Wanted: Imagination (dead or alive)
I’ve noticed a trend in video game character design: Faceless guy in futuristic armor and helmet.
As games move more and more into realism, game developers find themselves having to answer the question: How do you put the player in a realistic environment but give him supernatural powers?
The easiest, no-brainer answer is to give them a power suit and set the game in the near-future. It’s important to distinguish the future from the near-future. The future means the game plays out in outer space and the human race are either at the bring of extinsion or they’re the commanders of the galaxy waging an interplanetary war. The near-future means the near-almost-now, but not-really. In essense the real world, but with addition of cool inexplicable technologies. Like power suits.
The common denominator of all of the characters above is that they’re all from shooters and in that genre you get an extra benefit of putting a helmet on the player character. If you’re trying to do pseudo-realism you tend to want to explain everything, even the heads-up-display. Metroid Prime was the first game to explicitly put the HUD on the inside of the visor. In the game the visor even have gameplay purposes because the player can switch view modes for scanning objects or looking through walls. That’s fine! Metroid is not to blame at all for any of this because Samus put her suit on for the first time back in 1986.
I’m guessing the reason for all this inbred design is because of all the reasons I’ve mentioned above, but also because of one particularly successful game featuring a power suit with the shiniest visor of them all. Halo.
Games pictured, left to right, top to bottom: Halo 3, Crysis, Haze, Timeshift, Metroid Prime, Dead space.
Kronis Eric Arc said:
Mar 12, 08 at 02:30I have noticed it and I am actually working on the art for my game Lost Dimension:Threshold of Chaos(do not use, already recognized). They face-less characteristic is for the players and are part of the characters suit. The important this is that the players need to see the character unmasked after the games final sequel or the first game. Notice that their suits are unique enough so they are distinguishable and give a sense of the characters situation. Finally the suit is direcly related to the character by who they are associated with of them personally (like they made it/friends or an organization).