How To Make NPCs That Aren't Completely Annoying

Marvel's midnight Sons is a weird game not just because it's one of the best tiles of the Year released to almost no Fanfare or because it's just pretending to be a strategy game no the reason why midnight Suns is weird is because I should hate every single one of its characters but I don't let me explain Marvel's midnight Sons is a card based tactics game the sees you assembling a big superhero team comprised of a bunch of recognizable superhero faces so far so good the catch is that they all communicate exclusively in comic book quips and trendy slang they all have some deep personal angst you've got to resolve for them and they are all constantly bugging you with weird chores you need to do it's a perfect storm of potential annoying character syndrome but against all the odds I actually really like basically all of the NPCs in Midnight Suns and that's really confused me because creating likable non-player characters is something the video games have struggled with for decades and basically my entire time playing it I couldn't quite figure out how midnight Sons melee to avoid this problem oh and don't worry most of my footage is in the First Act of the game and I won't be talking about any major story stuff okay you see between overbearing tutorial givers bossy Sidekicks and helpless escalties that we just can't wait to get rid of even the best made most highly celebrated of games often fall into the Trap of creating companion characters and teammates that end up being a constant source of irritation and frustration where they should be enriching our understanding of the world or story and just generally being someone you actually want to hang out with this is a fairly standard video game observation but you know what the weird thing is that no one seems to mention it's often the characters that developers and writers most want us to like and appreciate that end up being the most irritating in the legend of zelner games fee and Navi are Infamous for nagging the player and being annoying even though they were designed to be friendly helpful and constantly dispensing useful advice plenty of mascot characters specifically designed to be appealing and funny like claptrap from buglands immediately got on our nerves and poor old guys like Preston Garvey who literally exists as a friend you can always rely on tells you about cool organically occurring adventures in locations who have an existing attachment to but might not revisit and we resent him for it what gives an even more insanely many of video Gaming's most beloved characters and party members are ones that require you to put in hours of work just to befriend them or weirdo irrelevant side characters never intended to become fan favorites or just plain mean to you why do we like weird hostile obtuse NPCs more than characters literally designed to help and appeal to us and also what secret ingredient did Marvel's midnight Sons tap into to convince me that doctor strange is a halfway decent not boring character something even the mighty MCU failed to do but before we can do that we need to figure out how these teammate style characters work whatever you want to call them I'm going to go with companions these characters serve a crucial role in basically any game they feature in companion characters exist to explain the world you're in how to play and provide a narrative foundation for the player to match onto and begin creating their own story not to mention serving as discreet gameplay entities that can evolve and change independently of the player and for developers companion characters are an incredibly useful storytelling tool and a great way to communicate with the player in a way that isn't going to break their sense of immersion however all those things are only true if we actually like the characters in question see companions are a bit of a double-edged sword their constant presence and status as the Avatar of the developers to match the main character being your avatar mean that when we're positively disposed towards them everything these characters do and all the ways they react to us are enhanced by that Universal empathetic bond that we create with all good characters but if they annoy upset or just disgust us then we're much less inclined to listen to what our companion might have to say and we may actually go out of our way to avoid or disobey them often causing us to bump up against the limits of the game that these companion characters were supposed to protect us from and making us resent them even more so if us liking companion characters is so important then why does it seem to be so hard to do well I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that writing an interactive video game character is twice as hard as writing one in any other medium a companion doesn't just have to appeal to us in a narrative context they also need to justify their existence in a gameplay context we want the feeling control progress through the game and have satisfying challenges and any character that stands in the way of those things will end up being annoying no matter how well written they are so how do the best video game companions man nice to be likable and pull off that seemingly impossible Balancing Act of allowing the player to have their own experience while also enforcing the intended structure of the game well one way to do this is to Simply lean into highlighting the player's autonomy by being as accommodating as possible and making the player feel like they're the main character while still secretly