I was thinking about my ultimate game earlier and trying to figure out another topic for this series and I realized one factor that I left out that I've always loved about my ultimate game (detailed in next blog) were the great characters in the story. You can't ever really become involved in a game if the characters aren't believable or interesting.
Most of us can probably agree that has played Star Fox 64 that Slippy was a little on the annoying side and the game might have been slightly better if he wasn't included or had a different attitude. In Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace who is the first character you think of? I always think about Jar Jar Binks and how I found him very annoying in every scene he was in. This didn't make me despise the movie or despise Star Fox for having Slippy but it was a minor set back.
If character design is done right you begin to care about certain people you may meet or characters that travel with you throughout the game. In the case of Star Fox again, I never really cared when Slippy was in trouble because that would just mean he would go back to the Great Fox for repairs and I wouldn't have to hear his jabbering for the remaining of the level but if it was Falco in trouble; everything was halted and the main objective was to help him out.
Character design and interaction is more important in Role-Playing Games though because if you're going to have someone follow your character around all game, they need to have good interaction with the player so it doesn't feel like a rock is following you. They need to have some sort of back story to keep you interested in them and for the player to want them with you in your adventure. Mass Effect did a great job at character design as well, for your other party members.
Depending on who you took with you on a quest would sometimes dictate how the quest would play out. Sometimes if you brought Wrex (a big burley bounty hunter alien) with you to go assasinate or make peace with someone Wrex would have special interactions with the target and might actually persuade you to shoot this guy instead of make amends. Making good or evil decisons was a big factor in Mass Effect and sometimes it was influenced by your party members and how you interacted with them. Star Wars: Knights of the did this well too; making light side or dark side decisions. When you turned out to be really dark side oriented you even turned against some of your former party members which made the game really interesting and different. What other game gives you the decision to kill your own party members!?
More on the design aspect of things. If you have this large breathing world with different species living amongst each other it should be believable to the setting of the game. If the setting is back in the Jurrassic Period it wouldn't be very believable to see robots walking around unless it was part of the game (sounds like an interesting idea for a game to me). The real point is it's nice to have some slight sense of how each character interacts with the world. When it's dark you may see animals or characters go to sleep and when it's the morning they'll come out and greet the morning air. You witness one towns member trading with a certain guy everyday in another town so you should be able to get some insight as to the relationship between these trading towns and the people to immerse yourself deeper in the game.
Character design and interaction is just as important as any other part because a game would be pretty boring if it was just you (the player) running around alone, everyone said the same dialogue and acted similar to the last guy you talked to.
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