Saying that a character has to be believable is a bit vague... There are many elements that make a character feel believable. Personality, appearance, behaviour, history... all these are important in making a character that one can easily relate to. Heck, even silent protagonists can be interesting characters if the character designers managed to get those points sorted out, look at Gordon Freeman (character from Half-Life for those who didn't know).
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When it comes to NPCs the interactions and responses is important to get right. Dialogue has to be suitable and well scripted especially in a game which the player decides the course of game through their actions and dialogue, for example Mass Effect and Fallout.
Decisions, decisions....
It's funny how I mentioned appearance as an important point in making a good character. Before this wasn't so important but as technology improved visuals too got better and great emphasis was put in making characters look as realistic as possible. Now determining a good character's appearance is a bit tricky. Depending who the target audience is the appearance is going to have to designed in a way that will appeal to them. This is clear when you see the characters from games developed in Japan, for Japan. While the Japanese may enjoy their spikey-haired feminine males and females with giant racks and stupidly coloured hair, the west prefer the grizzly dark-haired male with an incredibly large physique (occasionally made even more buff when wearing their space marine suits).
Argh! My eyes! They cannot unsee!
Ugh... anyways, better stop here before I rant about Tetsuya Nomura's designs. Even though Christmas is getting nearer along with the two-week long break I'll probably make a post or two during that time.
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