teaching them how to play one of the best early examples of this sort of approach can be seen in Alex Vance from Half-Life 2 particularly Half-Life 2 episode 1 where she's basically your constant companion Alex is a fascinatingly designed character because she basically exists entirely to inform and cue in the player without ever directly telling them what to do or taking away Focus from them as the main character all throughout the episode Alex's reactions to what's going on instruct the player on how they should be thinking and feeling at that particular point in time she takes a moment to look out onto the devastation of the Citadel reinforcing the danger to the player the chat with her dad at the start sets up the emotional stakes and she's constantly asking all the questions the game wants the player to be asking often figuring out the answer right around the same time you are look at this bit where you need to crawl through event to bypass a locked door Alex wonders how you'll get past but never even mentions the vent until after you've revealed it then she tells you an anecdote about some other time you use an event to bypass a long door instead of directly telling you what to do preserving a feeling of control and agency while still basically telling the player the solution to the puzzle but in a way that fleshes out her character and the surrounding backstory of the game Alex's amazing trick is that she's a really light touch and the developers trust the player to pick up on what she's putting down and to follow along with her emotional Arc without ever explicitly instructing you two the half-life team even changed likes from leading you through the levels to following you instead to highlight the fact that you're in the driver's seat and she's there to fill in the blanks that mute stoic Gordon Freeman is unable to other games that try this approach often get a bit too heavy-handed with their empowerment of the player and instead they end up coming across as patronizing the newer God of War games are an unfortunate example of exactly this in spite of their great writing and mostly solid characterization so often in the God of War Games characters Will shout at you about obvious Battlefield conditions remind you of your objectives over and over and even outright spoil puzzles as in you walk into your room and the boy has already figured it out and tells you how to beat the thing before you've even had a chance to look around it sucks the intent here is for your various companions to arm you with all the information you need to play the game your way but the help is so obvious and often so unnecessary that it just ends up feeling like you're being babysat by your own son this is generally why overbearing tutorial characters are so universally irritating they're often tuned such that they give you all the information that the absolute lowest skill level of players will need meaning that for everyone above that skill level they end up spouting redundant reminders and obvious Solutions not just interrupting gameplay but actively taking away from the fun of solving puzzles exploring or figuring out enemy weaknesses by giving players the option to shut them up or to only get help when asked these guys often become way more palatable without changing any of their dialogue at all it's crucial the companions attempting to make us feel like the main character are able to set up the right kinds of experiences and that often requires some prediction on the part of the devs it's no good if a sleuthing companions spoils or ruins the mystery of a detective game or if one encourages you not to explore in a game all about exploration as is the sad fate of Preston Garvey this same mismatch of expectations also happens in high on life a game defined by its core gimmick of your gun serving as your companions which isn't quite as fun of a concept as you might think see my main aim in high on life was to hear some jokes and shoot some stuff but it's often difficult to hear the comedy because Kenny the gun seems intent on continuing his type 5 while trying to concentrate on playing the game and you also can't shoot the things you want to shoot because he petulantly tells you off for trying to blast the non-enemy NPCs all of whom if I'm honest really deserve it stop it we're not killing this one it's a fundamental misreading of the player's goals and as such it doesn't really matter whether Justin Roland is funny or not the answer to which is occasionally I hate his stupid gunman regardless because he stops me from enjoying the game the way I want the character I do like however is knifey the knife who constantly begs you to kill people because guess what that's what I want to do as well see it's that simple midnight Sons actually has a really cool approach in this regard your core wants as a player when getting into the game after lead a superhero team and have cool superhero fights so all of its story beats are carefully structured in such a way that you get to do one of those two things giving you a chance to Define what kind of demon slaying soup you want to be and feeling charged by bossing around rubber man over here or using a character's individual stories as a justification for cool gameplay like this fun fight against Venom in a church Tower which is an explicit reference to the underrated Spider-Man 3. additionally the game openly acknowledges the weather cast as large as it has you're not gonna like every character or want to hang out with them and that's why every single one is completely cool with being left on