by Ice Cream Jonsey » Wed Oct 16, 2002 1:50 am
Oh, wow. That's a great question. Man, I'm thinking this through and having a real tough time coming up with anything. Here's what I've got so far:
o Freedom Force: I am probably as much of a rah-rah commie hater as you'll get this side of a foil hat, but I didn't feel anything towards Minute Man other than anger when he was forced along on another mission. *Maybe* if FF let us pick our own squads each and every time I would have. But Minute Man was just slowing me down. Towards the end of a game, a certain character meets a certain fate, and I can't say I got too worked up for him/her either.
o Baldur's Gate II: Most likely, character you make yourself shouldn't count. That leaves Imoen... and while she's less annoying than she was in BG, I was still not really solving the game for her sake. And when you get to the point where you free her and don't let her join your party (I mean -- come on -- you have *no idea* when you're going to be at the point where she is free... you either play the whole damn thing with 5 characters or you let one of your own guys go when she's free. Not a fair choice, not in the slightest) and she starts whining... well, t'hell with her. The Infinite Engine needed two slots for NPCs and only NPCs.
o Max Payne: Any empathy I felt for his dead kid ended when the devs looped the baby cries over and over again in the umbilical cord level. Sorry, but after wasting several hours of my life on them the kid got what he deserved. Is Max worthy of empathy? After a long ummm I would say no, because he's the narrator of the game, and the narration is just so downright laughable.
o Mafia: Haven't played it enough to really say yet.
o Maximo: With this game, I started blaming my character rather than me. That's a sign of death. Plus, he's a cypher... he's got nothing to say as far as I could see.
o Morrowind: Probably doesn't count for the same reason that BG2 doesn't. The character model I chose for my character is kind of a cutie, though, as Morrowind was one of the first games to go beyond the typical "hard core slut" design that just about every other 3D game went with for their female characters.
o Ico: Ah!! OK, this one definitely counts. It shames me that I didn't think of it until right now. I definitely like the kid Ico in the game of the same name. And it's funny that I do, because he doesn't say a thing. I really need to write up a full review of this. But, right, both he and the ghost-girl that he walks around with were really well-done, and playing the game to "help" them, like they were living characters ala in the Tron movie, is a legitimate feeling.
It could be that I am simply not thinking along the right lines. All of my boxes from the last two years are near the sink downstairs, and within them lie many secrets, secrets whose answers are things like "giant, hidden spiders," "giant, hidden ants," "giant, hidden beetles" and various other giant creepy crawlers whose empires I don't have the courage to disturb at this point. (The marines in Giants: Citizen Kabuto come to mind as another possibility, now that I think about it.)
But my take is that there isn't a whole of characters to care about in games as of late. It's kind of a shame, too.
Oh, wow. That's a great question. Man, I'm thinking this through and having a real tough time coming up with anything. Here's what I've got so far:
o Freedom Force: I am probably as much of a rah-rah commie hater as you'll get this side of a foil hat, but I didn't feel anything towards Minute Man other than anger when he was forced along on another mission. *Maybe* if FF let us pick our own squads each and every time I would have. But Minute Man was just slowing me down. Towards the end of a game, a certain character meets a certain fate, and I can't say I got too worked up for him/her either.
o Baldur's Gate II: Most likely, character you make yourself shouldn't count. That leaves Imoen... and while she's less annoying than she was in BG, I was still not really solving the game for her sake. And when you get to the point where you free her and don't let her join your party (I mean -- come on -- you have *no idea* when you're going to be at the point where she is free... you either play the whole damn thing with 5 characters or you let one of your own guys go when she's free. Not a fair choice, not in the slightest) and she starts [i]whining[/i]... well, t'hell with her. The Infinite Engine needed two slots for NPCs and only NPCs.
o Max Payne: Any empathy I felt for his dead kid ended when the devs looped the baby cries over and over again in the umbilical cord level. Sorry, but after wasting several hours of my life on them the kid got what he deserved. Is Max worthy of empathy? After a long ummm I would say no, because he's the narrator of the game, and the narration is just so downright laughable.
o Mafia: Haven't played it enough to really say yet.
o Maximo: With this game, I started blaming my character rather than me. That's a sign of death. Plus, he's a cypher... he's got nothing to say as far as I could see.
o Morrowind: Probably doesn't count for the same reason that BG2 doesn't. The character model I chose for my character is kind of a cutie, though, as Morrowind was one of the first games to go beyond the typical "hard core slut" design that just about every other 3D game went with for their female characters.
o Ico: Ah!! OK, this one definitely counts. It shames me that I didn't think of it until right now. I definitely like the kid Ico in the game of the same name. And it's funny that I do, because he doesn't say a thing. I really need to write up a full review of this. But, right, both he and the ghost-girl that he walks around with were really well-done, and playing the game to "help" them, like they were living characters ala in the Tron movie, is a legitimate feeling.
It could be that I am simply not thinking along the right lines. All of my boxes from the last two years are near the sink downstairs, and within them lie many secrets, secrets whose answers are things like "giant, hidden spiders," "giant, hidden ants," "giant, hidden beetles" and various other giant creepy crawlers whose empires I don't have the courage to disturb at this point. (The marines in Giants: Citizen Kabuto come to mind as another possibility, now that I think about it.)
But my take is that there isn't a whole of characters to care about in games as of late. It's kind of a shame, too.