I need it. It's my life blood. But I hate it when the game encourages you to give up your singularity and get the awesome gear. It bugs the heck out of me.
Character Customization and you
- Thread starter Thespian
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A lot of it really depends on the type of game. If it has "RPG" anywhere in the game concept, I want to at leadt be able to customize my clothing color like in Borderlands. Don't get me wrong, I really like to customize my looks and gear, as well as my choices having an effect on the game. Sometimes though, I just want to shoot things so I pop in CoD: World at War and play some Zombies.
The more customisation I get, the better. I like being able to pick what I look like, my class, race, preferred weapons, skills, stats. I usually won't avoid a game for lacking it (that would rule out most games that exist) but it's an absolutely definite plus. However, one of the biggest reasons I like customisation is that games that lack it often place you in the most boring, generic shell possible. Jack Ryan. Gordon Freeman. Master Chief. Guy from System Shock 2. (Yes I know system shock 2 has customisation, but it's purely your skills rather than anything else)
It makes me feel more attached to my characters. After all, I've always been one to mold things to my own design.
Oh man. I am a complete whore for character cusomisation.
Like, I can enjoy a game without it just fine. But if I see a way in which they could have implemented it, it just makes the game... lesser, somehow.
I've actually bought WWE games for the character creation, I am almost ashamed to say.
That is how much I am character customisation's *****.
Like, I can enjoy a game without it just fine. But if I see a way in which they could have implemented it, it just makes the game... lesser, somehow.
I've actually bought WWE games for the character creation, I am almost ashamed to say.
That is how much I am character customisation's *****.
I only trul love games with character customization. If it is as broad as ME games and OBlivion and WoW put together or just being able to wear what I want when I want like in DR2. It's important to be attached to your character otherwise the story is useless. Go out, buy a game and think of everything to take you out of that story and it won't be enjoyable. One of those things could be how stupid or fat(or skinny) your character is. But play the same story with character customization and there is a chance you will be so attached and sad when your character loses a family member or sacrifices themselves.
I once listened to a podcast where the guy was saying he had every save slot full of different customized characters for WWE games which he brought over every year for the next WWE game.Monkfish Acc. said:
I really enjoy trying to make good characters in ME, Oblivion and Fallout 3 but I always screw it up in some fundamental way because of the lighting in the creation screen or I forget to look from the correct angle. My Shepard looks pretty cool except for his equilateral nose etc.
I hate the way fable does it, want to make a swauve sword fighter... too bad that guys gonna hit the gym 24/7
I hate the way fable does it, want to make a swauve sword fighter... too bad that guys gonna hit the gym 24/7
Customisation is great, but I think the best games have a balance between giving you choices and making the main character...an actual freaking character. This is just my personal opinion, of course, but I think the most apt comparison would be comparing Mass Effect to Dragon Age: Origins.
You can tweak Commander Shepard, choose skills, back story and gender, but Commander Shepard is always Commander Shepard. There's a distinct personality there, which, of course, gets refined through in-game choices. Being fully voiced is a part of that, but not essential; the dialogue choices are set up that way.
Compare that to DA:O, where I spent ages customising my character, and I didn't get attached at all. Outside of the origin stories, I had no sense of who The Warden was, and even those early character pieces just got completely overshadowed by everything and everyone else. It wasn't even the fact that they weren't voiced, because I was fine with that in Neverwinter Nights. Maybe that was because the alignment system gave the character a distinct outlook that you could roleplay.
So, yeah, I like character customisation, and I like being able to choose gender, race/species or ethnicity especially (hey, why should, every character be a grizzled white dude?) but I'm willing to sacrifice a few sliders for the sake of a better story.
You know which game did character customisation the best? Saints Row 2. You could make your character completely unique, but they would always be fully voiced, with different voice sets to better suit your race and appearance. Seriously, the degree of customisation in that game was frankly insane. I have never seen such variety. And yet you were always playing a distinct character. It was absolutely fantastic.
I have never seen any other game balance character creation so well. Admittedly, they didn't have to deal with classes or stats like RPGs do, but as far as physical appearance and personality? Unrivalled.
You can tweak Commander Shepard, choose skills, back story and gender, but Commander Shepard is always Commander Shepard. There's a distinct personality there, which, of course, gets refined through in-game choices. Being fully voiced is a part of that, but not essential; the dialogue choices are set up that way.
Compare that to DA:O, where I spent ages customising my character, and I didn't get attached at all. Outside of the origin stories, I had no sense of who The Warden was, and even those early character pieces just got completely overshadowed by everything and everyone else. It wasn't even the fact that they weren't voiced, because I was fine with that in Neverwinter Nights. Maybe that was because the alignment system gave the character a distinct outlook that you could roleplay.
So, yeah, I like character customisation, and I like being able to choose gender, race/species or ethnicity especially (hey, why should, every character be a grizzled white dude?) but I'm willing to sacrifice a few sliders for the sake of a better story.