the benches and almost never being interacted with outside of maybe one or two story missions don't want to do Agave harknesses lesbian ghost witch treasure hunt I don't know why you wouldn't but yeah you can totally skip it want to totally ignore Robbie Reyes because he's not very good or blades book club because him awkwardly flirting with Captain Marvel is a bit cringy you 100 can you can even completely ditch your pair Hellhound if you don't like dogs but you might want to pet her anyway see in Midnight Sons if you pet your dog enough she levels up and gains a bunch of upgraded cards to help you in battle and the same goes for all the other characters minus the petting hanging out with them and increasing their friendship level will grant them passive abilities upgraded cards and a bunch of other bonuses plus increasing the team's overall friendship level will get you stuff like crazy powerful combo team-up cards which do Insane damage but why do this why not give you access to this stuff by default well the act of positively associating characters with an increase in power and success is a Surefire way to get us to like them and many video games that aren't able to make their characters relentlessly supportive and accommodating user companions utility and usefulness as a way to endear them to you look at a lot of other tactics games where you can build your own team of pre-written characters like Symphony of War fire emblem or the banner Saga for example often the character is most important of the story that the game really wants you to care about are also some of the strongest in Fire Emblem 3 houses the three house leaders and their lieutenants around whom basically the entire story wolves are always going to be the backbone of your team so you'll be more invested in their story because they already mean a lot to you on a gameplay level and in Symphony Of War main characters like xenos and Diana are Battlefield dominating monsters and so you'll end up automatically liking them for how they carry you through hard missions and before you mention it no it's got nothing to do with how tall Diana is in fact I don't even know why you brought it up Final Fantasy xv's boys are another great example of this phenomenon a lot of game mechanics that could be texturally handled by the player are instead handed off to be the responsibility of your companions ignis handles cooking gladio foraging and prompto is the one taking photos of your adventures even though nothing really changes mechanically than if noctis were doing all the work it does a great job of establishing the feeling of a team Dynamic Beyond combat and also makes the companions feel like real people with their own lives and interests Beyond smacking robots around when you tell them to there's a reason why companion characters who actively help out are much more likely to get on your good side and that's because while they might not always support the player's push to be the star of the show they do contribute to that Universal desire to win this is why even relatively grating party members like Alistair the himbo Paladin in Dragon Age 9s in near automata or yes even atreus from God of War more often than not get a free pass because they're useful and are still in their own way helping you to get what you want out of the game unfortunately this Dynamic of us liking companions were helpful also works in Reverse if someone feels like they're not contributing or like their reliability then you're almost certainly going to hate them and this can have disastrous consequences for your overall enjoyment in Final Fantasy VII Kate Sith is notoriously useless with his limit break having the potential to literally just kill you on top of him being generally the weakest party member so by the time he betrays you you're basically begging for him to leave as you're groan when he almost instantly rejoins and in various card games meant to be played multiplayer like Left 4 Dead you'll grow to despise your AI companions because they're often so incompetent that they're more dangerous than the zombies as you might imagine escort missions are particularly dangerous for this uselessness-induced dislike weak characters you have to babysit literally make the game harder and so you're instantly predisposed against someone you're supposed to feel sympathy for Ashley Graham in Resident Evil 4 is probably the canonical example of someone who's entirely helpless and also does very little to redeem themselves it's actually kind of a shame because I think her inclusion is a sensible idea idea survival horror games thrive on tension and tough resource management and actually forces you to do more of that stuff but the fact that she appears to do nothing but make the game harder overrides the fact that she sometimes secretly makes it more fun on the other hand Elizabeth from BioShock Infinite nicely sidesteps this by being portrayed as in need of your protection and cutscenes but in combat she's just Immortal and even helps out by summoning stuff and fetching supplies turning a particularly tricky companion Dynamic it is something that's basically all upside as far as the player's tactical sense is concerned without losing her important narrative role of course this isn't to say that characters who challenge the player or make them do more work are always going to be annoying companions in fact I'd argue the opposite many of the best companion characters ever are once then incentive to directly supporting you represents some sort of interesting challenge to overcome look at the lovely