Lunchtime Discussion: Emotion

Kris Lipscombe 67 Comments

I’ve talked several times in the past about how important story and character are to me in games. It’s just where I focus a lot of my attention, to some extent I’ll overlook genre and gameplay if a game has a compelling narrative and characters that grab me and won’t let go. I guess characters are sort of the point of today’s discussion, specifically the emotion those characters can generate in us.

Compared with the emotions that are stirred in my by older media such as books, films and music games often feel emotionally closed. I honestly can’t think of a situation where a game has actually brought a tear to my eye, whereas I can recall dozens of times that other forms of media have made me well up. Of course compared to other media games are still heavily in their infancy, even the relatively new film industry is nearly 3 times as old gaming; it’s perhaps understandable that they wouldn’t have developed the depth and reach of competing media.

I think part of this is the kinds of stories games tell, and the way they’re told. In general the stories we play paint the protagonist as a hero who must overcome some huge odds to get to whatever their ultimate goal is, whether it be defeat an evil foe or steal some ancient artefact. There’s rarely any kind of background on the character, and when there is it’s frequently some shallow story to make them seem slightly more than a cool piece of moving concept art.

Of course there is one very notable recent exception to this, Heavy Rain. Whilst some may criticise Heavy Rain for the dullness of scenes where you’re at home playing with your kids or taking a shower, these kind of scenes flesh out the characters, making them seem more real. By adding a significant dimension of depth to the character with every-day scenes they make it much easier to connect to them and their motivations, adding a small emotional connection that most games lack.

Of course I may well be wrong, and I’m fully aware that I’m missing out on some games like ICO and Shadow of the Colossus that may grab you almost immediately on an emotional level; sadly I’ve never played them. Do you have any games that really grab you on a raw, emotional level? Or are games still weak in this area?

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67 Comments

  1. Ocarina of Time had emotion in spades, especially at the end. Nintendo as a rule are pretty good at making you feel connected.

    I had zero connection with Heavy Rain.

    • i felt slightly connected, not as much as i thought i would.

      i feel furiously connected with Fifa though… i’ll break pads if i lose!

  2. Final Fantasy. Nuff said.

    • +1, always suck me in!

    • I’m with you on that one.

    • VII given, none since then for me. too many dull stereotypes.

      • XIII given, none of the others though. have you even played them?

      • yeah, up to and including 11, played the demo for 12 and hated it and then saw the black pimp character with his summons-special-pimp-mobile in the latest and gave up all hope. Still interested in the next online one though.

      • 11 was cool, though seperate really.

      • think I may just have got old and grumpy :D

        I know it’s a very different style of RPG but Demons Souls is where I get my RPG fix nowadays and I loved the sombre, desolate feel of that title.

      • Kingdom Hearts series :) I’ll cry with joy if they make a 3rd for PS3.

    • final fantasy X had a lot of emotions if i remember rightly

    • Aeris dying… very emotional.

  3. It can be done really well, Heavy Rain being the perfect example. If a game has fantastic story telling then it will likely strike a chord with the player.

    Not all games do it the same way though. Dead Space invokes terror, Split/Second with that adrenaline rush, whilst LBP generally makes me pretty happy. Games like Modern Warfare however seem to fail in that sense and rarely get any sort of substantial reaction.

    • i think FPS have moved away from story telling, and just focus on shooting objects in diffrent ways. EVERY FPS is the same; make your way to point x, kill every one on the way. then you just need to shoehorn diffrent obsiticals and enemys. then lay some form of story over the top to give a reason to make it to point x. Its a shame, but 9 times out of 10, thats how FPS’s are

  4. Nice topic. I completely agree with you on in para’ 4. I think the MGS series holds it characters quite well, you get to know quite a bit of background and with quite a lot of dialog going on you can get to know what each character is like as a person.

    The Final Fantasy’s always bring out the emotions in their games, particularly for a lot of gamers during the end cutscene of FFX.

  5. I’ve never been emotionally attached to a game character.
    In racing games I see the character as an extension to the player.

  6. Red Dead Redemption. Absolutely incredible. The journey the character goes on in the search of, well, redemption, really pulls you in. The ending was fantastic.

