Yesika talks about the uniquely video game experience of NPCs not acknowledging your character’s first name.
The best part about role-playing video games is the fact that you can create your own character. You can choose how they talk, dress, fight, and interact. In fact, many people have longed for this game release because of those factors. It would be great if gamers could get games early but because sometimes the wait it frustrating but this game was certainly worth the wait!
Sometimes, the only thing missing is hearing NPCs call your character by name. I mean after deciding almost 90% of what the character is all about, hearing them say your character’s name would be the cherry on top.
Other people tend to rationalize the limitation by working it into their head canon. Perhaps, some traumatizing event gave your character trust issues so he/she doesn’t give our their name easily.
Sadly, it’s not possible because of developer limitations. If they did, the budget would explode since they would have to record all the dialogue for each possible name or conversations would risk sounding like Siri.
Isn’t it kind of weird how even your most loyal followers and love interest call you by your last name or title?
Imagine if people did that in real life. This deserves a video spoof from Machinima or College Humor.
So, here are just some of the impersonal names role-playing video games have given our characters to make things a whole lot easier.
101 (Fallout 3)
Shepard (Mass Effect)
Yeahp, even your LI doesn’t know your first name.
Arisen (Dragon’s Dogma)
Dragonborn/ Dovahkiin (Skyrim)
Hawke (Dragon Age 2)
Exile (KOTOR II)
Boss (Saint’s Row)
Chicken Chaser (One of many purchasable titles in Fable)
I’m sure that there are many more, but these are what came up at the top of my head. However, there are some games that make it possible for NPCs to address your character’s first and last name.
One example of this is the recent NBA games and they do it quite well. The games pretty much have an audio database of common first and last names players might use.
I initially thought that it would sound weird since they would just be inserting these names into pre-recorded conversations. It would pretty much sound like Siri like I previously mentioned.
However, I was wrong because it flows quite well in the court commentary. It didn’t sound awkward or misplaced at all.
Why can’t they do it with RPG games? Well, if you’re familiar with the genre then most of the names are far from common. It would be so hard to predict what roman or other outlandish name you decided to give your character.
In the end, we have to be content with our character’s first name being sort of equivalent of “He who shall not be named” until the world develops a highly intuitive and intelligent A.I.
