Personality Traits

I learnt more about personality traits after I had taken the interactive storytelling and from doing the final project. Firstly, personality comes from the noun persona and persona means a mask. But personality is not necessarily to hide or disguise, but to typify a character. For interactive storytelling, the goal is to define personality - emotional, thought and character attributes - in order to drive behavior. Interesting behavior, in turn, drives dynamic, dramatic situations with a story.

Possible Spoilers ahead

I find the personality traits of evil characters or antagonists/bad guys to be particularly interesting. One personality trait often found in antagonists as portrayed in stories is of being manipulative. This manipulative personality trait I had tried to use it for one of my main characters in the final project. The iconic villain is from Star Wars’ movies who is Palpatine. In the first 3 movies, he is simply a senator who has gained more and more power throughout the trilogy to become the chancellor of the republic. In the first movie, it is he who manipulated the Trade Federation to take over the planet called Naboo which caused the former chancellor to become displaced due to his ineffectual handling of the Naboo situation. With this removal, Palpatine is able to get himself elected to the chancellor office through the great numbers of sympathy votes. By the end of the second movie, Palpatine had engineered the Separatists attack on the republic in order to gain more “emergency” power in his office. The clone armies he created are also a tool used in the third movie to destroy all of the Jedi scattered throughout the galaxy who are leading the clones in attacks on the Separatists. In the third movie, Palpatine manipulated and twisted Anakin Skywalker to become his apprentice Darth Vader, by feeding on Anakin’s desire for more power in order to save his wife’s Padme’s life from certain death which Anakin had been able to see in his dreams.

Another villain is Naraku from the Japanese manga/anime Inuyasha. In the beginning of the series, Naraku shapeshifted into Inuyasha and tricked Kikyo into believing that Inuyasha only wanted the Shikon No Tama jewel for himself to become a full Yokai and that his relationship with Kikyo is only one of the methods that he can achieve that aim. Naraku seriously injured Kikyo in the guise of Inuyasha and had wanted Kikyo to heal herself with the jewel. In doing so, Naraku would be able to corrupt the jewel for his own since healing herself by using the jewel is a selfish act. However, Kikyo sought to be burned together with the jewel in order that no other beings would be able to get the jewel for their own selfish needs again. Naraku continues with his manipulative schemes throughout the rest of the series. In a recent ended arc of the Inuyasha manga, it is Naraku who manipulated Hakudoshi and Akago to go independent from him. The purpose of this manipulation is for Hakudoshi to create Moryomaru who is initially just a puppet and his subsequent development into an independent Yokai after Akago is implanted into him contributed to him developing into a powerful Yokai, even exceeding the power of Naraku, but not that of his manipulative abilities. In the end, it is Naraku’s scheming and manipulative traits that won over Moryomaru, when Naraku let himself be absorbed by Moryomaru. But like a Trojan Horse virus, with the barrier dissolving abilities of the Yomeiju’s which he had absorbed earlier, he is able to incorporate and absorb Moryomaru into himself and gained the main powerful abilities of this Yokai which includes the Kongosoha technique.

A villain from PC Game is the final boss demon called Diablo, which is again of manipulative personality traits. It is he who engineered and let loose the demons in the town of Tristram after having possessed King’s Leoric’s son as his vassal and body in the mortal realm. But the body is too weak, and Diablo engineered the event in Tristram, in order that only the most powerful hero would be able to overcome all of his monstrosities that he created in the catacombs beneath the town. When this hero reach Diablo and defeated him, Diablo would in turn countercorrupt the hero, and hence gain a much more powerful body than he had ever before. Diablo continues with his manipulative behaviour in Diablo 2, the sequel to the original game of the same title where he freed his brothers Baal and Mephisto who are held trapped in the mortal realm. However, he had been defeated by another hero in this sequel and what future manipulative behaviour that he has will wait to be seen in Diablo 3.

I find that famous antagonists and villains are often defeated or betrayed by the ones closest to them. Emperor Palpatine during his act of killing Luke Skywalker using Force Lightning, contributed to Darth Vader turning back to the light side and gripped the Emperor and threw him down the power core shaft. Naraku would probably have met with the same fate of his destruction probably also contributed to by one of his closest minions or “detachments”. One example is seen from a recent development of the Inuyasha manga when he ordered Kanna, his most loyal detachment to destroy Inuyasha’s main weapon Tessaiga. Naraku does not view Kanna as anything else besides as merely a tool used to achieve his aims just like the Emperor just using Darth Vader as a tool but Naraku’s trait is more villainous and explicit then the Emperor’s because he would have Kanna sacrifice herself to destroy Inuyasha’s sword. In the end Kanna perished, but not before communicating the secret to destroying Naraku to Kagome through the glass shard that hit Kagome’s eye.