Complex Characters

[RelexCryo]

This is loosely related to videogames, but also ultimately goes off topic. I hear a lot of people complaining about cardboard characters, a lack of complexity, and a lack of character development in videogames. This confuses me.

To my knowledge, character development in Videogames is roughly similar to character development in pretty much every other artform.

Let me give a few examples: Juliet from Romeo and Juliet is a teenager in love. Every act she takes is derived from those 3 words: Teenager in love. She in no size, shape, or form, ever manages to be more than a teenager in love. Those three words define her entire existence. The same is ultimately true for Romeo.

In Les Miserables, Jean Valjean starts out as a convict, becomes a good man who is rich, adopts a girl. that is pretty much everything you could possibly want to know about him, he has no more depth than that. He is arguably a cardboard character.

EDIT: Keep in mind, this is a question of comparison- the question is, do characters in videogames feature far less character development or complexity than characters in literature?

 

[Lilani]

This is going to sound silly, but I found a Team Fortress 2 fanfiction recently that has some great character development. In fact, the author starts out the first chapter with a note saying that they wrote it out of spite, because most of the TF2 romance fanfictions are just meaningless fluff with characters who are just as meaningless.

Here it is, if you're interested. [http://www.fanfiction.net/s/6211518/1/It_Could_Be_Worse] I highly recommend it. It's well written, well paced, and most importantly character driven. It may be a bit hard for you to get at first if you aren't familiar with TF2 or the characters, but you can get to know them well enough if you just watch Meet the Sniper [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9NZDwZbyDus] and Meet the Spy [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OR4N5OhcY9s&feature=relmfu]. The story explains itself pretty well as you go, too.

Usually fanfictions aren't much to read, but this one just grabbed me by the heartstrings and would not let go.

EDIT: Guess it would help if I put in the link, huh.

 

[RelexCryo]

This is going to sound silly, but I found a Team Fortress 2 fanfiction recently that has some great character development. In fact, the author starts out the first chapter with a note saying that they wrote it out of spite, because most of the TF2 romance fanfictions are just meaningless fluff with characters who are just as meaningless.

Here it is, if you're interested. [http://www.fanfiction.net/s/6211518/1/It_Could_Be_Worse] I highly recommend it. It's well written, well paced, and most importantly character driven. It may be a bit hard for you to get at first if you aren't familiar with TF2 or the characters, but you can get to know them well enough if you just watch Meet the Sniper [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9NZDwZbyDus] and Meet the Spy [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OR4N5OhcY9s&feature=relmfu]. The story explains itself pretty well as you go, too.

Usually fanfictions aren't much to read, but this one just grabbed me by the heartstrings and would not let go.

EDIT: Guess it would help if I put in the link, huh.

Uh...is that a homoerotic fanfiction? Because I am not really interested in reading that, though I will admit the writing in the first chapter was good.

 

[Lilani]

Uh...is that a homoerotic fanfiction? Because I am not really interested in reading that, though I will admit the writing in the first chapter was good.

That's what I thought at first too, but it's so much more than that. The character development is amazing and it's really all about them as people. It's not one of those fanfictions solely written for the homoeroticism. The characters feel so real and authentic. They felt more real than many love story characters I've read in published novels, and were much less dry to boot.

And there is nothing in there that they couldn't show on TV, apart from the swears ;-) I really, really recommend you give it a try. I promise it will be worth your time.

 

[Fiz_The_Toaster]

The Count/Edmund Dantès from Count of Monte Cristo comes to mind.

For a video game character I personally think James Sunderland from Silent Hill 2 is pretty damn complex.

Spoiler

Considering he went to the town to find his wife since she "sent him a letter", going deep into his own psyche only to find out that he actually killed her

 

[RelexCryo]

Your initial assumption is completely broken, sorry.

First of all, a character that's identifiable by a few key traits is not the same as a cardboard character. Many characters can be distinguished by a few key traits: it's how those traits play out that tells you about character development and what kind of character they are. If they play out in a way that would be believable in a real, flesh-and-blood person -- if they deliver a complex story and their own complex reality out of simple ingredients -- then you have a well-rounded and developed character. If we never have the opportunity to see them play out, then you have a work with no character development. If there are opportunities for them to play out but the character never grows or changes as a real person faced with similar situations would, then what you have is a cardboard character.

Shakespeare is noted for characters that develop believably and deliver poignant, complex struggle. Romeo and Juliet are about the arc of character development they go through together, not a list of traits each character has. Hamlet is one of the great characters of the stage because of his emotional struggles and torments, the complexity of the decisions he faces and the flawed ways he comes to terms with them; his basic traits provide the matter of the conflict, not its development. And so on.

