So, I guess to break them down, it's: what happens (Plot), who the people are (Character), and what the world is (Lore). Pick your focus carefully.

I kinda wish I could make a game just to build one about that lore book world. Nice art.

So what did The Witcher focus on? As a book adaptation, I'd say it's plot. Books tell stories, first and foremost. But maybe "all three" is the correct answer here?

You're really growing on me, Matt. I'm glad you joined Extra Credits :)

Runescape absolutely shines in lore. There were heros before the player, entire wars and ages. Every city, town, ruin and dungeon has an in-story reason for being there, and different cultures with in the game world have different customs and habbits. From broad things to little details such as "Trolls are named after the first thing they try to eat when they're born" I love micro bits of lore like that. I could go on for a book about the lore or Runescape. XD

World building is entirely irrelevant to almost all genres besides speculative fiction, so it's not exactly one to one. An actual "writing 101" lecture would almost certainly focus on plot, character, and theme, while slowly introducing concepts like tonality and structure as they become relevant. Honestly I get that game writing is a bit different from literature, but this feels like a pretty ridiculous simplification even given that.

Wait, do you mean my comment is over-simplified, or the episode is oversimplified?

Exquisite Corpse Really? Most people I hear say characters are more important.

I think what Raymond Throne means is that video game writing is fundamentally different from writing in most other media, as it has a tendency toward fantasy and science fiction and thus video game writing would more likely have world-building as a major factor. In most other media, most stories are set in the real world during the present (or whatever the present was when the story was finished), so there's no world-building necessary. For instance, how much world-building is there in Pet Sematary, Rocky, or Archie? Very little, because each of those have mundane, everyday settings that can be understood without an explanation. Stories like Guardians of the Galaxy, Blade Runner, and The Hobbit would have a LOT of world-building, by contrast, because they're set in strange, fantastic locations that need explanation. (Even then, some speculative fiction have pretty little world-building. Star Trek, for example, focuses quite heavily on the characters, and they only do world-building where it's necessary to understand the plot or new characters. For another example, despite the world of Naruto looking very little like our own, the plots are very much focused on ideological conflicts, and so the stories are intensely focused on the characters with lore used only to explain how characters fight and how the characters are shaped by the history and politics of the places where they grew up.)

@@raymondthrone7197 There are works of fiction that are neither character driven nor plot driven, but world building driven, they are rare because for that to work you better make a long series of books but they exist

Yes but you cannot achieve an experience like minecraft or shadow of the colosus just with writen words, at the same time you cannot make a game that gives you the same experience than the ceremonial by hpl or the fall of the huser house by eap, there are two different media.

Not... really. World building isn't a central pillar in any sort of writing I'm aware of. It's a component of setting design specifically relevant to speculative fiction works, but even then you're better served by just calling it straight up "Setting". Their delineation of the pillars is also pretty painfully simplistic, given it completely ignores the role of tone, theme, (more relevantly to literature but still) and prose, which are all incredibly important concepts in any sort of serious written work. Breaking it up as they've done feels a bit like the strategy gradeschool English teachers take when they narrow in on plot and character analysis because they know those two are the most obviously visible elements of a story for students to grasp, not because they're the most important.

@@raymondthrone7197 for a lot of comic books and some movie, world building is really important tbh

@@raymondthrone7197 I mean world/setting can be really important to a written story, like "lord of the ring" would probably not work in a "matrix" setting and Vice versa and Depending on the story you are trying to tell, "what the characters are doing" would probably not be as important as "who the characters are and who they want to become". look at batman or spiderman for example, Many writers try to dissect the character and think about how they would respond to certain situations and how they would realistically think. they aren't always action, drama, and explosion

Tetris

Dragon Warrior 1 destroys your theory.

Fits very well for all Final Fantasy series.

Let me see... Vagrant Story. Final Fantasy Tactics. Nope....

I mean, Some of the JRPG's I've loved have departed pretty far from that particular mold. Depending on your definition of JRPG anyway. Eternal Sonata, the MARDEK RPG's (what we got anyway), Artifact Adventure...

