How do you create a huge array of characters?
Suppose you are part of a development team working on a fighting game, and you're given the role of creating about 30 or 40 unique characters from many different backgrounds from the ground up. It's more story heavy than most fighting games, and it takes place over a large universe spanning many planets, so most characters end up being largely disconnected from most of the other cast.
Being a fighting game, the characters follow some archetypes established from many fighting games, such as:
- quick characters who relentlessly rush down their opponents. They are often very light on defense (leading to glass canons sometimes), but they make up for it with their speed and their small size.
- characters who work best with their projectiles or other long range attacks. They shine by keeping their opponents out of their faces as much as possible or keeping them at a distance that's advantageous to them but disadvantageous to their enemies.
- grappler / heavy-weight characters who excel in close combat. They can take and dish out lots of damage, but they are often slow and easy to hit because of their size.
You also have healers, but it's specific to this fighting game as it features large teams with concurrently fighting characters.
Aside from these archetypes, you're almost completely free to create the characters however you want with whatever backstory and arc you want, as long as they fit the game play of course. For example, sometimes you're given the task of creating a character who needs to have something specific, like a ball and chain user for example, but you can decide everything else for the character yourself.
Regardless whether this game and its story would be feasible to make or not (that's not the point of this question), how would you create all these characters if you're given a specific number of characters you need to make with certain requirements/restraints for some or all of them, like the example above?
The way I'm currently doing it is by having one "main" story and character that drives everyone else's stories to some extent. I have one to four characters per planet and they are just there at the moment, as "character slots" so to speak. Later, when I get ideas for characters, I try to incorporate them into the character slots I created, keeping in mind the requirements or restraints the dev team puts on that character. Once I have a full set of characters, I try to make them work together, so I can tell a cohesive story with all of them.
Side note: I'm more of a discovery writer, hence the approach I take.
This post was sourced from https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/40101. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
1 answer
With that many characters, you're dealing with an ensemble cast. That means you're going to have to carefully structure your story so that each major protagonist is introduced to the story in a way that allows the players to connect with them.
Some good movies and games with ensemble casts that you might want to check out are:
- The Magnificent Seven (and its spiritual predecessor, The Seven Samuri)
- The Lord of the Rings
- Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars and the first two Paper Mario games
- Starlink: Battle for Atlas
- Mass Effect
- BlazBlue
Each of these stories shares a similar structure. The first act adds one or two major protagonists at a time, letting them be the focus of an entire scene. This scene showcases their personality, their motivations, and the way they fit into the world. The story proper only kicks into gear once the core group of the main cast has been assembled.
- The Magnificent Seven is a western about a gun for hire being hired to go to a remote village and rescue it from a viscious band of outlaws. The main character knows that it's too much for him to handle on his own, so before he heads out, he tracks down old friends and asks them to take on the mission with him. One man is reluctantly dragged into a duel with a bully and wins effortlessly; another is a war veteran who turns down the mission when he's told it doesn't pay well before changing his mind at the last minute; yet another is a young kid who gets drunk and decides to join just because it sounds like fun. Irregardless, all of the main characters are introduced one at a time in individual scenes. And each of the characteristics we learn about them come into play again by the end of the film.
- The Lord of the Rings starts with Gandalf and the four hobbits leaving the Shire. The gradually and organically wind up travelling with Gimli, Aragorn, and Legolas, but they don't decide to formally work together until creating the Fellowship of the Ring at Elrond.
- The Mario RPGs take a somewhat different approach. Mario is the main protagonist, but each chapter focuses entirely on one new party member who overshadows even Mario for that portion of the story. The start of the chapter give the new party member and organic reason to help Mario: whatever problem they're dealing with in their own life overlaps with Mario's goal of collecting a McGuffin. By the end of the chapter, the new party member has tied up all of the loose ends in their own story and have organically formed a connection with the rest of the ensemble, so it feels very natural for them to join the ensemble permanently after that. The ensemble isn't completed until the start of the final dungeon, but each individual major character is still given a thorough introduction.
- Starlink introduces its cast quickly. The opening cutscene shows all of the major protagonists, already assembled, on the bridge of their starship. Each individual character gets at least one punchy line of dialog that captures their personality, and the way they bounce off of each other so easily makes it clear that there's already a lot of good chemistry in the group. This is enough to get the story started with the ensemble already put together. A little while later, a major story mission is added to the player's quest log. This mission starts with the player collecting McGuffins scattered around a planet, each one containing a spoken diary entry from the ensemble's mentor. These recordings give a brief minute-long explanation of how each character joined the group, what their personalities are, and how they contribute to the whole group. This expands on the very brief introductions in the opening cutscene and lets the player connect with the group more solidly.
- The Mass Effect games start out with small ensembles. After that, each new party member who is added to the team has their own mission to recruit or rescue them. Notably, the player is able to pursue these missions in whatever order they want, so the ensemble will be put together in a different order for each player. But because each character gets their own introduction, it works effectively regardless of the order.
- BlazBlue has an individual story campaign for each individual character. The final campaign that brings the story to a close is only available after each individual character's canon ending has been reached, so by the time the story ends, the player is very familiar with each character.
These are just some examples. If you find any of the structures compelling, it might be worth your time to watch or play these stories to get an idea how they work. In the end, what you need to do is find a way to organize your story so that each major character has a chance to be properly introduced to the player. This will tie your ensemble together.
Here are a couple of really unique ensemble cast stories that might come in handy if your game takes off:
- Avengers: Infinity War
- Super Smash Bros: Subspace Emmisary
- BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle
All three of these stories have absolutely enormous casts. Unlike the other examples I gave, they do not structure their stories to give a strong introduction to each protagonist. This is because they are all stories that are based off of existing intellectual property, using characters that the viewers/players are likely already very familiar with. As a result, when a new character is added, the audience is able to immediately recognize and connect with them. The only characters that need thorough introductions are the ones that play the most central roles in the story.
Unfortunately, if you're seriously going to try to have a cast of 30-40 characters, it might be worth your while to see if you can leverage a similar technique. Either get lucky enough to use someone else's established characters, or accept that, at least for now, you're not going to get to thoroughly explore each character's role in your story and hope that your players are OK with some characters playing minor roles in the story mode.
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