What makes a great HM/SoS cast?

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Somerandom
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I did some thinking recently about why I didn’t like some of the recent games and I realised a problem that some of the games I don’t really care for have. They don’t have interesting casts.

An uninteresting cast doesn’t mean it has no marriage candidates that interest you because that is only a symptom of the problem. It is at the core of the town itself, the town must feel alive.

To me an uninteresting cast develops few close bonds with the MC, has characters that serve no purpose in the town or the story of the town, do not react to events that happen in game, have boring festivals, rarely interact with each other and just feel stagnant.

People are saying that rival marriages made the games better because the candidates do something rather than staying single but honestly, Trio,RF4 and to an extent SoS had no rival marriages and I enjoyed those casts while conversely I didn’t care much for IoH’s cast that much.

I feel this can somewhat go hand-in-hand with my last topic on the amount of play time we had in certain games, as I tend to play the games that have a cast that interests me more for longer.

But what does everyone else think? What makes a good cast?
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Kikki
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Backstory. GOBS of it. It's why Trio feels so good, imo. So many characters, yet every one has a distinct personality AND their own schedule. That you could always find X character fishing in Lulukoko, or hanging around the campfire in the evening, while Y character went all around every town from 9 to 5 but hung out at the bar/restaurant in the evenings, while Z always follows their sibling around in the mornings and sits on the bench and plays with O when their sibling isn't around...stuff like that. It feels like they have their own lives, independent of anything the MC does. Plus you had the most events with all the candidates, AND an event dedicated to each regular villager as well. Plus all those lines that they call out just by you passing by, and loads of changing daily dialogue...that all felt great.

It was really nice that even after marriage, your spouse and child had their own schedules, too, rather than just hanging around inside the house like lumps all day.

So each character having their own distinct past AND present just feels really good, makes the town feel lively, and gives the impression that their could always be more to discover (even if you really have actually drained every possible event and line of dialogue out of the game already). The cross-town events (really just stories that would trigger related dialogue in multiple characters across the towns, not a formal event) were really fun, too, like the white flash, and the disappearing rectangular items. I liked Yuzuki's story about the merchant with the sob story about his family (he was cheating Yuzuki) and then Ludus went and 'had a talk' with him and made him stop taking advantage of Yuzuki's soft heart. It was cool how you'd never even know that full story if you weren't talking to both characters regularly. IT was cool how there were 'hidden' events buried in the villagers' daily dialogue, often connected to each other, sometimes without them even knowing it.
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Mikodesu
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Hmm... I think a lot of it comes down to the effort the devs are willing to put in. We can always sense it, even if we can't really explain it. When the effort has been put in beforehand, you want to replay the game! To try new things, and see how the game will react. We want our games to have a cast of characters, not a checklist of tropes. I mean, reality is they will ALWAYS be a checklist of tropes, but the better that can be hidden, the better the cast. How to do that? I've got...ideas.

1. Character interactions
With each other--not the player, except for in Rune Factory, the player is not a character. No matter how well written a one-sided interaction is, it's not going to do as much to develop a sense of a character as a back and forth will. It's like the videogame equivalent of show, don't tell. A few lines of dialogue can do more to explain the dynamic between two characters than being outright told it somewhere else.

I think that's what makes rival marriages good. Marriage isn't the point. Marriage is flavor. The good stuff is the rest of it, the interactions tell you a lot about the characters that can't be told with you in the room.

2. Character backstory
(Basically agreeing with Kikki, just some thoughts on implementation.) I want my characters to make sense in their world. Without having played the latest SoS game, I think that was the biggest turn off for me and the cast there. I don't KNOW, but I got the sense that they didn't fit all that well in their world.

To give an example, you want to put a coffee shop in your game. Why? Because you had a tea shop in the last one, or because it makes sense? Does the town grow really good coffee? If they don't, does your character really love coffee? Do you describe the effort they go to to get the ingredients to keep their shop running? You have to think everything through, which is a lot of effort, but it's noticeable! We can tell!