I'm very surprised that no one seems to have caught the Yatzee quote. Even more surprised to see people bringing up Vagrant story, given it's an Action RPG. As in the exact opposite of a JRPG.

General Luigi Obsidian games lately seem to be really good with Lore and Character.

Heh, it's widely acknowledged that Tyranny is well written. Don't worry. :)

I want Tyranny 2!

In my experience, Tyranny's very existence isn't especially well-known. Maybe I just haven't been hanging out in the right parts of the Internet... Warning for those who haven't played Tyranny: there are spoilers below. On a related note, I'm actually hoping for more expansions to Tyranny rather than a sequel. I doubt I'm the only person who wanted, among other things, quests for Eb, Sirin, and Kills-in-Shadow akin to what Bastard's Wound gave us for Barik, Verse, and Lantry. Sirin could have a quest to safely remove her helmet, Eb could have a quest that delves into either the Tidecasters' history or the fate of her daughter, and Kills-in-Shadow could have a quest connected to the Shadowhunters. I'm also pretty curious about the region Hunter's Respite is in, to say nothing of the Free Cities we hear so much about. Expansions could give us all that. Narrative-wise, I'm not sure where Obsidian could go with a hypothetical Tyranny 2 without endangering the premise Tyranny is built on. If we're to follow the Archon of the Tiers in Tyranny 2, then unless the patched-in surrender option becomes canon, a confrontation with Kyros is probably the easiest path for the story to follow. As I mentioned in the comments section for the Extra Credits video on Cthulhu, however, Kyros has value as a character because they can't be defeated in-game. As with Cthulhu, once Kyros is given HP and the player is given a means of depleting it, Kyros stops being this inevitable entity and instead is reduced to a standard RPG final boss. In my opinion, Tyranny 2, if it is to retain the premise that its predecessor is built upon, would need either a new player character altogether (maybe the Archon's revolt against Kyros, if it's treated as the canon ending, could be crushed between games, for example) or a path for the player character that doesn't include the possibility of Kyros being defeated.

Tyranny did an excelent job on the three. But I would wager the developers focused more on the characters and lore elements. The plot is fairly good and it has a lot of stuff to say, but I would say it doesn't go too far beyond the standard good narrative RPG.

Yeah so much more detail than usual. Lovin' it

Thanks a lot , that just make my day :D

Thanks , I tend to overwork them a little bit but it pays off .

David Hueso Ten un lindo día! ~Jumanj1 ;)

Journey. I have to give a shout out to Journey for this.

*cough cough* Undertale *Cough cough* Basically the whole game soundtrack is remixes of two or three songs.

Max payne 3 does this as well

SeanBellWrites I 100% agree with that idea!

@@elijahclevenger10 Whoever made this video has never made a video game before. Would you really trust the advice of someone like that?

I would too, but by someone who has actually made a video game before. This YT channel is all bogus.

As Always Holy Trinity of Game Writing

in the begining there was plot... and plot then said "let there be lore" and lo(re) and behold, lore there became...and plot created the players, then plot sent them his son, character, so he could show them the games

Hail garfoof

@@armepos 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂

Don't see: The Last Of Us 2

@@Player-kg1ds most of the game wasn’t bad

@@Player-kg1ds I hate every character of the side of Abby

@@mateoreyes6921 that's exactly the point

@@Player-kg1ds LOU2 writing is amazing. Keep drinking that Joel cult juice.

the implication is that they are a small child and small children like adventure and think they are invincible

Deltarune is even a better example, like at the beginning at the character creation and name giving screen and later when you lose control over Kris

And you never fail to spam

PALADOG that t block has such a interesting background

I agree, but the tragic fates of the two Z blocks makes me tear up every time

Well, Puyo Puyo Tetris introduced a set of characters for the Tetris side of the game, and I'm going to miss them, as due to the very strict terms of Tetris licensing, we are probably never going to see them again.

/necro

don't forget the character development, they end up together and then they die happy

One of my favorite characters to draw , Thanks !

