• ModNation Racers (PS3)
• Wolverine: Old Man Logan (Hardcover)

Whether or not games should or shouldn’t feature characters with greater a range of emotion is debatable until the cows come home and won’t be solved in 1000 words or less, so let’s not go there today. Instead, we’re going to simply acknowledge that currently, for the most part, characters don’t emote much during gameplay. That being said, I’d like to explore the possibilities of what could happen if they did emote more, and more importantly, if they emoted in ways that didn’t match up with the player’s feelings.

Let’s start things off by looking at one of the most cited reasons as to why game characters don’t often emote. The basic idea is that by giving video game protagonists a tabula rasa sort of mentality, the player is then able to project whatever they are feeling onto the character. This then gives a greater sense of immersion in not only the character but the actions in which the player is participating as well. Character immersion is heightened because there is very little character there, just enough archetypal framework to give the player a general sense of direction. Brave soldier. Curious explorer. Angry seeker of vengeance. Adorable pastry chef. This is about as complex as it usually gets. The rest of the mental make-up is provided by the players’ mental image of themselves in the presented scenario.

This line of logic does make sense just as long as you don’t aspire to make the player feel any emotions beyond the very basic examples I listed above.  The problem here is that when you look at the types of stories and types of games that this line of thinking has gotten us, they are too often little more than hyper-masculine hero fantasies, even when the hero is of questionable moral standards or the things they are doing are horrific. These emotionless protagonists are still offering a blank canvas on which the player can gladly paint the positive picture of “winning the game,” just so long as the player is completing the game’s objectives. It may or may not be that players are desensitized to violence, but I would argue that that isn’t what’s at work here. I say this because I don’t feel any happier in a happy situation of a game than I feel bad in a violent or grotesque situation in a game. I simply feel good about completing the task, and that is what I project on to the character. This causes stories to play out like any other unfeeling, action movie. It’s all point A to point B with no time for feelings in between.

If games want to become a more viable narrative medium, capable of telling stories that evoke a wide array of emotions in the player, they need to start exploring other methods of doing so, and I believe that showing a character’s facial expressions and emotions during gameplay is one way to do this. Let’s look at a couple outcomes of implementing this idea.

One possible technique is to use the character’s facial expressions to help shape the player’s feelings around what the character is feeling. This could cause the player to feel things in specific situations that they have never felt before because it never occurred to them that that might be what the character is feeling. Take Gears of War for example. What if, instead of giving Marcus Fenix two facial expressions throughout the entire game, he actually emoted things like fear, nervousness or uncertainty? What if as the player dropped into cover, the game zooms into one of the tight angles Alex mentions in his latest article and shows us a look of sincere dread? Think about it. You’ve been playing as humanity’s last hope for the last few hours, and suddenly he looks scared. Would that not give you, as the player, at least a little pause of fear and uncertainty as well? To think that this invincible killing machine of a son of a bitch is actually worried in this situation? That might cause a little worry in your mind as well. When was the last time you were truly worried in an action game? Probably almost never since the characters don’t emote anything other than stone faced victory.

Another possibility takes us down a much more interesting path. Using the character’s emotions to intentionally be the exact opposite, or at least a little off, of what the player would likely be feeling. Think about it. You’re playing an extremely violent character; I’m sure you can think of many. Let’s use Kratos as an example. You’re busy letting Kratos do his “kill-anything-that-moves” routine only to leave a pile of bloody limbs and torsos littered across the ground around him. As the mini-battle ends, the camera zooms in, and you notice something. Kratos is grinning. He’s enjoying himself, maybe a little too much, and definitely a little more than you might be comfortable with. You thought you were killing just out of vengeance, which is a justifiable reason in game-land, but he actually seems to like it?

So what happened there? That one little smirk has created a bit of a tradeoff between immersion and understanding of the narrative. While the player may be less immersed in the character, they now have a deeper insight into the character and therefore, hopefully, a greater understanding of the narrative overall. The game becomes less and less about vicariously living out some revenge fantasy and more about understanding the madness of a character wrapped up in violence and power. The game becomes less Clash of the Titans and more Taxi Driver.

If developers have the goal of telling a great story, then they can’t be afraid to let their characters actually be characters. They can’t be afraid to let them show their emotions and to take the chance that the player may end up not actually liking these characters, but that’s ok because if they are telling a compelling enough story, we’ll still want to play through it. Those who are shouting at the screen right now about the uncanny valley can cork it. That issue can be overcome if we tell developers like Epic Games that we don’t give a crap about their new “meat physics,” and that we’d really like it if they spent some of the time they used for developing that silly stuff to give their characters the ability to smile. And if it’s not too much to ask, you could put the whole package together with a character that emotes and is relatable, and then cinema would really have to start looking over its shoulder.