Character Names

[silversun101]

So... Capcom inserted a half-way interesting (and most of all: original) character dynamic into what is otherwise an utterly bland and generic JRPG, and then completely removed it for the Japanese version. What? Were they afraid their Japanese audience would spontaneously combust if exposed to new ideas?

How completely depressing.

To me, a big part of the appeal of Saints Row 2 is the whole "Just pick the character you like best and play that" aspect of it. Not just the visual customization, which is awesome, but the fact that you can choose from 6 different voices, that have full dialogue recorded for every cutscene and in-game bit of chatter, and even though the lines themselves are all more or less the same, the different voices all have clear personality differences in the way they deliver the lines.

More games should do stuff like that. Saints Row 2 is the only game I've played that really delivered on the "Play who you want!" idea. Well, so long as you want to play a sociopath.

Hell yes to Saints Row 2! Still one of my all time favorite games to come out of the current gen platforms. My gf at the time made a character that looked exactly like her (it was eery), I made one that looked exactly like me, then we spent the good part of that week blowing the hell out of Stillwater together. One of my best gaming experiences in recent memory.

 

[Enigma6667]

I personally love the option to change someone's name to Twattycake or Fagballs for comedic value, but for immersing us into the story, it's pretty half-assed.

Mass Effect was the only game to do it right, though. They said the main character's name no matter what you changed it to. His last name, however, is gonna remain as "Shepard", so they refer to him as "Shepard", "Commander", or "Commander Shepard", while still being able to giggle at the fact that you named your character "Vagina-Nipples".

 

[Veldt Falsetto]

Am I the only one that thinks it's ridiculously funny and a little depressing that Square Enix apparently thinks the only thing holding them back in the Western market is the muscle mass of their protagonist?

I'm beginning to think that Jun Takeuchi is right: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/100722-Capcom-Producer-Japanese-Industry-Has-No-Hope-in-Hell

Name a popular western action game where the main character isn't just a bodybuilder who has lost his gym that doesn't take all it's gameplay influence from japanese games and I may reconsider that westerners just want either muscles or floating hands with weaponry (because every character who isn't muscles has no personality) .

 

[Divine Miss Bee]

"Every member of your party in Nier has white hair, it's like a delivery of fetish gear got mistakenly delivered to the geriatric ward."

speaking of punctuation, that comma needs to be a semicolon.

(inner monologue: i can't believe i just grammar-trolled yahtzee. i feel accomplished, yet somehow unworthy.)

 

[Teshi]

I rather liked how they dealt with the name issue in Dragon Age. Simply calling you 'Warden' it only felt really weird when you'd reached a very close friendship with your companions and they still were calling you 'warden'
The 2nd time I played through the game I named my character 'Wardin' just so it sounded right.

Brilliant.

 

[sketchesofpayne]

There are other things you can do other than a name that personalize the experience of the dialog. For instance:

"Hey, you in the [item of clothing or armor the player character is wearing], get over here."
"So [Tall guy, pointy ears, or other physical characteristic], what'll it be?"
"Get that [currently equipped weapon] out of my face!"
"You may be an excellent [character's best skill], but leave the flying to me."
"I don't know how they handle things in [player-chosen hometown], but out here we take care of ourselves."

 

[Rayansaki]

Mass Effect got around the naming problem by having a set last name that every character calls you by. Though it gets weird when your love interest is still calling you "Shepard".

It kind of makes sense tho, since my character was Shepard Shepard.

 

[Rayansaki]

"Every member of your party in Nier has white hair, it's like a delivery of fetish gear got mistakenly delivered to the geriatric ward."

speaking of punctuation, that comma needs to be a semicolon.

(inner monologue: i can't believe i just grammar-trolled yahtzee. i feel accomplished, yet somehow unworthy.)

You could at least correct the grammar on your post, specially upper cases, so you don't allow him the pleasure of fighting back!

 

[Aquarion]

Back in the Mysts of time when Black & White came out, I played it a lot. One of the things that happened when you played was that whenever a villager died, the game would quietly whisper "Deeeeeeeeeeeeeath". At 3am, playing with headphones, this was just a little creepy.

Then, after a while, I heard the game whisper something I recognised, very quietly. I stopped what I was doing - hurling flaming shit at the enemy, as it happens - and waited for it to happen again. It didn't.

I went back to it, and again with the scary whispering. This time I caught it, and almost fell off my chair. The game was whispering my damn name at me. One of the very rare occourances of me using my first name for a profile, and it had caught that and used it. Absolutely terrifying.

(Looking in the game data files later on, I found they'd recorded whispers for about thirty common male, thirty common female names.)

