How Much Do You Like To Define Your Protagonist?

Sometimes with video games, the character you play as has a defined personality. Perhaps not fully fleshed out, but there's enough set dialogue and cut scenes that the player has a fairly good idea what the character is like. I'm sure there are better examples, but I think of Timesplitters: Future Perfect, where Cortez was presented as a reckless, but competent soldier, who was clearly enjoying the idea of leaping through time and teaming up with versions of himself from 5 minutes ago, or 10 minutes from now. He even had a horrible catchphrase he clearly thought was great ('It's time to split!')

Then there are games where the protagonist is more of a blank slate. Phantom Dust is sort of an example, because your character never speaks, but his body language still says something. But that body language is open to interpretation by the player. Still, there are certain scenes that I think give a sense of the character.

Persona 3 is actually the game that had me wondering which sort of protagonist video game players prefer. That game lets you choose who you interact with in your free time, and to a limited extent, what you say to them when they come to you with problems, or open up to you. In that way, you get to decide what kind of person your character is. Are they bluntly honest, calling a dumb idea what it is, regardless of consequences? Do they prefer to soft-pedal, being supportive regardless of circumstances? Is it somewhere in between? Of course, as the person making those decisions, I can justify my choices how I like. There are points where the character is asked why he does what he does, and again, it's my call.

When something important happens, I can't see my character's face, so it's up to me to decide what he's thinking or feeling. Which is funny, because apparently he's supposed to be almost expressionless, a result of the childhood trauma that gave him special abilities, if some of the stuff I've read online is accurate. I had always always considered that a deliberate action on his part, that he had an excellent poker face when he felt like it, but was otherwise perfectly expressive. That was part of my picture of him, different from how other people who play the game perceive him, apparently.

As much as I enjoyed Persona 3, I think I prefer games where my character is already defined. The problem is, I tend to see most of the characters where I'm calling the shots as behaving in similar ways. It's either how I think I act, or how I wish I acted. Either way, I'm not sure there's much variety. I've tried to play against type before, when I briefly owned Fable. I decided going in I was going to be the most evil sumbitch the world had ever seen. Yeah, that lasted about five minutes. After that, I kept finding myself justifying reasons to choose the good guy path rather than the bad guy one. Admittedly, I didn't get very far in the game, but it was frustrating I couldn't make myself be really evil.

if however the game has established already that my character is scum, well that's different. When I played Goldeneye multiplayer, I almost always chose Alec (006). As he was the bad guy, I felt it perfectly in character to shoot my opponent (usually Alex or my dad) in the back a few times, then run away until another sneak attack opportunity presented itself (this worked much better with my dad than Alex, though Alex was considerably more likely to blow himself up with explosives).

While I enjoy the occasional game where I form the character's personality from my own mind, one the whole I like it when the character's a little more defined. It adds to the variety, and I think it can make for a tighter story, if a more limited one.