You know which game did character customisation the best? Saints Row 2. You could make your character completely unique, but they would always be fully voiced, with different voice sets to better suit your race and appearance. Seriously, the degree of customisation in that game was frankly insane. I have never seen such variety. And yet you were always playing a distinct character. It was absolutely fantastic.
I have never seen any other game balance character creation so well. Admittedly, they didn't have to deal with classes or stats like RPGs do, but as far as physical appearance and personality? Unrivalled.
Personally, I think it's a must for RPGs. It doesn't have to be as in depth as Oblivion or Mass effect, but some level of control of your character's physical appearance greatly improves the experience, IMO.
It's one of my (many) complaints about Risen right now. A decent game, mind you, but there are so many stupid design choices that I want to tear my hair out.
It's one of my (many) complaints about Risen right now. A decent game, mind you, but there are so many stupid design choices that I want to tear my hair out.
male/female
hair/hair color
face(pre-designed)/skin color
height/weight
clothing style (if you can't change it later)
(done)
Generally I feel that if I have to pick shit like eye color, lip color, number of pimples, third eye, and what not, by the time I am done and log into the game I can't see all that shit anyway because my resolution is 1920x1200, so I'll take a pass on all the fluff.
hair/hair color
face(pre-designed)/skin color
height/weight
clothing style (if you can't change it later)
(done)
Generally I feel that if I have to pick shit like eye color, lip color, number of pimples, third eye, and what not, by the time I am done and log into the game I can't see all that shit anyway because my resolution is 1920x1200, so I'll take a pass on all the fluff.
I love customization. I spent hours making characters and buying clothes in Saints Row 2. I just love that stuff. But I can play free roaming games without character customization. There is no discussion when it comes to RPG's though. There has to be character customization. Exception is Witcher because it has it's own character with a voice and face. Still, different armors and stuff like that is a must.
...meh. I'm fine with customization if it comes with a ton of different presets, but if I have to draw my own logos, I just don't bother. I'm just too lazy to design my own stuff.
For most of the time I feel it pretty useless, what the point of choosing my eye-hair-skin color if anytime in the game I am just wear a big giant armor, im not talking about so tiny custom that they serve no purpose, tattoos, ring, bracelet, necklace, earring to name several
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It's hit and miss. I like the idea, but the execution -most of the time- sucks so hard that I just hate going through it.
City of Heroes is one of the few games in which I enjoyed creating my own character. It allowed a great degree of customization that looked good.
Dragon Age left a lot to be desired, but was decent enough. Although all of my characters came out with dark skin, black hair, and bent noses. It was especially hilarious with the human origin, as I would always just pretend I was an illegitimate child and the Arl was just in denial.
Demon's Souls and Fallout 3 both had horrible character creation. KoToR was just awful. If you played a dark-side jedi, you had to deal with a week-dead walking corpse. Veins through the face, hair with no luster, flat eyes. I hated it.
Another bad one was WoW. It had ten faces per race/sex, two of them were good, eight were absolute crap. Female dwarves are rare? Try a female human with a hag's face. Then you had the ludicrous models with no scaling. All male NE were gorillas, and none had the option of the Cenarius-style beard like on all the damn box art(apparently straight razors are the number one import among male night elves ever since the humans arrived.) All human males were ripped, all the girls had huge busts, and then the blood elves were pro-ana sticks.
And then there was Mass Effect. Omaigawd that game had horrid character creation. I just stuck with generic Male/Female Shepard because the second you touch the slider, you get a fish person. Do people in the future not use shampoo at all? That shiny hair looks like grease, tone it down, Bioware, it's disgusting.
City of Heroes is one of the few games in which I enjoyed creating my own character. It allowed a great degree of customization that looked good.
Dragon Age left a lot to be desired, but was decent enough. Although all of my characters came out with dark skin, black hair, and bent noses. It was especially hilarious with the human origin, as I would always just pretend I was an illegitimate child and the Arl was just in denial.
Demon's Souls and Fallout 3 both had horrible character creation. KoToR was just awful. If you played a dark-side jedi, you had to deal with a week-dead walking corpse. Veins through the face, hair with no luster, flat eyes. I hated it.
Another bad one was WoW. It had ten faces per race/sex, two of them were good, eight were absolute crap. Female dwarves are rare? Try a female human with a hag's face. Then you had the ludicrous models with no scaling. All male NE were gorillas, and none had the option of the Cenarius-style beard like on all the damn box art(apparently straight razors are the number one import among male night elves ever since the humans arrived.) All human males were ripped, all the girls had huge busts, and then the blood elves were pro-ana sticks.
And then there was Mass Effect. Omaigawd that game had horrid character creation. I just stuck with generic Male/Female Shepard because the second you touch the slider, you get a fish person. Do people in the future not use shampoo at all? That shiny hair looks like grease, tone it down, Bioware, it's disgusting.