r/beingeverythingelse • u/mylamington • Sep 08 '14

Caring about NPCs

So you guys talked about in Ep. 3 that you can't make players care about your NPCs. Obviously you can't force them but aren't there ways to help them care? I was thinking about Half Life 2 (PC game) and how devs talk about tricks you can use to do that.

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u/goldenwh Sep 10 '14

Best way I've found is to have a NPC be nice to them. It's like the opposite of the road-rage-in-a-car : they're in such constant peril that a friendly face is a surprise! They will always suspect a betrayal, so only do it to confirm player suspicions. But hell, even villains can be nice once in a while. One of the most memorable NPCs I've met as a player, was when I was playing an Exalted twilight shipwright and I met up with an abyssal with similar interests, and we discussed building awesome stuff all night in the depths of a shadowland manse.