Charles Dickens is in fact not particularly notable for characters with depth in this sense. Neither are most videogames. If you honestly can't think of any artform or anyone outside of a single bloody writer, in thousands of years of human literature, that delivers well-developed characters, what this tells me is that you need this video:

No, you are confusing complex stories with complex characters. You can put the most cardboard character possible in a complex and confusing series of events, and they will feel a wide variety of emotions and deal with their problems in a flawed manner, unless their particular cardboard stereotype happens to be a flawless individual.

At one of the old schools I went to, there was a program called Accelerated Reader. It basically had you read books and take tests based on those books, then you were given points. Every book in the library was given points. I broke the school record for those points, by earning roughly 50% more than anybody else.

I have read many, many books. And I am tired of people confusing a cardboard character's monotonous reactions to a complex series of events for character complexity.

 

[Sightless Wisdom]

There is no such thing as a complex character the way you see it. If human nature is too simple, if reactions to situations do not create complexity, than nothing will. If you understand the human psyche perfectly, there ceases to be any complexity or unexpectedness in any believable character in any piece of writing whether it be for a play or a videogame. Your essentially being pedantic with the accepted definition of a complex character.

 

[Arsen]

Every character in "A Song of Ice and Fire". They act and behave like actual people with likes, dislikes, hatreds, and loves. Technically there are no villains in this series. To quote the author Joe Abercrombie "Everyone believes they are the hero...".

 

[RelexCryo]

No, you are confusing complex stories with complex characters. You can put the most cardboard character possible in a complex and confusing series of events, and they will feel a wide variety of emotions and deal with their problems in a flawed manner

No. You simply don't know what the terms you are using mean, I'm sorry. If a character reacts believably to events, they are by definition not a cardboard character. If you insist on using an idiosyncratic definition of this term, you're just insisting on not being able to communicate with other people when talking about characters.

At one of the old schools I went to, there was a program called Accelerated Reader. It basically had you read books and take tests based on those books, then you were given points. Every book in the library was given points. I broke the school record for those points, by earning roughly 50% more than anybody else.

That system sounds like an absolute horror, and those people did a horrible thing to you, and I'm sorry. It's quite evident from what you've said here that their points system did not teach you how to comprehend or analyze what you were reading.

You say believable. Define believable. Many human beings have mental conditions that cause them to act in an unusual manner. What is "believable" about how a character acts? Any conceivable course of action is believeable, period, simply because humans do not necessarily act in a logical fashion.

 

[Tomo Stryker]

SNIP

Uh...is that a homoerotic fanfiction? Because I am not really interested in reading that, though I will admit the writing in the first chapter was good.

Ya, you kind of tricked us into that. *Wages Index Finger*

OT: Well you can only keep creating so many characters before you start looping back. I have a question for those who complain about cookie cutter characters. What character are you looking for that isn't cardboard?

 

[Somatsu]

I would venture that Midna was one, James Sunderland, Leliana, Morrigan and Zevran from DAO for a few others.

 

[conflictofinterests]

Harry Dresden from the Dresden Files series by Jim Butcher.

Arguably Harry Potter, though Rowling did kind of veer towards dumb angsty teen in the latter half of the series.

I would also like to point out that character development is a legitimate source of depth. Who are we as people if not for our experiences? Much of the dimension of anyone you care to meet in real life was developed at some point, unless you're talking about a congenital defect. So too with characters, though you may be in the process of bringing them out of cardboarddom.

 

[RelexCryo]

No, you are confusing complex stories with complex characters. You can put the most cardboard character possible in a complex and confusing series of events, and they will feel a wide variety of emotions and deal with their problems in a flawed manner

No. You simply don't know what the terms you are using mean, I'm sorry. If a character reacts believably to events, they are by definition not a cardboard character. If you insist on using an idiosyncratic definition of this term, you're just insisting on not being able to communicate with other people when talking about characters.

At one of the old schools I went to, there was a program called Accelerated Reader. It basically had you read books and take tests based on those books, then you were given points. Every book in the library was given points. I broke the school record for those points, by earning roughly 50% more than anybody else.

That system sounds like an absolute horror, and those people did a horrible thing to you, and I'm sorry. It's quite evident from what you've said here that their points system did not teach you how to comprehend or analyze what you were reading.

You say believable. Define believable.