3. Character development
This section was listed as 'plot' at first, because I'd already done a bit on character interactions, but... The major difference is first establish who a character is, and then change it. The first example that comes to mind is FoMT Cliff. Super simple, but very memorable--probably for two reasons: (1) it's distinct, and (2) you have a hand in it. It's doing the videogame thing.

Now...about that plot thing. Plot should, by nature, have tons of opportunity for character growth. It's the big thing going on throughout the game. The gamey, interactive thing. Rune Factory does a far better job at plot than Harvest Moon/SoS. (Stronger premise, easier to write. Or at least, a premise that requires more... going out and doing things. Revitalize the town doesn't have quite the same ring as save the world.)

Okay! I think that's all my brain can do for now. There may be more, but I'm not totally caffeinated yet, so I'll have to think on it. :lol:
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simside
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Post  Posted:

This is a good question! I've been thinking about it a lot while playing RF5, as I don't like the characters quite as much, and I can't quite put my finger on why. Some other folks have touched on the same points as me, but I can't think of how to say some of this very concisely. ^_^;

I usually like Rune Factory games because the town exists before and without you - the characters are friends and interact with each other, and they get to explain certain things to you. There is a lot more dialogue in general in RF vs other games, which also helps. 5 has some of this, but a lot of events are set up as "character does this! other people are there", and only a few of them are peeks into multi-character relationships. The best one I can think of was the story where Lucy has you investigate a fight between Simone and Elsje, which doesn't involve you at all. I love stuff like that.

My favorite types of character events are ones you walk in on between multiple characters, which there were a lot of in the rival marriage games. I played the remake of FoMT fairly recently, so those are sticking in my head, and you also walk in on fraught phone calls and drinking contests, etc.

I also like characters with a lot of personality. Having a lot of these as marriage candidates can get a bit weird, but quirkier characters tend to get more explanation, which helps them pop. I like it best when character events unfold as a little plot too, instead of isolated events. Those are a bit more interesting to me than "I ran into this character at the river! Oh ho ho, a big fish got away! I learned they like to fish!" This kinda also goes with Mikodesu's point about how much work devs are going to put in. Sometimes more detailed writing probably isn't on the table.

I also live for drama, which is extremely unpopular in life sims right now, it is not very "cozy." I don't need anything high-stakes, but playing a game where nothing bad happens ever is really boring to me. Stardew Valley has a few helpings of drama, but the older HM/SOS games where you walk in on interpersonal conflict that never comes up again would be my preferred method of delivery.
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PaleSunflower
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A good cast, for the most part, is one that is interesting and memorable in some way to the audience. Naturally, what "interesting" means and what constitutes "memorable" here varies from person to person and from context to context (some tropes work better in some media and situations more than others). It's also worth pointing out that "interesting" does not necessarily mean "kind" or "pleasant to be around."

In my opinion, the whole cast doesn't need to be equally interesting or memorable, but most members should be defined in some way. Most characters should have their who, what, when, why, and where defined, fleshed out, and be available for the audience to know (ideally within the work itself and not in supplementary material). I know that the whole who, what, where, when, and why thing normally applies to actions, but characters are largely defined by their actions and presence in the story or game. I think it still works.

The gist of it for characters goes...
- Who is this character, both in-story and gameplay-wise?
- What does this character do? Again, this applies to both in-story actions and the actions that happen during cutscenes or are mentioned in text only.
- Where does the character do it? Does the specific location matter or can it happen anywhere?
- When does the character do it? How often? This question also applies to the character's backstory. Approximately when did this important event in the character's history occur?
- Why does the character do it? What is this character's motivation?

Not all points require a essay for each point, and leaving one or two points blank or ambiguous can be the whole point for some characters, but, if I can't define a character beyond what role in the game the character has, then I probably won't remember that character much at all beyond maybe that character's appearance.

In HM/SoS, the most common way for flesh out characters is via interactions with other characters, including the player character. This includes rival marriage events, characters talking about and with each other, characters doing things together, etc. Likes and dislikes are another way, which is why I dislike that the dislikes in SoS:PoOT were absent for all characters. Having one or two characters like or be neutral towards everything is a character trait by itself, but everyone not disliking anything is lazy and boring to me. Removing the in-game penalties for giving disliked items to characters is fine, but I like having characters acknowledge that he or she doesn't enjoy something every once in a while. In general, conflict, whether towards awful gifts, other characters, the weather, or anything, can help define characters.

