Character: The Next Great Gaming Frontier?
4/24/2009 6:36 PM | 5 Comments | Page 2 of 3
Chris Buecheler
Status: I hate their hair ... but I'm enjoying the latest Kings of Leon album
Not a lot of depth. Let's be honest here: We have yet to see Vance express any more-than-token nods to many of the less-pleasant human characteristics. She is rarely jealous, appears unwilling to lie or cheat for either political or social reasons, and displays neither hypocrisy nor selfishness. She is without greed, is never smug, arrogant or self-satisfied, and is as loyal and dedicated to both her father and her cause as one could possibly hope. Her brilliant white teeth suggest that even personal hygiene is not outside of Alyx's daily attention; apparently, when the Seven Hour War occurred, great stores of Crest Whitestrips were hoarded by members of the resistance. This is a woman whose main flaws, as best we can tell, are a tendency towards goofy humor ("That must be a 'zombine' ... get it?") and a short battle with self-doubt when confronted by the same creature which at one point
stabbed her in the abdomen and nearly killed her. Speaking as someone who hates getting stabbed to death, I don't think I'd be thrilled about another encounter of that type either.
This, then, is the state of gaming. We have reached a technological point where fast, fluid photorealism is at hand. We can render tiny halls and vast expanses in great detail, often without the slightest hitch, drop in framerate, or even load time while moving between the two. Our game characters have multilayered skin textures, cast soft shadows that blend and change with the dynamic movement of light, and even have hair that can wave and shift in the virtual breeze. The steps that computer gaming has taken visually in only 10 short years are nothing short of amazing, and in the next 10 years we will see games which make today's high-resolution titles look like the original
Super Mario Bros., or perhaps even
Pong. This is the digital future, driven by the law of accelerating returns, where things can only get better, and at an exponentially faster pace.
Charming, attractive, and scripted to love you no matter how many times you throw a paint can at her head.
Why is it, then, that a character like Alyx Vance represents arguably the pinnacle of our achievements in producing a realistic virtual human? Vance is simply
not realistic; she offers the very best of humanity, but reflects virtually none of its flaws. More importantly, she is incapable of reacting to her environment, and cannot change or grow as a person. She is a programmed automaton -- a mannequin with a voice -- one whose every movement, gesture and facial tic is purposefully scripted to achieve a very specific, and usually very positive, reaction from gamers. There's nothing inherently wrong with this, and in many ways Vance and the technology that powers her represent an incredibly important step for gaming -- but she is not a human, nor even truly a simulation of humanity.
The answer to the questions asked at the beginning of this article -- what makes a character compelling, and how can we pursue this effect in modern games? -- actually lies in the same realm of programming as the visual technology which has overtaken character development by leaps and bounds: simulation. Modern videogame rendering has moved with ever-increasing speed and precision toward simulation, rather than scripting. Not content with burned-in lighting, developers have moved to ray-tracing technology, coupled with advanced texturing techniques like bump and normal mapping in order to simulate depth. Not satisfied with simple animation, complex shader code has been written to simulate the movement, reflection and refraction of light on various materials. These technologies are still nascent, little more than teenagers in the total lifespan of world-rendering technology, and there are many great leaps yet to come. Still, if our visuals have reached the teen years, our characters are just now learning to walk.
