Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
in the past with games such as Gauntlet and Diablo 2 , but also in more recent titles
including The Warriors and To n y Ha w k' s P r o Sk a t e r 2 . Although the lead character
in Obscure is a Caucasian teenage male, some of the other characters are left open-
ended. When you determine aspects such as a character's appearance, background
story, and interests, you're also going to identify what makes them different from
each of the other characters. Players end up choosing the value of a character's play
on what they're able to do. It's easy here to fall into stereotyping abilities based on
race, so carefully consider the implications of your writing. Find real people to inspire
your characters.
Even when writing sidekicks, where most racially diverse characters get slotted,
take care in rounding out their personalities. Of course, don't expect the program-
mers on the team to read your lengthy background stories. However, taking the time
to work on the context of a character even just for you will make writing dialog and
actions more natural later on. Sergeant Johnson in Halo is remembered as a solid
heroic sidekick, in part due to the decisions he makes and his honorable assistance
up until his death in Halo 3 .
The overall cast of characters can also influence impressions of sidekicks. In
Darkwatch , the juxtaposition of Tala, the femme fatale Native American, and Cassidy
Sharpe, the good-willed Caucasian blonde cowgirl, creates a very apparent good vs.
evil/white vs. Native simplification of the characters. If you choose to side with Tala,
who you've been seduced into biting, you end up remaining a vampire, but if you
follow Cassidy, who tragically dies and continues as a spectral guide, you redeem
yourself. The actions of the characters are just as important as their appearances and
abilities.
In some cases, character appearances can lend to racial ambiguity. Particularly
in Japanese games, such as the Pokemon series and Oni , the characters tend to lean
between Asian and Caucasian features and draw from manga-style modes of expres-
sion. This is certainly a style in and of itself, but ambiguity dips into other games as
well. Torque in The Suffering is left anonymous in his background, other than that
you as the player determine whether he murdered his family or was framed based on
your negative or positive actions throughout gameplay until the revealing cutscene
at the end. Throughout the Halo series, the main player character Master Chief is
fully covered in armor with his face covered. However, in an excerpt of a topic based
on the games, one of the writers described him as “white� beneath the armor. This
is a case where the character could have been left completely ambiguous, but writ-
ing had a direct impact on the character's racial representation. With characters that
are left ambiguous in their appearance, it is up to the writer to make the decision
whether to maintain ambiguity or determine ethnicity. In some cases, ambiguity is a
preference. Master Chief may have been better left ambiguous so that players could
identify closer with him if race impacted that connection.
In any genre you're writing for, it's certainly viable to look back at stories told
before us and find ways to transform them into games or take methods of telling
stories and use them in games.
In this way, ethnicity can be represented beyond
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