It depends. While worldbuilding with a theme in mind can help, it can also backfire. Say if you have a message you want to convey, but every single character arcs is centered around said message and every conflict is revolved around said message then it can get annoying very quickly, especially if said message is overused(pro-diversity, environmentalism, anti-capitalism). The real world isn't based entirely on a single social issue, so having some minor variations in said theme may help make swallowing the main theme easier.

Reito Shizaki Oh, yeah, that's definitely true, I agree with that. If you make everybody and every thing go through similar exact motions and express the same themes or messages on said themes, you're gonna wear things out real quick.

So it's not that plain and simple, is it?

Lodfield Kerman Did I say that everything needs to serve a single goal, or that the character's arcs needed to serve the same purpose, let alone the same theme, or anything like that? No, I didn't. I do like things being relatively holistic, but I didn't say anything like that, and I'm glad the other commenter brought up what he did.

I strongly agree with theming being important. I once heard an interview with Team Meat where they said they felt theming was more important than any other writing mechanic in games. Completely changed the way I look at Meat Boy, and it strengthened my opinion on Celeste, and on Bioshock, and on a large number of games.

Skyrim has no main character for all I care and incredibly weak plot, but it's lore still captivates me and many others, many love Dark Souls and KH even though what you said about them isn't a lie, I guess it depends on taste, not every one is going to like every story 😊

It's not about not working on the other pillars, sometimes is about using the others to support your core pillar. Have your characters and plot structured in a way that you can show more about your lore. Or having lore that is directly related to a character's backstory, or plot that allows for that character to grow. Or to have characters/stereotypes which help on sending a certain message through the plot, or lore that embodies a certain theme presented within the plot or the reveal of some part of the lore being the plot twist itself.

A Song of Ice and Fire does this really, really, _really_ well. To the point that it's hard to tell which of the pillars is being emphasized at any given moment. I know it's not a game, but this kind of writing advice applies to any medium. The plot of that series is absolutely bonkers, and it'd be ridiculous to claim that the plot isn't a major part of what makes it so engaging and popular. But the plot doesn't just trudge on by itself. It's not driven by fate or divine will or any external force at all, it is driven _entirely_ by the actions of the characters who inhabit that world. Even the ancient history of the world, like the existence of the Others (White Walkers), is character-driven. So is it all about the characters? It might be, but what if the characters are simply archetypes chosen to fulfill a particular role in the story GRRM wants to tell us? Then the point wouldn't be the characters themselves, it'd be the story they're playing out -- a story about the wildly self-contradictory and often self-sabotaging nature of humans. Although... A lot of the worldbuilding in ASoIaF reflects real-world cultures and their histories, including the power structures of those cultures. Every major character in the series is someone who's part of that power structure, and the plot is driven by the actions they are able to take as a result of their position. So perhaps it's not about the characters _or_ the plot. Maybe it's about the hazards inherent in giving any human being control over the lives of many others. So it'd be about the lore, then, and specifically about using the lore to comment on its parallels in our real world. Or is the lore only there to give the characters a sandbox, or the plot a setting? The pillars play off each other so well that it's hard to say which of them, if any, GRRM is attempting to emphasize. We're engaged with the plot because we care about the characters and the world they're in, we care about the world because of the people in it and the interesting things that happen, we care about the characters because of the things they do in their world. You can't appreciate one without thinking of the others. Thanks for coming to my TED talk.

That's what I said. It's not about "hey improve this pillar and everything will be solved!", it's about how the pillars can be dependent on each other and going 100% in a single pillar may not be enough to make your writing "good". KH has an absolutely banal story with its "chosen one fights bad guy" and an absolute disaster of a lore even Nomura admitted he just winging it as he goes along without any actual future planning, but its characters are good with distinct personality(except for all girls not named Aqua) and if nothing else you can just enjoy the Disney characters from your favorite films. Dark Souls, Monster Hunter and 90% of fighting games otherwise has a nonexistent plot since the player can ignore the entirety of the plot apart from them of going to fight progressively bigger enemies. And while they can have deep lore hidden behind it and make you appreciate the efforts put into it, it still failed in selling said lore in the moment of you playing and facing said bosses with deep lore. Gameplay is the main appeal of these games, not the writing, and that's perfectly fine for it. You can try to convey messages and themes, but that alone is still not what make games writing good. Consider this, Mass Effect(first trilogy) is lauded for having a great story(1st and 2nd game anyway), but what is it's message? The message it's trying to convey clearly is not what people liked(if anything, the message is what killed it in the 3rd game), and certainly not what people goes back to praise when talking about Mass Effect after all these years.