    • The ending had me staring at the screen with my jaw open for quite some time, the presence of a twist was very clearly signposted leading up to that mission, but I never expected what actually happened.

    • yeah RDR done it well there was the first ending where i was happy and nervous (especially with the music) then when i got to the ranch i was nervous and cautious because it might be a trap and then curiosity and relief

      then the second ending smacked my gob a had to replay it multiple times just in case i did it wrong somehow

      oh and when john and abigale? leave Mc farlen’s ranch and the blonde woman’s kicking the dust that was also somewhat emotional

    • Dutch’s ending took me by surprise. I felt attached to my horse to the point of restarting a mission if he died. Also i felt guilty about shooting the wildlife and to a certain extent any passing folk caught in the cross fire. Damn you Emotions

  7. Games are still weak in this area, but they are getting there.

    For me, the most emotionals have been FFVII, Heavy Rain and I-fucking-cried-at-the-end MGS4.

  8. Flower. endof!

    Don’t see what the fuss about Heavy Rain is… it had all the story telling ability of someone sitting their 11+ and played out worse than any made-for-TV movie I’ve ever seen along with some of the worst acting this side of Eastenders.

    • Jason!

      Jason!

      Jason!

      Jason!

    • I can;t really think of any story telling that was of any value, however I do enjoy some of the Zelda ones, and I enjoyed Unchartered 2’s story.

    • I couldn’t possibly disagree more with this. I got more involved in heavy rain than any game i’ve ever played, and i’ve played games in 1 form or another for 20 years. I finished it in 1 long sitting, morning to evening. I just couldn’t put it down, and that’s clearly not because of the gameplay because admittedly that’s a poor aspect of the game.

    • Flower :)

      • Heavy rain :)

      • I’m with cc_star on this, I liked elements of Heavy Rain a lot, but the acting and writing was cringeworthy and prevented me developing any kind of emotional attachment really. Some of the gameplay elements were just plain counter-intuitive, button press combos to squeeze past a dumpster being an early example – this sort of stuff just reinforced that you were playing a game etc and highlighted the mediums restrictions with regard to storytelling.

        Having said that I did really enjoy it as a game and it was a good saturday spent with some mates a load of beer and a rental copy of HR. Was nice to see a dev try something out of the norm and it was a great evolution of Fahrenheit.

  9. *SotC, my heart fell out my arse when Agro ….y’know.
    *Tidus and Yuna in FFX + probably more so in X-2 because it was just tragic throughout.
    *Osamu Tezuka’s Dororo, If you’ve never played this then you don’t know what your missing out on !
    Check it :- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfWmSpCwBGQ&feature=related

    • YMAM speaks the truth. When Agro… yeh. Good god. I was genuinely upset. *pretends that there’s something in my eye* lol.

      However, emotionally connecting with games seems to be something we’re only now getting into. We’ve finally got the hardware to visualise all kinds of games (Uncharted 2, fairly realistic sandbox titles, etc). Actually, sod that. SOTC was last generation so it’s down to the developers.

      However, it’s tricky to do as it’s emotion. Anything natural is a bugger to build compared. Buildings, no probs, but look at nature, scenery, trees, humans, movement, interaction, etc. We’re years away from getting it near to films if you ask me.

      God knows Uncharted 2 went a huge way to making things feel believable. The bit with Elena was really quite saddening. The acting was admittedly Summer blockbuster but still streets ahead of other titles.

      I truly wish devs would look to emotionally engage us at a grown-up level but does the shallow nature of gaming mean such a thing isn’t treated seriously enough?

      • GamesWipe hit the nail on the head when he said great story driven movies are made by people who have used books, journalism & other stuff as their inspiration but videogames are made by people who use Diehard 4.0 as their inspiration.

        Yes, gaming will close in on Hollywood blockbuster levels of storytelling but its a million miles away from what it could be

      • I watched that too, although I always feel a insatiable need to slap Charlie Brooker repeatedly…

  10. I thought roughly the first half of the MGS4 ending was perfect, and very moving. Sadly the latter half lessened the impact by some margin.

    • Whereas ‘Snake Eater’ was perfect throughout ;)

    • Disagree. I don’t exactly well-up, but it’s very touching when it gets to the end of the scenes with the two Snakes.

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