28 replies to this topic

[Zevti]

Moo! Hello. Zevti, your resident furry game designer here just wondering .. How do you come up with characters?

This isn't me looking for help but rather me seeking to learn how others go about the daunting task of creating characters. And I used the word daunting because the process by which a good, interesting, and well rounded character can be a cake walk for some but be an impossible struggle for others.

Naturally this is geared towards games that are more story based. But even for your voiceless or simplistic characters, game designers still must go through a through process of brainstorming and revision as the character is being created and this can continue pretty far into the game's actual production with last minute changes being common. You'll never see something placed into a professional game 'just because' so even if the most complex character was a color changing block. I'd like to know what went into making that color changing block -if only to spur conversation.

So. What's your process? How do you feel a character should be created? How have you gone about this in the past? I'm not saying answer those specific questions. Just give your 2 cents.

Now supposed you're new to this? What if you don't consider yourself good at creating characters, or stories in general? It is my intention to create a list of ideas and links as they are provided ...if they are provided. For all I know no one will reply to this ^..^;

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Characterisation Learn the basics
• http://www.darcypattison.com/revision/15-days-to-stronger-characters/ The above link pulls from this. There's ALOT of good information here but sadly the first thing you see is a request to join their mailing list. Just scroll down past it.

Edited by Zevti, 24 February 2011 - 03:09 PM.

[Dark Matter]

First, think about what type of game you're making. If it's a shooter, you could have a cold, heartless killer. In an adventure game, you could have an explorer or archaeologist or something. If you've got a story, you'll need to fit it in to the story, think about back story and stuff and how that's affected them and their personality.

Have you got a game you want to make a character for? That could make it easier to help.

[Catelf]

Fellow Furry.
I have a tendency to want all characters i make, except for non-living robots, to have a reason for what they are doing, and not just resort to being ordinary sterotypes.
Ok, in the game itself, they might act much like sterotypes, especially minions, but if i get to delve deeper into their story, they will clearly not be as much "stereotyped".
Not even the worst villain in my first, and current, attempt at making a computergame, is just a mean, ruthless, mad scientist, he actually has a good reason(at least as he sees it)to be ruthless. And no, it isn't world domination.
Thing is, that is something for another story, if i ever get my current fully finished .....

It is also much based on what kind of characters are needed for a certain reason:
I have robots, someone must have made those.
There are animal anthros, someone must be responsible for those.
It's in a city, city-based stories often have gangers.
If the plot also needs policemen, those are added too.
And so on.

When it comes to the main character, it is much depending on what kind of character i'd really like to play myself.
That is my little input ....

[Yal]

When I make [b]up[/p] a game, I often start with some sort of basic idea; most of the time, the type of gameplay and the theme of the game. For instance, when I came up with Final Columbus, the game play was "same as Gun-Princess" and the theme was "Post-apocalyptic world with a community that has come to a second rennaissance (1600s-1700s) and thus explores the world again". From there I would need to derive a character. For some bloody shrewn reason my main idea was to name the protagonist "Mario". Then, the logical consequence of that would be asking: "How should I design this character so that he will be so different from the Nintendo Mario as possible?". Parts of this was solved already: I wanted the protagonist to be roughly my age (most RPG characters are 12-20 years old, depending on if they're DS or PS based, respectively). As Mario Segale is in his 40s, that'd mean that a teenager would be different.

The next major decision I made was to make my protaonist black. Video games as of today - especially RPGs - haven't got a lot of diversity. A logic consequence of this would be to make the game take place in post-apocalypse USA, since the ratio of colored people in the USA is higher than in most other countries I have statistics for. Plus, most of my gamers would be from the USA. Plus, a lot of people seems to think that USA is the "cutting edge" nation (when it really is Japan) and thus an apocalypse in there would, well, feel more apocalyptic than one in, say, Kuwait or The Netherlands. Or some other arbitrary country.

As you can see, the protagonist and the game is already affecting each other.

Other things I decided upon was to make the protagonist have blue hair - him being an RPG character motivated it - and some other things. As for "wings",

Spoiler

I came up with them quite late in development (some time before I added them, I think). My main question I asked was: "what is the simplest sort of jump upgrade I could add, EXCEPT the dreadful unphysical double jump"? The answer was "disguise short double jumps as flapping your wings". And thus I gave Mario Norris wings and made him a teenage vampire. Plus, it suited the game mechanic that you absorbed enemy blood drops to recover hundredths of hitpoints rather than touching hearts to recover half your healthbar.

