Project #5 - Character Designs

So, this was a fairly fun project to do, since I could try to utilize what I already knew through my previous projects, and deliberately negate some things for the purpose of this particular investigation.

I think I may have had a bit too much fun with it though. Instead of designing just three characters as I'd intended, I ended up creating eight fairly well-developed characters. So i figured there was no harm in including them all in the study.

The entire process began with making character profiles for them, before even thinking about their physical appearances, profile templates based off those given as examples in the book The Ultimate Guide to Video Game Writing and Design by Flint Dille and John Zuur Platten. These characters needed to be fairly well developed so that I could provide potentially misleading visual information to the participants. In other words, the intention was always to purposefully try to make them assume the wrong things about these characters' true personalities, traits and behaviours.

Although I did keep in mind the conclusion I'd drawn regarding consistency and cohesiveness, and the main aspects which make the essence of a character, not forgetting visual family and the basic fundamentals of course.

So, minding all of this, I created a basis for the whole group: a group of misfit, mismatched individuals who grouped together as vigilantes as a way to protect their own hides from the trouble they all seem to have got themselves into.

They go by the name of the Red Panthers, indicated by the small garments of red that each of them wear. (Visual family, woo!). Anyway, these are the character designs I came up with:

Isolde, Trystan, Caleb and Aaron

Amber, Lilith, Meric and Daniel

I won't upload their full profiles yet, since I'm still waiting on participants to return the worksheet I provided them regarding these characters. Been waiting over a week for some of them -_-. The worksheet I distributed contained a number of random facts and statements about the backgrounds, traits and characteristics of some, all or none of these characters, and the intention is to see how how people interpret each character.

While I can't draw a full conclusion as of yet, it seems to be that I successfully managed to mislead a number of participants through pure physicality, and that they didn't feel cheated by it (those that I asked about it afterwards, at any rate).

I may compile an entry with the results thus far, perhaps, and later update it with the full conclusion based on participants.

Project #5 - Case Study 4 - Samus Aran

Case Study 4 - Samus Aran - Metroid. 

The last example of a misleading character which I looked at, was of course Samus Aran, a short and sweet case study.

In fact, this character is infamous for fooling pretty much everyone in the demographic when it was revealed that the 6 foot 3 inches tall, 198 lb bounty hair clad in full space armour was actually a woman and not a man, as everyone had believed.  

On Kotaku, Brian Ashcraft even writes that he was 'floored by the game's big reveal' -

http://kotaku.com/5634616/how-did-metroids-samus-aran-become-a-female-character

- and includes a quote stating that during development a staff member had suggested that she be female as a surprise for the player.

This is a perfect example of physicality misleading a player. This big, heavily armoured character was assumed by pretty much everyone to be male.

Project #5 - Case Study 3 - Gentle Giants

Case Study 3 - Gentle Giant


By Gentle Giant, I mean a character which is large in stature and looks intimidating, but is in contrast very gentle at heart in some way, even if it takes them a while to show that side of them.

It's pretty self explanatory, so I was brief with my example of this. In fact, this whole image is almost an archetype in itself, ironically, since so many people have used it as a way of breaking stereotype.


Mordecai  - Fire Emblem

In Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance, Mordecai is a member of the Laguz race, a race of shape-shifting people (including Tigers, Cats, Hawks, Ravens and Dragons), with a fairly large prejudice towards humans.

Even in the illustration above, you can see that as fearsome and formidable he looks in his Tiger form, even being a particularly large Tiger, he is an incredibly gentle soul. Perhaps another Tiger would eat that squirrel in his hand - you generally don't know much about the generic characters other than that they are fierce warriors. Don't get me wrong, Mordecai is a very strong warrior, but ultimately he dislikes combat and hates even more to bring suffering or displeasure to those he considers friends. 

He is a perfect example of a gentle giant who would rather avoid conflict than engage in it, unlike his almost polar-opposite superior officer, Lethe:

 

She is a smaller member of the Beast Tribe and far quicker to judge and to anger, whereas Mordecai is much more mellow, not at all what his physicality seems to suggest upon first impressions. 

Project #5 - Case Study 2 - Dishonoured

Case Study 2 -Corvo Attano - Dishonoured

So I was too busy with doing the project, that I totally forgot about updating what I'd done in researching for it, etc. Silly me. I've finished the project anyway, so I'll shortly be writing an entry reflecting upon that.

In the case of Corvo Attano in Dishonoured the 'misleading' here isn't quite so dramatic as with Mirajane Strauss (Fairy Tail), which is why I chose to use it as an example. When I use the word 'misleading', I don't mean in a bad way - I just mean that the player is misdirected to believe that the character is one thing through the way they look and then proven wrong in uncovering information about the character. This seemed to work in Mira's case, and I'm going to analyze this example as well.

Again, there will be some spoilers in this analysis.

Anyway; Corvo is an assassin. There he is:

That information, in itself, springs certain images to mind. Assassin's are expected to be pretty cold and calculated, and remorseless killers. That's what Corvo is, right? Not exactly. He's not an assassin by choice, and that, here is paramount.

The general archetype of assassin's is that they tend to be hardened killers who prefer not to hold ties with anyone, however Corvo wasn't brought up as one and he certainly seems to care about Emily, with whom he seems to share an affectionate bond, whether she is or isn't related to him by blood.

Long story short, he was originally Lord Protector to the Empress, having surprisingly grown up in a lower class family, fighting on the streets as a teen. These turns of events would make one assume that Corvo is a less compassionate man than he is. Even based on physicality i.e. his body language, expressions, dark colour palette, you'd assume that this man isn't all that approachable.

 

So to learn of his affections with Emily is almost a surprising turn, and a misleading characteristic in a way. While it might not be an enormously outrageous break of archetype, it is still what I like to call a 'quirk' - in that it's a trait you wouldn't expect of a character; in this case one which goes around inciting jailbreaks.

But it is also potentially pivotal. Perhaps this is one reason I focused on Corvo as an example. His compassion towards Emily can influence the choice the player could end up making, based on how they interpret Corvo as a man through this. There are two choices that the player can make after [spoiler] Corvo rescues Emily. Funnily enough, this choice ties in with what I'd been looking at regarding consequences and role-playing.

So yeah, this was the second one I'd looked into. It might arguably not be considered misleading in any way, since it's fairly ambiguous, although the general archetype of assassins is that they are emotionally hardened and don't tend to keep strong ties.