TinoTino Faustino fallout is the same, the plot is boring, i like the twist, but the plot is pretty generic, the charecters arent great (except strong), but i love the lore, i love just exploring places in fallout

You've inspired me to try to think of games where I can't place what part of the writing I enjoyed. First that came to mind was Brothers. I'm not sure if it was the plot or the gameplay that ended up making that game so effective, but I guess the gameplay... actually became character writing, somehow...? Other one I thought of was the first Bioshock. I've actually never played it, but the twist obviously became a meme right quick, so I know about it. Was that twist a character moment or a plot moment? Genuine question, I don't know! I'm sure there's games that have successfully pulled a Planet of the Apes that I just can't think of right now, and surely that kind of twist would count as plot, without particularly great characters needed to make it effective. Like, the thing you thought you've been doing is actually something else? Although that particular kind of twist actually becomes lore... Gah, this is complicated! Maybe we should agree that plot is necessary and sometimes has more or less presence, but it can't really be the focus unless your game is all gameplay and no story...?

I'd say Halo (1-3) is a good example of a game with good plot and basically no character writing for the main character. Same with Half Life (although they both have some great side characters). These stories tend to be the type where the main character is reacting to things happening, vs being the one that created the problems. In Halo Master Chief has to go around and do all this stuff to defeat the baddies. (with some good character writing for Cortana). But what do we know about him? Basically nothing, he is a "doom guy" type of character. Even by Halo 3 we know very little about him. Anyway I think "silent protagonist" stories usually lean more on plot/world building vs creating a complex character, although many create memorable side characters.

I think the other extreme of plot ahead of character would be something like Freespace, an old space-flight fighter sim game where aside from the intro, all the dialog is done trough text-briefings and voice dialog between pilots. The amount of characterization of the player in the game is close to nil. A lot of this dialog has to be very to the point too, due to how it's supposed to be a relaid conversation between military-personnel , but the writers (and VA's) were able to add some IMO good character/humanity to nameless NPC in some moments, precisely because where the plot has ended up placing those characters. But I think the situation that a game that has a conflict between groups that is so wide in scope, that neither the main characters or any particular supporting characters can be said to be the focus of the story is fairly unusual for a game that cares a lot about it's writing.

Patrick Reding doom?

Patrick Reding my first instinct answer is that a game should be capable of having good plot writing with weak character writing if the skeleton of the plot is very original and utilizes very effective twists. It'd probably be a lot more feasible if it also supplemented the plot writing with strong lore writing, but in theory, this should be possible. Unfortunately, humans have been telling stories for millennia, so constructing a fascinatingly original plot structure is no small feat, but I find it hard to believe we have totally exhausted all original plot lines and all subversive twists as a culture. I wish I could think of a good example in gaming though

While neither way is wrong if you watch some of their videos in the past liking the making your first game series, they actually recommend not going into game making with a story in mind, and to actually go in with a fun mechanic and gameplay. It's what your players will be doing the entire time they're playing your game, and while narrative and writing are important nothing undermines an amazing gameplay experience. I've played lots of games with a great story but no real gameplay flare that I didn't enjoy, but I've also played a lot of games with a poor story and an amazing gameplay that I kept coming back to. It's why so many mobile games are so popular despite having almost none of anything talked about in this video.

Ned Kelly was one of my favorite series to draw :D

One of my favorite Extra History episodes man :D

David Del Pozo Filíu World Building is the act of Creating Lore

Is it? the definition is "a body of traditions and knowledge on a subject or held by a particular group, typically passed from person to person by word of mouth.", according to google, so, generally speaking is about things that happened in the past, basically "history". If you make your NPCs have routines independent of the player (e.g.: they trade with each other, prices of merchandise changes) it makes the world feel alive, it builds relationships between other characters independent of you, but I wouldn't necessarily call it 'lore'.

