PC character arcs conveyed through gameplay

[BrotherRool]

I'm talking about games that subtly change the way you play over time to demonstrate the main characters character arc. Not 'you were shooting x and now you're shooting y' but, for example, through the course of Spec Ops they slowly have more and more people through the course of the gameplay fall down injured and you have to execute the wounded soldiers or they'll start shooting again. And you have to do this more and more often and the animations become more and more brutal until you realise you character has descended into a rampaging carnage.


Most RPGs do this, the levelling up taking you from some newbie unfamiliar and uncompetent in the ways of the world to hardened veterans.

Arkham Asylum subtly changed your appearance through the course of the game to become more and more battered and tired but the gameplay itself didn't (intentionally) convey that.


But apart from that, it seems quite rare in games, anyone got some good examples?

 

[hazabaza1]

Tomb Raider seems to do this quite a bit. Not just clothes degradation, but Lara stops grunting like she's getting off or something and there's the whole upgrade thing as well.
I think The Walking Dead did this as well, kind of subtly. Pretty sure the big red screen edges when you're up close and personal with the zambies get smaller and eventually go away as you get further in the game.

 

[Trueflame]

The first Witcher game. You start out having no memory, so you have none of the usual magical powers that Witchers possess, and have to reacquire them over the course of the game. By contrast in Witcher 2, when you have more of your memory, you start out with all of your magical abilities already functioning.

 

[DoPo]

In Dishonored, the world shifts in response to your actions - if you've killed a lot of people, you encounter more rats and shambling infected, otherwise, you get less of them. I'm also pretty sure you get other things - when I played the game a second time - non-lethally, I ran accross a guard and his sister near the beginning of the game - the overseers wanted to take her in for practicing black magic which she, and her brother, claimed was a lie. I didn't see them when I played a murderous psychopath the first time...well, then again, I could have missed them, dunno. But there are other small shifts and nuances here and there to reflect how you behave.

In Bloodlines you get changes in the dialogue choices depending on how high your karma meter is. Normally, you get some variation of the good-ish, normal-ish and evil-ish response when talking although the difference isn't Jesus vs Charles Manson. Well, in some dialogues you can gain or lose a point in your karma meter, too, in which case the difference tends to be bigger. However, if you're low on the karma meter, you get more and more asshole-ish responses. In the instances where you can gain/lose/do nothing with points, you might even not get the line that would lead to increase in morality. Heck, you get dialogues where instead of good-ish, evil-ish, neutral-ish, you instead have genuinely malevolent, snarky but overall neutral and neutral instead. Or sometimes it's two responses that lead to karma loss and one that is neutral. It is a downward spiral. While moral characters get to express disgust at some vile acts, evil characters instead celebrate it.

In KOTOR and KOTOR 2, your character's looks change depending on which side of the force they are on, and how far in. A neutral character looks, well, normal, a light side character looks slightly more healthy and alive, while a dark side character looks rather different - shrivelled, scarred and almost like walking corpses. In KOTOR 2 in particular, some NPCs would remark upon it asking if the character is sick or something. Some companions, on the other hand, would mention that they know which path you're heading and they aren't happy.

Then there is Fable, where killing bandits would make you look like Jesus (complete with a halo) and being a douche would turn you into the devil (horns, glowing red eyes, a cloud of flies following you).

In Medieval: Total War after a battle, you usually capture some of the enemy soldiers. Then you have some options - either let them go, or try to sell them back to your enemy (they get armies back but you get money) or just execute them (the enemy doesn't get any armies). Leaders who usually let enemies go become known as compassionate and get more and more respect. Leaders who slaughter enemies like sheep get a fearsome reputation but even your own troops may mistrust them. Also, I believe leaders got other traits to reflect what they've done - those who do a lot of sieges get perks related to that and similar.

I'm not entirely sure if that counts but in Dark Sector you play a guy infected with a...virus, I think, or whatever it is, it's slowly mutating him - it starts off with just the left arm being different but it progresses until his whole body is changed. The changes occur in cutscenes, though.

 

[Professor Lupin Madblood]

I wonder how long it'll take Daystar to show up and tell us how stupid Spec Ops is.

Braid did this really well, though it might be less of a character arc and more of a narrative arc. The way the time manipulation mechanics work combined with what items are affected and how they are affected accentuates the deeper meaning of the game a lot.

