NPC CHARACTER DESIGN
Tasked with creating a "grunt" and a "one-off" NPC or Non Playable Character for a game/game series I know very well. The grunt is to be spawned frequently and has little to no lore about them as individuals (e.g. a goomba in Super Mario Bros). And the one-off is a character with some lore, but not a main plot point, mainly used as a point of interest for side quests or similar tasks.
I chose Uncharted: The Lost Legacy for this task as I know the series well and I wanted to challenge myself to make a non-combat NPC in a game often criticized for being all about guns and killing. And so the "Seeker" and Dr. Tara Kumar was born!
Grunt initial DESIGN
This NPC works as a way to challenge the game play in open area stealth/combat parts of the game. To force the player to move faster and more precisely, unless they want to risk being caught by this NPC.
In my deign, this NPC would only be present in the Hard, Crushing and Brutal difficulties.
MODULAR ASSETS
As this is a modern game with top notch character design and graphics, it is expected NPC's have different personalities in the sense of how they look/how they wear their gear.
Here are 3 variants of my NPC design.
One-Off initial DESIGN
This NPC works as a way to incentivize players to find all Hoysala Tokens in the open world level of the map as soon as possible.
As the game is right now, the hunt for the Hoysala Token's is nothing more than a side story/optional hunt for the player and without guidance from walkthroughs or spoilers there is a real lack of incentive to find all of them unless you are determined to 100% the game.
This NPC will challenge this and hopefully inspire more players to hunt for the tokens.
These are all the locations of the tokens in the level, as you can see, the players would overlap with Dr. Kumar's location when attempting to find tokens' 7,8 and 9. Ensuring that a player, at some point in their hunt will run into her.
In-game reference to the "Queen's Ruby"
Currently, when the player finds all the tokens, it unlocks the room that holds the Queen's Ruby. When picked up it notifies the player through controller vibrations and the bracelet glowing on the screen whenever they are near hidden treasures
Encounter Flowchart
This flowchart shows how, where and when the player would interact with this NPC and progress the hunt for the Queen's Ruby from an achievement to a side mission.
Click on the flowchart to get a closer look