Kim kotaragi from disco Elysium he unlike you is a good cop and will repeatedly reprimand you for being dumb or unprofessional in a way that actively prevents you from being able to do certain fun stuff while he's around and on a broader level the guy just doesn't like you very much to start off with however rather than being a buzz kill the journey to earn Kim's respect and generally clean up your act forms one of the best and most rewarding plot lines in the whole game with some great payoff precisely because your relationship is so Frosty to begin with crayer in kojo 2 is another great example who operates on the same principle but towards a different end her job is to criticize and point out the flaws in both light side and dark side players and I think the real value of this approach is in how her criticisms force you to defend or reconsider your choices in the game encouraging you to create a more sophisticated worldview of your character in the process the idea of encouraging the player to put the work in to make friends with a character or understand what their deal is is an interesting psychological trick all that effort you put into the character just makes you value them more and by appropriately rewarding the effort games can create incredibly strong bonds between us and companions that only get stronger over time look at basically any game that tracks your relationship with its characters mechanically like Persona 5 for example which I'm bringing up because it's very good of this stuff and not just because I put 90 hours into beating the damn thing and I want to make it worth my while basically a large part persona's progression structure is based around leveling up your relationship with the various characters in the process earning new combat abilities access to cool items all the ability to cook magic Curry and by default leveling up these relationships is very slow however you can increase the speed the confidence level up dramatically by saying things they like and giving them gifts they appreciate and this really incentivizes caring about each character enough to remember their likes dislikes and personal history so for example yusuke the best boy is a sophisticated artist so giving him fancy vases and engaging him in intellectual debate will give you a bunch of bonus points that you can use to progress through his storyline much faster same goes for Makoto the best girl who values decisiveness and is kind of a nerd see if you know to avoid cracking jokes and resist the temptation to call her a robot she'll decide to be your friend this is a genius system because it turns the narrative process of getting to know and getting attached to each character into something with tangible mechanical weight choosing to spend time with the characters you like isn't just text on a screen it actually affects the way you play the game and so it's much more rewarding to pay attention to the dialogue and figure each character out organically than if they just became your friend automatically without any work and this brings me back to Marvel's midnight Sons because I finally think we're equipped to answer why I like its Moody demanding and occasionally unfunny characters more than expertly polished ones written by award-winning writers Precision designed to be your best friend ultimately it comes down to the fact that the game isn't about shoving the characters in your face or making you listen to hours of backstory it simply incentivizes caring about them in a way that's rewarding both mechanically and narratively and that's why my favorite moment in the game isn't a boss fight or a big twist is this little throwaway scene with magic the team's resident grouchy portal expert and one of the game's less important characters all across the beginning of the game I really struggled to get a foot in the door with magic she seemed to dislike basically whatever deliberately pandering I threw her away and that sucked because I really enjoyed her movement-centric playmaker combat style that was until a story moment where magic pieces out of a surprise birthday party gone wrong and you have to follow her back to her weirdo held imagine to try to talk her into coming back home successfully winning magic around requires paying attention to what the other characters have said about her as well as reading into her backstory and rather than just being some unimportant narrative thing that changes a few lines of dialogue and nothing else this scene has actual consequences in the form of a massive amount of friendship experience with basically the whole cast essentially it's the perfect mix of what I've been talking about the game uses its characters to set up interesting scenarios but also give you final responsibility for resolving and progressing the story it rewards you with tangible power for performing well but isn't afraid to introduce failure in the form of magic continuing to hate you as a possibility massively increasing the feeling of importance and attachment to this character you develop if you manage to crack open a shell it is great and it's enduring proof the video game companion characters are at their best when they acknowledge the link between the player character and the player themselves all too often video games spend hours of cutscenes and audio logs explaining why the main characters are like their companions without giving any reason why we as the players should give a damn and equally others are so fixated with with pandering to the player but they end up feeling out of place within the very world they're