 

[ERadical]

ME2 did it well as I'm sure has been mentioned countless times

 

[bjj hero]

Codemasters Racing games have been just recording a bunch of names and letting you pick from a list, So my adoring racing fans have been calling me by my first name since GRID

Thats a nice idea and better than most but the list of names does tend to be a little Eurocentric. I happen to be named Rez so it never worked for me.

Name a popular western action game where the main character isn't just a bodybuilder who has lost his gym that doesn't take all it's gameplay influence from japanese games and I may reconsider that westerners just want either muscles or floating hands with weaponry (because every character who isn't muscles has no personality) .

2 Words... Commander Shepherd.

My prefered choice is a relatable charecter, at that point it doesn't matter what his/her name is. Sqeenix seem to think that letting you choose your name gives them more Role play points. It's odd as that is normally the only choice you get to make all game, the rest is linear and predetermined.

 

[Xander_VJ]

Good point, but I think that's one of those easier-said-than-done things. To such a level that it's not worth it. At least for now.

As someone else has already said, this kind of synthesized voices are already done in Japan from time to time, and they work. But for once, they don't work because of their weird tastes. At least, not completely.

They work because the Japanese language itself is suited for it.

Japanese language phonetics are way simpler than the western languages' ones, by far. They don't have to combine syllables and sounds as much as we do. That's why they usually have to remove them is the western localizations, because it just doesn't work as well in other languages.

I remember that they did it in "The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures" for NGC, the most "out-of-the-radar" entry in the series. The Japanese version had a game mode that was some sort of party game where the players played in the GBA while in the TV the "The Wind Waker" characters were giving full-voiced tips to the players addressing them by the names they had already input.

It's been the only Zelda game to feature voice acting to date.

Since the player had to look at the GBA and at the same time understand what the characters were saying, subtitles on TV were completely out of the question. And the GBA screen was already busy as it was. Besides there was the problem that in Europe Nintendo always localizes to the FIGS as well (French, Italian, German, Spanish), so they had the challenge of localizing the feature to five different languages.

All for a (undeservedly) second rate Zelda game. It was not worth it for Nintendo, so they removed the game mode altogether in the western regions.

Too bad.

 

[JohnTomorrow]

You know what i'd like to see? A game where you have a main protagonist fight his way through the entire story, find the macguffin and rescue the princess and all that crap - then have an expansion pack retcon a specific part of the story to blow it out into a completely different path, changing the story entirely.

Perhaps you destroy the macguffin before the bad guy can use it. This forces him to play his hand, killing the princess and find another macguffin.

Or maybe the protag isn't even able to reach the macguffin. Bad guy uses it and starts to rule the world. The protag retreats, dispondant and depressed, hits the bottle hard and hides from the world...but he's the chosen one, so a different protag needs to dig the old one out, dust him off and give him a kick in the ass to get him back on track.

That would be awesome.

 

[Sylocat]

I tried entering the name "I Say" once, and I though they sounded more like P.G. Wodehouse characters than Foghorn Leghorn.

 

[Deofuta]

You know what is funny about this, there are already many good working synthesizers in a large amount of games, but I bet you don't play them

Sports sims, particularly the ones based on college basketball, use an excellent voice synthesizer that has accurately and naturally used my name many times. Bravo to EA, they got something right in those things

 

[Banana Phone Man]

I remember catching a Caterpie or Weedle in Pokemon, naming it penis and using "Harden"

Ah, the joys of naming characters...

I think I did something like that years ago and called it something that will get me told off here and only used the "lick" attack. They were amused and distgusted at the same time.

 

[Jhales]

I wonder why the Japanese version didn't keep the eye patch on. It's a common fad in Japan now to give their protagonist a stupid eye patch because they think it looks cool or something.

 

[Jhales]

Name a popular western action game where the main character isn't just a bodybuilder who has lost his gym that doesn't take all it's gameplay influence from japanese games and I may reconsider that westerners just want either muscles or floating hands with weaponry (because every character who isn't muscles has no personality) .

The cast of Team Fortress 2, except for the heavy, also Left 4 Dead 1 and 2. It's really good to see Valve giving character to their characters, instead of silent protagonists like Gordon and the girl in Portal.

 

[Hiphophippo]

I remember a friend buying the old Legends of Wrestling game for gamecube ( I think it was on gamecube ) and playing a few rounds with him. I made myself in the game with the character creation and input my name of course. However, when I was strolling down the aisle and getting in the ring the announcer comes over the PA yelling my name.

My actual name.

I shat brix.