Metro 2033 had something like this at one point. You find a kid in a metro station that's been taken over by mutant nosalises and lurkers (giant pig rats), and when he climbs onto your back to be carried, your aim sways a lot more. It's not an arc so much, but the gameplay does change to reflect a change in the player character.

Infamous kind of had it, too. You get a sweet power late in the game (you pretty much rain lightning down on fools whenever you want), and several of the last missions revolve around doing almost nothing but that move.

That's all I got.

 

[shrekfan246]

I wonder how long it'll take Daystar to show up and tell us how stupid Spec Ops is.

I'm pretty sure he's asleep, but I could always inform him of this thread so he sees it tomorrow.

Braid did this really well, though it might be less of a character arc and more of a narrative arc. The way the time manipulation mechanics work combined with what items are affected and how they are affected accentuates the deeper meaning of the game a lot.

Braid was stupid!



[sub]More "pretentious" than stupid, really, given the fact that Jon Blow thinks he's God's gift to game design for making a combination of Mario and Prince of Persia with a metaphorical narrative that makes fuck all sense. But that's neither here nor there.[/sub]

OT: You forgot that the in-combat chatter from Walker in Spec Ops: The Line gets more and more aggressive as you get further through the game.

I suppose a lot of action-adventure games do this in a way. You generally start out with one weapon and maybe one or two items, then by the end you're practically a walking arsenal spewing molten death from all angles.

 

[Mikejames]

The Line was the first thing that came to my mind.

I don't know if it qualifies, but Shadow of the Colossus had a subtle progression with how the character looked following the advancement of his journey. My first time through I didn't even notice notice the more significant changes until the final fight...

 

[Abomination]

Jason Brody of Far Cry III is the best example of this. At first you're quite inept with weapons but eventually you're hunting bears with a shotgun and cutting throats like grain come harvest time.

Your personality also starts to reflect what you're becoming, moving from still freaking out and being disgusted to laughing like a maniac and realizing that you have become Death, Destroyer of Worlds. At first you're a confused coward and eventually you're a ballsy badass.

 

[BrotherRool]

Braid did this really well, though it might be less of a character arc and more of a narrative arc. The way the time manipulation mechanics work combined with what items are affected and how they are affected accentuates the deeper meaning of the game a lot.

See, I don't think Braid did it, even in that one level (less certain about that level), what it did was provide a narrative that mentioned the game mechanics, but it wasn't actually explained at all by the character arcs. So we might get a bit of text about a wedding ring slowing down time around it, but the actual gameplay felt nothing like having a wedding ring and didn't explore the idea of a wedding ring being like that. It was much more like Mr Blow had thought of a gameplay mechanic, designed a standard set of puzzle levels around that mechanic and then thought up some flavour text that he twisted to sound a bit like it.

I also don't think the protagonist goes through any kind of character arc. It's one of my big criticisms of the game that the levels and the text in them doesn't try to fit together in any cohesive way

I suppose a lot of action-adventure games do this in a way. You generally start out with one weapon and maybe one or two items, then by the end you're practically a walking arsenal spewing molten death from all angles.

But see a lot of action-adventure games do this without any justification. RPGs have been story-focused for a long time, so they hit upon the idea of matching up gameplay mechanics with the story, but action-adventure games are much more likely to have an everyman badass who for some reason is much more of a killing machine at the end than the beginning.

Even Arkham Asylum, which I praised, has Batman get progressively stronger through the course of the game even though the story is about becoming more worn out and tired. It's not as bad as most a-a games because every time Batman adds another gadget to his arsenal it feels like a desperation move as he tries to keep pace with the threat.

 

[The Wykydtron]

Uh maybe not the best example but I love how they handled the main character's character arc in Persona 4. And yes he does have one regardless of how you play him. The first few hours he has an attitude of "head down, get through school, leave town" because hell, why make friends in a town you're only going to be in for a year right?

Then as the game progresses ALL those types of conversation responses slowly disappear entirely as he actually makes his way through the Power of Friendship shenanigans. HEY, DICKHEAD IN PERSONA 3! YEAH YOU! WATCH AND LEARN!

I'm going through Persona 3 again and dammit I stand by what I said about the MC being this unlikable asshole the entire game.