Sure. A believable character is one whose actions are plausibly native to that person's temperament given what readers know or can guess about them (and their setting or context). There are of course a huge number of possible plausible choices for any given character -- that's where narrative tension in stories comes from, not knowing which choice the character will make -- but not an infinite number of them (otherwise all such tension would dissipate and no character would be distinguishable from another). Most works of literature, not having lifetimes to establish all the background elements of a character, give us the basics in summary before developing them. (This includes Dickens, BTW.) Complexity arises in the development of those elements, whatever their number.

Your turn. Is this "Accelerated Reader" business as horrid as it sounds, and as I suspect it is? In racking up your score, did you fail to come across mention even in summary of any of these books:

The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Paradise Lost by John Milton
The Iliad (any translation)
Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu

I'm not asking if you've read them. Just if you've heard of them. Because they all provide extremely famous examples of literary characterization, and your claim about Dickens would seem to indicate that you're simply not aware that these examples and thousands beside them are out there. Your initial question is sort of like saying, "Has anybody heard of any religious texts that aren't the Book of Mormon? Because I'm pretty sure no other religious texts exist."

I have heard of all of them. That said: based on your definition of complexity- complexity arising from the development of character traits, whatever their number- every video game character I can think of off hand, including Lara Croft, has a high degree of complexity. Which causes me to wonder why people keep complaining about a lack of complexity in video game characters.

 

[Mikeyfell]

This is loosely related to videogames, but also ultimately goes off topic. I hear a lot of people complaining about cardboard characters, a lack of complexity, and a lack of character development in videogames. This confuses me.

To my knowledge, character development in Videogames is roughly similar to character development in pretty much every other artform.

Let me give a few examples: Juliet from Romeo and Juliet is a teenager in love. Every act she takes is derived from those 3 words: Teenager in love. She in no size, shape, or form, ever manages to be more than a teenager in love. Those three words define her entire existence. The same is ultimately true for Romeo.

In Les Miserables, Jean Valjean starts out as a convict, becomes a good man who is rich, adopts a girl. that is pretty much everything you could possibly want to know about him, he has no more depth than that. He is arguably a cardboard character.

The only characters I can think of with actual depth are in Charles Dickens novels, and that is simply a byproduct of the insane amount of detail Charles Dickens delivers. Can anyone here name a single complex, well rounded, well developed character in any concievable art form known to humankind that is not a work by Charles Dickens?

As shallow as those characters may be (I've read Les Miserables [sub]all 1000 pages of it[/sub])

The "Cardboard" videogame characters we're complaining about are Markus Fenix and his ilk.

Romeo, Juliet, and Jean Valjean may not develop much over the course of the story but they have personalities. Their actions are driven by their feelings.

Master Chief, Markus Fenix, and a million other videogame player characters are just soulless blobs that don't have emotions. they're actions are largely unrelated to them. They're blank slates that shoot things. Or the other extreme where their personality is overwhelmingly thick like Nathan Drake and Rubi from Wet. You wouldn't meet a human who acted like those characters.

It's the difference between an one dimensional character and a two dimensional character. then there are three dimensional rounded out characters with arcs and development and the like.

 

[deleted_by_strongbad]

I don't really agree with Dickens having the "deep characters" you are looking for, he was a huge fan of archetypal characters, and used them excellently.
Though to one of your detractors, I can't agree with the Iliad there either. Granted, the greek gods and such had feelings, were petty, etc. so compared to many of the other Epics there is a lot of development, but that is to say they are not mindless personifications of one or two concepts like masculinity (Beowulf). But beyond that, it is less a dynamic system and again the interaction of archetypes that are static in their roles and personalities.

Pretty much any of Somerset Maugham's characters are incredibly well developed.

One of my earliest experiences with pure character development was the Flotsam and Jetsam scene from the Two Towers, granted I had just gone from Beowulf to Tolkien, so that may have made it seem more exaggerated than it really was.

Also, most of Robert Anton Wilson's, James Joyce's, or Flann O'Brien's characters, are really well developed. Heck the first two pretty much write stories that are explicitly the collective head trips and emotional breakdown/awakening of their characters.

 

[RelexCryo]

I have heard of all of them. That said:

Nonono, not so fast. I'm keen to hear, if you're aware of all of these examples, why exactly your classification scheme disqualifies them from having well-rounded characters. Please explain.

based on your definition of complexitity- complexity arising from the development of character traits, whatever their number- every video game character I can think of off hand, including Lara Croft, has a high degree of complexity.

This tells me you don't know what the words "development of character traits" mean. Reacting to stimuli -- shooting something, solving a puzzle, crushing a headcrab -- is not the development of a character trait.

Upon finding out that there is a funeral in their honor, Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer hide in the rafters of the church holding the funeral. That is reacting to a stimuli.

