Characterization and Its Developments in the History of Video Games

In this analysis article, we will discuss the subject of characterization and, in line with it, the changes that sometimes completely change some prominent characters in video games.

Throughout the history of gaming, and especially since storytelling and characterization became a prominent part of video games, we’ve constantly seen different characterizations change throughout the franchise’s story and change their characters accordingly. This issue has always caused the community of fans of different franchises to exchange opinions on the characterization approaches adopted at certain points in the history of that series, and sometimes they even become completely isolated and stand on opposite fronts. But the question that arises is why this happens at all? Why do established and so-called “Established” characters change?!

During this article, we try to address these questions a little, examine different examples and see at what point it is logical and necessary to develop, mature, or even “change” the characterization of a character.

The relationship between characterization and storytelling

Before anything else, it is necessary to mention, as you probably noticed, during this article, we are talking about works that focus on at least one of the mentioned dimensions. The two drivers of characterization and overall storytelling of a work are like a two-way relationship, which of course does not necessarily mean equality in these parts, but rather means action and reaction between them, perhaps in different scales and degrees.

But what is meant by the different scale here? It means different approaches that may be adopted towards a work in the narrative dimension; For example, a franchise like Devil May Cry is primarily a character-driven series, at least in terms of narrative, thanks to which these characters enable the storytelling and overall narrative goals of this franchise, but you’ll never say, “DMC 3 had amazing storytelling!” Rather, you mention the protagonist and supporting characters of that work, such as Dante, Lady, or Vergil, whose action and reaction with the game world justifies the story and its ultimate goal.

On the other hand, we have works that are primarily narrative oriented and justify their characters in line with their narrative and set the gears of characterization in motion. For example, a franchise like Silent Hill follows such an approach, and in fact, it is the general narrative and its purpose that justify the various characters, including the protagonist.

However, in the end, this two-way equation is directly connected not only to the narrative topic, but also to the justification of the game world or the so-called “World Building” and affects it. There is also another thing to be aware of, which is that poor storytelling can’t necessarily save its characters, but good characterizations can sometimes shoulder a weak plot goal or overall narrative and make it more tolerable. .

Narrative-focused video game characters play a very important role as a bridge between the player and the game, which, if not managed properly, can greatly undermine the overall experience of a work. If the story of a title such as Red Dead Redemption 2 is impressive and memorable because of the correct management and logical and purposeful processing of the protagonist of that work, Arthur, because this logical processing makes the events of the story more effective and also creates a very powerful connection between the player and the world of this game. It was played and even the action and reaction of this character with John officially directly changes the re-experience of the first episode and the player’s understanding of it.

Logical characterization is the main pillar of establishing a relationship with the player, because when this is done correctly, the character’s pain, happiness and sadness become the player’s pain, happiness and sadness, and in fact, it can be said that it allows the player to relate and connect, which is effective in this direction. It also multiplies the narrative.

Therefore, it can be said that proper characterization is the first step towards reaching a story and an effective world and narrative purpose, and if the first step is taken incorrectly, it will cause the experience to falter until the end. They are true to their purpose. Even though I want to talk more about different franchises and character development approaches in them, we have to listen to the fact that these franchises all started from a single game and have put the bricks of creating their iconic protagonists together over time.

The continuation of a franchise has a direct relationship with the growth and change of the protagonist or even other characters in it; The important issue that exists is that the initial version of the unit, the narration and the processing of its characters are based on certain lines of thought at a certain point in time and have been implemented according to a specific idea, which will certainly shape and generalize these lines of thought to the needs along the way. And the new narrative approaches are considered a big challenge, so each of these eras and the amount of elasticity of the initial template in the direction of generalization and finding shape in the future is limited.

Sometimes these characters serve the goals of the story and sometimes the story serves the goals of these characters and they grow and mature by feeding on each other through one or more versions, but growth and maturity means that the previous clothes of that character sooner or later It starts to shrink and eventually tears, and this is where the character’s need for a new cover is actually a warning about the end of a period and the entry into a new one.

When is maturity or character transformation a “need”?

The maturity of a character can sometimes occur during the story of a single work, and in other cases, it is more often seen in franchises that have established characters, and after a while, they certainly need to be torn and changed, and it is precisely in these cases that a sudden separation may occur. To create greatness among the fans of a franchise.

But sometimes it can be seen that people are not necessarily against the new approach, but against “change” in general, which at least in the field of video games is caused by many parameters, sometimes personal. However, in this article, we personally intend to take a general look at this issue. Let’s have and use some examples to see when a character “must” go further and present something new to his name and identity.

