Some would say the point of playing games is to offer a special brand of escapism, a way of branching out from the norm and assuming the role of a hero. Thanks to games we have been many things; race car drivers, ninjas, criminals, soldiers and professional athletes and the fundamental aspect of what makes these games fun, is the persona you govern with your joy pad.
Iconic game characters ooze attractive personality traits that make them so appealing. Dante from Devil May Cry, for example, bleeds style while looking awesome in everything he does and I have to say, I always feel pretty mint when I play that game and string together ridiculous combos without so much as breaking a sweat. I reckon a good game should let you get under the skin of the protagonist and invoke emotions throughout the course of the story.
The most significant instance where I ‘felt’ for a character while playing a game by far, was the death of a certain lead character in Final Fantasy VII. This is definitely my most favourite game in all my years as a gamer but it really hacks me off when folk cite this as the first time gamers felt true emotion while playing a game and all that guff. Sure, she had a vivid persona, but personal attachment to a game doesn’t necessarily need to stem from strong characters.
It’s entirely a case of ‘each to their own’ of course, but aesthetic quality can make people gaze in awe; like the first time you stepped out into Hyrule Field in Ocarina of Time, or encountered the first of the Colossi in Shadow of the Colossus.
Are character creation engines becoming a tad ridiculous?
What I’m curious about though, is this slowly increasing trend of games that let you create an avatar in your own image. I got a copy of Top Spin 3 over the weekend and it really is an awesome tennis game, but before I could get stuck into the career mode, I had to make myself, which is fair enough I suppose. But jeez-o! The options! I could choose from something like 45 different haircuts, 35 different jawlines, 12 eye shapes and so on. In the end, my digital counterpart looked a lot like me I have to admit, but I must have spent a good 25 minutes on this.
It’s odd though, there was nothing stopping me from making a random character, but I felt compelled to make a guy who looked as close to ‘myself’ as possible. If games start doing this a lot more, do we lose some of that characterisation games are so often good at?
Take Guitar Hero III, for example, I love playing as Axel Steel, with his stupidly out of proportion biceps and his metal haircut – EXTREEEEME!!! In Guitar Hero: World Tour, however, it looks like you will have to make yourself in the game and not to put myself down too much, but I don’t think I’d make an interesting character in any title.
So the question is, would you get more attached to a digital image of yourself in a game or do you feel at home with the larger than life characters developers come out with?
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