"Lore" kinda makes it sounds more like "history". Whereas world building included geography, environment, economy, social systems, ethnicity, sciences, magic system, etc.

theyre kinda the same thing idk

Lore to me is the history, myths, and legends of the story milieu. It's part of world building, but world- building also encompasses the geography and geology. I've done enough planetvand star system design for some works in progress that I'm aware of it. One thing to be aware of, whether it's for games, books, film, or TV, keep the "iceberg" principle in mind. You may spend ages developing you world in detail, and it will give depth to what you actually use in your end product, but 90% of it should remain unseen. One if my writer friends said a lot of ppl he knew fell into the "I suffered for my work, now it's your turn" trap. He was referring to thr types where half the end product was background. Goal: you may need to know it all, but the reader/viewer/gamer only needs just what they need for the story to make sense. But that hidden part of your iceberg makes what's visible in the end more stable.

loafhero Please, I love origins gameplay as much as the next guy, but the story? It's the one thing that stops me from constantly replaying it! I mean the whole plot is one big cliche and even the first time playing it I knew what was going to happen way before the reveal (and I think I was around 13 or something)... While both 2 and inquisition weren't masterpieces either plot-wise, they at least sometimes managed to surprise me

You know the writers of Dragon Age Origin had balls when you could kill off / not even recruit all the party members. It really lent weight to your decisions.

You can not recruit some characters in DAI.

GiggitySam Entz Well, except for Origins. It's a massive game with maybe three interesting, characters and one halfway interesting NPC (Bhelen, naturally).

Deepseafish "Love" is not a word many would use to describe Origins shallow, tedious gameplay. You've got the story spot on though.

Idk m8

I dunno. It seemed pretty character-driven to me.

It's plot.

Well, to a point, mechanics do serve the game. One of the things that most made me realise the change in tone were the executions. In the first level, executions are quick and clean, usually a shot to the head and that's it. In the later parts of the game, the executions start to become more and more sadistic and desperate, with the protagonist smashing the enemy's heads against the ground with their rifle stocks and such. They really showed the protagonist's evolution.

The mechanics were pretty bog standard for a 3PS and I think that was on purpose cause they wanted to lull you into thinking it was a standard shooter game before it pulled the rug out from under you.

OnimaxBlade, agreed. Extra Credits actually did a two-episode analysis of Spec Ops a good time ago which is very much along those lines. kzfaq.info/get/bejne/odCRddamvb2uemw.html kzfaq.info/get/bejne/mbCKfMuUqKeWnJ8.html

I would say that the final point of this episode should have been that if a game is genuinely well written, fans will NOT be able to agree on which element of plot was the focus of the writers and developers, because each will have merits.

Tales don't really have much in lore aspect and these games plots are extremely character driven, I would say even more so than Final Fantasy. Doesn't mean series is bad, I love it.

I would indeed say that it's mostly Character-driven, but they do have lot of lore, mostly through all the skits you can find all around the world. In Tales of Zestiria, there's even Discoveries that always trigger skits explaining what it is they discovered.

I would say that Zestiria is worst Tales game, so it's not a good example - and big part why it's worst is how underused character part is. They pretty much tried cramping lore and gameplay explanation into parts which were about characters and their interactions (skits), to the detriment of both. I'm not saying that Tales don't have lore, I'm saying that lore part in these games is rather basic - compare amount of lore you get in Tales with amount of lore you get in games like Arcanum or old Fallout games (to not use most popular lately Dark Souls example).

Unfortunately for you, I disagree and found Zestiria to be one of the best games, so it is a good example. Especially since it wasn't the only game to had that, Tales of Graces also had discoveries triggering lore Skits. But just about any Tales of game gives enough lore to let you understand about the whole fictional world. Also unfortunately, I haven't played any of the games you mentionned, so I don't know just how much lore there is in those. I'd assume Fallout has as much lore as Skyrim, but Open World games are usually all about the Lore and little about characters and story. There's Tales of Xillia 2 that attempted to go the Open World path while keeping focus on the Character, but that ended being one of my least favorite Tales of since the story felt bland.

