Top 5 Most Affecting Characters
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3. Andrew Ryan (2K Boston's BioShock, PC/Xbox 360)You'd expect someone from Mass Effect to make it, but nope.
The architect of BioShock's Rapture serves as a cautionary example of the danger of pure philosophy. Though he's introduced as an antagonist, Ryan quickly becomes as sympathetic as he is so bitterly wrong despite his hard-line objectivist-influenced ideals that delineate artists from parasites, men from slaves, his greatest crime save for fatal arrogance was perhaps believing in humankind too much.
When the ensuing conflict forced him to compromise, over time, his ideals, that uncompromising faith in his beliefs were worth sacrificing his life to attempt to convey to his son. BioShock's one weakness was that, as that son, the player couldn't elect to adopt that philosophy to thwart his own abuse.
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1. You (You, Everywhere)
This year's trends showed us clearly that networked gaming is here to stay. Social virtual worlds inspired by game concepts did a tentative introductory dance around gaming itself, and social networking, communication and personalization quickly distinguished themselves as lynchpin features that suddenly no game can do without.
Blizzard's unshakable World of Warcraft nation seems invincible, Mass Effect allowed players to customize the protagonist to an unprecedented degree -- from every response he or she has, right down to the width of the eyes. Much was also made this year of choice in games as an absolute necessity the player wants to personalize the experience, see themselves reflected in it.
After chafing for years under conventions that forced film-like linear stories on players perhaps too hard, gamers have quickly declared that they're quite happy to make their own stories, to place their preferences and their own character concepts front-and-center in an open world. The audience has set a new bar for the year to come, as gamers begin demanding game experiences where their own will is the star.