I should also mention that different characters should also be distinct from each other. If everyone behaves and acts more or less the same and it's not a plot point, then I believe that's called lazy writing.
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FarmingForDaysMan
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Post  Posted:

This is a really good question. It’s a tough one, too. On a side note, I’ve seen the subject of rivals come up on this topic. Personally, I would love to see rival marriages come back. It was kind of stressful to see somebody else—your rival—try to woo the guy or girl that you wanted to marry, and most of the time I felt bad to see that your rival would forever be alone (the only exception was Rock from Harvest Moon DS. In one of my previous files, I married Lumina just so I could save her from a very unhappy marriage. There was some degree of unhappiness in the other rival marriages, but the marriage between Lumina and Rock seemed to be the worst). However, it was always a comfort for me to see all of my pals get married, too. I really miss rival children, too. I think that is one reason why I love Animal Parade so much.

Anyways, my favorite cast in the Harvest Moon series is the Hometown Story cast. Here’s why:

1. Character development
There were characters in this game that changed throughout their story arc. I think Bobby is a good example of this. He was already lovable from the beginning of the game, but it warmed my heart to see how he changed after Dexter came to live with him. Sue is another good example. In the beginning, she
Spoiler:
wanted to make a Pendant of Happiness and sell it for “big bucks,” but after Harvey died she decided to keep it.
In conclusion, every character had some form of development.

2. Story Arcs/Background?
I’ve seen some other people mention this, and I agree. I really enjoyed learning about the characters through their story arcs. Why is Carl obsessed with time? Why is Aisha in a wheelchair? If Scarecrow wasn’t always a scarecrow, then who was he? Where did Lamisa come from? Who is Nana? These are some questions that were answered via the characters’ respective story arcs.

3. Interaction/Friendship.
Something that makes any game great is unity, if that makes sense. I like small towns, where everybody knows each other and interacts with each other. There have been some Harvest Moon games where it seems like the people aren’t united. Yes, they have their own lives and their own circle of friends, but I think it’s really cool when a community gives off “one big family” vibes. I saw this a lot in Hometown Story. I adored the friendship between all of the characters in Hometown Story. Some of my favorite events were the ones in which somebody like Mika, Steve, or Shinji would come into your shop and invite you to come have a picnic with them and some other people. I really liked the event where Mika invites you to a picnic with Steve, Philip, and Lamisa so that y’all can help Lamisa continue to improve her English.

That’s all I can think of for now :)
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Somerandom
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Post  Posted:

Thanks guys for your insights.

I agree that character development is a big thing, this often goes hand in hand with backstory as if a character doesn’t have a reason for developing, the development doesn’t feel satisfying. For example In HM BTN for girl, the doctor had extra events, one where he went out fishing with you showing he wasn’t as stuffy as he may initially appear and one later where he tells you about his parents who were a doctor and a nurse and were always busy, making you understand why he is the person he is today. These are all absent from future games namely the FOMT games for some reason making him quite bland in comparison to the other candidates and especially his original counterpart. Also, I was surprised that if you gave him wine in BTN for girl he had special dialog stating that since he was a doctor most people wouldn’t give him wine but he actually likes it. That’s pretty cool.

Dialog is also important. If the character just says the same things everyday without anything changing it up even if you have seen events where something significant has changed for them, then it is bad writing. That’s why I love dialog that rotates through or changes based on development, it means you get an insight to characters and in trio you often would get stories that often took place over a couple of days that often connect to other characters as well, Yuzuki and the jewel order in trio is probably one of the best examples of great rotating dialog. Do they talk about their family, friends, likes and dislikes, why they do their job, their hobbies and dreams? or do they simply state generic statements about the town and the day.

