Characters

Character Report

Characters within a computer game refers to a person, controllable or uncontrollable within the game. Characters can either help you achieve your goal such as team mates in Call Of Duty, those who attempt to stop you from achieving your goal such as the police if GTA or are neutral and don’t effect the game such as civilians in Assassin’s Creed. 

These characters are there to give the game a certain realistic atmosphere. Player characters are those characters that can be controlled by the player of the game such as Tidus in Final Fantasy X. in some games the main character either does not exist as you can control many of them or they keep changing. Such as in GTA there are 3 different main characters which you could use, Franklin, Trevor or Michael. 

People prefer one to another due to the different abilities they have, Michael can enter bullet time in combat and can shoot in slow motion. This allows you to be more accurate in your shooting and kill enemies easier. Franklin can drive at a slower speed which allows you to drive more accurately, reducing the risk of crashing. Trevor, once the special meter is activated, can enter a special mode wherein he can perform unique melee attacks that the other characters cannot do. Another game such as in FIFA shows that there isn’t a main character, but there are players within the team that you can control if they are passed to or by pressing a button. You cannot control all players at once and some players are better than others. Such as the centre back Alex who currently plays for A.C. Milan is slow compared to Thiago Silva (Centre back for PSG) who is relatively fast but Alex is stronger and has an extremely powerful shot. Both of these players are Brazilian so if you had to choose between these two characters, you would measure the positives and negatives of the players weighed up against each other, then the preference of the user. It is important in games for them to have strong main characters as they will entice the user to want to play, giving them a sense of authority and power within the game. Some games have more than one main character due to the fact that there could evolve from it, more missions especially suited for that character. This allows the player to play the game for longer and once it is completed, want to play the next one if it will be created.

Non playable characters are those such as the enemies within the game or those not assigned to the user to control. These could include bosses in games such as Bowser in Mario or the opposition in FIFA that, depending on the level of difficulty of the game, would determine how hard these characters are. They cannot be controlled and are there as obstacles within the game. It is important to have strong non playable characters within the game as they make the user play the game for longer which is the aim of the developers of the game.