Saboteur protagonist Sean Devlin may have been inspired by real-life Grand Prix motor racing driver and special agent William Grover-Williams, but Grover-Williams' look didn't quite fit what Pandemic was looking for in terms of a rugged, good-looking main character. Lead designer Tom French and Hunt explored the difficulty they had finding the right look for Sean Devlin during their "Rethinking The WWII Gaming Genre" panel at the San Diego Comic-Con this weekend.

After the original concept of Tom French wailing on an electric guitar was vetoed, the team tried for something a bit more period appropriate. A nice look, but it was a bit too fragile for their liking.

Then, inspiration struck. Chris Hunt found their hero at a concept artist convention, but it wasn't a piece of art that caught his eye. It was this guy:

"Then we ran into this guy. He had the hat, he had the hair...even him walking around...he was the embodiment of what we wanted, so we approached him, got permission to use his likeness, and now we had the hero we were looking for."

The moral of this story? Always wear a kick-ass hat. You never know when you'll be asked to be the main character in a video game.

PS. If I stole this link from someone, send me an email. I can't find where I got the link.

Super Smash Bros Brawl producer Sora Sakurai announced today that they will be showing off new footage from the upcoming Wii game at the Nintendo World 2006 event in Japan.

The video will include new characters, so it's a must see.

Good thing we have Ashcraft going to the event. Make sure to check back for our coverage and the unveiling of the new characters. Come on Master Chief. Brian Crecente

Smash Bros [Thanks Ryan for the heads up and translation]

Tim Schafer seems smart. Like, really smart. I am extremely impressed with the very simple, very true little bombs he drops over and over in this recorded lecture from GDC 2004.

Yeah, it's long. But for anyone interested in creating any sort of fictional experience, be it games, movies, books or Crecente/Bashcraft slashfic (we call it Bashfic), this will be a valuable hour and five minutes for you.

A very few of the many points Schafer makes about creating good characters:

• Characters should be wish fulfillment. This doesn't mean they can't be goofy, or nerdy, or losers. There are lots of ways to make characters that are fun to play. Guybrush might not be a badass, but he always has a comeback.
• Create supporting NPCs as you would the ideal road trip buddies. Making them annoying, offputting, needlessly stupid or generally hateful and then sticking the player with them through the whole game is just sadistic.
• Write the PC as you would a character in a movie, a character that a good actor would jump at playing.

More after the jumpasaur.

• Backstory. Making up pasts for every single one of your characters, big ones or not, makes it insanely easy to imbue them with neat little traits by pulling from the past you've created.
• Steal stuff, but steal it right. Steal stuff from life, especially. From your own life, from your friends', from crazy things hobos tell you on the street. And steal stuff from other fiction, but don't steal the surface junk. Steal what makes good things good. So if you're stealing from GTA, stealing the hookers and mobsters and violence is missing the point. Steal the fun, the open-ended gameplay, the facetious attitudes.

I'm taking better notes on this speech than I ever did on anything in the history of my school career, so I'll stop. Just give it a listen; even if you aren't a creator this will give you a whole new way to look at and appreciate games. Eliza Gauger

Listen to the lecture here, and subscribe to the Gamasutra podcast [Gamasutra]

Click the image to see full size, hosted here on Joystiq.

I love this. This is a fantastic new style and I am stoked for this game now. The distinctiveness of the different classes, the anatomy of the characters, the color palette and personality...the art department on this game is a winner. Look at the little touches like the athletic socks on the guy on the right, and the pants bunching under the kneepads of the engineer.

This is attention to detail, and characterization, and just overall excellent design. I can't wait to see them in action. Eliza gauger