What games/franchises do you think have the best/worst character writing.

[DaveMcDamage]

Best character writing

 

Naughty Dog - Uncharted

 

Nate Drake is one of the most charming and well written characters I have ever enjoyed. I'm a massive RPG fan so I love to be able to create my own character. Devs ruined that when they finally started adding spoken dialog to RPG mc's and totally wrecking it for me. So to enjoy a a character someone else has specific in mind, it takes a lot for me to like them. He can be cheesy, he can be heart warming, and with a kill count that puts CoD games to shame, he's remained very chipper throughout the series. 

 

Worst character writing

 

Kojima Productions - Metal Gear Solid

 

I may get some flak for this, but I think thats because a lot of people confuse story writing with character writing. Anyway. Over the years the writing for the MGS characters has been nothing short of dog crap to the eyes and ears when it comes to the way their characters are written. I think a lot of this is down to the fact that Japanese writers for the most part are god awful when it's time to market to a grown up western audience, but its bad character writing none the less. Also the 4th wall breaking they do turns my stomach. Though whilst they still did this for for MGSV, I still that is probably the best character work they have ever done.

[DrBloodmoney]

Every Quantic Dream game has the best worst character writing.

 

 

[Helyx]

I rarely pay attention to the plot of a game.

[KennethMcCormick]

Best, I would say the South Park, Saints Row, Red Dead Redemption and Uncharted series.

 

Worst would be Disc Jam, Rugby Challenge series, Conan Exiles...

[MarcusPunisher]

Best: I say the Nier series, although I haven't played the Drakengard series, so I don't know if I count that. Alternatively, I say the Persona franchise. Both feature some great and complex character writing. Not all of them struck the gold, but the great out waves the bad. 

Worst: Easy, Life is Strange or majority of David Cage games. Both have some terrible and inconsistent characters that are frustrating to watch, let alone play as sometimes. Weirdly enough, both developed by French studious. 

[Copanele]

Best writing, I would say... Geralt from Witcher (and I mean Witcher 1-2-3, not only the third one), Nero from DMC (his transition from 4 to 5 was awesome imo), Ezio from Assassin's Creed, Nier from Nier Replicant, Kiryu/Majima from Yakuza, Kratos from 2018 GoW, Sekiro from Sekiro Shadows Die Twice.

Worst writing would be Connor from AC3, Bayonetta, Dante from Dante's Inferno. And also (some people will laugh at me ) Vincent from Catherine, a personal dislike.

[Crispy_Oglop]

Best writing: I loved the way characters of Booker DeWitt and Elizabeth were written in Bioshock:Infinite. Also the way William Joseph Blazkowicz from Wolfenstein:The New Order and Wolfenstein 2 was written is fantastic imo.

 

Worst writing: Final Fantasy 13 was genuinely awful and the vapid characters felt like they were written by a bot. It's a shame, because I loved the RPG mechanics. I still don't really get why people love this game and choose this hill to die on specifically.

[Baranov_925]

Worst - Far Cry 3 - Vaas "insanity" is cringe.
Best - Uncharted series - Drake is very persuasive, Sullivan is trustworthy, but still, Sam is unnecessary.

[Dr_Mayus]

Persona 4 and 5 both have great characters.

 

[GoonerLukeThe]

the worst is adam from adams venture origins, it's so bad that I actually enjoyed it

[cubiCampla]

34 minutes ago, Dr_Mayus said:

Persona 4 and 5 both have great characters.

 

I was going to say Persona 4. Persona 5 characters were pretty bland in my opinion.

 

The Yakuza franchise has amazingly written characters. Especially Yakuza 0 and Yakuza 7. Probably the best in any game series in my opinion.

[SnowxSakura]

2 minutes ago, FrostyMcNugs said:

 

I was going to say Persona 4. Persona 5 characters were pretty bland in my opinion.

 

The Yakuza franchise has amazingly written characters. Especially Yakuza 0 and Yakuza 7. Probably the best in any game series in my opinion.

Gotta agree with that, although the non-party member characters in persona 5 were way more interesting than the ones in persona 4

[cubiCampla]

2 minutes ago, SnowxSakura said:

Gotta agree with that, although the non-party member characters in persona 5 were way more interesting than the ones in persona 4

Exactly!! I actually liked Kawakami, the doctor, and the politician in Persona 5. I also liked Futaba cut she could act pretty cringe sometimes when the writers tried to make her a "neet gamer"...