Since the protagonist would be a soldier, but the future nation wouldn't have an army, I gave him casual clothes with some sense of uniformity: denim jeans, a scarf and a black shirt. All the other soldiers in the entire game wears the same thing (they also use the same guns, spare the unique key guns Mario finds to get to new areas).


I've put a lot of work into making all characters having elaborately developed personalities (spare Mario in fact, since he's a typical Silent Protagonist, partly because that makes the player feel more involved), and trying to make that show off in dialogue. To do this, I started with a long list of pretty stereotypic characters ("Medic", "Mother of the group", "Driver", "Commander", "Buddy") and then started combining them into fewer characters (originally since I didn't want to sprite 30 people, then I suddenly realized that with fewer characters, it would be possible to develop them further. Silly me didn't begin the project thinking that...)

And that's more or less the whole story, I think. I could come here later and post how I designed some of the other characters, but that's another story.

[Zeddy]

Well, it comes to me by itself when washing floors, and-

Yeah, fine, I'll say something new. (Wash floors, though. It puts you in the ultimate position for letting your mind drift.)

Yal has pretty much already said this, but I, too, derive characters from what I want them to do in the game. In Rocket Arena Deathmatch I wanted a ship that could only turn and accelerate, none of that strafing bullcrap, so I made the player's avatar a rocket. In Hive (which I spend every minute beating myself over somehow not getting myself to work on), I wanted a character that relied on bees. Rather than the player finding them overly complicated to use, and just opting to punch or jump over enemies, I had to make him a weakling. Perhaps a weakling controlled by the bees. My chain of thought pretty much derived from there (while washing floors).

You'll see all great developers to this. The design of the characters and the game itself simply can't be separated! In Portal, Chell has implants in her legs to make the lack of fall-damage from enormous jumps believable. In Sonic the Hedgehog, Sonic has spikes all over his body and spins while jumping so that smashing through robots from any angle is believable. Lara Croft was give a semi-iconic backpack so that it'd make sense for her to have a large inventory while still performing acrobatic feats all over the place.

The personality can also derived from the mechanics. Sonic needs to like running, Lara Croft must enjoy raiding tombs and casually murdering people, GLaDOS needs to be insane. It wouldn't make sense any other way.

It's worth noting that you could probably start at one of the other ends (visual and personal character design) and extract the mechanics and other design from there. They are, ultimately, the same. You can simply not change one without the other.

Edited by zeddidragon, 24 February 2011 - 10:35 PM.

[Zevti]

First, think about what type of game you're making. If it's a shooter, you could have a cold, heartless killer. In an adventure game, you could have an explorer or archaeologist or something. If you've got a story, you'll need to fit it in to the story, think about back story and stuff and how that's affected them and their personality.

Have you got a game you want to make a character for? That could make it easier to help.

Not to pry, but exactly how much thought do you actually put into it? Lots of if's and could's but nothing in terms of elaboration. And moreover the few examples you listed just seem reliant on tropes. The rest of which you spoke of I agree but I don't think its anything writers don't already know, though it wouldn't be the first time I was wrong.

Fellow Furry.
I have a tendency to want all characters i make, except for non-living robots, to have a reason for what they are doing, and not just resort to being ordinary sterotypes.
Ok, in the game itself, they might act much like sterotypes, especially minions, but if i get to delve deeper into their story, they will clearly not be as much "stereotyped".
Not even the worst villain in my first, and current, attempt at making a computergame, is just a mean, ruthless, mad scientist, he actually has a good reason(at least as he sees it)to be ruthless. And no, it isn't world domination.
Thing is, that is something for another story, if i ever get my current fully finished .....

It is also much based on what kind of characters are needed for a certain reason:
I have robots, someone must have made those.
There are animal anthros, someone must be responsible for those.
It's in a city, city-based stories often have gangers.
If the plot also needs policemen, those are added too.
And so on.

When it comes to the main character, it is much depending on what kind of character i'd really like to play myself.
That is my little input ....

:3 So would you say, its better when everything has a reason?

I think a of games suffer from "badguy is evil because he is evil syndrome". In terms of something like a horror film, the lack of explanation adds to the fear. But with everything else the lack of answers or reasoning screams laziness.