Upon finding out that his home is full of suitors hitting on his wife, Odysseus kills them all.(Though that is the Odyssey, not the Illiad, admittedly.) That is reacting to stimuli.

One could argue that both are also development of character traits. But they do not function any more as development of character traits than any game mechanic.

 

[RelexCryo]

Upon finding out that there is a funeral in their honor, Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer hide in the rafters of the church holding the funeral. That is reacting to a stimuli.

Stimulus. Stimuli is plural.

One could argue that both are also development of character traits. But they do not function any more as development of character traits than any game mechanic.

Sure they do. The characters in the books react as they do because doing so is native to the content of their character; neither of the scenarios you describe are remotely equivalent to brute Tomb Raider puzzle solving. A game mechanic is usually simply a function of progression. If there's a character it typically tells you about -- if it leaves enough choice for choice to reveal character -- that character is generally the player. Some of the best games, of course, give a player the chance to shape a fleshed-out, three-dimensional character in-game through his choices using the mechanics. But if this was true of "every video game character," Deus Ex would not be the famous title it is.

I notice you avoided the first question in my post, by the way. Why is that? Are you unable to explain to me why those books would be supposedly devoid of well-rounded characters?

Generally speaking, Game mechanics are native to the content of the character. Example: Lara Croft kills other people simply to obtain rare artifacts that she wants. She risks death leaping across ledges to get rare artifacts that she wants. Romeo and Juliet endure similar problems because they love each other. Unless one assumes that romantic love has some objectively deeper value than acquiring magical artifacts, the two are fundamentally similar. Lara Croft is someone who wants magical artifacts, Romeo and Juliet love each other.

Secondly, I could not explain to you why most of the books you have listed are devoid of well-rounded characters, because I have not read most of them.

 

[Evidencebased]

For a complex or fleshed out character, I usually see if I can naturally imagine their behavior/responses in a variety of situations. For real people you can tell if they're acting oddly, and you can (somewhat) see if they're behaving "in character." (When someone comes into class and they're a bit off you can tell, for example.) You can see a game and say "oh, my cousin would love that!" or imagine "hmm, my friend probably wouldn't think that joke was as funny as I did" or the like. If I can go through a similar process with game or book/movie characters I think they're pretty decently written. If all I can imagine them doing is something stereotypical -- or just responding to any situation by shooting everything in sight? -- I'm less likely to consider them a well-rounded character. A good character is one where I might see them doing something out of character and instantly recognize it; "no WAY is Tom Sawyer politely buckling down to do his homework; that's not his style!" or "seriously, you think the Patrician (from Terry Pratchett's novels) would put up with that? Hell no; he's about to have someone gently murdered!"

TL;DR = if I can mentally interact with the game (or book/etc.) character somewhat like a real person, then I usually deem them a solid character. If I don't have enough of an idea of their desires, motivations, fears... then no, they're cardboard-y.

 

[WolfThomas]

Complex =/= better.

Spoiler: Take Cable from X-men for example (as much as I love the character)

Child of famous X-man Cyclops and a clone of Jean Grey, abducted as child and taken to limbo, rescued and infected with techno-organic virus. Taken two thousand years into the future by alternative universe half-sister. Cloned. Son is kidnapped. Travels back in time, son is killed in present. Defeats clone and evil dictator from future preventing own timeline from occuring. Wanders earth looking for meaning. Meets amoral mercenary, becomes pseudo-messiah for earth, makes perfect society on island, it is destroyed. Fakes death. Returns to take and raise a potentially re-incarnated Jean Grey (though it looks like that's going to be jossed) to the future before returning to preventing another bad future. Older than his father.

 

[Evidencebased]

snip

snip

Upon finding out that there is a funeral in their honor, Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer hide in the rafters of the church holding the funeral. That is reacting to a stimuli.

Upon finding out that his home is full of suitors hitting on his wife, Odysseus kills them all.(Though that is the Odyssey, not the Illiad, admittedly.) That is reacting to stimuli.

One could argue that both are also development of character traits. But they do not function any more as development of character traits than any game mechanic.

But you can imagine other characters reacting really differently to the exact same "stimuli" right? What if Romeo got back home and found Juliet getting woo'd -- Odysseus decided to kill all the other guys but Romeo would be just as likely to kill himself. And Huckleberry Finn would be like "well, that sucks" and run away again. And Othello would maybe jealously kill the woman being woo'd! And Hamlet would whine about it until everyone ended up dead.

Because we have an idea of their characters we can speculate about how they'd all react differently (even though it would be open for debate, of course.)