Finishing the capacity, storyline, era or general tension of a certain approach of characterisation

The first example I want to use is Kratos; Personally, I like the classic and hack and slash titles of the God of War franchise more than the recent cinematic versions, but nevertheless the truth is that when this franchise reached the version of God Of War Ascension, in terms of narrative, the juice of the franchise was largely drained. was Here, the creators were faced with a choice, either they had to abandon the franchise forever, or in order to continue “must” important changes were made in this series and its mechanism. The part that we are discussing today was the characterization of this character, which was ironically one of the biggest points of change in the continuation of the franchise, which brought different feedbacks.

Kratos is a very good example of a character who has grown up; Some are upset about why this character no longer has his former morals, including his excessive violence, and if you separate emotions and nostalgia from logic for a moment, you will understand why such an approach was taken for this character in the 2018 version.

The mission of this character towards himself and the former mechanism of the world he portrayed ended in the third edition, so repeating the same approach further along the way was largely an insistence on a one-dimensional approach that no longer had its former efficiency and effectiveness, and it was exactly at this point. The transformation of this character from an option to a “must” in order not only to maintain the logic of character development, but also to become an efficient steering wheel for his collection. We are talking about a demigod who is at least more than a thousand years old by a thumb calculation and while his exact age is not necessarily stated! How can such a character not have the slightest growth after hundreds of years.

Of course, some questionable approaches to the characterization of Kratos were adopted in the version of Ragnarok, which was influenced by some negative and sometimes strange overall narrative approaches and policies of that work, but nevertheless, during the Valhalla add-on package, this character was able to achieve a logical and correct development.

The use of paradox in characterizations is common, and for Kratos, while it may be unpleasant for some, coming to terms with the monsters of his past is much more impressive given the experiences of this character throughout the various titles, still being the same character after a thousand years. Furious remains hungry for revenge because that chapter ended in the best possible way.

Now is the time to be influenced by it and to “reflect” on those events, which will finally make Kratos appear not only as a protagonist but also as a father figure. Therefore, in general, we must say that we cannot expect a franchise to grow and continue if we are not willing to accept and cope with some sacrifices and a targeted trade-off, especially character processing.

Another example that can be mentioned for this type of extensive character changes and actually injecting paradox is the character of Phoenix Wright from the Ace Attorney franchise; This character was also one of those characters who largely followed a certain pattern during the initial trilogy and was not affected by certain changes, and it can be said that he used his narrative capacities to a large extent, but in the fourth part, Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney The franchise’s writer at the time Mr. Shu Takumi decided to take the character in a new and different direction which, as you can probably guess, upset a section of the fan community so much that some called it character assassination.

But if we looked again at the condition of this character through the lens of logic, we could clearly see that there was a lot of potential for storytelling for him, and this new path takes advantage of exactly these potentials, so that now we were facing a very different character, who not only understands and believes It challenged the main protagonist to Phoenix, but this mechanism was directly transferred to the players.

The gray actions of this character made not only his story line become one of the most engaging parts of that work, but also helped the new protagonist of the franchise to build a bridge with the player, because thanks to this characterization approach, Apollo and Player are almost identical in terms of lines. They were of the same mind.

Finally, the truth that exists is that sometimes the era of a specific approach specific to a specific period of narrative in franchises has ended and as a result, writers need to make changes to continue their work, certainly players who have been with those characters for years. They especially remember that it is hard for them to let go of that era, but if this causes them to give no chance to new ideas, and a very strict point of view adopting this issue can prevent the flourishing of the remaining potentials of the collection and new paths.

In the collections that rely on their iconic characters, they limit their capacities to a large extent to the elasticity of those characters, so when the capacities of a story line, a certain period or the narrative approach of the characters are fully used, maturity and even “change” to A must be converted. But sometimes, due to the non-optimality of the initial approach, the characters go through the change process much faster, one of the great examples of which is the character Raiden from the MGS franchise.

Of course, sometimes it is better for the franchise to end its work on a good note after the end of capacities, but since today, if something is profitable, “the end” has no meaning for it, it is generally decided to continue, which certainly required extensive changes. And it is very important how these changes are implemented.

Changes in order to create depth, introduce dimensions and create new dynamic capacities for narration

Sometimes the authors like to add more layers to their character so that in the end it is not only a more flexible supplement to the game’s narrative but also more depth and capacities to challenge that character, in this regard it is not bad to go to another example and Chris Redfield is from the Resident Evil franchise.