-Snip-

I like that you chose a protagonist that was black. I said it once and I'll say it again: I'm sick of all of the Caucasian tough guys with brown hair and stubble, give me something different, and don't hide behind that "but the player wouldn't be able to relate" crap. You're not a space marine or a soldier, you're a 13 year old kid in your parent's basement. Shut up.

Care to elaborate on how you said you condensed a list of stereotypical archetypes into your characters to make them multi-faceted? I'm curious.

[hardlylike]

I play other games and copy their characters. My last character was a blue Hedgehog with a red-blue jumpsuit, his weapon was six monsters trapped inside balls and to beat the game, you had to destroy a special ring (you turn into a robot when you equip the ring)

I'm not good with imagination

EDIT: jk, I try to make a original nice story and then try to come up with characters that fit into the story:)

Edited by hardlylike, 24 February 2011 - 07:22 PM.

[Cakefish]

Sometimes it can work if you combine stereotypical characters and situations in a way that hasn't been done before.



My game I am currently working on, 'The Scribbling', has 'Doodle Dude' as the main character. He is a stereotypical stick man but with a twist - he is Jamaican and has crazy dreadlocks hair. Two stereotypes merge to form a new character - a Jamaican stick man doodle.

Edited by Player_2, 24 February 2011 - 07:42 PM.

[111Studio]

I talk to my characters. =P Before you think I'm mentally unstable, let me explain.

I find that when I try and "create" a character I tend to form a stereotype/cliche character. But when I imagine that I'm talking with the character or interacting with the character then I can really begin to get in depth into the character's reasons and emotions. I think what games lack these days is reason. Someone else already has mentioned this but I felt it needed to be reiterated. Why does the antagonist do what he does? Batman: The Dark Knight pulls off the antagonist having no reason the only way possible, anything else just looks sloppy. In TDK the Joker is chaotic and without reason. It seems he has no plan and no past and no reason for why he does what he does. But most stories unintentionally do this and so they do it horribly because it's a hard thing to pull off. In general it's best to have a reason or set of reasons for each character that are believable to match their actions.

Secondly... the other major thing that I think is necessary. I find that its best to know the characters far better than the story even reveals them. The reason for this is because if you as the author only know as much as you write for the reader to read, it will be low quality characterization or it will be extremely wordy. It's important to always know your characters better than the reader (or in this case, game player) ever will.

As far as the process of actually "creating" a character. I tend to start by looking at the game's overall story and setting. Then I decide where I need a character and what their purpose will be in the story. Then I decide whether they will be male or female. Often I will pick the gender that will create the most tension and the most conflict in the story. Then I'll pick the age. Beyond that I *discover* the character by interacting with them rather than really *creating* them.

[NinjaCatStudios]

An Idea that I decided to think of here is that you could take two characters that you like.
Combine them.
Refine them to fit your game as Yal stated.
Develop the backstory/ cliche depending on your game.
done

[Shadow Link]

Nice to see you around again, Zevti.

As a cop out to not wanting to say "it depends", I'll start off with a different quote: Not all characters are created equally.

I suppose it'd be best if I wrote this as if a novice were reading, but not all of it will be baby-talk. Apologies in advance for the wall of text!

There are different ways to create a character. A safe ground that most people pick is a medium. Just like artists will pick clay or canvas and visualize their final product, you can use a medium for your character. However, the character is an idea or concept, so it needs a different type of medium. Common ones are an emotion, a personality trait, a goal, a purpose, or whatever else have you. It's easy to mold your character around a mental armature, because most of the work is already done for you. This is a very traditional way of doing it, and I could write pages detailing many different methods, but once the ball gets rolling it's simple. To put it short: Pick something from that small list - A goal (Peace and justice) -> Superman. The next step would be to introduce challenges. What would stand in the way of his duties? What can help him? What personal issues might prevent him from achieving his goal? Etc.

Now, I only say that a medium is a safe ground because it's not the only way to go about making a character. That's just a basic rule set. There are countless ways to get an idea going. Picking a mental armature is (almost literally) going from the inside out. You can, for instance, go the opposite way. There's also the option of reinterpretation: taking an already done character and adding onto/fine-tuning it. There's also breaking rule sets. There's even a null option, as zeddi explains, getting an idea from thin air without effort.

