31st January 2005, 10:11 PM
Ryan Wrote:Take MGS. Snake is dropped onto an island near Alaska to stop terrorists from firing nukes. If this moron had his way, the whole game would be divided into levels, with no story or character development along the way. Snake would just be a cool spy dude, Liquid would be just another final boss, and Meryl and Otacon nothing more than physical objectives. It would have sucked huge. The gameplay of MGS is wonderful, but everyone loves Snake because he's human, and for all his awesome skill and ability, he has his flaws too, and we, as flawed, nowhere-near awesome sneaks, can relate to him better.
An excellent point. Personifying the characters in a video game allow you to not only relate to them, but go so far as to CARE for them. There are still fanboys crying about Aeris in FF VII, one the most story-rich games in existence. I still consider the ending cinema of FFX to be very powerful, even heartwrenching. The ending of MGS3 also had a lot of emotion behind it, and many others come to mind.
Creating bland characters with no background will make it difficult to care about the characters, and thus, care about the game itself.
The Earthworker Race has ended. Everybody wins.