If you truly feel something toward an NPC, why not feel several things?
This chapter explores
ways to give the player emotionally complex relationships with major NPCs.
At the end of the last chapter, I speculated that some people in your life probably have mixed feelings toward you. Are there people toward whom you have different layers of feelings?
Many people have a variety of feelings toward one or both of their parents, their siblings, or even their spouse.
If it happens in life, it's appropriate to put one or more NPCs in your game toward whom the player will feel a variety of mixed feelings simultaneously.
Going back to the example from the last chapter, again take the role of a gunslinger in the post-Apocalyptic world.
In the game, a guy named Kovar sells you weapons. Your feelings about him are complex because:
Sometimes he cheats you.
He almost steals the heart of the woman you like.
While he doesn't get her, he does land the heart of a well-known hottie who never falls for anyone.
He risks his life to save you, and even takes a bullet for you.
You find out that he has suffered incredible tragedies in his life; his own wife and son were murdered by the same enemy you're going after.
It's likely that you'll have Layer Cakes toward him—a variety of layers of feeling. If you're a guy, you might simultaneously:
Feel annoyed at him for swindling you.
Be angry that he's making a play for the woman you like.
Grudgingly admire him for winning the heart of a woman everyone thinks is untouchable—or perhaps be a bit jealous.
Appreciate him and like him for the risks he takes in saving your life.
Feel sorry for him for the tragedies of his past.
Remember, you may feel these different emotions sequentially (feeling different emotions at different points in the game), or, at any given moment when you're with him, you might feel several of them at the same time.
The reason to do this in a game is to emulate life itself. This book is about creating complex states of emotional immersion in a game, and Player Toward NPC Relationship Deepening is a useful type of Emotioneering.
The illustrations depict a game in which you play a WWII soldier. In the first scene, you, the player, would probably feel annoyed at your fellow soldier, an NPC named Conrad, because the sexy and spunky girl he's flirting with turned you down in favor of him.
Then, in a battle, Conrad bravely defends you when you get injured.
How are you going to feel toward this NPC? You'd most likely feel a variety of things. This is another example of Player Toward NPC Relationship Deepening, and it is just one of many Emotioneering techniques yet to find its way into many games.
Depth is possible in a relationship, whether it's the way an NPC feels toward the player or how the player feels toward an NPC. If you're trying to get a player to feel a variety of emotions toward an NPC, then that NPC will have to do and say things that prompt a variety of internal reactions to the NPC.
You can also have a progression of feelings. For instance, you could be a member of a Navy Seal team and have a variety of feelings toward one of your fellow Seals who, on one hand, is an irritating hot-head, but on the other hand is a skilled asset to your squad. As the game progresses, your annoyance with him could gradually give way to admiration.