Support Characters

We've all had one: the helpful fairy who tells us how to open the door we're standing in front of with a nice "Push A to Open" sign floating over our head, the arrogant bird living in our backpack who does little but state the obvious and irrate the bosses to attack us but at least can be used as a weapon, and of course the woman that you can't stand who follows you endlessly around and requires your help to save the world but after doing so dies and you must undo all your hard work to save her.

Support characters come in various forms, but their function is mostly the same form game to game. A support character is one who follows you around (sometimes they may not, but usually do) and serves to provide hints to the player on how to proceed. That would be the official description, a more realistic one would be: follow you around and irritate the hell out of you.

This may sound pessimistic, but unfortunatly this is usually the case. In many cases, what the character has to say is unskippable. This means that while it may have been useful on your first play through, if you play it again then  it will get annoying. The other common diseases support character catch are: annoying voices, stating the obvious, and getting in the way.

I've decided to skip spending much time on annoying voices, see last week's post for that.

Stating the obvious can be a good thing if you expect younger people to play your game. Something a teenager would consider obvious might not be so to a seven year old. All the same, such dialogue from a support character should be skippable, for the sake of those poor teenagers.

Another part of this problem is support characters giving control tutorials. Frequently however, we run into the problem where they are again unskippable and obvious. An example would be Enchanted Arms, where your friend tells the main character, "Walk up to the ladder and press A to get on." Enchanted Arms had a fourth wall problem.

Getting in the way is a problem that most often surfaces in shooter games. You will be taking heavy enemy fire, crouching behind cover. Finally, their gun fire ceases as they reload. Your chance to return fire is opon you! Nimbly, you hop out from the cover and proptly unload a full clip into the... back of your ally, who had also noticed the chance to return fire and captalized upon that chance by screaming "Vive Le France!" and bullrushing the opponent. Now he is saying, "Sacre Bleu!"and you are ducking behind cover again because you need to reload and the enemy has finished doing so themselves.

This takes it worst form when the game penalizes you for the death of such characters. In Red Faction Guerilla you lead a resistance group on Mars. Random rebels will occassionally take up arms to help you, but you have no control over when this occurs. Case in point is when you are driving around and accidentally hit a lamp post. The rebels then assume you have started the liberation and shoot everything in sight. Then they die, rather easily, and you lose morale. It's quite embarassing.

Finally, a mention of the most notorious support character of them all: Navi, from The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.

Navi was the one I was thinking of with my first example at the beginning of this post (the other two being Kazooie from Banjo Kazooie and Elika from Prince of Persia (2008).). She has become quite famous on the internet for her two word catch phrase "Hey! Listen!" They're technically two sperate quotes, the first from when she has something to say and the second when she starts talking. Frequently at the beginning she skips the Hey! part and just starts rambling and you can't shut her up.

At least I have to give Navi some credit, she can be useful the first playthrough. She is the official reason you can target enemies and (if and only if asked) will provide information about the enemy and how to defeat it. This is more than I can say for her successor Tatl, from LOZ: Majora's Mask. The usefulness of Navi's info is debatable on some foes, but Tatl always says something along the lines of, "What? You don't know what a Like Like is like? How are you ever going to do anything if you don't know that?! Stay away from it!" The slighly useful bit "Stay away form it!" can be applied ot all enemies in the game, just for the record.

Navi will also provide hints on how to progress and will only offer them if asked after the first dungeon or so. For a first time player, this is actually pretty much required not too far in the game when Navi is your only source of the hint that you should contact your childhood friend for actual advice. You stumble into where you need to go, but some might not for a long time. Mind you, Navi hints you should call your friend on your Ocarina (no really) because if you meet her face to face she says nothing of value. Out of curiosity, I once called her from two feet in front of her and yes, she was helpful. And yes, she used mind speak instead of people speak from two feet away.

Don't believe how annoying support characters can get? Then I dare you to sit through this.


In short, support characters are usually not done very well. It is understandable to place them in a game, but their dialogue should be skippable... in fact, all dialogue should be skippable as well as cut scenes. Otherwise you will just annoy your players.

Every Ocarina of Time player has been pushed to this point.

At least you could skip what Kaepora Gaebora said.