar you stop by every now and then.

I can't remember other peoples names for the life of me, but I know that a lot of people know my name, and I'm a nobody.

 

[Ca3zar416]

A fair point. It would be nice to see a character with old friends and see how ht could have an effect on the game.

 

[Yureina]

A very interesting read indeed, and I agree. I think this might actually be why I was able to get into Fallout 3 much more than I have done so with New Vegas. Also, I think that those connections are a major reason why I have turned out to like Ezio in AC2 quite alot, which allowed me to get over my usual dislike for games that force me to play male characters. It would be nice to see more games that made it feel like its characters were part of the world, and had existed before the game began. Or, at least, to take the Fallout 3 approach and give a good reason for why a character would not really know the outside world so much.

 

[Top35]

one of the things i liked about dragon age 2 was that the characters actually seemed like your friends, who had their own stuff going on, and even had other friends themselves

I agree with this whole heartedly. Some of my favorite scenes in this game were when you come to talk to one of your group and find them speaking with another one of your group like they are friends as well.

 

[Dusk17]

I would rather see a loner character, i find that forced/established friendships with npcs is annoying. Its like this is bob, bob is your best friend, you like bob, there is no real connection when it is forced by the game.

 

[Jumwa]

I've said for a while now that single player gaming seems to be catered to and by introverted loners. That's not a jab, I too was once a bit of an introverted loner as a kid, spending a large chunk of time alone. It's also one of many reasons why gaming was so slow to spread beyond that original core of gamers; their focus on single player, not multi--and especially--co-operative gaming was a big turn off to the vast majourity of humanity.

 

[Michael O'Hair]

However I need to do what I always have to do when someone mentions the Courier. They are building up to something. Go visit the Caravan Waste in New Vegas and see the graffiti taunting him. The corpses with his name above him. Complete Dead Money right and you will see the scene about "Two couriers fighting under the old flag at the great divide." Don't get me wrong the fact that no-one remembers him is quite vexing but they are working on changing that by building up to something.

I believe there was a whole back story between the Courier and another courier named Ulysses who was supposed to be in Vegas, but got scrapped and planned as DLC.

http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Ulysses

In addition to a possible relationship with Ulysses, there is a dialogue script that indicates that the Courier has been out west in NCR territory before, specifically New Reno.

http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Bruce_Isaac

This is a combination of both personal projection on the part of the player (via a provided dialogue option), and character background that hasn't been entirely revealed in the currently released content. This may indicate that some or all of the character's close relationships (friends) are back west, or are operating in different areas, or dead. Is that fact important to the overall narrative of the game? Not really.

I'm a fan of projecting onto the characters I play, not simply playing by the script known by a few NPCs in the background story created by the developer's writers. But to facilitate that there should be more dialogue options to pursue that. A majority of the time the only dialogue options available equate to:

1. Okay. I'll help you fight the good fight.
2. Maybe. I'll help you, but for a price.
3. No. I'd rather not get involved.
4. No. I won't help you, and I'm robbing you. Gimme your all stuff right now.

Four options is really limited. I'd rather have more options, akin to the nine alignments in AD&D:

1. I'll help you, although it might be illegal, since the law is sometimes unjust.
2. Okay. I'll help you even though it might be illegal. I don't really care.
3. I'll definitely help you. That'll show the establishment and their unjust laws.
4. I'd help you, but your plan is against the law. No.
5. I'd rather not get involved.
6. I really don't care about your cause, and would prefer we never speak again.
7. I can't help you, and I'm turning you in to law enforcement.
8. I won't help you, and I think you should gimme all your stuff right now.
9. I can't help you, and I think I'll kill you right now.

This would allow more personalization and characterization in the game world, allowing the players to project onto the characters with their own personality. Perhaps I'm content with this due to playing all those mute amnesiac characters in the past.

Some video game characters have friends, but it doesn't help that all but a handful are locked in an underground bomb shelter for the entire game.

Side note: Lucca in Chrono Trigger never built me a jet-bike or powered exoskeleton because there was never a dialogue option to ask her.

 

[RandV80]

Yeah there was always something that bothered me when playing a Bethesda game, especially Oblivion, when it dawned on me that I'm basically playing Jim Carey's character from The Truman Show with the distinct feeling that the in-game world somehow unnaturally revolves around me. And as a fan of immersion I don't like that.

Making things even more annoying, whenever you have a group encounter, like that ruined city early in the storyline where you fight alongside some other guards or later in the sewer when you work with that spy, I long for some sort of connection with the characters so I tediously save & load my way through the encounters to ensure everyone comes out alive, and at the end of it all am reward with the usual blank stares as these characters had no meaning to their existince and it was unimportant if they lived or died.