I guess Visual Novels are cheating? Katawa Shoujo has an amazing character development for the main character. It even changes from route to route. Like in Emi's route he just flatout doesn't read this super important plot letter halfway through the game. He gets to almost the halfway point and tears it up in disgust. Every other route handles it differently.

 

[shrekfan246]

I suppose a lot of action-adventure games do this in a way. You generally start out with one weapon and maybe one or two items, then by the end you're practically a walking arsenal spewing molten death from all angles.

But see a lot of action-adventure games do this without any justification. RPGs have been story-focused for a long time, so they hit upon the idea of matching up gameplay mechanics with the story, but action-adventure games are much more likely to have an everyman badass who for some reason is much more of a killing machine at the end than the beginning.

Even Arkham Asylum, which I praised, has Batman get progressively stronger through the course of the game even though the story is about becoming more worn out and tired. It's not as bad as most a-a games because every time Batman adds another gadget to his arsenal it feels like a desperation move as he tries to keep pace with the threat.

Erm...

I know "hack&slash" is its own sub-genre, but I'd still say they belong to the greater genre of "action-adventure" for the most part, so you've got games like God of War and Devil May Cry. Then there's Darksiders, Okami, Castlevania, Legacy of Kain, Shadow of the Colossus, and depending on how tenuously you want to stretch genre definitions Metal Gear Solid. SotC is the only one there where I'd say the protagonist qualifies as an "everyman". Even Beyond Good & Evil is sort of justified because the mechanics of the game don't have you bouncing up and down all over the place killing monsters left and right like you're Bayonetta. And in The Legend of Zelda there's a lot of minor monsters that you can just run right past once you know where you need to go/do, especially given the fact that they all respawn anyway. Well, and Link remains rather consistently skilled with the sword throughout the entire games once you've learned the spinning attack, and just gets more and more items like bows and bombs that are fairly impractical for the average combat encounter.

Shadow of the Colossus and Metal Gear Solid 3 in particular I feel convey a sort of progression rather well. MGS3 more for moment-to-moment gameplay what with the lenient survival mechanics implemented in the game, and SotC because your character never becomes some immortal badass who can cut down hordes by glancing at them funny, he just gets a bit better at hanging on to large things that thrash around while he's climbing them. Though I suppose more of his actual character arc within the game is conveyed through the short cut-scenes after each colossi's death.

 

[BrotherRool]

Erm...

I know "hack&slash" is its own sub-genre, but I'd still say they belong to the greater genre of "action-adventure" for the most part, so you've got games like God of War and Devil May Cry. Then there's Darksiders, Okami, Castlevania, Legacy of Kain, Shadow of the Colossus, and depending on how tenuously you want to stretch genre definitions Metal Gear Solid. SotC is the only one there where I'd say the protagonist qualifies as an "everyman". Even Beyond Good & Evil is sort of justified because the mechanics of the game don't have you bouncing up and down all over the place killing monsters left and right like you're Bayonetta. And in The Legend of Zelda there's a lot of minor monsters that you can just run right past once you know where you need to go/do, especially given the fact that they all respawn anyway. Well, and Link remains rather consistently skilled with the sword throughout the entire games once you've learned the spinning attack, and just gets more and more items like bows and bombs that are fairly impractical for the average combat encounter.

Shadow of the Colossus and Metal Gear Solid 3 in particular I feel convey a sort of progression rather well. MGS3 more for moment-to-moment gameplay what with the lenient survival mechanics implemented in the game, and SotC because your character never becomes some immortal badass who can cut down hordes by glancing at them funny, he just gets a bit better at hanging on to large things that thrash around while he's climbing them. Though I suppose more of his actual character arc within the game is conveyed through the short cut-scenes after each colossi's death.

The original God of War had a character arc I guess. But stuff like Devil May Cry (and for that matter, Metroid etc) whilst they have reasons for why people lose their powers and why they gain their powers/items, it doesn't tie very well into an actual character arc. Dante is a badass at the start and he's a badass at the end. Samus for the most part the games aren't a growing experience for her, just a difficult time.

MGS3 is more interesting, Hideo Kojima is really good at story/gameplay integration (strangely) and it's definitely a character building experience for Snake, but I don't think the gameplay really changes much through the game, or rather changes in a way a little too complex for me to fully study.