If you know a thing or two about people, it's that we all think differently. If you can find your own method to craft an idea, use that as a tool. I have my own crazy and sometimes masochistic ways of doing it. Here are two examples of my own (and perhaps some others as well?):

Create a character that you absolutely hate. In other words, it would be something you normally would not like, would never think of, and might even be so outlandish that it appears to be someone else's idea. Has there ever been anything (a game, character, movie, etc) that you just legitimately did not give a second care about? You might be thinking, well, what would motivate me to develop that idea further into a final product? The beauty is that it's still yours. And, to be able to claim that you can think as if you were someone else might be an indication that you can think deeply, or maybe in even more creative ways.

Second example, and one of my favorite ways, creating a character not as a person, but a concept. What I mean is that your character would be frameless. By design, yes, they'll could have a body and traits, but the psychological make-up would be applicable to anything else you can imagine. It's a twist on the classic purpose-character and trait-character. If I were to say "make a character who hates rules, but is not a criminal; is independent, but can't be because of the way society works; is a leader by heart, but chooses to follow" what would you come up with? Notice how I kept the character genderless, raceless, etc. The point is, it can be anyone or anything. The beauty is that you have free reign on the design, and it could work in your favor.

I'll stop here, as I'm not really in a book-writing mode. I could honestly write pages upon more on all sorts of methods, so I'll just contribute whenever the opportunity arises. If anyone wants elaboration, by all means ask away. It's challenging trying to write a post on such a broad subject without writing a wall for every sub-topic.

[Catelf]

Fellow Furry.
I have a tendency to want all characters i make, except for non-living robots, to have a reason for what they are doing, and not just resort to being ordinary sterotypes.
Ok, in the game itself, they might act much like sterotypes, especially minions, but if i get to delve deeper into their story, they will clearly not be as much "stereotyped".
Not even the worst villain in my first, and current, attempt at making a computergame, is just a mean, ruthless, mad scientist, he actually has a good reason(at least as he sees it)to be ruthless. And no, it isn't world domination.
Thing is, that is something for another story, if i ever get my current fully finished .....

It is also much based on what kind of characters are needed for a certain reason:
I have robots, someone must have made those.
There are animal anthros, someone must be responsible for those.
It's in a city, city-based stories often have gangers.
If the plot also needs policemen, those are added too.
And so on.

When it comes to the main character, it is much depending on what kind of character i'd really like to play myself.
That is my little input ....

:3 So would you say, its better when everything has a reason?

I think a of games suffer from "badguy is evil because he is evil syndrome". In terms of something like a horror film, the lack of explanation adds to the fear. But with everything else the lack of answers or reasoning screams laziness.

Thing is, i don't belive in "purely bad or worse" characters, so they have to have some reason for what they are doing.
Ok, it can be vry twisted reasons, but for the character itself, they works well as reasons.

To answer your question:
Not everything needs a revealed reason, but it is a good idea to have a reason in the back of the head, because it might affect very small details.
To me "badguy is evil because he is evil syndrome" is more a lack of understanding, or even not wanting to understand, rather than laziness.
======================
... I can explain how some of the characters in the game i'm trying to make came to pass:
I had already decided that the protagonist would be a femme cat-anthro.
This would require someone able to make such hybrids.
(I was discussing the plot and storyline with Yal at the moment, and even if i had my own ideas, the discussions were valuable.)
So, i thought at some time about an author of childrens' books, famous for a lot of anthro-animals in those books, and how she would be as a kind of "mad scientist" ... but with a good heart.

But, there would be anthros as opponents as well, so there had to be the ruthless "mad scientist" as well.
One of the most ruthless things i can think of, is churches, so i called him Dr.Church.
Later, i thought more about his why's, and found that he must be ruthless because .... something else may be threatening.
However, that "something else" is most probably something for a sequel .....

One area that i wanted to include, was a construction site, inspired by the original Donkey Kong.
As a small joke, i decided to make the boss for that area into a monkey... but a small, and anthro.
However, to not copy DK too much, this "monky"(femme) would throw down whatever she found, and had brought along ....
And this made me think about a text that the artist Bjork had written for one of her songs, and this, in turn contributed to make the "Monky" character more .... understandable.
She had now a valid reason(although quite a nutty one) for "terrorizing" the workers on the construction site.

I recently added a Cop in a Mall.
He's there gamewise to give some info, while essentially standing there, keeping his eyes on the mallrat.
To give him character, i simply made him quite talkative, and interested in different kinds of sub-cultures.

Edited by Catelf, 25 February 2011 - 11:51 AM.