Tolkien was a lore fiend. Though if I'm honest, Peter Jackson did most of the stuff I liked with the characters.

Félix Pinchon The genius of Hollow Knight is that there is an actual in game explanation for why the protagonist doesn't talk or have a personality.

Yes. Funny enough the reason the character is "poorly written" is not a failure in character writting but a success in lore instead

dookie_12 Yeah it's crazy just how hard it nails all these pillars.

Mass Effect 2 did for sure, 1 and 3 could be argued either way

Plot is the weakest of the three pillars in Mass Effect, but they surely deliver on the world-building and character pillars.

Actually, I would consider Mass Effect 1's plot to be the strongest. If you strip away everything else as suggested in this video, it has the most drastic turns. The betrayal at Eden Prime, Saren as the big bad and you now must hunt him across the galaxy with his robo death army. That's the basis but in terms of twists we have the revelations on Virmire that Saren might not be the true big bad as Sovereign is revealed. The council grounding Shepard right as he's on the cusp of victory. Discovering the protheans and that "all" of them are dead. The possibility of Saren's last redeeming act. Sure, it still isn't the most nuanced plot and it doesn't set out to say anything truly meaningful. However, it's twists solely related to it's main plot felt more influential into how you saw the story as a whole than in latter games. This is also ignoring the side plots, each with their own personal twists and turns that contribute to smaller parts of the main story while being self contained plots of their own usually with twists and turns.

Mass effect 1 certainly did. Mass effect 2 had quite a lot of plot problems, not least of which was finding out that in plot terms the entire game was a waste of shepherds time as the collectors were never a significant threat. Mass effect 3 had some plot problems that I think were a carry over from the wasted time of mass effect 2. The krogan and quarian sub plots could easily have been in mass effect 2 and in mass effect 3 I think they really impacted the story of getting asari/salaraian/turian support.

Siliuse You have a good point. However ME2's plot felt contrived to me. Colonies are disappearing. Must be the Reapers! Is a leap. Let's revive Sheppard like Jesus. Let's all go offboard at the same time so plot can happen. And ME3 is let's do side quests, cause Deus Ex machina will fix everything. I love those games to death, but only the first has a 10/10 plot That said, out of the entire franchise I enjoyed the ME3 Krogan and Quarian missions with their amazingly nuanced meaningful choices

Absolutely, Mass Effect 2 is definitely a character driven game as there are 22 character missions (recruitment and loyalty) and ~5 plot missions. But the other games ? I'd claim that Mass Effect 1 is lore driven and Mass Effect 3 is plot driven. Mass Effect 1 is very much a story about stopping a big bad before he dooms the galaxy. Very original. The character interactions between missions are mostly to serve the lore as Tali mostly speaks of her people and not herself. Wrex spoke of his career as mercenary while also mostly speaking about lore. Kaidan speaks of his and others experience as human biotic. Garrus and Ashley might be the only ones speaking about their aspirations and histories. Mass Effect 3 however focuses on plot right from where the beginning and does not stop. Every single mission and interaction on the galaxy map serves the plot. In fact the developers had to put in a separate DLC for all the "missing" character moments in contrast to the previous game.

Yeah it is actually really interesting how the series focuses on entirely different elements like that. But I think it's the right order to do it in if you are gonna do something like that.

Truth. I have always said it and I'll say it again. The ME2 plot sucked.

Antilli There wasn't much of it, but what was there was good. The Revelation regarding the collectors, and the creation of reapers was amazing.

InfamousArmstrong That's Lore. Not plot.

Is this a JoJo reference??????!!!!!!!!!!

While the plot is... debatable... it does have very distinct, diverse, and developed characters.

Dialogue: A+ Plot: Uh, we don't talk about that...

Plot is about Robot - Human relationship, conspiracy, evil organizations, envirioment hazzard and war. In game lore is about pushing payloads, escorting a Holywood hotshot and fighting over a ghost base on the moon. Reasonable enough.

well Overwatch is pretty much character sentric, there's little to no plot besides "good guys fight badguys" & most of the lore is just there to explain the characters

it's a good example of proper focus in the right aspect, it's entirely character driven, sure it has it's plot and plenty of people like the lore, but both of those are really just there as a setup for the characters

S.Mehdi Mousavi what happened to him?

