FUNDAMENTALS OF GAME DESIGN, SECOND EDITION
Character Archetypes
In his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces (Campbell, 1972), folklore scholar Joseph Campbell identified a pattern that many stories follow, which he called the Hero's Journey. Stories that follow this pattern frequently include archetypal characters—that is, characters of types that have been fundamental to storytelling since the days of myth, that are found in the stories of virtually all cultures, and that may even be fundamental to the human psyche. These characters assist or impede the hero in various ways on his journey. In Banjo-Kazooie, for example, Bottles the mole teaches the protagonists (and thereby the player) a number of things they need to know to fulfill their quest, so he fits neatly into the archetype of the mentor character.
There isn't room to discuss each of Campbell's character archetypes here, but Christopher Vogler's book The Writer's Journey (Vogler, 1998) gives a condensed treatment of Joseph Campbell's work for screenwriters and discusses archetypes in depth. For how to make best use of characters who represent these archetypes in your own games, refer to The Writer's Journey.
You should not implement character archetypes slavishly, nor must a game have all or even any of them. Video games do not necessarily have to be heroic journeys, and good characters don't have to fit into neat little boxes.