I definitely agree that interaction is important but I also think interactions with the MC need to be good even if they are one sided. Do they remember previous events with the MC? Does the MC have a reason for being in the town in the first place? These simple things can impact how we feel about certain villagers.
Spoiler:
In PoOT you just arrive to the farm because you are the farmers grandchild and then are roped into renewing the town for the mayor with customisation you have no say in. Why? I don’t know? While in Trio you become a farmer because it was your dream since childhood and are aiming to prove to your father that you are capable of being a good farmer. You also need to build friendship with a town in order to help the town with their problems and each request builds with scope the further you are in the story. Also you physically help with the projects, you help test the candied sweet potatoes in the Westown link for example, it makes you feel like you actually were a part of the process, then afterwards the townsfolk comment on the event and thank you for helping them, it’s a nice touch.
Interaction between other characters is also very important. That is probably one of the things that makes RF5 inferior to RF4.
Spoiler:
Apart from festivals do you really expect the group of guys hanging out together? Heck even in their conversations at the festivals it doesn’t feel like anyone is friends with each other. Cecil is just Martin’s younger brother who is there, Lucas feels very out of place in these conversations, Ryker and Martin hate each other and not in the Dylas Doug way of we hate each other but actually really like each other. Poor Reinhard and Murakumo seem like the 2 that are just trying to keep the group together. None of them hang out together, have events with each other, have conversations outside of festivals or even interact with each other at all. Also characters don’t react to events when you take them into dungeons like in 4, for example if you take Dylas with you when you see Doug at the clinic at the start of the 2nd act Nancy comments that it’s nice for Dylas to be concerned about Doug, to which Dylas angrily responds that he is not concerned. In 4, It also feels like all these guys are friends… because they are. They talk about each other in their dialog, hang out in various combinations e.g. Leon and Kiel often hang out together and feature in several events with each other. The only friendship in 5 that seems to actually exist and get explored is Priscilla and Lucy’s friendship, that’s it.
It is great when characters state when, where and why they hang out with each other, as that shows that they choose to hang out not that the developers randomly put these people together to do something.

I think these things can create an interesting cast. But some games seem to waste the potential of their casts by not exploring backstories or relationships. The best casts have me caring about most of the characters, the least interesting casts for me are just that, casts that don’t make me care about a majority of the characters. That doesn’t mean a cast with characters I hate is bad. On the contrary, I find Allen and Michelle good additions to the HM ANB cast. I don’t like them or their personalities but they are far more memorable and interesting than basically anyone from PoOT because they can be rude and selfish. They are also a good contrast to kinder characters in the game such as Sanjay and Tina making them stand out slightly more than they would any any other game.
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PaleSunflower
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Character's don't have to explicitly state when, where, why, etc. aspects about themselves, but the game has to give players enough to work with via a combination of show and tell. Two characters can be friends and the game can show us them having similar hobbies or hanging around the same spots. For example, I don't think the game tells the player that Ciel and Leon are friends, but they hang out together enough at Ciel's (and Forte's) house that it can be inferred. They are probably not super close, but they do appear to be friends.

Bringing up RF5 reminded me of some things. There is a lot of difference between in-game stuff and what characters can supposedly do in RF5. Murakumo often leaves the bath unattended, limiting what Ares and Alice can do there when he wanders off. This is never addressed in-game.
Spoiler:
The closest the game comes to mentioning it is that his previous business failed due to him messing up. If I remember correctly, however, his last business failed because he hurt a customer and got a bad reputation because of the incident, not because he failed to man the counter and get orders and customers in.
It would have been nice if him wandering off was tied to some story (the plot, his events, someone else's events, etc.). Meanwhile, in RF4, if a character wasn't present at a usual spot, then it was usually due to a town event or something. The character not being around mattered in a way beyond gameplay.