He went on to other projects.

@@Ajehy Projects on Extra Credits, or somewhere else? We want him back

There are plenty of tutorials for that doe.

Im not so sure that whould be exactly the type of thing that they whould do, especially since for the most part it whould end up being just a programming tutorial, but hey if you really want to learn you can find some really good tutorials for free out there on the internet. Maybe it takes a while to find a good one for the type of game you wanna make, but if you search a bit it Im sure you`ll find one you like.

That's not really their thing. Extra Credits is more about design than anything else.

Extra credits teaches theoretical game making, not practical scripting dude

A tutorial doesn't fit the kind of videos Extra Credit does. Extra Credits videos are about concepts and ideas that could be used to improve the quality of games, they are never tutorials about the technical aspects.

You can go for archetypes and then expand or contrast. The legend of heroes games does this well. Good first impression, then fill in later. For example _ Swordy Mc Sword Sword is a Sword guy, loves them, carries like 3-4 on his back but can't ever use them in a fight, too useless and never the time to use them. So he uses guns so he does not risk the urge to use them. - Literally just made that up but you could flesh out from there, the who and the way and the past. Hope this helps!

Nelson Baietti One of the supplements for Vampire: the Requiem, I believe it was the Ordo Dracul source book, had a system where you would draw a series of cards (ordinary playing cards, that is), to get suggestions for a character. It was a bit like a simple Tarot spread, you would draw (quoting from distant memory here) three cards for your character's past, three for their present, some for their Vices and Virtues, ambitions etc. Then there was a list of brief explanations of what the cards would mean. I'm sure there are many similar systems to look up, but I recall that one as being both fun and useful. Of course, you would have to adjust it to your current setting.

I remember a spreadsheet I got from a writing workshop ages ago... I don't have it on me, but this was the basic framework that I remember: - what's the name? what's the appearance? gender? age? (can be decided last, unless any of these influence them in-universe) - their associates and family members (not only those who appear in story; what relations did the character have before the story begins? If none, why so?) - personality: this was divided into four quadrants, IIRC -- external strengths (ex. good at reading people) -- internal strengths (ex. determined) -- external weaknesses (ex. easily offended by others) -- internal weaknesses (ex. low sense of self-worth) - abilities (social, martial, supernatural - how important are they in this particular genre you're writing?) - weaknesses (again, social, physical, supernatural - illnesses or low social status would also go here, if they matter) - backstory (what happened before the story begun; should either inform all of the above or come from all of the above, depending on how you prefer to write your character) -- the cliff notes version: what were the decisive moments of your character's life? What informs their behaviour, what haunts them? - role in the story (protagonist? antagonist? supporting character?) - what do they want? - why do they want it? - "other" (hobbys, habits, etc.) Ideally, you can fill all those in in any order, but when you do, you should look at all the others to make sure they fit together fine, and if they don't - either fix it to match, or figure out why one person has such disparate traits.

i got a book a few years ago about using Tarot Cards to develop a characters traits and faults, and its not only an easy way to streamline its also a really fun method to use.

My "cheat" is just defining what a character wants and what a character fears. Then I make the plot about their wants and fears colliding, so they have to "choose" which is more important to them. I find a lot of personality just comes out of letting them play out that conflict. As an example, My MC, James wants redemption but is afraid to face that he might be iredeemable. So he runs into situations where he thinks he can prove to himself he is a good guy but those are usually situations where his past is coming back to haunt him, so every misstep seems to prove his problem. So he tries to take easy ways out, which ends up backfiiring and proving his original problem, that he can't get what he wants. And it just goes in a spiral, from which his character emerges. Most character frameworks rely on how a character is at the beginning. What they look like. What their job is. Unfortunately, the demands of plot are that these sorts of things are going to be challenged and/or stripped away. Gregor Samsa loses what he looks like the first paragraph of the Metamorphosis, so how would that help the audience learn about his character? Instead, I feel, it is better to concentrate on strong motivations. What will drive a character in unfamiliar circumstances? What traits do they have that will guide them when they are insecure, out of their element, or feeling desperate. Because those traits will work at all points in a story. They'll be unconciously pursuing such things at the beginning, relying on them in the center, and working on resolving them at the end. The other great piece of advice I've heard is that characters are defined by their ability to care. It is what they care about most deeply that will draw the audience in. Even an anti-hero who "doesn't care" does care about something enough to feel a need to act in the way they do. The "doesn't care" is just an attitude that they will overcome, fairly quickly, because their need to participate in the plot is greater. So, that would be my third peg to hang a character on. What they care about deeply enough to override their apparent surface character.

