Creating Emotion in Games: The Craft and Art of Emotioneering™

Chapter 2.8. Emotioneering Techniques Category #8: NPC Toward NPC Relationship Deepening Techniques

Giving NPCs layers of feelings toward their fellow digital creations.

This chapter

illustrates ways, with very little reliance on dialogue, to make it feel like two NPCs have a rich and complex relationship.

Revisiting a thought from Chapter 2.4, if I were to ask you how you felt about your mother, father, brother, or sister, you might respond, “Well, that's kind of complicated….”

Which is exactly the point of this chapter. We often feel several emotions simultaneously toward a person. If we can capture this in the relationships between NPCs, we add to their life-likeness. If we don't, we've missed a great opportunity to create a more emotionally immersive ...