Does the west create the more believable characters?

[QUOTE="jsmoke03"]so what? japanese people should be more like western cultures? you know you are being ethnocentric....capaho

Most people in the "West" have a mythological concept of Japan that does not match the reality of Japan.  People make comments that are based on ignorance rather than understanding.  In any case, Japan is heavily influenced by American culture these days, even if they don't like to admint it.

There are games like Silent Hill 2 which feature characters that are eminently relatable (at least to me). That's a game that i've come to appreciate more and more over the years, especially after my experiences taking care of a terminally ill loved one.

But then there are games like MGS. Actually in the PS MGS game, the characters had a western action movie vibe, including Snake, who coincidentally was based on a western action character acted by Kurt Russell. I enjoyed the game very much and found the characters enjoyable in that popcorn-movie sort of way. Then came MGS2 and the "anime-ification" of MGS. We go from Sniper Wolf to fatman on roller skates. You just lost me. Almost everything that goes the anime route, there's an immediate disconnect with me and I quite frankly don't want to play it anymore.

So, it's more of a stylistic decision than cultural, to me. I've seen my share of japanese films and have no problem relating to the characters therein.

Ish_basic

I can relate to Pyramid Head.

i meant to say developers. japanese developers not relating to western gamers hurts japan alot more. japanese gamers dont have to change. and this isnt the ps2 era anymore where we didnt have much of a choice. western gaming caught up and has characters much easier to relate to with the majority u know, since the western world is bigger and alrdy used to western style charactersatleticlover

Japanese game design (i.e., manga style characters and sappy stories) doesn't hurt Japan because it's intended for the Japanese market, where Japanese gamers are the majority (mainly Japanese teenagers).  People are complaining about Japanese character design intended for the Japanese market as if it should be relevant in the US.  It's an irrelevant discussion.  It would be far more relevant to discuss Japanese games that are designed for the US market.

It is hard to compare character when side needs to go through the translation.

wiouds

It all depends on the writing, as much, if not more, than the culture. I've seen some great Western created characters. I've seen plenty of generic action male protagonists too and a lot of silent characters. I actually tend to like Japanese characters as they are full of life and larger than life. But there are some generic hero types there too, which makes the side characters far more interesting.