MGS: Peace Walker is a more straight up example, because the base building mechanics sort of are the narrative

I guess Visual Novels are cheating? Katawa Shoujo has an amazing character development for the main character. It even changes from route to route. Like in Emi's route he just flatout doesn't read this super important plot letter halfway through the game. He gets to almost the halfway point and tears it up in disgust. Every other route handles it differently.

KS has some super cool stuff going on with it's gameplay. There all sorts of things where they make the player actually feel the emotion himself that Hisao is feeling, like because you choose to follow Hanako's story arc instead of having it thrust upon you, the chances are most of the people who followed it are themselves falling into the same trap that gets revealed at the end.

But I don't know if the gameplay itself conveys the arc. The way you pick choices remains the same from beginning to end

 

[shrekfan246]

The original God of War had a character arc I guess. But stuff like Devil May Cry (and for that matter, Metroid etc) whilst they have reasons for why people lose their powers and why they gain their powers/items, it doesn't tie very well into an actual character arc. Dante is a badass at the start and he's a badass at the end. Samus for the most part the games aren't a growing experience for her, just a difficult time.

MGS3 is more interesting, Hideo Kojima is really good at story/gameplay integration (strangely) and it's definitely a character building experience for Snake, but I don't think the gameplay really changes much through the game, or rather changes in a way a little too complex for me to fully study.

MGS: Peace Walker is a more straight up example, because the base building mechanics sort of are the narrative

Well, there's always the giant microwave at the end of MGS4.

I wouldn't say the gameplay changes because of the character arc, but I definitely feel that what's there perfectly serves the character arc. Especially the little extra touches, like after the fight with The Boss where the game will stop with Snake aiming at her

Spoiler

until you pull the trigger yourself.

The gameplay may not necessarily convey the character arc in itself, but it's an agent for conveying the arc, which I think is every bit as vital to avoid getting Half-Life syndrome, where you've got this literal everyman stoically bashing his way through endless hordes of monsters and oppressive alien overlords in a huge disconnect from the narrative they're trying to put across. When all of the Combine have Stormtrooper-Syndrome and can be slaughtered by one man with a pretty pitiful power suit, how am I supposed to feel that they're actually a threat?

 

[BloatedGuppy]

...eventually you're a ballsy badass.

Or, y'know, a deluded lunatic.

Far Cry 3 wasn't about Jason Brody's transformation from wimp to warrior. It was about how he was manipulated into a transformation from man to monster.

Pretty good game though. I was actually quite impressed.

 

[BrotherRool]

Well, there's always the giant microwave at the end of MGS4.

I wouldn't say the gameplay changes because of the character arc, but I definitely feel that what's there perfectly serves the character arc. Especially the little extra touches, like after the fight with The Boss where the game will stop with Snake aiming at her

Spoiler

until you pull the trigger yourself.

The gameplay may not necessarily convey the character arc in itself, but it's an agent for conveying the arc, which I think is every bit as vital to avoid getting Half-Life syndrome, where you've got this literal everyman stoically bashing his way through endless hordes of monsters and oppressive alien overlords in a huge disconnect from the narrative they're trying to put across. When all of the Combine have Stormtrooper-Syndrome and can be slaughtered by one man with a pretty pitiful power suit, how am I supposed to feel that they're actually a threat?

Please don't get me wrong, the Metal Gear Solids are the some of the most incredibly clever and creative games ever made. People always say HK should have directed films and stopped making games, but that's completely untrue because he uses the game format to do absolutely everything and his style is just as consistent across the gameplay as it is in the game. Like in MGS3 when Snake loses an eye, they actually reduce his line of sight in game to match it. And you have the ladder boss battles which are actually just Snake climbing up a ladder for 5 minutes, but they feel epic and reinforce this survivalist I can rise up and make it atmosphere. And he integrates everything and adds in these cool little systems. Like where you can actually snipe the End (?) way before that fight starts in an early cutscene and then he won't be there when the time comes.

Or in the very last battle of MGS IV which is one of my favourite game moments in all time where the lifebars and the music and the CQC style are going through the games and reflecting all the changes that brought him there and the slow weariness and fatigue that life brought to him, and Liquid Ocelots voice and animations are slowly changing over the course of the fight from Liquid habits to Ocelot affectations.

