Fallout 3 - The Fundamental problem of Sympathetic Characters

I’m more struck by the sense of loneliness and despair than I am any type of grief when I’m killed by a fellow raider.

Click to expand...

What is it that whenever my character is killed or damaged, I have absolutely no concern for his wellbeing?

Click to expand...

Are there really games out there that make you filled with grief when your character dies?

Death in games is part of the fun. If I'm not dying and starting over at the last save point frequently, it means the combat is boring and not challenging enough. It has nothing to do with the quality of the storytelling.

The way to get players emotionally invested in a game is not by making you feel sad about your own character dying, but by writing more compelling NPC characters. If you actually give a damn about whether NPC "X" manages to escape from slavers, etc. you are going to be more invested in a particular quest.

I thought of a different thing besides personalities for NPC, how about motivating the player, from time to time, he discoveres what goes wrong because of his choice, so he is always taking instant gratification from something, then punishment.
Humans care a lot more about shit they lose. So keep taking NPCs away because of the players decisions, and he will replay with diferent things

Another thing is SIZE. If you make it huge, even if all NPCs are divine, it won't stick.
Keep it short and sweet. By huge I mean moderation in all, because honestly I don't think they would make 2k unique quests and 2k NPCs and so on

What if developers understood more of psychology instead of programming ? Would it lead to more immersion ?

The reasons I don't are

Can't relate to their situation. I play mostly fantasy games so there's no real life situations to relate to.

They never really show pain for the most part they run through bullets, sword and arrows. In some games they may limp or something but you never feel like they are really hurt.

Death never feels like death as you can instantly reload.

The only time I remember feeling bad for my pc was they opening on max payne. I watched that scene thinking wow that's brutal. I could never go through that. An hour later though after several death's the feeling was gone. I still get chills when I watch that opening though.

If they one day make a game where death is an actual issue, they'll be writing an article about how games are supposed to be escapism - and how dying isn't fun

Demon's Souls and Dark Souls seem to be hated by a lot of people for that reason, but - strangely - popular media seems to have accepted it.

Kind of a paradox, considering how games are otherwise trivially easy to "complete" on the default difficulty setting.

sakichop said:

Can't relate to their situation. I play mostly fantasy games so there's no real life situations to relate to.

Click to expand...

Just curious saki: you have the same problem with fantasy/sci-fi literature?

Attachment to a character stems not from ray guns or bastard swords, but empathizing with the human element. Loss, tragedy, exultation transcend genre, and if they aren't present, that is a failing of that particular product's design, not the genre.

Oh I agree and I have said that in my previous post. I was just wondering why there are literary characters I care about but almost no game characters. I'd say that it's because there are many more books (so you can pick the ones you like) and not so many games.

The writing and exposition in games mostly sucks, that's why. It's really quite simple.