supposed to belong to but the companions that stick in our memory pull our heartstrings or just really fun to hate are the ones that appeal in both a practical and meta textual context and I think through this lens a lot of old mysteries about why we like and dislike certain characters become way clearer Navi may be helpful to link but she's super annoyed to the player so she never quite feels like she earns her place midna from Twilight Princess however serves an identical function and is just as pushy but is much more likable to the player because she serves an active role in combat and has interesting stuff to do in the story and more generally we tend to dislike characters that are nice to us and enjoy more abrasive ones because friendliness and companions is often a facade used to hide the fact that they'll be giving you orders and slowing you down whereas rude characters often represent a fun challenge in earning their respect so next time you're feeling annoyed by a companion character or you're struggling to connect with one in spite of how much the game clearly wants you to consider that you aren't seeing them through a single set of eyes and that a great video game can companion has to connect with the you in the real world as well as the you in the video game and it's only with this information in hand that we can take a look inside ourselves and realize the best video game companion of all time our one true Digital Love might have been right under our nose the entire time yes that's right I'm talking about the Resident Evil 4 Merchant My One True Love screw you Ashley Graham up yours Ada Wong and even go to hell attractive Spanish man whose name I forgot I'm happily taken by a guy who knows what we really want and that's a limitless supply of rocket launchers oh yeah stranger stranger now that's a weapon hello hello and preemptive happy General winter celebration period I've been working myself to the Bone to get this one out ASAP so let's get right on with things as I'm on the verge of passing out this is the after the video segment where I get to give you loyal viewer who's watched all the way to the end the gift of some actual useful content for a change wow how about that huh the like to do is send a little recommendation of a cool YouTube thing your way and how could I not point you in the direction of ludacery someone who's been on my big list of potential recommendations for ages ever since he released a genuinely fantastic video on the problems with Xenoblade 2 sexualization and he's only continued to impress me since I noticed the views on his channel are pretty spiky some have loads some don't have money at all so to rectify that I highly suggest you check out asda's videos on gravity Rush's approach to progression and enforce powerlessness the one on bastian's narration and any one of the quite frankly absurdly comprehensive Final Fantasy videos seriously I used to basically dismiss the old school final fantasies as being junk Museum pieces but I came away from the video with a whole new appreciation for these old games please do give them and the channel a look of course the other people I need to shout out are my super cool patrons over on patreon who would have guessed they are responsible for allowing me to dedicate myself to weird like this and they're the ones to blame for this video and everything else on the channel in return for throwing some cash my way on patreon you'll get access sister behind the scenes stuff Early Access to videos extra design content and also a potential shout out in the credits right here eight dollars gets you a special voice shout out like this lucky Patron named jinkeloid they've told me to tell you um jinkeloid I'm not sure if they're like a Pokemon or they've got the form wrong or something so I'm just going to say their name a couple more times ginkeloid ginkeloid ginkeloid ginkeloid ginkeloid jinkeloid see wasn't that fun thank you very much Ginger Lloyd the mighty jinkeloid isn't the only person who gets a shout out though if you pay 10 a month on the old patreon you also get a special voice to mentioned in the credits Like These Fine people who are algae brute Ali Wright asaran alner 94 Bardock Dragoon Brennan Spalding Brian notariani Constantine amend cosmix 360 Daniel midges Das kangaroo David Setzer Dirk and Jan karenbeld diglettier dontwo ekton Edward Franklin Woods Eugene balkin Gaskell isaw Dano iofer 93 Jacob Dillon riddle Jordan gear Justin Dent Lee Berman mace window 54 nwdd Nate Graf Patrick Romberg Peter D tomasak Phoenix thurakaz rettidex Regal regex Rey's dad rajagar Sheldon Hearn Simon Jacobson sir snakespeare Steve Riley strategy in Ultima The Forbidden shrimp tin markovic Ty guran tighorn Tyler Duncan Uprising Whimsical wisp Zach brandtmeyer Zach Randall and Chow okay that's me done thanks for watching I'm about to go and uh enter some sort of Christmasy coma um have a have a lovely holiday period bye-bye

Channel: Adam Millard - The Architect of Games

Views: 109,440

Keywords: Games, Video Games, Gaming, PC Gaming, Adam, Adam Millard, Architect, AoG, Architect of Games, Review, Analysis, Game Design, guide, Level design, New Games, Marvel, Mightnight Suns, Superheroes, MCU, Iron Man, Doctor Strange, Spiderman, Companions, NPCs, writing, games with best writing, best characters, High on Life, Justin Roiland, Resident Evil, Resident Evil 4, Star Wars, Half Life, Portal, God of War, Kratos, Ragnarok, Thor, Atreus, Puzzles, Tutorial

Id: OIzZymDAc80

Length: 22min 23sec (1343 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 23 2022