I strongly disagree with this. Whenever people make up rules like this it feels like they either just haven't seen any good examples that go against these rules, or it turns into a self-fulfilling prophecy where they don't even give works that don't follow these rules a chance. Also, I would say that "writing" is far too broad of a term to make up this kind of rule for. While it certainly can have characters and probably even lore, I would say that poetry can also do pretty well without them.

True. Thx for reminding us

There are so many games where character is a lesser focus that are great games that I am forced to disagree with you. Most of these are RPG's where you make your character who you want them to be. Where is the character development in World of Warcraft, Skyrim, or Fallout? These games thrive on their lore driven plotline.

Adrienne Gormley What about stories where characters are more symbolic in nature, instead of having depth of characterization? These stories, like Homer's epics and Shakespeare's plays, proliferate our history, and these aren't bad stories.

If you're making a character-driven story, then yes. HOWEVER. You don't necessarily need to have a compelling PROTAGONIST character. Games like Elder Scrolls, Fable, or just about any BioWare title (though Dragon Age and Mass Effet take the cake there) will often have scintillating, controversial, or just plain interesting characters, but a protagonist specifically designed to be a blank slate, someone who the other characters can bounce off of and who the player can insert themselves into. Later BioWare games have given these protagonists their own voice and dialogue (i.e. the Inquisitor and Hawke from the last two Dragon Age games), but the CHOICE of words remains with the player.

They had plenty of character. No one ever said the characters you make have to be *likable* , or Kratos wouldn't have gotten past his first game. For the record, I LOATHED Squall. He's only really tolerable to me in Kingdom Hearts, as Leon, and that's after a near-complete overhaul of his personality.

Babar the elephant king!?

Bar. bar bar bar bar. Barbar.

Chase Strohm Barbarian.

Bar.

Bar bar bar bar bar bar bar bar bar bar bar bar bar bar

It's mostly mechanics focused though.

out of the story telling pillars, i think Xcom goes to charaters. BUT it's an understatement to call XCOM a mechanic focused game. Long War only adds to them... and i'm a long war kind of guy.

Solarat 1701 Imo, TF2's characters are much better than Overwatch's. I really like both games though.

Rallis I haven’t had enough experience with Overwatch to really get a grip on the characters (I’m poor and would just got TF2 for free), so I can’t pass judgment on which characters are better. I just love TF2’s amazing characters, and I think it’d be really nice if TF2 got more attention from video game channels. Part of this MIGHT be Valve’s fault for not advertising, which is a sharp contrast to Blizzard’s aggressive advertisement (have you seen the Reddit post on r/TF2 where we see that all the ad spaces on the TF2 comics page were bought by Overwatch)

Solarat 1701 I think they use Overwatch as a frequent example because it is popular and relevant, so it's generally an example most people watching these videos could understand. That's not to say tf2 isn't popular, it's just not on the same level

Edan J-W yeah, but I really do think that part of TF2’s irrelevance is that people just aren’t finding out about it, and people/channels like extra credits could really help bring it back into the spotlight

Solarat 1701 that's a nice catch-22. It's unpopular because people don't cover it, so people don't cover it because it's unpopular.

Dan's been gone for a few weeks now, aside from the episodes of Extra History and Politics they're still releasing. He still associates himself with the channel, he's just rebranding some of their stuff. Extra Frames is now New Frame Plus, Extra Play is now Playframe, etc. Alas, the voice of Squeaky Dan is no more.

D: