I’ve been thinking a lot about my favorite video game characters, and I’ve realized
that the vast majority of them are either villains or companions.
I found this a little strange at first, but after thinking about it for awhile, it kinda
made sense.
The gaming landscape is filled with titles starring main playable characters that are
either silent or fairly generic, like blank canvases for players to imprint themselves
on, following the idea that the less distance someone has to travel in order to relate to
a character they are controlling, the better.
This leaves a lot of room for villains and companions to stand out.
They often have more eccentric and distinctive personalities, because they are meant to be
people players see as friends or enemies, and not as themselves.
Players are supposed to develop bonds with them, creating memorable interactions and
providing further motivation to finish the game.
Honestly, companions and villains are typically the ones who push stories forward, with villains
forcing the protagonist to overcome conflicts and companions aiding them in said conflicts.
The main character's relationship with companions and villains gives the player insight on how
a world works, what’s important, and what needs to be done.
The best examples of this are carefully crafted to elicit certain reactions from players,
and while it is ultimately impossible to hit home with everyone, some games get pretty
close.
Games with villains who you despise, but have an odd respect for, and companions who you
are willing to go to the ends of the earth to help.
And while I am certainly interested in how games get players to hate a character, I have
always wanted to explore how they get them to love one, and beyond that, how these characters
pull a player into a story and keep them there for its duration.
To do this, I’m going to primarily focus on the two companions I found myself most
connected to in a game: Ellie from The Last of Us and Elizabeth from Bioshock Infinite.
Both characters turn out to be the heart and soul of their respective games, and neither
title would really work without players being made to care about them.
So, the big question is how are we made to care about them, and the best place to find
an answer is in what draws us to people we care about in real life.
For instance, it’s been pretty well established that we’re drawn to people who are similar
to us, often in the form of personality traits, opinions, backgrounds, or really anything
of that nature.
When it comes to writing however, this complexity is often boiled down to two things: desires
and flaws.
Both of which give characters depth and meaning to their actions.
Like, in Bioshock Infinite, more than anything else Elizabeth wants to escape her tower and
go to Paris, a place she has read, painted, and dreamed about for her entire life.
Until the final act of the game, everything she does is in service of this goal, and while
I relate to her desire for freedom and exploration, more than that I relate to the mere fact she
has a desire at all.
Seeing a character like Elizabeth, who literally travels through time and space in an attempt
to achieve her goal is really easy to latch onto, because on some level, the struggle
to get what one wants is a universal experience.
And this why in most stories characters with the strongest desires are the driving force
of the plot and they are often the most interesting as well.
Seeing Elizabeth’s desire and motivation from the start of the adventure puts her in
the driver’s seat and makes it much easier to align with her goals.
While Booker does have his own aspirations, the ones shown to players early on don’t
define his character as much as they define his situation.
Based on the initial context, his greatest desire isn’t to “bring them the girl and
wipe away the debt.”
It’s just a task he needs to complete to survive, and that’s not really as compelling
as the kind of desire Elizabeth has: the kind that comes from dreams instead of bad decisions.
So, whether it be Elizabeth’s need to get to Paris or, say Ellie’s desire for companionship,
players relate to the act of having a desire as much if not more than the desire itself.
While desires are important, flaws play just as crucial a role in defining a character.
In fiction, flaws work best when they are fairly common and mostly forgivable.
For instance, Ellie cusses a lot, which is understood to be generally frowned upon but,
given that most people do it anyway, players included, it’s more endearing than anything
else.
Also, her swearing is aggressive instead of downright offensive, making it comical instead
of hurtful.
Another example is how impulsive and brash she is.
Ellie will often act without thinking, putting herself at risk, and while this behavior could
be seen as annoying, it works here because almost everytime she does act irresponsibly,
it ends up helping Joel and the player instead of getting them in trouble.
With Bioshock Infinite, Elizabeth is undeniably naive, but based on how well-read she is,
assumes she has a grasp on how the world works, which causes nearly every plan she comes up
with to be met with a misstep.
However, the innocence that comes with her naivety is easy to appreciate; the way she
marvels at the world around her still is one of my favorite aspects of her character.
All-in-all, flaws allow players to relate to and even appreciate these blemishes without
having to fully experience the potentially annoying consequences.
Being able to take solace in the fact that a character has messed up in the same ways
you have creates a bond.
Honestly, that is the basis of most of my real-life friendships.
Along with desires and flaws, both Bioshock Infinite and The Last of Us emphasise just
how crucial a role cooperation plays in endearing companions to a player.
As each game goes on, the amount players rely on both companions grows, with Ellie providing
cover fire and the well-timed backstab, and Elizabeth opening tears to turn the tide in
combat and throwing Booker everything from spare change to rocket launcher ammo.
There are multiple moments in each game where the companion ends up saving the playable
character’s life, not only making them mechanically valuable, but more importantly building trust.
Furthermore, the fact that neither of them really face much danger in combat avoids player
frustration; having to constantly worry about a companion, like Ashley in Resident Evil
4, leads to players being stressed out anytime she is around.
While making companions nearly invulnerable in combat situations is definitely a cop out,
at the very least it means their presence doesn’t hinder the player, which led me
to actually want both of them around all the time.
And the comfort of their presence is something games use in order to condition players.
Arguably the scariest moments of these two games happen when the player is separated
from their companion.
In The Last of Us, Joel loses Ellie after he falls down an elevator shaft, leaving him
alone with only the sounds of swift footsteps in the darkness.
Creeping through the dank, partially submerged rooms, with the imminent threat of an ambush
left me feeling beyond uneasy, and the relief that came after reuniting with Ellie was palpable.
Bioshock Infinite does this during the Asylum section after Songbird takes Elizabeth away.
While most battles in Infinite end up being about direct confrontation with enemies, this
is one of the few times where players are given the option to be stealthy, and I imagine
most approached it this way, because the consequence for not is terrifying.
Everything from the atmosphere to the inhabitants of the asylum placed me on edge, and I was
afraid to fight without having Elizabeth there to support me.
Moments like these condition players to feel uneasy when their companion is not around,
heightening the importance of sticking with them.
And even though players still encounter a ton of stress and conflict while with their
respective companions, it isn’t the same kind of skin-crawling uneasiness.
In fact, the kind of stress that players normally go through, like action set pieces and large
scale battles, actually add to feeling a connection to a character.
Some research indicates that shared pain can lead to individuals feeling closer with each
other.
Like, if you were sitting next to a stranger on a plane that almost crashes, you would
most likely feel closer to them than if the flight just went by with no troubles.
The fact that players go on these intense adventures, where practically the only person
they can rely on is the companion strengthens the bond.
The player and companions have been through some shit, and that ends up meaning a lot.
From an external standpoint, it is worth noting that performances can alter how an audience
views a character, and for these two games the execution by Courtnee Draper as Elizabeth
and Ashley Johnson as Ellie are near perfect.
The amount of emotion both actresses exude from just their voices is staggering.
Draper and Johnson helped shape the direction of their respective characters, and I think
this greatly benefited their performances.
Along with the vocal performances, the motion capture and general programming of the characters
both matter as well.
Ellie and Elizabeth move and interact with objects and things in the world like actual
humans would, and it makes it feel like they can act independently of the player.
A lot of companions before this point just moved when the player told them to move, and
any other development was saved for cutscenes, but the more a character can seem like they
exist regardless of a player’s input, the more likely they will feel like an actual
person.
Physical attractiveness also plays a role.
And while this seems shallow, it isn’t really surprising.
People gravitate toward beauty which is why so much of our culture is based around the
celebration of it.
There is even research that suggests being good looking can lead to others assuming one
is also more talented, intelligent, and honest.
Bioshock Infinite leans on this pretty heavily, with Elizabeth being a combination of the
girl next door and a Disney princess, and while it is impossible to measure the exact
effects her looks have on players, it doesn’t feel like a huge stretch to say that her attractiveness
is another reason players were interested in her.
Ken Levine has stated many times that Bioshock Infinite was trying to pull in the “Frat
Guy” demographic, and I think looking at the transformation of her character from the
Gibson Girl to the final design, is a pretty good indicator of my point.
Ultimately, her beauty helps her be a little more persuasive.
It’s pretty much the same reason advertisements almost always use attractive actors: people
are more likely to listen to them.
For Elizabeth, even if it is only a little bit, this raises the chance that the player
aligns to her goal, in this case, of getting to Paris.
So, everything I’ve talked about is done in an attempt to get players to like and trust
a companion, and in both titles, this build up happens throughout the first half.
The second half of each game is when Elizabeth and Ellie start influencing players to make
certain decisions.
It did not take long for me to care more about getting Elizabeth to Paris instead of taking
her to New York as I had been assigned to do, and it took an even shorter amount of
time for me to want to escort Ellie as far as she needed to go.
These characters cash in on the relationships they have developed with players.
And it doesn’t bother us because: We like to help people we like.
We like to help people who help us.
We like to help people we feel a commitment to.
And that is what these games do so well.
Influence players into liking a character and feeling a sense of commitment to them,
leading to the choices, whether forced by the narrative or otherwise, being made in
the best interest of the companion rather than the character they are playing.
Most of the information I’ve found on what makes people compliant comes from observations
of salespeople, political lobbyists, cult recruiters, con-artists—in other words,
people who are often pegged as shallow.
Which I think leads to an interesting question: can a likable character be shallow?
And I think the answer is yes.
This is kind of noticeable when comparing Ellie to Elizabeth.
Ellie feels like a teenager who grew up in a post-apocalyptic world.
She is desensitized to violence and morbidly afraid of winding up alone.
One of the most common complaints I have heard people make about Elizabeth is that her personality
does not really reflect her background.
Elizabeth does not feel like a person who was locked away in a tower with little to
no human contact her whole life.
She is bubbly, trusting, open, and personable.
I don’t want to say that this would be impossible given her upbringing, but regardless it created
a disconnect for a lot of players.
However, her charm is able to push through that for the most part.
There are a handful of parts in Bioshock Infinite that I still look back on and question whether
or not it made sense, but when playing, Elizabeth’s humanity did a good job of pushing those questions
to the back of my mind.
And there is certainly a fair bit of depth to Elizabeth, but a lot of what makes her
endearing to players is on the surface level, and when compared to Ellie
who has layers on layers of depth, she comes a little short.
At the end of the day, developers want players to finish games.
It has always kind of shocked me how few players do, and I think the rise of games centered
around companions is partially an attempt to use human connections to get players to
keep playing a game.
The use of companions creates intense and immersive stories, which is great because
When they hit the right strides, players become deeply invested, and this can create incredible
interactions and even help cover some of the more questionable bits of a story.
Everyone likes fiction for different reasons, but characters will always be the linchpin
of a narrative, and that is why, when done right, good characters can create unforgettable
moments that are impossible not to marvel at.