 

Persona 4 had great party characters but a lacking supporting cast. I barely even remember anyone besides the popular girl and the old lady by the river? lol. The only party character in P4 I didn't like was Yukiko. It's not that I disliked her or anything it's just that she was rather boring to me. Chie, Rise, Naoto, Kanji, Teddy, and even Yosuke were always very dynamic and I enjoyed pretty much all of their dialogue. Teddy could be annoying sometimes but I think that's part of his character.

 

(Persona 4 Spoiler)

 

Spoiler

Human form Teddy was super annoying all the time because he just kept trying to be in a harem. It's like P5's Morgana but worse...

 

[SnowxSakura]

Just now, FrostyMcNugs said:

Exactly!! I actually liked Kawakami, the doctor, and the politician in Persona 5. I also liked Futaba cut she could act pretty cringe sometimes when the writers tried to make her a "neet gamer"...

 

Persona 4 had great party characters but a lacking supporting cast. I barely even remember anyone besides the popular girl and the old lady by the river? lol. The only party character in P4 I didn't like was Yukiko. It's not that I disliked her or anything it's just that she was rather boring to me. Chie, Rise, Naoto, Kanji, Teddy, and even Yosuke were always very dynamic and I enjoyed pretty much all of their dialogue. Teddy could be annoying sometimes but I think that's part of his character.

 

(Persona 4 Spoiler)

 

  Reveal hidden contents

Human form Teddy was super annoying all the time because he just kept trying to be in a harem. It's like P5's Morgana but worse...

 

Didn't help Ryuji in persona 5 was just a carbon copy of Kanji, the delinquent looking party member with a heart of gold. Also both morgana and ryuji were jerks

[cubiCampla]

1 minute ago, SnowxSakura said:

Didn't help Ryuji in persona 5 was just a carbon copy of Kanji, the delinquent looking party member with a heart of gold. Also both morgana and ryuji were jerks

Yeah Ryuji is like Kanji and Yosuke put together lol. Then there's Ann who is a model with pig tails (Rise copy??)

[Dr_Mayus]

30 minutes ago, FrostyMcNugs said:

 

I was going to say Persona 4. Persona 5 characters were pretty bland in my opinion.

 

The Yakuza franchise has amazingly written characters. Especially Yakuza 0 and Yakuza 7. Probably the best in any game series in my opinion.

I beg your pardon but Yusuke's love of lobsters begs to differ ?

 

As much as i love P4 (look at my avy/sig) but i actually liked the relationships in p5 more. Funny enough it was actually the dancing game that tipped it from P4 to P5 for me ?

 

 

[Pumpkin Head Cthulhu]

Best - Legacy of Kain

 

Worst - New Tomb Raider

[StraightVege]

1 minute ago, Void said:

Best - Legacy of Kain

 

Strongly agree—way ahead of its time, considering the era it was released in. The Soul Reaver intro is probably still my all-time favorite:

 

[Feral]

Best: The Witcher series, Red Dead Redemption 2, Bioshock Infinite, Uncharted series and Mass Effect series.

 

Worst: Vampyr.

[jackgalligan1]

Best I’ll go with anything from falcom, namely the trails series. Persona 3 and the Digital Devil Saga games as well.

 

worst: bloodborne. Everything about this game is awful, including the characters. The walking dead season 2 as well. By chapter 5, I hated every character aside from the main character. 

[RadiantFlamberge]

Best: Falcom titles (especially Ys or Trails), Witcher 3, Control, Mass Effect, Hard Reset, Cyberpunk 2077

 

So bad it's good: House of the Dead series. The one-liners in this are often cheesy, but in a good way.

 

Worst: Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon (Philips CD-I). This one is all around horrible. Not just the character dialogue and artwork, but they totally botched everything. I can't believe Nintendo approved this hot mess.

[Raidou Kuzunoha XIV]

Honestly this is gonna be hard for me, because despite how many games I've played, I can't think of many that have had exceptional character writing. Prepare for nitpicking.

 

Best:

 

Persona - I love these games and some of the characters do actually have some pretty good character writing and development. The problem is, not all of them do, and some characters often feel far too similar to previous characters (e.g. Ann from Persona 5 and Lisa from Persona 2). Some characters get kinda neglected when it comes to character development and arcs, and others feel like the writer had something specific in mind for how they wanted the character to develop themselves, but kinda failed with expressing that properly (e.g. Ann from P5 being a femme fatale and owning her own sexuality, while also feeling uncomfortable with her outfit and often being the butt of the joke when it comes to innuendo/sexualisation). The protagonist in every game is obviously the worst of the bunch, not really having their own established character most of the time (one of the things I love about the Persona 2 duology, the protags in that are their own characters).

