While most developers drop virtual humans into their worlds as fodder to be shot, blown up, or dismembered, video games haven’t always limited NPCs interactions to a Rolodex of one-liners or a very sudden fight to the death. As catharticashitting an evil NPC with a flaming car at 109mphis (especially after a long day of customer service), humans are, by their nature, social beings who long for ties with other people and tribes; even virtual ones.
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That’s why many legendary games have filled their non-playable background cast with rich, fully-realized personalities and heartening histories that help to fire up a player’s imagination, build their sense of empathy and cement their investment in the fictional world. Whether it’s the main focus of a game or a flavorsome side feature, or designed with scripted or emergent gameplay, the developers behind these games believed that the content of an NPC’s brain could be just as entertaining and compelling as watching it explode into a million bloody chunks.
10The Sims Series
With every sim potentially having as many traits, skills, likes, dislikes, agency, and memories as the player character’s avatar(s),The Simsseries stands out as games built around the concept of having a richly-realized world of non-playable characters. While the exact specifics of each conversation are glossed over in the abstract, the emergent nature of each character truly brings the Sims' world to life.
Given that the main gameplay loop revolves around building relationships, the success ofThe Simsproves that gamers are hungry for stories in games about people and communities (either that or an unending supply offreshly squeezed Sim souls).
9The Elder Scrolls Series
It would be difficult to say which game of theElder Scrollsseries brought NPCs to life the best, as each game brought something new. While the vast number of NPCs populatingMorrowindall have a long list of topics about Vvardenfell to discuss in a Wikipedia-entry-style dialogue system, much of the dialogue sometimes feels copy-pasted.
Giving the player directions in their journal instead of dropping a map marker or waypoint may have also given the playera greater sense of adventure and immersion, but it meant that NPCs had to be static by necessity. Dialogue and navigation were streamlined inOblivionandSkyrim,and NPCs were given their own daily schedules and territory to move around in.
8Shadow Of Doubt
Shadow Of Doubtis a detective simulation that procedurally generates a moody, atmospheric city as well as its rain-soaked citizens and their lives before the game begins. A web of networks is generated before each game, and it’s the player’s job to trace those lines while sleuthing for clues.
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While there’s some interaction between the player and the multitude of characters in the game, the real magic of the procedurally generated crime thriller is working out how a random Joe-Shmoe’s social life fits together, figuring out who did them dirty (and why!).
7The Legend Of Zelda: Majora’s Mask
What’s the point of saving the world if there’s no one there for the player cares about? The non-playable characters inhabiting Clock Town and beyond run like, well, clockwork on a rewindable, three-day schedule. Many of the quests inMajora’s Masklean heavily into getting to know every single person in the world, as well as their problems, hopes, and dreams, through short but precise dialogue.
This makes their inevitable demise at the falling moon infinitely more tragic than if only shopkeepers and one-note characters were scattered around Termina. From the 1986 NES classic toThe Tears of the Kingdom,Zeldagames have always strived to make lovable NPCs. But by the end, it’s easy for players to feel as though they are saying their goodbyes to a community rather than chips in a cartridge.
6Watch Dogs: Legion
After so many headshots, hit-and-runs, and quick-time mini-games, even the most explosive titles can leave players feeling as though they had been walking knee-deep in waters as wide as an ocean but as deep as a puddle. Shooting, exploding, or running over bystanders was a riot inGTA 3. Today, it feels to some like one of gaming’s oldest novelties.
TheWatch Dogsseries puts a twist on the open-world crime game by allowing players to pry into the lives of procedurally-generated NPCs at the touch of a button. The HUD divulges info about every NPC the player passes, including their income, personality traits, and background tidbits, while their jobs, hobbies, and friends remain hidden under the trunk.Watch Dogs: Legiontakes this further by allowing the player torecruit any NPC, no matter how wild, by completing missions for them.
5Middle-earth: Shadow Of Mordor
Who would have thought that orcs would have been considered for their intelligence?Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordoruses the Nemesis system to bring orcs to lifeby giving them the illusion of memory, mainly in the form of grudges.
Their characters are also fleshed out with names, titles, traits, and even rivalries between other faction members. Orcs can move through the ranks, gain or change classes, and even fight other orcs, all independent of the player’s actions, creating a believable cast of rivals to meet in battle.
4Shenmue
If there’s one thing that makes a game world feel alive, it’s knowing that its inhabitants all have their own lives, places to be, and homes to sleep in and that some have deep-seated secrets. Learning about the backstories of the NPCs inShenmueis an experience that cannot be found in any other storytelling medium and is rarely seen today.
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From reluctant gang members to salarymen with sad secrets, the level of attention to detail delivered through this type of storytelling will go unnoticed by unobservant players. However, those who notice will bring the memories of those characters with them for a long time to come.
3Animal Crossing
While the NPCs (or residents) inAnimal Crossingdo tend to be talking, anthropomorphic animals, they share two things in common with real people: memory and a sense of familiarity. What players say to a resident isn’t as important as how often the player says it.
Conversely, forgetting to do a favor for a resident causes them to admit feelings of disappointment or anger. Of course, the villagers don’t feel such emotions, butthe residents' soulful qualitiescome from programming fueled by a deep understanding of human connections.
2Tokimeki Memorial
Tokimeki Memorialis a game that makes socializing and relationship-building its sole developmental focus.
Most Western gamers have probably never heard ofTokimeki Memorial, a Japanese dating sim developed on a game engine created byMetal Gear Solid’s Hideo Kojima, as the game never received an official translation into English. The game has a remarkably sophisticated personality and relationship tracking system between the player and other NPCs, branching dialogue choices, skills, sports mini-games, and even a secret battle system, resulting in an incredible simulation of a mid-1990s Japanese high school experience.
1Dwarf Fortress
SomeDwarf Fortressplayers choose to “play” the game by generating a world and then only reading its history. Since the world and all its minutia is generated with so much depth, it makes sense that its NPCs would get the same treatment.
Every creature in thedelightfully complexDwarf Fortresscomes packed with so much detail that it boggles the mind. With ethics, thoughts, preferences, memories, and more being processed every second, it’s no wonder the game’s simple graphics will never look any more complex, barring perhaps the advent of true quantum computing.