That's gameplay/storytelling convergence genius!

All I mean is that I was thinking about a very particular part of story/gameplay interaction recently and I was trying to think of games that fitted the example and I don't think MGS3 tries to do that particular thing. It does a lot of neat gameplay/story stuff, but it doesn't happen to try and find an arc for Snake in gameplay

 

[shrekfan246]

All I mean is that I was thinking about a very particular part of story/gameplay interaction recently and I was trying to think of games that fitted the example and I don't think MGS3 tries to do that particular thing. It does a lot of neat gameplay/story stuff, but it doesn't happen to try and find an arc for Snake in gameplay

Oh yeah, I get it. That's why I said I don't think it's really what you were talking about.

Conveying a character arc through gameplay isn't really something a lot of games explicitly do, because it's pretty difficult to effectively implement ironically enough. Or at least, through gameplay alone. Mostly because the mere fact of being a game usually means that it needs to remain fairly consistent so as to keep the player playing. The final sequence of Connor's story in Assassin's Creed III,

Spoiler

where you're beaten and hurt and trying to find your way through to Haytham and Charles Lee to end it all and the HUD is visibly flickering and flashing red and Connor's moving slow and stumbling around

was pretty neat as part of the narrative, but didn't really add anything on the gameplay side.

Again it's probably not exactly what you're talking about, but tangentially related to my ACIII thing, one thing I really loved about the Dead Space franchise is that the lower Isaac's health gets, the more he starts stumbling around and breathing harder.

 

[BrotherRool]

Oh yeah, I get it. That's why I said I don't think it's really what you were talking about.

Conveying a character arc through gameplay isn't really something a lot of games explicitly do, because it's pretty difficult to effectively implement ironically enough. Or at least, through gameplay alone. Mostly because the mere fact of being a game usually means that it needs to remain fairly consistent so as to keep the player playing.

This is actually why I was asking people about examples they'd remembered, because I was seeing if I could roleplay a fairly complex character in Knights of the Old Republic and I noticed it's actually really hard to introduce change. I think people want to stick to the playstyle they're comfortable with and get progressively better and it's pretty hard to design a game that convinces people to change the way they play in a subtle manner.

Like in Dishonoured it'd be hard to make the game in a way where people start off with a low-chaos run and then become increasingly more chaotic as time goes on. Or even worse, start off low-chaos, become more chaotic and then have an impactful moment that makes them regret that playstyle and switch back to low-chaos.


The games that succeed most often tell very specific types of character arc, like RPGs telling stories about newcomers or people who've been set back by a traumatic event refamiliarising themselves with the world and becoming stronger people. Spec Ops was really clever to do what it did and it's still a storyline that goes in one direction instead of traditional dips and arcs

 

[bafrali]

Devil May Cry 3. Dante's first fight with Vergil ends with a defeat. But as the game progresses Dante eventually gains enough power to dewfeat his brother. It can't be solely through his demonic power since his brother has the same powers. It can't be the devil arms since Vergil gains different devil arms through the game as well. Reason behind this was the guns that are man-made. They gave him the over his Brother who favors his demonic heritance over his human side.

At least that is what it seems like if you read too much into it.

 

[Abomination]

...eventually you're a ballsy badass.

Or, y'know, a deluded lunatic.

Far Cry 3 wasn't about Jason Brody's transformation from wimp to warrior. It was about how he was manipulated into a transformation from man to monster.

Pretty good game though. I was actually quite impressed.

Let us compromise: he was a deluded lunatic that was a ballsy badass.

No matter how crazy someone is he still succeeded at slaughtering rooms of armed guards with only a machete or punched sharks for fun.

 

[DoPo]

Devil May Cry 3. Dante's first fight with Vergil ends with a defeat. But as the game progresses Dante eventually gains enough power to dewfeat his brother. It can't be solely through his demonic power since his brother has the same powers. It can't be the devil arms since Vergil gains different devil arms through the game as well. Reason behind this was the guns that are man-made. They gave him the over his Brother who favors his demonic heritance over his human side.

At least that is what it seems like if you read too much into it.

But you don't get that through gameplay - you get cutscenes. Heck, if you go and play against Vergil again, he's actually very easy - you can easily get a flawless victory in the first combat, and yet the cutscene shows Dante struggling to keep up and then getting roflstomped.