These are the methods that I''ve come up with for relaying the story to the player. Most everything here can be lumped under the passive approach.

Speech: Characters can speak it. Be they NPCs, or playable characters, perhaps they could say something that reveals the information that the player needs to know.

Thoughts: The avatar (or anyone else whose thoughts the audience is privy to) could think it.

Written material: the avatar reads a sign, a book, something from a computer, etc.

The Environment: if the player needs to know that a village has been burned, he can see it on fire, or see the ashes after the fire is out.

Events: this actually covers superpig''s non-interactive, semi-interactive, and fully-interactive cut-scene methods. Events can occur while the player is in control, or watching passively.

Avatar Actions: The in-game actions that the player takes can be informative.

If the action stems from character motivation, it characterizes.

If an action is required by the game, that action and the information we learn from it seem important. For example, say that the avatar has to help a border village set up a barricade against an advancing army from the neighboring nation. This tells us that a war is starting, and hints at the intentions of the neighboring nation. And if these points relate to the story, we have learned about the story.

quote:Original post by superpig
After all, in something like Half-Life, isn''t Gordon Freeman just a convenient name for the representation of the human player within the game world? As such, it''s not an independent entity; it can''t have it''s own thoughts. Can it?

I think it depends on how much of a personality the playable character has, and how independant that is from the players personality.(I can''t speak for Half-Life, because I''ve never played it.) In some games, the playable character is more than an extension of the player. Sometimes he he has his own goals and motivations. But sometimes the playable character is just there to represent the player, and nothing more.

You bring up a good point when you say that if the thoughts of the playable character does not match the thoughts of the player, it can be damaging. I argue that it is damaging only if the playable character is supposed to be an extension of the player - if I''m supposed to pretend that the playable character is me, he or she had better not be someone else. And if he or she has his or her own thoughts, it is a reminder that he or she is someone else.

But it doesn''t bother me if the playable character is supposed to be his or her own person. In that case, I expect his or her thoughts to be different from mine.

As to how to get the thoughts across...
If the playable character is nothing but a representation of the player, I do not think that he should have his own thoughts. Frankly, it would seem superficial to me. (He''s had no reason to think before, just been there for me to move him around, then all of a sudden a thought comes from him?) There may be games out there that prove me wrong, but I have not met them yet.
But if you did want this type of character to think, there is the problem with character identification. There is always the chance that the player will be thinking something different than the words that come up in the thought bubble. You could guess what the player would think, even try to guide him or her to think that...But that doesn''t solve this problem completely.

Here''s a question - how do we make thoughts different from words that are spoken out loud? Some games put thoughts in parentheses or brackets. If it''s clear that this means ''thoughts'' then it''s enough for me. But does anyone else have comments about this?