[fawful]

Unless you are making a game with some kind of story, creating a personality for the main charecter is pretty unnecessary.

So on that note I tend to make up the charecter design on the spot. Sometimes from a vague idea from somewhere.

[lavethion]

One of the most ruthless things i can think of, is churches, so i called him Dr.Church.

Lolwut?

[Zevti]

I talk to my characters. =P Before you think I'm mentally unstable, let me explain.

I think that's actually a really good idea. I guess I do something similar, but I personally don't talk to them, I have my characters talk to themselves. Still I agree with everything you said.

Nice to see you around again, Zevti.

---

Create a character that you absolutely hate.

Second example, and one of my favorite ways, creating a character not as a person, but a concept.

---
I'll stop here, as I'm not really in a book-writing mode. I could honestly write pages upon more on all sorts of methods, so I'll just contribute whenever the opportunity arises. If anyone wants elaboration, by all means ask away. It's challenging trying to write a post on such a broad subject without writing a wall for every sub-topic.

<3 it makes me blush to know people were wondering where I'd gone.

More good ideas. And defiantly masochistic. I feel if I were to make a character I hated, it would let the hatred distract me, but its that kind of exercise that could really result in something novel.

That's what -spoiler tags- are for. And if you have any more thoughts on this topic I'd love to hear them.

Unless you are making a game with some kind of story, creating a personality for the main charecter is pretty unnecessary.

So on that note I tend to make up the charecter design on the spot. Sometimes from a vague idea from somewhere.

There's more to character creation than just personality mind you, and even that's not completely true. Regardless of how voiceless a character is, the outward appearance can speak volumes about who they are -how big they are, what they wear, ect. It may not be a vocal or internal personality, but its a visual one which can be just as important. Just look at enemy or monster designs.

So you say that you don't put much work into character creation then? You've technically answered my OP question. But unless there's more to it than that, then that doesn't sound like the formula for anything memorable IMO.

One of the most ruthless things i can think of, is churches, so i called him Dr.Church.

Lolwut?

x3 I have to agree.

[Catelf]

One of the most ruthless things i can think of, is churches, so i called him Dr.Church.

Lolwut?

x3 I have to agree.

(Confused)
...... Is there a problem with that comment?
I could explain why i look at it like that, but that would be so well off topic, so i'll spare you it.
I could say that it perhaps was a kind of "divine inspiration" as well, considering that name eventually added to the clues that has given the character more depth.
I can also say, that despite the fact that i'm religous myself, i still dislike churches, because what they have said they stood for, don't match up with what they actually has stood for.

Similar to the Character, Dr Church, in a way.
To me, it is easy to imagine him saying, or even thinking something like "I will save the people here, at any costs!"
Then one may ask how that goes together with making animal anthros.
Well, the main three versions of the "One God Faith" builds on prophesies and visions .....
So, simply, the name "Dr. Church" gave a good answer to that as well:
He has gotten the impression that he MUST make anthros, as a part of a prophesy he has read, and/or visions he has had.
So, what started out as my dislike for churches, actually ended up in a character with a good reason(as he see it)to do what he does, and why.

[fawful]

There's more to character creation than just personality mind you, and even that's not completely true. Regardless of how voiceless a character is, the outward appearance can speak volumes about who they are -how big they are, what they wear, ect. It may not be a vocal or internal personality, but its a visual one which can be just as important. Just look at enemy or monster designs.

So you say that you don't put much work into character creation then? You've technically answered my OP question. But unless there's more to it than that, then that doesn't sound like the formula for anything memorable IMO.

It likely isn't. But then again,I think mario was created in a similar way.

And I believe memorability of a character is more connected with the quality, and a number of other factors, of the game it belongs to rather than the design of the charecter (Unless your main charecter is a squiggly collection of moving lines or something a bit out there). It certainly plays a huge role.

[Zevti]

(Confused)
...... Is there a problem with that comment?
I could explain why i look at it like that, but that would be so well off topic, so i'll spare you it.
I could say that it perhaps was a kind of "divine inspiration" as well, considering that name eventually added to the clues that has given the character more depth.
I can also say, that despite the fact that i'm religous myself, i still dislike churches, because what they have said they stood for, don't match up with what they actually has stood for.

