A Character's Development

Characters are very important to the story. The players relate to the characters. The characters are major selling points for the game. Character development applies to all key playable and non-playable characters. The antagonist has development as well.

Throughout a game characters will have many positive and negative experiences. These events may shape a character.How important do you think character development is? Which types of characters do you development the most the protagnoist or antagonist?

Hmm... I totally get the idea behind character development, and I know my characters do tend to go through some (maybe not a lot, but some). But I have yet to work out how I manage it. I have a tendancy to just have a basic character outline and then I just let them lead me. I never think about how they're going to change throughout the game (or book) so sometimes my characters can go from cold and brooding to cold and brooding, but with a secret soft side that's been uncovered. I tend not to have huge changes, even in bad guys that turn good, or good guys that turn bad.

I don't know if that made any sense, but I think the point I was trying to make, is that I just let the characters develop naturally within the story and I never plan for a major development to occur. I suppose my best explanation would be a character I've written called Shawn, who starts off completely loyal to this particular guy, to the point where he would gladly die so he could achieve his goal, but somewhere along the way, he aquired this sense of honour which made him step into the middle of a duel between the guy he was loyal to and a guy who saved his life but was the enemy and stood there and begged the guy he was loyal to to kill him and complete his quest. I would see that as character development if a sort.

I tend to blur the line between protagonist and antagonist, but most of my characters have little "developing" to do.

Those that do, I usually place in the main character slot, so the viewers can "grow" with them.

usually using common themes/arguments, and showing how common answers to questions are wrong. (As well as the opposite view point also being equally wrong)

You don't have to have a character change in a story. There's lots of static characters people love such as Indiana Jones or James Bond. They go through a bunch of stuff but that doesn't mean it particularly changes them.

So what I'm saying is that not just any event is going to change a character. You have to have good solid reasons for change, where there it's a bunch of events leading up to this change or one big one. A random example could be Joe hates werewolves because they killed his family when he is a kid... on his quest of adventure he becomes romantically involved with Cindy who turns out to be a werewolf, thus when he finds out.... he either kills her (yar static character) or changes his views (dynamic character). But basically there's reasons behind both actions... what that character ultimately does is up to you. To help support either one you can have other events that effect this. Such as perhaps Joe offers mild sympathy to another werewolf on some quest or remains completely unmerciful. It doesn't have to be just one thing. If it is one thing that makes the character radically change, it better be a big one. Just have reasons and you're fine. They shouldn't change out of the blue.

Joe doesn't kill his werewolf girlfriend, and the story ends with her killing him. Insert M. Night Shama-llama-lan quote "What a twist!".

Anyways, I think this can go either way, but I really agree with Raven. If the character is going to change a big part of their personality, there needs to be a reason big enough.

Lets say a character is a cold-hearted bad-ass (like Kratos from God of War, but with at least a hint of personality). He is a true warrior and a soldier. If he is told to kill, he does it brutally just to prove a point. If, for some reason during the story, the game ends with him wearing a tu-tu ballet dancing in a field of flowers singing the Sound of Music, it probably wasn't because a fluffy bunny warmed his heart. Let's get real, there is a reason disney made kid's movies and not video games (besides the fact that they didnt really exist during his life). Stories like Disney's would make Dr. Suess strangle himself with his own karchingle (I think it is a horn, like thing, I dont know)(look it up, it is actually a word he used). Our character have gone into a huge battle, blades a swinging. Somewhere and somehow, during the battle he killed his only brother, his closest friend. After a nice long, sappy scene of him regretting even going to war, he now has changed his personality a bit. Not to the extreme I mentioned earlier, but there is certainly a difference between after the battle and before.

So, I guess what I am trying to say, is that no character will ever do a 180 degree personality change. A cold-blooded killer will never become an awarded butterfly collector who studies fine art and international teas. But at the same time, I do think that it is essential for a character to 'evolve' a bit. A character who doesn't change at all is boring. But, even though Raven pointed out James Bond, I would like to note that even Bond has taken a few changes over the years. For instance, the newer movies with Daniel Craig are supposed to show to violent and unrefined he was during his early career, while the Peirce Bronsnan movies showed James as being calm and suave. Somewhere in the middle, something must have happened that made him the way he turned out. And as for Indianna Jones... He doesn't count. He is a George Lucas character, so he doesn't have to be well thought through.