How to Put More “Character” into Your NPCs

Re:How to Put More “Character” into Your NPCs by bsanr on Tuesday May 26, 2020 @01:33PM (#23314027)

I think it depends on the quality of the text. Richly-detailed and well-written (read: well-edited) descriptions as well as quippy dialogue are all welcome, but the mountains of poorly-written copy you find in many visual novels are a chore. I think a lot of writers fall to lawyer-ism, which I define as the idea that you can convince someone of anything ("My characters are deep! Their relationships are meaningful! My world is complex and well-constructed!") so long as you just keep talking at them. It doesn't help that some are often translated from or imitating the Japanese expositional style, which can be long-winded.

Control, FFXIII, Fallout, Animal Crossing: Fun to read through all the extra text/dialogue!

{Vast majority of visual novels}, Mass Effect, Tales Series, {Vast majority of story-based gacha games}: Not so much!

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Re:How to Put More “Character” into Your NPCs by simion314 on Tuesday May 26, 2020 @02:10PM (#23314477)

It is your opinion, not all people are like you, but I think you can design a interface where people that want to skip this ca do it. even visual novels will give you a skip button and a log to go back if you need some information.

Not all things that seem bad to you are objectively bad, some people enjoy that, remember how you taste in books/music etc changed in time.

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Re:How to Put More “Character” into Your NPCs by Miraste on Wednesday May 27, 2020 @04:22PM (#23329429)

I agree with the idea and most of the examples, but I'd be interested to hear why you've put FFXIII in the good category and Mass Effect in the bad one. XIII has a ton of dubiously-written extra text, and I don't remember ME being too verbose or badly written (with some exceptions).

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