I can't believe she's dead. Just like that. It's not like we were friends or anything....we'd just met...but still. I didn't even see her die. When those mechanical sentries attacked, all hell broke loose. Flashes of gunfire competing with fireworks of laser light. Lasers...who gets killed by ROBOTS firing LASERS? My life has become a science fiction film, only people are dying for real.

She was like me. Wandering around, taking dangerous odd jobs to get by. Now's she's gone. No funeral. Christ, not even a burial. Will I end up the same?

The above was inspired by a confrontation I experienced while playing Fallout 3. Not too unusual of a mission - I had come across an NPC with the same goal of rescuing the Declaration of Independence from its protected vault. We partnered up and worked our way down to where it was kept. Her passing came at the hands of an unexpectedly strong robotic resistance.

Reading the previous paragraph, one would think it might be hard to draw emotional attachment out of such a rote gaming situation. But after the fact, replaying the events in my mind, it began to leave a more dramatic imprint. I could forget that she was "just an NPC" and found myself wondering what could have become of her life had she survived this task. Would the two of us have parted ways? Teamed up for further adventures? Maybe she had family or friends to return to. I'm haunted by the desire to reload a previously saved game, but won't because in the back of my mind I fear l'll be letdown by an outcome that lacks the depth of my own speculation. That, and I believe reloading the game would cheapen my original experience, which somehow is more powerful having ended in failure.

Humans have a great natural ability to find stories in even the most bare of situations. We have an inherent desire to fill in the missing gaps, to instill drama and emotion into largely empty vessels. At times, game developers have used this instinct to great effect. In games ranging from the 2D Small Worlds and Canabalt to the 3D Portal and Left 4 Dead, some of our most treasured narratives are those we imagine ourselves. There are few or no plot holes because there is almost no plot. We don't have to deal with weak characterization because the characterization is in our minds.

All this does leave me wondering how one creates the right balance of information and conjecture in the player's mind. Reducing the number of "hard facts" can strengthen the player's internal narrative. But currently, and unfortunately, it seems that the best way to strengthen NPC characterization is to remove them. For example, in Bioshock the best characters in the game are those you only hear in recordings and over the speaker system. All but perhaps Andrew Ryan pale once you come across their 3D representations in person. When crossing paths with NPCs, one could tell even the developers were aware that interacting with said characters would damage immersion in the narrative - in each case they player was separated from them or relieved of his ability to control his own actions. Sure, you combat a few, but there are no story-driving interactions.

I want to believe that we will one day be able to create settings and NPCs that are truly engaging to interact with, free of tiresome and limited dialog trees, repeating animation cycles, and everything else that breaks the narrative immersion. But for right now I think the smart money is on letting the player do the work for you when constructing your characters and story.