 

AI: The Somnium Files - This game somehow managed to not take itself too seriously, and has a few of the standard archetypes, but also have some pretty believable and well written characters. I may verge into spoilers if I go into too much detail on why I think this game has good character writing, but put simply, many of the characters react surprisingly realistically to certain scenarios, and develop in an equally realistic way. The Zero Escape series was also pretty decent for this, but did have worse character writing overall I feel.

 

The House in Fata Morgana - Maybe this is cheating since it's a visual novel, and a pretty strict visual novel at that (no gameplay other than making choices), but this game truly did have some excellent character writing (and writing in general). It wasn't perfect and a few characters were kinda neglected and felt like they were written a certain way just to be part of the plot narrative rather than be characters in their own right, but even those side characters were generally fairly believable and likeable in their own ways.

 

Worst:

 

Quantic Dream games - I mean, do I even need to explain anything here? If you've ever played a Quantic Dream game, you know exactly what I'm talking about.

 

Metal Gear - I agree with you on this one OP, as much as I love the series as well, its characters and their writing often have me cringing. I replayed Metal Gear Solid 1 last year and felt myself internally facepalming so many times while playing it. It was kind of embarrassing remembering my teenage self got really absorbed in this game, its characters and story. It's still great and loads of fun, but the characters feel like they belong in a fan fic or old cliché campy action movie most of the time, in all honesty.

 

Danganronpa - I love these games, I really do, and I think this is one those games that's somewhere more in the middle in terms of character writing. There's some pretty well written characters, and it's undeniable that many of the characters are very likeable, it's just... There's so many characters that feel like the writer's pets or Mary Sues/Gary Stus. A lot of characters that don't have a great deal of personality beyond a few one dimensional character traits, and many, many archetypes. There are plenty of moments though where those one dimensional characters do get some good character development or otherwise surprise me, but the problem with this series, is that that's usually when the character is written out of the story for the most part anyway. Having character's pasts revealed or characters speaking about their tragic past or whatever is cool and all, but when that character is about to die or is already dead, and isn't going to have much of an effect on the story any more 9 times out of 10, it often feels like wasted potential. But there's not much that can be done about that given the series' premise, and it does really shine when it comes to the investigations and class trials, it definitely has excellent writing there at least.

[cubiCampla]

18 hours ago, Dr_Mayus said:

I beg your pardon but Yusuke's love of lobsters begs to differ

 

I don't know if you're joking or not but personally I found this par to just be like a 10 minute gag or a reoccurring joke. I actually found it annoying myself but maybe I just had little patience that day or something lol.

 

18 hours ago, Dr_Mayus said:

As much as i love P4 (look at my avy/sig) but i actually liked the relationships in p5 more. Funny enough it was actually the dancing game that tipped it from P4 to P5 for me

 

Yeah, the Dancing games added a surpring amount of development for the characters as well as Persona Q and Persona Q 2. Though it kind of sucks when you need supplemental games to flesh out a character because the main games didn't do a good job. I really like Fuuka in Persona 3 but a lot of people don't like her! Maybe it was her voice actor's lack of expression most of the time but in Persona 3 Dancing in Moonlight, she was a really cool character with a new voice actor to my knowledge and reminded me of Futaba but less awkward haha.

 

1 hour ago, SuperSmexy500 said:

Best:

 

Persona - I love these games and some of the characters do actually have some pretty good character writing and development. The problem is, not all of them do, and some characters often feel far too similar to previous characters (e.g. Ann from Persona 5 and Lisa from Persona 2)

 

I don't really see any similarities between Ann and Lisa besides both of them having blonde hair o.o

 

1 hour ago, SuperSmexy500 said:

Best:

 

 

 

AI: The Somnium Files - This game somehow managed to not take itself too seriously, and has a few of the standard archetypes, but also have some pretty believable and well written characters. I may verge into spoilers if I go into too much detail on why I think this game has good character writing, but put simply, many of the characters react surprisingly realistically to certain scenarios, and develop in an equally realistic way. The Zero Escape series was also pretty decent for this, but did have worse character writing overall I feel.

