Non-Player-Characters

No matter how much effort you put into your world, the player will only see what is on the surface without some method of relaying information to them. Sure, you could provide the player with a library of documentation, but that gets dull, and there's little way of guiding the player away from things they don't need to know until later, and things they might want to know now.

Enter the NPC, or non-player-character. This title officially covers anything in the game that can think, but isn't controlled by the player, although it's come to be a term for only friendly characters the player meets along their route. Evil characters are villians, anything that attacks you is a monster - or perhaps a boss. They're not considered an NPC until they shake your hand and say something to you.

In a video game, most NPCs typically have one, and exactly one, peice of information to give the player when prompted. You have to wonder what the player asks to get such varied responses from people all over the world, "What's going on?" perhaps? Regardless, the information almost always remains static throughout the game unless something signifigant happens in the area, at which time the information changes to that NPCs comment about the event.

NPCs are usually used to say something about the current point in the story and the current area the player is in. An NPC in the castle might say "Sigh, times are tough." An NPC in the forest might say "The green snails are plentiful this year." They provide you with a little window into the setting that the player wouldn't otherwise get a chance to know. Most of the information isn't useful, but it's interesting for the player to know. Sometimes what they say is important, but that's not quite what I'm talking about here.

While this is an essential window into the world, there is a problem with it. Once an NPC says the same thing twice, most players won't talk to them ever again. To make the NPCs more lifelike, more dynamic in the world, there needs to be a list of things for them to say. This can be drawn from a pool of tidbits about the current point in the story "I hear the volcano in Maxitone errupted", information about the area the NPC is in "granny makes so many pies now that the apples are ripe, anyone can get one", and a few that could be used for any NPC across the world, "My feet are sore". This lets the NPC, with little extra effort, suddenly becomes interesting for the player to listen to more than once. But, there has to be a balancing act between interesting and repeating. If the NPCs always have something new and interesting to say, the player's never going to go and save the world, they'll spend all day chatting in town!