Chris was a character that remained almost untouched during the first several titles of the franchise; A completely one-dimensional character who followed the stereotypical rules of a hero always looking to do the right thing and save the world. Meanwhile, characters like Jill and Albert Wesker, who appeared in the first episode like Chris, were able to get better characterizations over time and also go through several narrative twists.

It can almost be said that before the sixth version, Chris’s narrative capacities were so low that almost all of his roles up to RE5 were the same and very close to each other, and in fact, there was no special character maturation for this character, but finally in the sixth episode of this character for It was challenged for the first time and received new narrative layers and was able to depict a new aspect of this character.

But Chris is not one of those characters that has been subjected to extensive changes just once, because he received interesting changes again in the seventh and eighth episodes, and while the seventh episode itself is an example for the next part of the article, the eighth episode is still a subset of Our current conversation.

Episode 8 took Chris to a grayer side, a character who was once a stereotypical hero now turned into a very interesting character with dumb and gray goals that greatly challenge his past beliefs. This issue not only made Chris a much more attractive character, but also helped a lot in the advertising campaign of that work and creating vibrancy in the fan community.

However, there were many who had a problem with this change in the approach of processing this character and believe that Chris should never have changed, which if I want to say my personal opinion here, I think it is a very one-dimensional and limiting point of view that if Capcom wanted to To put it mildly, the RE franchise in general never managed to create a large number of iconic characters.

So, for example, it can be said that sometimes the topic of characterization can be changed based on the needs of the author and regardless of the capacity or need, but here this change requires a strong backbone to support the narrative logic, and sometimes some works completely fail in the field of embedding this backbone. And as a result, they not only ruin the image of an established character, but also destroy the communication bridge between the narrative and the game world with the player, and at the end of the experience, it conveys an empty and so-called “flat” sensory effect.

In line with this definition, it is not bad to give an example that exactly matches this issue, the character of Dante in DMC 2! The second part of Devil May Cry is definitely struggling with many problems outside of the subject of characterization and narrative, but it can be safely said that the way Dante is portrayed in this version is one of the strangest and worst types of skin changes and character development.

An important aspect of all the above-mentioned definitions and examples is that all these cases are still based on the previous ideas and processes of the characters, which actually move in the direction of their growth. In some cases, including DMC 2, this doesn’t happen because the creators completely forgot what they did in the previous version, so Dante in this version was more like a completely new character than an extension of the previous processing!

This issue has caused the characterization of the protagonist of this work to lack a supporting backbone, which not only questions the narrative logic of the game, but also, as we mentioned earlier, since these characters are directly connected to the creation of the work’s world, this backbone was missing. It caused chaos and destabilization of the game world and its identity.

Therefore, it can be said that the issue of characterization, especially in franchises, sometimes becomes a “need” in the case of mismanagement or the end of the narrative capacities of a character, which can sometimes even appear sudden and imposed, just like what happened after the release of God of War. Ascension happened due to fan outcry.

Sometimes this “need” is raised by the author in order to create new capacities or to use the unsearched dimensions of the characters, which directly goes back to the issue of the supporting backbone and overall narrative logic, which is a “must” for a favorable transfer and new foundations. If this issue is not paid attention to, the resulting processing can not only drown the said character in instability, but also spread like a virus in all aspects of the narrative of the game and involve it.

Characterization in reboots; Adherence to principles or a new beginning?

Rebooting a famous franchise is really like walking on a thin layer of ice that one wrong step can bring the whole project back because these reboots rely on their iconic character before anything else and re-create the world and a distinct narrative based on different approaches. They shape the new characterization in different dimensions, but as I mentioned in the opening section, the characterization is the first step towards reaching the story, an impressive world and a narrative purpose, so here the reboots have the ability to change the structure compared to a sequel, but with this new possibility. A new risk is also introduced, which is the identity crisis resulting from the wrong processing of characters and the reflection of IP goals.

So reboots, as much as they can be a fresh start, are still shackled to the principles of the IP they represent, which is why I say reboots for developers of any scale can be like walking on a thin layer of ice that could break at any moment. to break But now we want to take a look at how to deal with characterization in reboots.

Full-fledged reboots and the risk of identity crisis

Full reboots always carry a higher error rate because sometimes creators think that since they are dealing with a reboot project they can throw everything away and start over, which history has well proven never ends well. There are no traces. Story-oriented IPs always have a direct connection to their characters, which are a large part of their identity, and this is an important parameter when reviewing the goals of this IP, because if these characters are “rebooted” in a non-optimal way, it can be a huge inconsistency. Create a game between the name and the narrative mechanism, which will eventually have an unstable and anonymous output.

