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COVER feature A Player’s Best Friend BRENDAN KEOGH investigates the characters that accompany us in good times and bad, in sickness and in health, until death do you part: NPC companions. Superheroes have sidekicks, comedians have straight men, and videogame protagonists have companions. They have accompanied us in our adventures to save kingdoms/mankind/the universe and to slay monsters/demons/aliens for as long as video games have been around. Link had Navi, Donkey had Diddy (and Diddy had Dixie), Ico had Yorda, Mario had Yoshi (and Yoshi had Mario), Master Chief had Cortana, Gordon had Alyx, Jade had Pey’j, Wanda had Agro, Marcus had Dom. The list goes on and on. There are good reasons why so many games rely on companions, and it is no coincidence that some of the most memorable, most critically acclaimed games are those that rely heavily on an NPC following the player around. When implemented properly, a companion can immerse you deeper into the game world and give you something within the game to care about, such as your trusty canine in Fable II. Conversely, a bad companion is at best forgettable and useless, such as B-Company in Battlefield: Bad Company, and at worst has you double-guessing the game’s logic and yelling at the screen in frustration, like when your party medic in Final Fantasy XIII refuses to heal you. Simply put, companions are capable of making or breaking a game. A good story-focused game will hide the game’s rules behind a layer of fiction. The simplest example: an impassable mountain range is more immersive than an invisible wall at the end of the map with the on-screen message, ‘You cannot go this way’ (I’m looking at you, Bethesda). It is DIDDY KONG not so much about forgetting that you are playing a game as it is about participating in what feels like a complete, coherent world. Companions play a crucial role in forming this coherent fiction by tying the player to the world and giving them something to care about. Few seem to understand this as well as Fumito Ueda of Team Ico, responsible for the Playstation 2 classics ICO and Shadow Of The Colossus as well as the upcoming Playstation 3 title The Last Guardian. Both ICO and Shadow Of The Colossus (and The Last Guardian if we can judge from the trailers) create minimalist worlds with little story and even less dialogue. Yet, Ueda’s titles are among the best-received and most critically acclaimed games of recent time. The critical success of Ueda’s NAVI LUIGI YOSHI 8 www.pixelhunt.com.au JANUARY 2011
YORDA If the player is to care about Yorda, she must be convincing as an individual entity but must also do exactly what the player wants. games comes down largely to the central relationship between the player and a consistent, significant companion. In ICO, you control a boy trying to escape a large castle prison. The gameplay is relatively straightforward platforming and puzzlesolving with one unique addition. Almost immediately after the game starts, you encounter Yorda, a girl also imprisoned in the castle. You soon discover that Yorda is in danger and needs your help. On the flipside, you cannot hope to escape without Yorda’s mysterious door-opening powers. The relationship between player and Yorda is one of co-dependence. As the skills of the player and Yorda do not overlap, neither steps on the other’s toes. Yorda will not rush off and do something the player doesn’t want her to do, but neither will she rush forward and do something the player was about to do. The relationship between Ico and Yorda is pivotal to the entire game. This is a ballsy gamble by Ueda. If she glitches up and gets the player killed even once, the player will be furious. There is nothing players hate more than feeling cheated by the game. If the player is to care about Yorda, she must be convincing as an individual entity but must also do exactly what the player wants. For Yorda specifically and all gaming companions generally, she can’t be god-like and invincible, but neither can she be stupid and placid. Instead, she must be humanly flawed and humanly intelligent; she must be smart enough to make mistakes; she must be imperfect and ‘real’. Yet, she also has to do exactly what the player wants her to do. If she shows too much free will, the player will get frustrated that the game is not doing what they want it to do. But if she just follows the player mindlessly, the player won’t be able to care about her as a human being and, by extension, won’t be able to care about the game’s fiction. So many conflicting conditions! So how did Ueda manage to balance them all With one very simple addition to the controls: press R1 to hold Yorda’s hand when she is close enough or to call her when she is far away. When left to her own devices, Yorda will wander around the map, run after birds, look over edges, and sometimes, if you watch her for long enough, maybe even discover a solution to a puzzle. Yet the moment you press R1 and call her, she will come back to you and hold your hand. Instead of mindlessly following you, then, Ico pulls Yorda along in a charming, enthusiastic run, like a younger brother eager to show his older sister the fortress he built in the lounge room. By tweaking her animations and behaviours just right, Ueda has managed to balance Yorda perfectly between free-minded and obedient. It’s hard not to care about her and her plight as you play ICO. After not too long, you find yourself not being concerned about Ico or Yorda, but about Ico and Yorda. Later in the game, when the two of you are separated, it is akin to having all your weapons removed halfway through a first-person shooter: you feel naked, exposed, vulnerable, and most crucially, alone. So many emotions evoked just by the absence of a NPC! This is how you k<strong>now</strong> a companion has been done well: you don’t just notice Australia’s best gaming -zine www.PIXELHUNT.com.AU 9
Page 1 and 2: PS3 360 Wii PC MOBILE OPINIONS FEAT
Page 3 and 4: contents ISSUE 13 JANUARY 2011 Publ
Page 5 and 6: Garbage Tips Around the World Appea
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Page 11 and 12: like Cortana in Halo, the dependabl
Page 13 and 14: TRANSFORMERS: WAR FOR CYBERTRON STE
Page 15 and 16: STEAM Report Card Paradox Interacti
Page 17 and 18: Always call ‘shotgun’ in MAFIA
Page 19 and 20: Only Nintendo got it right, offerin
Page 21 and 22: For our money, this console generat
Page 23 and 24: ASSASSIN’S CREED BROTHERHOOD Deve
Page 25 and 26: QUESTIONS & ANSWERS PROFESSOR PIXEL
Page 27 and 28: ON THE HUNT PATRICK LANG Deadly Pre
Page 29 and 30: it was enough to make me fling a hi
Page 31 and 32: ASSASSIN’S CREED BROTHERHOOD MEDA
Page 33 and 34: When I say that games are getting l

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