Rev Rant: Character Empathy

How videogames are not movies, where empathetic characters are concerned.

• Category

  Gaming

[Alex Franklin]

I always felt really sorry for this one character I met along the first route in Pokemon. All she could say was "Did you know different kinds of Pokemon appear at different times of day? I'm going to stay here until I've seen every Pokemon there is!" When I finally beat the game and decided to return to my own town, there she was, right where I'd met her. Still blindly optimistic that she'd find every Pokemon just standing there. She was never going to learn. For some reason, it broke my heart.

[PoptartInvasion]

Yeah, have to agree about your dad from Fallout 3. I mean, he's the first thing you see--AFTER ESCAPING FROM YOUR MOM'S VAGINA! I imagine for a baby that would be reassuring in that, "OH MY GOD, THIS IS HORRIBLE, I'M SCARED, THIS IS UNLIKE ANYTHING I'VE KNOWN--oh, da-da." But for me, it was, "...What the FUCK! Is this seriously HAPPENING? This is so weird--oh, Liam Neeson." I don't know if a game ever started more appropriately. Then spending all of a rather long tutorial with him

[Oliver Thulin]

This is so goddamned true. Go teach the developers.

[joaovictor1994]

Well taking GoW as an example again, I gotta say I was fucking pissed off when Deimos died. And Deimos was Kratos' brother so it's not like we met him at the same time as he did... But I was still fucking pissed off. So I don't know if I can agree with you entirely.

[chrisspudster72]

i get what youre saying about the family and spartan warrior from gow. i understood the reasoning behind the family implementation of gow1. but when WE killed the spartan in gow2 i was like whoa! its him! nice thoughts and like the vid :)

[nightrider505]

I love gow hate kratos

[crazymiles]

God, I hate this pretentious fucking hipster.

[willtkaczuk]

I saved Doug, but I went through the same thing.

[Miles Noctis]

For me, Carley. I played the section where she dies 4-5 times trying to see if there was any way to avoid it. It was a real holyshitwtfwhy?!? moment for me. Goes to show you can generate real emotions in a short time, but you can't just tell the player how they're "supposed" to feel.

[havok smith]

dude makes sense.

[willtkaczuk]

Perfect example. We met Clementine at the same time as Lee. We care just as much as Lee.

[BranFlicks]

Clementine