Of course, sometimes these reboots can achieve a dynamic formula that doesn’t conflict with the IP by expanding the character and even revising his goals, for example, let’s take a look at the latest reboot of the Tomb Raider franchise. The first part of this reboot worked perfectly in terms of revising the goals, tone and overall processing of Lara Croft, so that despite the great difference in moral dimensions, the spirit of this character was still well depicted from a new lens and it displayed an excellent mechanism. In fact, it can be said that a more realistic and “Grounded” approach was adopted towards this character, which was not at all in conflict with the general IP, but rather appeared as a new scenario that required a distinct but logical and multi-dimensional processing of Lara.

However, in the continuation of this trilogy, Lara’s characterization betrayed her own reboot approach and was constantly weakened, so that during the next two versions, especially Shadow of The Tomb Raider, Lara’s character became so one-dimensional that she could not even play some climax or emotional sequences. Or manage his actions and reactions with other characters! Personally, at the end of that experience, whenever Lara started talking, I wanted to choose death over life and save myself from that excruciating agony. But let’s not get away from it, the Tomb Raider reboot is a good example of innovation while sticking to character identity and IP.

But on the other hand, we have DMC: Devil May Cry, which was officially considered a full-scale character assassination for all the characters of that franchise, and is a great example of misunderstanding the identity characteristics and reasons for the characters’ popularity, which certainly faced such resistance from fans that Capcom completely backtracked on its stance on the franchise and began to review its goals.

In terms of narrative and characterization, the creators threw away all the previous material and imagined that they can twist and change everything as they wish. Dante had become a debaucherous “bad boy” who miserably tried to inherit the tone of the former Dante and failed at it. Mundus has also become a banker who tries to gain control of the human world through “loans” and watches them through CCTV!

These two characters alone created such a disconnection between the name of this work and its identity that it ended in a massive identity crisis, while this game had a lot of potential to become a new hack and slash work. In complete reboots, there is always a very narrow line between expansion and destruction of a character, which all comes back to the correct understanding of the capacities and identity characteristics of these characters.

Soft Reboot and keep the format of the characters

The big difference that Soft Reboot titles have with full reboots is that these works are still in the same original world and along the previous characterization and narrative approaches of the series, and in fact they are still considered “Canon”, but they have more freedom of action than a mere sequel in In the field of ideation, there are jumps in the timeline and the injection of revision of approaches, so the big challenge of these types of reboots is to maintain the narrative logic and create the world of the game while expanding and developing new ideas.

Consider Resident Evil 7; This work is an excellent Soft Reboot in almost all its dimensions, but in our discussion today, it has a major problem, and that is in the field of Chris Redfield’s characterization, which almost violates the important parameters for characterization in such a reboot.

The characterization of Chris does not take into account the narrative logic of the franchise and the main storyline of the franchise, nor does it even try to adhere to some of the basic characteristics of this character, so that if the game does not tell you the character’s name, you will probably never guess that this person is Chris. It is Redfield.

In this version, we return to the approach before the sixth episode and we see a very stereotypical approach to the character of Chris, as if he never experienced the tragedies of 2012. On the other hand, there is not enough time to process this character, and therefore there are instabilities in dealing with this character during the seventh episode, which have been tried to be partially resolved in the eighth episode.

It is not bad to mention the appearance design of this character, which has almost no resemblance to Chris, and as we saw, it was redesigned during the eighth episode to be able to rely more on the nature of the Soft Reboot of this character and the new layers of his characterization.

Another example of this issue was God of War, which we talked about in the previous section, although important parameters were observed in relation to GOW 2018 and we saw a logical and proportionate expansion for this character. In general, Soft Reboots, due to their complete dependence on the past of their collection, require more subtlety from the developers in order to carry out the optimal transfer of characters from the past to the new phase, but in the same proportion, they create more capacities in order to search for new dimensions, which They are the basis of the previous principles of the collection.

Conclusion

As we examined throughout the article, the growth, maturity or even change of characters and in line with that, changing their processing approach is a natural thing, especially for large and continuous franchises; Although this issue sometimes causes dissension in the community of fans of a franchise, it is ultimately an inevitable issue for the survival of any franchise that relies on its story and characters. Of course, as we mentioned in some examples, this issue does not necessarily mean that creators are free to do whatever they like under the pretext of “change” with the characterization of characters, because there are always rules that determine a specific framework for them, and if they are not respected And complying with these final exit rules can lead to an identity crisis.