Character design

What makes a character good to me is that it grips my attention from the start, mainly it to do with looks and if the character looks cool or something about the character that shows a meaning to them.  For me a lot of the time a character gets my interest from his clothes and his hair. The face never really grabs my attention much. I think this is mainly because when you’re playing a game you’re hardly ever looking at the persons face. Nearly all games you play a character and see from behind so when to me it makes sense for a character to grip your attention from behind and then be able to turn a character around to see they’re front.

 Don’t get me wrong faces are very important for cut scenes when you’re in a game you can get very bored if your character isn’t very interesting to look at. I think it helps that in some games like RPG’s you get unlocks for clothes/armour and to me that’s develops a character for me I love being able to see my character develop.

I think one of my favourite characters of all from the films and the games is Batman. We all know the story about batman so I won’t jump in to why that interests me but it’s his suit. The way his mouth is left open and the rest of his head is covered up. It kind of reminds me of like the helmet in gladiator that Russell Crowe wears. ( just a little bit though) but from whatever angle you look at batman you can tell its him he stands out so well and to me it looks freaking cool. His cape is another thing that makes his character interesting for me. The way it spreads out like batwings is a really cool concept. It’s like those millions of concepts of people with angel wings but it’s nothing like that they aren’t real it’s just a cape which I like.

I think quite a bit of what makes a character interesting is based on the script like Zack out of final fantasy 7 he basically teachers cloud in the original game how to be a solider before he dies but in the PSP game you play the story of who he was and how he became a soldier and how he taught cloud and also how he died. I think the script to this character was amazing. When I actually finish the game i felt really sad because I felt like I’d come all this way and I die and that’s it. Which is sad you grow this bond with this character only for him to die? I think that’s what makes his so interesting. It’s only his hair and sword that makes the character interesting looks wise but everything else is down to the script for this certain character.

Mainly I think it’s got to have an even balance of both the script and the looks of the character to make a game character interesting so it sells. If a character looks cool but doesn’t have a good script to them then it’s probably going to suck Mind Jack being a good example of this.