Family within games and how this makes for a more relatable character

One of the most immersive links to the game world is through a relatable main character. There are many ways to achieve a relatable main character such as a believable motive. The method I will be talking about to achieve a relatable character is through the use of Side characters to achieve an origin.

Orphans in games represent a neutral persona, which can be interactively moulded into any form of personality such as good, bad or neutral. Example of this is Fable.

Adding a family into the equation pushes the character into either a good or evil mentality.

Family can and should be implemented into games to allow the characters to have a relatable background and there motivations believable. Most good narratives in games focus around the main character finding themselves. One such example is Ezio.

Ezio as a person is arrogant and over confidant. This is because he is raised inside a rich family unit. He is overall a good person but his not heroics until the event of his father and brothers’ death.

With a troubled a background Ezio may have referred to a life of crime or an outlaw like john Marston.

Instead he takes the lessons his father and family taught him and he becomes much more than an arrogant good-hearted man. He adopts a cause – the cause and creed of the assassins. A role, which his father had always intended for him

John Marston’s mother died during childbirth and was orphaned at 8 years old when his father died of unknown causes.  Because of this he did not have a guided upbringing.

After john lost his father he was then guided into the life of an outlaw by the criminal Dutch and his gang.

During the a long period as a criminal and a rather bad lifestyle he then tried to be a better more honourable man when he fell in love and had a son named jack.

Johns final act alive was to do the honourable thing by giving himself up to save the life of his son and wife so that they may live happily in peace. This however backfires since jack Marston, through the traumatic loss of his fathers, adopts the role of the outlaw to one day seek revenge against the murderer of his father.

What made john Relatable was that he was fighting for a cause which most can relate too. He was fighting was his family and his loved ones. In johns story His wife and Child were the Princess that he tried to save and protect.

So in both senses, it was the use of side characters, which drove the narrative – the use of Ezio family can be likened to that of spider-mans uncle Ben who ushered peter into the role of a hero rather than a villain.

Both examples make the character as relatable to a wide audience as an outlaw and assassin can be because of the common loss, which as human beings we will all experience

Ezio: http://images.wikia.com/celestial-refresh/images/9/97/Ezio_Auditore_da_Firenze_image.jpg

John Marston: http://images.wikia.com/deadliestfiction/images/4/47/John-Marston-red-dead-redemption-14740700-494-599.jpg

Fable 2: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/7f/Fable_II.jpg