Haze is proving particularly interesting for the way it’s harnessing the problems of vocal/silent protagonists in the first-person perspective and turning them into elements of gameplay;
"The main challenge that a strictly first-person experience poses, of course, is that we can’t cut away to another event, or show what someone else is doing in some other location. But in fact, that was the very reason we chose that style – we want the player to be locked inside Carpenter. We want them to feel uncomfortable, maybe even a little claustrophobic.
You’ll be watching some pretty unpleasant events unfold in the game, and we don’t want people to be able to disassociate themselves from what’s going on around them. Ideally, we want people to feel complicit and maybe even responsible to some degree."
Which raises the question; how should first-person characters communicate to gamers? Speaking aloud without player prompting can ruin the illusion of controlling a character, while giving players options of what to say can slow the pace of the game too much and require extra development time.
Silent protagonists can make narrating certain aspects of a story difficult and writers must often resort to monologues to compensate.
The criticisms and restrictions of a silent protagonist, ala Dr Freeman, are obvious and can require incredibly careful writing that can occasionally seem forced or contrived.
We asked Rob a little bit about the player character from Haze, how he was written and how he communicates with players and the NPCs around him.
"His name is Sergeant Shane Carpenter, and you’ll certainly hear him speak. In fact, he’s played by an actor from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts. Carpenter wants to do good things for good people in bad places. He suffers from that very Western guilt that comes from living a trouble-free life just a short plane ride away from a nation of people who are suffering in terrible ways. That guilt makes him vulnerable to bad influences. But the quickest con is a sob story."
So, in Haze we'll definitely be getting a situation where the player is talking and remarking to NPCs without player interaction. How this'll affect the way players view their relationship with Shane Carpenter remains to be seen though with consistent, high-quality writing any problems will be hopefully overcome.
Characters who talk to much however can break the fantasy created by a first-person perspective.
Crysis instead takes a different approach to the issue, as outlined by Martin Lancaster and, instead of using a vocal character to drive the story forward, Crysis tries to tread the fine line between expression and silence;
“In most successful stories it is the protagonist that drives the story forward. If the player is in a silent role, then there’s a danger that the character will feel more like a supporting role than a star.
Conversely, playing with the constant companion of a disembodied voice can be disconcerting for players, especially when that voice is putting thoughts and emotions into the player's head that the player just doesn't have. We decided on an approach that was somewhere in between the two: where the player's character speaks, but avoids expressing himself in ways that might cause players to disconnect.”
"The main challenge that a strictly first-person experience poses, of course, is that we can’t cut away to another event, or show what someone else is doing in some other location. But in fact, that was the very reason we chose that style – we want the player to be locked inside Carpenter. We want them to feel uncomfortable, maybe even a little claustrophobic.
You’ll be watching some pretty unpleasant events unfold in the game, and we don’t want people to be able to disassociate themselves from what’s going on around them. Ideally, we want people to feel complicit and maybe even responsible to some degree."
Which raises the question; how should first-person characters communicate to gamers? Speaking aloud without player prompting can ruin the illusion of controlling a character, while giving players options of what to say can slow the pace of the game too much and require extra development time.
Silent protagonists can make narrating certain aspects of a story difficult and writers must often resort to monologues to compensate.
The criticisms and restrictions of a silent protagonist, ala Dr Freeman, are obvious and can require incredibly careful writing that can occasionally seem forced or contrived.
We asked Rob a little bit about the player character from Haze, how he was written and how he communicates with players and the NPCs around him.
"His name is Sergeant Shane Carpenter, and you’ll certainly hear him speak. In fact, he’s played by an actor from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts. Carpenter wants to do good things for good people in bad places. He suffers from that very Western guilt that comes from living a trouble-free life just a short plane ride away from a nation of people who are suffering in terrible ways. That guilt makes him vulnerable to bad influences. But the quickest con is a sob story."
So, in Haze we'll definitely be getting a situation where the player is talking and remarking to NPCs without player interaction. How this'll affect the way players view their relationship with Shane Carpenter remains to be seen though with consistent, high-quality writing any problems will be hopefully overcome.
Characters who talk to much however can break the fantasy created by a first-person perspective.
Crysis instead takes a different approach to the issue, as outlined by Martin Lancaster and, instead of using a vocal character to drive the story forward, Crysis tries to tread the fine line between expression and silence;
“In most successful stories it is the protagonist that drives the story forward. If the player is in a silent role, then there’s a danger that the character will feel more like a supporting role than a star.
Conversely, playing with the constant companion of a disembodied voice can be disconcerting for players, especially when that voice is putting thoughts and emotions into the player's head that the player just doesn't have. We decided on an approach that was somewhere in between the two: where the player's character speaks, but avoids expressing himself in ways that might cause players to disconnect.”
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