Similar to the Character, Dr Church, in a way.
To me, it is easy to imagine him saying, or even thinking something like "I will save the people here, at any costs!"
Then one may ask how that goes together with making animal anthros.
Well, the main three versions of the "One God Faith" builds on prophesies and visions .....
So, simply, the name "Dr. Church" gave a good answer to that as well:
He has gotten the impression that he MUST make anthros, as a part of a prophesy he has read, and/or visions he has had.
So, what started out as my dislike for churches, actually ended up in a character with a good reason(as he see it)to do what he does, and why.

o: Oh I didn't mean to offend, I just thought it was funny. And from what you've stated, this supports your other statements. Everything here feeds back into what you've created. And it sounds pretty good to be honest :3. The statement just made me giggle is all. Apologies for that. *Hugs*

There's more to character creation than just personality mind you, and even that's not completely true. Regardless of how voiceless a character is, the outward appearance can speak volumes about who they are -how big they are, what they wear, ect. It may not be a vocal or internal personality, but its a visual one which can be just as important. Just look at enemy or monster designs.

So you say that you don't put much work into character creation then? You've technically answered my OP question. But unless there's more to it than that, then that doesn't sound like the formula for anything memorable IMO.

It likely isn't. But then again,I think mario was created in a similar way.

And I believe memorability of a character is more connected with the quality, and a number of other factors, of the game it belongs to rather than the design of the charecter (Unless your main charecter is a squiggly collection of moving lines or something a bit out there). It certainly plays a huge role.

Where its true many other factors feed into memorability, you're dead wrong when it comes to how Mario was created.

Hiding behind the Mario excuse doesn't work because he was created during a time with so many limitations that the designers were just working around it. The only reason Mario has a mustache is because the Miyamoto wanted to accentuate his nose and the pixels didn't look good with out it. The only reason he was put in suspenders was because the run cycle seemed clumsy without them. Red and blue, because it contrasted well with the background. There are even reasons as to why they wanted to give him a big nose, why they made him Italian, and why they original placed him in New York. These were all important decisions and work that set Mario up for what he is today. And just because you can replicate a sprite in a couple of seconds in msPaint today, did not mean it was easy for them way back then.

Here are some interviews where Miyamoto explained this and more
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/gamehunters/post/2010/11/qa-mario-creator-shigeru-miyamoto/1
http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/asiapcf/02/14/miyamoto.script/index.html

And even then, Mario has gone through a number of changes since back in the 80's. Small ones yes, but changes nonetheless that have over time defined who he is. He wasn't always a plumber, he didn't always live in the mushroom kingdom, and he wasn't always called Mario, he was called Jump Man. And as Nintendo's mascot he's had the opportunity to be featured in over 200 hundred games http://en.wikipedia....o_games_by_year so its no wonder he is the most iconic character out there. He's been in good games and he's had the most exposure. -Still all of this doesn't change the fact that he went through a thought out design process like every other good character out there.

There's a big difference between simplistic character design and lazy character design.

Edited by Zevti, 26 February 2011 - 04:50 PM.

[twelveways]

As has been mentioned, a good character evolves with the game, it is much harder to evolve a good game around a character. If your gameplay machanic means that you cant jump then give your character a reason he cant jump, maybe he is in a wheelchair, or a robot for example.

[Catelf]

o: Oh I didn't mean to offend, I just thought it was funny. And from what you've stated, this supports your other statements. Everything here feeds back into what you've created. And it sounds pretty good to be honest :3. The statement just made me giggle is all. Apologies for that. *Hugs*

Oh!
* Hugz back *
....
And, to add something more to the topc than just a hug ...

There is a friendly "mad scientist" as well, her story is to be doing the same things as Dr. Church, but much slower, and being concerned for her ... charges.
As a result, her charges are in harmony with themselves, none has been unwilling, and so on.
She haven't understood Church's ruthless rush(she used to work with him on similar experiment), for her it is a faschinating kind of development, and she actually adore the idea, but wants it to be done right, on several levels.
I actually named her Beatrix, after Beatrix Potter.

Dr.Church has made several non-harmonic, he hadn't the time nor direct caring to search for willing nor "proper" subjects.
This also explains why some of the Anthro-enemies act as they do:
They are irritated, or worse, mentally and/or physically, as their body and/or mind resist the implants and the genetic changes.
Thanks to Beatrix's patient research, wanting to do it correctly, the ones that she "makes" does not have that problem.
As the game starts, one only knows of one of Beatrix' charges: The protagonist.