Quote:Original post by Silvermyst You might want to take a look at Heavy Rain, where the player does control the actors in the story, but where none of the actors is the lead actor and can all really be thought of as supporting actors.
But in much the same way, all of them are the main characters. There can be more than one.
Quote:Original post by Schildpad If I remember correctly, the first Halo game has this. You're just a marine fighting the Covenant, doing what is your duty. A big part of the game is played in a squad and the player is not an especially important member of it. Ofcourse you play a very good marine who does some badass things, but I can't think of a moment where you are addressed personally or are rewarded for doing anything out of the ordinary. Then again, I've played this game when it was new, so it's been a while.
In the first Halo, you play as Master Chief. You are the last of a line of superhuman warriors. You are the only one left... and you are put on the most important missions because of that. Almost everything you do is part of a story path where the focus is on your character and what it does. Every soldier you encounter recognizes you and seems encouraged knowing you're there because you're virtually indestructible.
So I think the topic is asking about the OPPOSITE of Halo...
...perhaps you should replay it or something.
This man made my day: http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=523021
One big issue you may run into is that of AI. Unless the AI hero's plays far better than the player it may be difficult to inspire the player to look up to them. If the AI hero does everything off screen or the gameplay is very straight-forward then this might not be an issue.
--------------------Just waiting for the mothership...
You get a dungeon, it's already been raided, and the best loot has been taken.
You can't sleep at the inn, the hero's party took the last available room.
All the best items have been bought from the shop.
You try to rescue the princess, and she refuses. She likes the other hero better, and is waiting to be rescued by him.
You beat the final dungeon, and open the big chest at the end to get your prize, only to find a note inside that says you are a day late and a dollar short. On your way back to town, you get hired to sweep up the elephant poop at the parade in the hero's honor.
Modern Warfare did this to an extent, didn't it? You bounce around from character to character, but more than once you find yourself taking orders from a supremely mad mother who's off-screen performing feats of derring-do, and sometimes you get rescued by squad leaders or your whole squad gets scooped out of the combat zone by a really awesome guy. In the climactic fight of MW2, [spoilers ahead] you spend most of the time on the ground, delirious with pain, staring at the knife sticking out of your chest while another guy has an epic fistfight with the villain. Although you do manage to play a key role in the resolution of the fistfight, it's not all up to you.
I remember an old game, Out of This World, where you're a nerdy scientist trapped in a parallel dimension, and you make friends with a hulking alien who saves your bacon more than once. At the end a boss beats the everloving shit out of you and your buddy rolls up and tackles him, and you crawl agonizingly over to a door control or something while he's got the boss in a headlock. Then he picks you up and carries you into the sunset on a pterodactyl. That game was awesome.
Its hard to make a playable character secondary without literally taking choices away from them. Even if your character is a second-class citizen of the game world, just by virtue of the player experiencing the goings on through that player, they become primary. The only way I can see to combat this is to take control over the direction of the game away from the player, and to focus heavily on the exploits of whoever does have control over the direction. Now you face the problem of making that person not be bossy and unlikable (or perhaps that's their character.)
Another tact that might work is to make the player-character's role less pro-active and making it more reactionary instead. Then, instead of doing what they want to, they have to do what they're told, or what's necessary, to progress. Some of the RPG classics touch on this theme (though they typically trend toward the player taking control of their fate -- the typical Hero's Journey) where, rather than being foretold in legend, the player's troupe becomes caught up in events that are beyond their control, and are always one step behind the villian right up until the end.
In general I support the idea, especially in the fantasy genre. It's not that there's anything wrong with epicness, but I'd like some variety. In many cases the game is really about leveling up and "making a career" so why not make the game explicitly about that?
But there has to be some way to influence I think. I used to play a WW2 flight sim where your performance had exactly 0 influence on the campaign. If you played as German you could slaughter every single bomber raid but you would still get pushed back. Sure it might be realistic that a single ace cannot win a war, but that is one kind of realism I can happily go without. And I tend to like realism for it's own sake.
Simply by being the player, you play the *main* character of the story you're in. You cannot pretend to play a "secondary" role, as this is a matter of perspective, and only yours as a player is taken into account ^^.
I guess a naughty storyteller *could* have you follow another character too, using some narrative tricks (voice over maybe ? I'm not the storyteller kind...) but imho this doesn't change the fact that you, as a player, follow your character.
Whether or not to play the role of a leader is a different question. But many games already put you in the shoes of secondary ranking characters.
In fact, except Civilization maybe, every game put you in the shoes of secondary ranking characters ^^.
I don't think you have to make the main story focused on the character. However, the character would have to be able to make some sort of impact. Either in his own story or the main story.
If you were to play a game of... say, CounterStrike, but whether you died in the assault or not, the Hostage is rescued or killed would make people feel insignificant. Not doing anything to the story would just be boring.
Just imagine Lord of the Rings, the movie. Remember the final scene where the humans/elves/drawves are basically surrounded 1000 to 1 by orcs? Well, imagine a game where you play Frodo or Sam, where regardless of if you destroyed the Ring or not, Everyone in the battle still ends up dead and you're left stranded at Mount Doom. Not exactly something you want to play. You don't actually do anything, sure you sneaked through a couple of Orcs and such but it was all for nothing. Likewise, even if you failed to destroyed the Ring, but they won the war... Well then, what was the point of you going to destroy the Ring? If they could've won, you didn't have to do it because they won anyway. With the orcs out of the way, anyone could just walk up and destroy it if they got enough Will to do so. ...... Might as well Catapult the ring into Mordor.
Now, if you got something like Heavy Rain, you don't have to find the Origami Killer yourself, but you have to atleast done something to help. Otherwise your character is useless, insignificant... basically a character in an MMO where any quest can be repeated without any consequence. Basically a "Yay, I beat the ultimate evil" and then turning around to see someone else that did that yesterday. Or a "I need herbs to heal my daughter" quest being done 1,000,000,000,000 times and yet she is never actually cured.
I hope I wrote that in a understandable manner .... hmm.
What I would like to see is an Inspector Gadget style of play Where you have the "hero" and you are the support...that basically is the real hero but without the glory as the "hero" is bloody useless with all the glory
As for player focus the game will always have a focus on the player no matter how epic or not he effects the world