 

I gotta agree with you on this one! The characters are really well written and likable besides Ota and Mama in my opinion. Also, the sexual jokes that Date says a lot of the time, especially in the somnium sections, seem kind of forced and not like the character. I get that he is a pervert and the porno magazine gag is and his conversations with the receptionist are funny but other jokes from him are just hit or miss for me. I really like A-Set, Aiba, and Mizuki! Pewter is also really cool.

 

1 hour ago, SuperSmexy500 said:

Worst:

 

Quantic Dream games - I mean, do I even need to explain anything here? If you've ever played a Quantic Dream game, you know exactly what I'm talking about.

 

I must disagree with you here. I found the characters in Detroit: Become Human to be very well written especially Conner, Hank, Marcus, and Carl. I also really liked the Heavy Rain characters but sometimes that got annoying like the balloon part in the very beginning. I've never played their third game where you can play with two people. It's not the best for sure but I wouldn't say they are in the worst.

 

1 hour ago, SuperSmexy500 said:

Worst:

 

Danganronpa - I love these games, I really do, and I think this is one those games that's somewhere more in the middle in terms of character writing. There's some pretty well written characters, and it's undeniable that many of the characters are very likeable, it's just... There's so many characters that feel like the writer's pets or Mary Sues/Gary Stus. A lot of characters that don't have a great deal of personality beyond a few one dimensional character traits, and many, many archetypes. There are plenty of moments though where those one dimensional characters do get some good character development or otherwise surprise me, but the problem with this series, is that that's usually when the character is written out of the story for the most part anyway. Having character's pasts revealed or characters speaking about their tragic past or whatever is cool and all, but when that character is about to die or is already dead, and isn't going to have much of an effect on the story any more 9 times out of 10, it often feels like wasted potential. But there's not much that can be done about that given the series' premise, and it does really shine when it comes to the investigations and class trials, it definitely has excellent writing there at least.

 

Another disagreement. I agree that some characters appear two dimensional in terms of their personality such as Leon (DR1), Korekiyo (DRV3), Mikan (DR2), Ibuki (DR2), Teruteru (DR2) and many others. The thing is though, is that a lot of the characters don't get a chance to develop much because they die so early. I mean not everyone can have 20 hours of development when they die in the 3rd hours of the game, you know? I think I know who you are talking about when you mention the surprising development of an otherwise 2D character which I will spoiler below but I think a lot of other characters get to have a lot of development and some to shine that doesn't merit the series so be called one of the worst written series ever such as Chiaki (DR2), Nagito (DR2), Kokichi (DRV3), and Shuichi (DRV3) as well as many others.

 

Spoiler

"I think I know who you are talking about when you mention the surprising development of an otherwise 2D character which I will spoiler below"

 

Fuyuhiko? I really liked his surprise development after Peko died.

 

 

[DaveMcDamage]

Some awesome mentions there. Geralt from Witcher 3 especially. That husky voice should be vomit inducing as its such a nod to 80's movie characters and video game characters though the 90's and seen as 'cool sounding', but the writing behind him makes him very awesome. That cabin scene as well will always blow me away no matter how many times I see it. 

 

I don't think I disliked the Vaas speech from FarCry 4, I think the problem is that Ubisoft have a habit of killing off well made characters too quickly. But this is all opinion. 

 

Whho would you guys say has the best written villain character in a video game? Rockstar Games are good at making slimeball villains but nothing that has you really routing to finish them as they still write charm for the character. Off the top of my head I cannot really think of one at the moment.

 

[DrBloodmoney]

50 minutes ago, DaveMcDamage said:

 

Whho would you guys say has the best written villain character in a video game? Rockstar Games are good at making slimeball villains but nothing that has you really routing to finish them as they still write charm for the character. Off the top of my head I cannot really think of one at the moment.

Villains don’t often get terribly well fleshed out in terms of writing in games, but there are a few that come to mind:

 

GladOS (and Wheatley) from Portal 2

- they both have genuine arcs, and are pretty well written.

 

Andrew Ryan from Bioshock

- most of his stuff is recorded dialogue you find about him, rather than direct interaction, but you certainly learn a lot about him, and it’s well done.

 

Irene Engel from Wolfenstein II 

- just scenery chewing evil - but it’s scenery chewing evil of the highest order!

 

Royce from Transistor

- theres not a huge amount of interaction with him, but by the time you get to him you know a lot, and his dialogue (and tone of voice) does a lot of work in making him work

The Joker from Arkham Asylum

-HaaAaHAaHaaAaHaAAAAaaHAhA

(also reasons)