Game Design: “Shadows on Deck” - The Game Maker's Companion: Game Development - page 168

and indeed many first-person shooters don't really need an elaborate story. That said, Valve still
managed to tell a great story in Half Life , with Gordon being just such a hero.
Make Him Fantastic
Another option is making a character that players admire and aspire to be, or whose company
they would enjoy. A strong, muscular warrior hero, for example. Someone the player looks up to
and finds fun to play, because he can do all the things the player dreams of doing. This one is
harder to get right, because you might end up choosing something that the player doesn't
actually admire. What if the player thinks that muscular warriors are actually quite stupid and
they would rather be a cunning wizard? What if the player is a girl and she would much rather be
a strong female character? Lara Croft is a good example of a character that players can admire.
She is good-looking, clever, and strong. A boy playing Tomb Raider might not want to be Lara, but
he can certainly admire her.
Make Him Mortal
The third option is to go for someone that players can like and sympathize with. They might not
want to be him, but they will want to help him, and will care what happens to him. To make such
a character, he or she has to have more depth and personality. He has to have traits that players
can recognize from themselves and sympathize with. That means that we aim for a character who
is not a perfect hero, just an ordinary guy with talents and flaws like everyone else, but the
adventure he is about to embark upon makes him (and the player) special. Games that use story
to drive them usually have a character like this; April in The Longest Journey and Ratchet in
Ratchet & Clank are good examples.
Flynn
So in our game, we'll go for the third option because it allows us to tell a rich story with the player
character taking center stage. Our hero is a very ordinary boy, called Flynn, about 15 years old
(Figure 7-2). He has never known his mother, doesn't know quite what he wants to do with his
life, and feels like he is an outsider among the other boys on the island that he lives on.
Flynn has all that we need in a player character. He is basically a good guy, making it easy for
us to like him. He doesn't quite fit in, and who hasn't felt like that at some point? We can
understand and empathize with him. He is also restless; aching for something to do, to find a
calling. And he has a bit of mystery-he doesn't know who his mother is. So now we need to give
him a story: what will happen to Flynn?