There is a common issue with shopkeepers in RF5 opening their businesses late. As it stands, it's a programming problem, but it could have been intentional if it mostly affected Elsje. She hates running her restaurant and likes to sleep in, so her of all people opening late would make sense. It does not make sense, character-wise, for other characters to open late.
Spoiler:
In Murakumo's situation, he regrets letting his last business fail and is overly generous to customers. If anything, his bathhouse should occasionally open early and close after the official closing time, since he tends to bend over backwards for his clients. It's a missed opportunity, in my eyes.
It was a nice touch in RF4 that shopkeepers could be forced to work their jobs by adding them into the player's party and bringing them to their work places. Except for Forte, players must build friendship with the NPCs before the characters would join the player's party. The shopkeepers are willing to work when they otherwise didn't want to if a friend asked them to. How kind of them! (And sure enough, the people of Selphia are generally shown as kind and welcoming people at heart.) I know it might also a glitch, but still.

Comparing Forte of RF4 and Randolph of RF5 (he's the character who will join the player's party at 0 friendship in RF5) also shows some notable differences. Forte joins the player's party even if she doesn't care for the player character because she's the royal knight who guards the Selphia. Frey or Lest is the royal ruling over Selphia, so it makes sense why Forte would know how to fight and why she would be so willing to accompany the player character compared to other characters. Randolph was once a soldier, which explains why he knows how to fight, but I can't recall a single reason why he would ditch his wife at their bakery and want to go with a complete stranger, especially since the game shows his relationship with his wife to be close and loving. I also don't recall him wanting to relive his fighting days or something like that. It's not explained or defined in any way story-wise.

I guess it ties into showing and telling, or, in this case, gameplay and story segregation, as TV Tropes would call it. What the characters say and do doesn't match the gameplay in ways that become jarring in RF5, where in RF4 the gameplay would go out of its way to incorporate what characters say and do into gameplay. I think incorporating story, characterization, and gameplay helps create a memorable and good cast.

Edit - In RF5, there are a lot of missed opportunities related to gameplay and story and such not working together.
Spoiler:
- It would have been nice to hear Randolph's opinion of Reinhard and the PC dating, since Randolph met Yuki as a soldier and eventually quit to be with her. Reinhard is knight, not a soldier, but I think the two would be able to talk about romance while being part of an army. Perhaps Randolph could off Reinhard some advice on how to balance his work with his love life?

- Beatrice's family doesn't come to her wedding if she weds the MC. At that point, she is the crowned princess, next in line to the throne of a kingdom. Shouldn't she and the MC have a royal wedding with tons of (possibly unexpected) guests? Why doesn't her family show up, especially since she saved her father's (the king's) life? We have no reason to think that they hate her and no reason to think why she keep it a secret from her family, whom she cares for and loves deeply. (Please keep in mind that the two could have had a small ceremony in Rigbarth, and, off-scene, have a big royal wedding elsewhere.) In comparison in RF4, Arthur was far down the line of succession to the throne, born to a mistress as opposed to the Queen, lives in the town undercover, and the relative that he was closest to (his mother) is dead. His and Frey's wedding being relatively modest for a prince is acceptable. Heck, Xiao Pai's father shows up for her wedding, and he isn't featured for most of the game. He basically only shows up for Xiao Pai's events. Beatrice's family could have at least sent a letter.

- Lucas got amnesia for part of the game, but the other divine beings didn't, as Livia, a divine-ish (or something) dragon, recognizes him as a « Harvest Goddess ». He must have been a very unpopular « Harvest Goddess », as we don't hear or see any of his servants or godly friends (or enemies for that matter). Did no one go looking for him when he left the heavens? It could have been nice if he knew Livia and Radea from his time as « Harvest Goddess » or vice verse. For example, Livia (or Radea) and him could had an event or whatever where they spent time together trying to get specific parts of Lucas' memory back. Alternatively, Livia (or Radea) could have mentioned that they didn't like each other or something when they were both divine, and she doesn't want his memory to come back. The two or three of them could have had a history together, which would give Lucas further reason to stay in Rigbarth beyond convenience and his job. Why, their connection could have been what subconsciously drew Lucas to Rigbarth specifically instead of pure chance. In RF4, the amnesic characters that were once monsters have a specific connection to both Selphia and Ventuswill, so of course they would be kept/want to stay there.
There are probably a ton of other missed opportunities that I could talk about, but I'll stop here. I don't recall there being nearly this many in RF4. I suppose this post has become a bit of case study of sorts of RF4 and RF5.
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