Riachu said:
In other words, the developers should avoid using unlikable characters and should have the main character narrating the story. Is that what you are getting at?
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How on Earth did you manage to reach that conclusion from what I wrote? There's a term for what that would lead to. It's "generic.""Uncreative" is also acceptable, along with a host of others.
Think this through, Riachu: the authors of both the articles claim that the same problem exists. The authors of the two articles also cite what they feel are games that have solutions to these problems; the Gamasutra article I spoke of talks about removing the player from the character, while this article mentions games in which the Player's Character is mute (note the difference in how the two articles frame the situation. It's not accidental.).
Both of them are thus proposing that there IS a way around the problem, and they highlight a developer who has found one such way. Who's to say that there aren't others? In fact, we already know there are. FamousRingo mentioned one in this very thread; Bioware lets you make most of the choices for your Player Character, so you really DO feel that the character is acting like you would in the same situation. This maintains the illusion. I'm also positive that other developers have come up with other solutions, advertently or not, sometime in the past.
To simplify: the authors feel the medium offers its own challenges for telling a story, and they each highlight different solutions. (Plural intended)
