The Bizarre Nature of Playable Characters
Much like Pixar's Cars, the very concept of a playable character in a video game is incredibly weird and full of potential barely reached
NOTE: Two places remaining for my upcoming game writing workshop - read testimonials from past students and apply over at https://www.gregbuchanangames.com/teaching
Aspiring writers see “interactive” in front of the word “narrative”, and suddenly all they can see is the former: but narrative is still very much in play. The fact that we are being told a story isn't a limitation or a failure of the medium; it's an inherent aspect of interactive storytelling, because as much as our job is about crafting space for interaction, there is still a craftsperson.
If I am a blank slate character that has no pre-definition, then there is no joy of learning about the hidden depths of a character, because they aren’t really a character anymore unless I write fan fiction in my mind: they are just our vehicle in this world.¹
When Joel or Ellie in THE LAST OF US runs from Cordyceps zombies, I am them. To continue the vehicle analogy, I am running, in the same way that if a car were to hit my car when driving, I would say “they hit me!” The character is synonymous with us: they are our vehicle in this world.
But what happens in a cutscene? Am I still the character? No. Not entirely, though the memory of controlling them is not irrelevant. We shift into an observer's role, learning about the characters rather than “being” them.
It’s no coincidence that two of the best received game stories in the medium excel at both styles. THE WITCHER 3’s Geralt and DISCO ELYSIUM’s Harry have well-defined protagonists (even in the case of the amnesiac Harry, proving it’s got more to do with behaviour than backstory). At the same time, these well-defined protagonists offer a range of choices for the player to engage in. This isn’t radically transforming these people into ‘good’ or ‘bad’ versions, but showing how they can sometimes be pushed in certain ways based on their life experiences. The player’s choice functions almost like the imposition of a good or bad day or weird mood — but they don’t cause crazily out of character behaviour.
(To demonstrate the bizarre hybrid nature of a playable character, I am never going to miss an excuse to share this bizarre CARS drawing:
In games, we are both the agent and the observer—our own selves and the character - often alternating (cutscene vs gameplay) and sometimes to different degrees at the same time. Since we can't fully "be" the character (they haven't lived our lives, and we haven't lived theirs), we have a fascinating and unique version of identification that cannot exist in other mediums.
This is a great opportunity for game writers, but also one possible cause for why so many game narratives fail out of the gate. At the start of games, players are eager to act, to make choices, and to see the world reacting to them: knowing they will be asked to do things, they want to know what they can do, when, and why.
Something I see time and time again in early student work?
People thinking they should do immediate flashbacks or extensive backstory at the very start of a story to get us to bond with and understand a character, as if the prior history of that character we’re missing is going to be the vital missing element to ‘getting us on side’.
“Back”-story is a hint. It moves us backwards. It does not feel relevant if we are primed to expect the story to be about what happens -next-. The phrasing we innately use to refer to all this implies actual movement, which is fascinating, considering what we’re discussing here. It implies doing. So imagine a medium such as games, where we bring expectations of -movement- and activity we had even when the story was linear, to an experience where we know we can more literally do stuff. We want to do.
(See this earlier article for thoughts on our need for reactivity in games)
Returning to the example of DISCO ELYSIUM, does it fill in the blanks for Harry in a specific life sense early? No. It defines him through his actions and their effect on the present day. We might be curious about the past - it is a detective game after all - but it’s the present stakes and -exterior situation- both ourselves and Harry are facing.
To provide extensive backstory or lean on this at the start in a non-interactive format is not only a delay of action, making us antsy as players, but an enforcing that this person is not the same person as we are, even as it is most likely ironically designed to help bring us closer to the character at hand!
Other options designed to bond us in traditional storytelling , like the "Save the Cat" moment—where a character performs an altruistic act to gain the audience's favor—don't always translate effectively into games either. In films or novels, witnessing a character perform a kind act helps the audience form a positive impression through observation. However, in games, the player is an active participant. When we're the ones making the choice to perform a good deed, it can easily affect more on our own morality than on the character's inherent traits. The emotional impact differs because we're not just observing the action; we're enacting it.
(As an aside: one of my favourite WITCHER 3 moments for this isn’t even in the game, but is a prelude in the marketing: saving the cat in a non-interactive format to prep us for the role we’ll be inhabiting)
The challenge
There is a fundamental challenge in game writing: the need to create emotional engagement without relying solely on observational moments, while not ignoring the fact we are observing the character at the same time as -being- them! Players are eager to act and want to want to be this character, they want the character to feel alive, but they do not want to be too actively shunted out of feeling that 1:1 connection at the same time.
And all of this is so important especially in the opening 5, 15, 30 minutes of a game — so few people ever finish games, but many writers don’t realise that even deciding to play your game at the start is not enough to secure investment. How many times have you started a new experience only to quit within a few minutes? You need to ‘sell’ being this person you’re asking the player to control.
So, how can game writers do something super easy like, say, quickly and effectively bonding players to their characters in a medium where the line between player and character is blurred? How can they do this rapidly at the very start of a game?
Well, you pathetic piece of shit…
We can’t save the cat, it would take too long.
You’d take too long, so -
Fuck you.
RUDENESS is your solution.
Last article, I talked about this in one of the lines I wrote for NO MAN’S SKY early in my career. Next article: I go into detail about the anti-save-the-cat strategy to invoke rudeness early on to bond player/character: a device I call DEMEAN THE CAT:
FOOTNOTES:
1
This can be really fun, to be clear, and there are still degrees and embers of narrative in that kind of mix (the negative space depiction of Gordon Freeman in the Half Life series emerging from the strong characterisation of the way others treat him/us, despite there being no actual Freeman ‘behaviour’ beyond the objectives of the game). There are also degrees to which the range of choices a character is offered in the authored experience of a game will always define them / eliminate the ability for the character to be 100% a player proxy, and therefore always have a latent small amount of this dynamic going on — the player observing, rather than being that character.