Characters… Characters are kind of the main requirement for
any film, book, game or story in general. I mean they act as the focal point of
that visual story. I never said it can’t be a human or necessarily living
character, but there must be at least one character that drives the story
forward. I mean look at Rubber for
example. It’s a story about a car tyre! Obviously the film makers knew that
selling a video of a tyre just lying in the desert for almost 2 hours is nearly
impossible. But they knew that if you gave that tyre telekinetic powers where
it can blow things up with it’s… tyre… mind, then you have created a character
with mystery and to be quite honest one of the weirdest films out there.
When you compare a character in a book, film or game, you
may notice that they are in fact very similar. They usually have a very
intricate and leading story in which a viewer, reader or player can follow and
gives them depth. But this all largely depends on their genre. All of these
media creators understand that a story can drag you into that world and push
out thoughts of reality, and if they do it well enough it can lead to more
story’s, more money and all together their one main goal… a franchise with a
fan base.
The characters I enjoy in games and films however, have to
be the classic action/war hero, and also, clever genius’. I like to play as a
hero as I like to feel like I’m in that world for a reason. Usually being a
powerful war veteran or an assassin fighting for a cause, you can find yourself
being led along a path through the story. Elements around a free roam world or
background dialogue in a game can lead to understanding the character and the
story even more and it leads players to want to find this out.
I mean looking at a character such as Vaas Montenegro from Far Cry 3, you can see that a lot of
work went into him, not looking like a lean and fear evoking leader of pirates,
but bringing out the fear in the player by making Vaas insane and very
unpredictable. Every encounter with him makes you feel on edge as it keeps you
second guessing a somewhat obvious outcome. They also made him somewhat
chillingly realistic, in the sense that it could actually be a real person. And
when you witness him kill your playable character, Jason’s brother, you
somewhat feel Jason’s anger and sense for revenge, which swallows you into the
adventure.
I feel its many elements which brings this together. With
the acting of Michael Mando through motion capture being so superb, his amazing
interpretation of the script and the style of an insane pirate accurately being
portrayed, I think that this adds depth to one of the best characters out
there. For a game to be able to produce a better character than many films out
there, it’s no surprise as to why more and more people are playing games and
giving these franchises such large fan bases.
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