Game Design – Story and Characters

Story and Characters, something which can be found in books, tv and films, they can move us to tears, feel joy, shock and fear. You can feel any kind of emotion towards a character thanks to the story and it’s acting, so long as both are of a good quality.

When its bad, you feel removed from what is being displayed in front of you, its just a list of pictures or words, none have any emotional content, While good storytelling and acting that allows you to relate to the characters, is good storytelling/acting, for it allows you to feel any emotion that the creators want, be it joy or sadness.

By why do we feel emotions towards what is essential fictional characters, by making them as human as possible, by giving them flaws, virtues, allowing them to make sacrifices or to steal due to greed. These are what people are made up of character traits and the more traits the character has, the more likely people will relate to them.

This of course is dependant on the script, something that a character encounters in a magical fantasy setting, or the far future of Sci-Fi is harder to relate to, we have nothing to draw from, but we can still take from similar situations seen in life to conjure up the right emotions. So long as the actors display the right emotions as to the mood of the situation, it is easy to draw upon the characters emotions and our own experiences to generate the feelings that the film/books creator desires.

Appearance to me means very little, books, are all writing and so long as the tv show/film isn’t a collection of children’s drawings then I am still capable of enjoying the piece of fiction that I desired to see.

But what stories do I find irresistible? Magical fantasy and Science Fiction are my 2 great loves of fiction, for they show me experiences that are impossible to have, for magic does not exist and the Science is usually so far away that I most likely wont see it in my lifetime. And so I feel richer for adding to the collection of experiences I have seen, whether they are my own personal ones, or they are ones I have seen as a viewer.