Designing Your Antagonist

Every game needs an antagonist to act as that one key element that gets your story going. An antagonist could be anything ranging from a dragon taking the princess, a brewing storm, or in our case, a Yokai running off with a powerful lantern. What's important is that your antagonist is not only compelling as a trouble-maker, but is clearly identified to your players in order to inform their actions and the game's mechanics.

Statue of Tengu in Japan

For Kisetsu, we wanted our antagonist to have deep ties with our source material and inspiration. To accomplish this, we took an in-depth look at traditional Japanese folklore. We became drawn to the mountain living Yokai, commonly known as the Tengu. The Tengu are well known for their prideful and trickster-like nature.

Tengu Facial Iterations

Tengu are known to come in a variety of forms. Some are depicted as bird-like men, while others can be identified by their red skin and prominent nose. For our antagonist, we were drawn to the more human depiction focusing on the long nose and crimson skin. To incorporate more bird-like qualities, draped over his shoulders is a long feather cape. With the character concept now done, it is up to our team of artists to collaborate and bring this character to life: from the initial sculpt in ZBrush to the retopology in Maya, clothing in Marvelous Designer, and animations made with our mocap studio.

To bring this article to a close, I want to reiterate the importance an antagonist can be to your game. Don't feel limited on who or what your antagonist can be. What's important is how it can move your story along.

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Author: Dylan Shepherd