Character Va Va Voom

Renault used the words Va Va Voom with the help of Thierry Henry to promote their range of cars, later on they also added Animal from the Muppets. Sadly I’m not Thierry Henry and even more drastically – I’m not Animal.

I can’t really give you a detailed explanation over what the term means, although the dictionary does list alongside its entry “exciting”, “vigorous” and “attractive”. Personally I prefer the “going that extra mile” take on the phrase.

We all love games, but we love the characters more. You mention Halo and someone will mention Master Chief, Little Big Planet, Sackboy and Tomb Raider, Lara Croft. It’s the characters that help bring us back for more, the bait on a fishing rod if you will.

One might even look at successful games and take a look at their characters; do they have any prominent ones? The answer in my eyes would be a straight forward yes. Just taking a look at my shelf of games and my obsession with having things laid out in a certain way has led to my favourite games all making their way into one pile. I’d say a rough estimate would see about 80% of them have characters that have that “Va Va Voom” about them, the Big Daddy in Bioshock, the Left 4 Dead quartet and perhaps my favourite amongst the bunch, the Team Fortress 2 line up.

Team Fortress 2 is a good example of what I’m trying to talk about. On paper the game doesn’t actually sound ‘that’ great, but its execution of what it sets out to do is just superb, but ask yourself this, would Team Fortress 2 work if the characters were generic action hero a, b and c?

It probably wouldn’t, the character design that’s gone into TF2 is simply superb and in my opinion one of the best things about the game. The style of the characters doesn’t just stop at any promotional video (seriously, go watch the “Meet the…” series) or artwork, but it carries on throughout the game.

Mass Effect was a game I really enjoyed, so much so it was the first game I ever bought DLC for. But what about the characters? The background characters were great, but the main character? Stick Commander Shepherd straight into the box labelled “generic action hero” please. The game would have been that much more enjoyable if he wasn’t so bland, so basic… so generic.

Of course the use of generic action hero does work in some cases, Gears of War as an example, but there was just enough life in Dom and Marcus to see them through, although probably helped over the finish line by Cole.

There’s a lot to say about game design these days, and with an ever growing emphasis on DLC and meeting release deadlines, as well as being in a year of sequel amongst sequel it’s hard to see where exactly the next Big Daddy is going to come from.

We could do with a few more engaging characters in the gaming world, they are after all the ones we use to portray our actions in game, or interact with, so why not make them engaging and interesting?

[Tina Tuner]We don’t need another bland hero[/Tina Turner], we need more like Reaver, Sackboy and Guybrush Ulysses Threepwood, we need a few more characters with Va Va Voom.