Poll: Best Character Customization in a Game

[dertyqwerty]

I hate to be obvious, but The Sims series?

I think that definitely has to be the winner for character customization. Body and face, clothes, hair, makeup, job, personality traits, even favorite color.

I enjoyed Dragon Age's a lot too. Mostly how you could decide what your personality was like through responses. I hadn't played a game like that before, I found it wonderfully involving.

Being able to customize a game is what really draws me in. I rarely will play a game that doesn't allow any sort of variation.

 

[DustyDrB]

Actually, if you're talking about just physical character customization, then wrestling games probably have the best. A roommate of mine had one of them and the customization just went on and on and on. You could customize body height, weight, muscular definition...everything. It took me nearly an hour just to make one character, and that was just his appearance.

 

[badgersprite]

Aesthetically? Saints Row 2 had the best character customisation of any game I've ever played. It was great. You had oodles of outfits, complete with colour selections, you could choose your race, voice, walking style, and change your face and body shape in infinity billion different ways.

In terms of customising your actual character and play style...Hmm...I'm not even sure what the best of those would be, because I can think of a fair few. Actually, come to think of it, a few old school online MUDs come to mind. They have such a wide scope of abilities and different paths you can choose that you can do just about whatever you want. Hell, you can even forgo combat altogether and just be a craftsman or fisherman.

 

[Azure-Supernova]

I can't pick just one, no matter how much I want. But here's the reasoning:

Body (neck down) - Champions Online
I spent more time and had more fun in the character creator than I did actually playing it. The tweaking and fine tuning means you can make pretty much any body type you like with a wide array of aesthetic choices.

Facial - Oblivion
At face value Oblivions' character customisation doesn't feel all that deep. But I after exploring the options and thanks to a mod for precision tweaking (more out of necessity so I didn't end up with a truly ugly character) I found that you can pretty much do anything with it. I can give my character a number of traits and with some clever tweaking you can simulate nationalities and skin tones normally seen.

Over All - Saints Row 2
I felt that Saints Row 2 really shines in its customisation. Sure the graphics aren't brilliant, but I had a great time playing with sliders to get a desired look. In the end you really can create almost any character you want and you can have fun doing it.

 

[PureIrony]

Saints Row 2 has the best clothing customization I've ever seen-I think I've spent at least 4 hours playing dress-up-but the character customization had so many variable I ended up only changing a few minute details on each character because I was completely bewildered as to what each slider did.

DA2's character customization was a bit more user-friendly, even if that extends only to Hawke.

 

[Javarock]

I'm going with D&D I Get to set my characters skin tone, Hair type in any way, Hair Length, Hair Color to the exact shade, Any scar in any way, The Exact weight, Height, Age, Weapon they use, Add small custimuzations to the weapon if I feel like it, And Much more. With plenty of races to pick from and classes and even then if we have the right DM you can Change those or add some too.

 

[Nooners]

I had a lot of fun with CoH and Champions Online, but for something more down-to-earth and with less spandex, I actually really liked Guitar Hero World Tour's character and instrument customizations.

 

[Richardplex]

If it's an RPG, yes, very If not, no, unimportant. If it's not a game hinging on immersion, then there isn't much need for it.

 

[lion el jhonson]

saints row 2 defiantly has the best character customization as of now but saints row 3 will probably be better

 

[The Virgo]

For some games, it's good. For others, it isn't.

I think that for games where you tell, basically, your own story (Oblivion, Fallout 3, etc.), it's good, because it allows you to create a character and then tell a story based on what YOUR CHARACTER would do. In Fallout 3, I once created a character who was balding (he wore a baseball cap to cover it), had Gordon Freeman-like facial hair and glasses. He was more of a talker than a fighter, and I actually enjoyed playing as him than my previous character, who was the typical badass, minigun-wielding killer. Would The Sims have been as much fun if you could only use a pre-made Sim? I didn't think so.

However, in games that tell the specific story of a specific character (Half-Life 2, Penumbra: Overture, Assassin's Creed, Gears of War, Halo, etc.), it wouldn't make any sense (to me, anyway) to be able to create a character. A specific character is great for a single-player driven, story-focused narrative. Would the Splinter Cell games have been the same if the protagonist was self-created? Or if Half-Life 2 wasn't headed by Gordon Freeman, but instead some green-haired, goofy looking abomination? Or if Halo's protagonist was somebody you created? I didn't think so.

However, I think there's room in both categories for character creation to be either implemented or not added. A forge-your-own-destiny RPG can be great with a specific character. A single-player focused game with a specific, linear story can be great with character customization.

I also think that character customization (from full creation to topic additions) can be implemented in well into multiplayer games. That's why I don't mind hats in TF2. It's a way to make each specific player's class their own, and doesn't destroy balance. (However, unlockable/buyable weapons do kill balance, which is why I'm against them.) I mean, does a guy with a lime green hat really destroy the game THAT much? Players adding their face in Rainbow 6 Vegas didn't do anything to balance, but it did add emotional attachment to the mass of polygons and code that was his/her character.

Well, I guess that's about everything I can say on this subject.

 

[Pirate1019]

EVE Online's new-ish character creator is balls to the wall awesome if you're into that kind of thing. Pretty much everything else pales in comparison.

 

[Racecarlock]

Saints Row 2. Show me another damn game where you could give a morbidly obese lady a cockney male voice. And how about a mexican guy with a lady voice? How about freddy krueger with a british accent? All of these combinations plus probably millions more are available in SR2. I have yet to see another game with this much customization. You can also change clothing colors and if you don't like your character shape or voice or even personality, you can go to a plastic surgeon at any time and change every option that you got in the character editor at the beginning of the game. So yeah, the customization fucking rules.

 

[Kahunaburger]

I think 99% of character customization in games is trivial. Take the Elder Scrolls game of your choice: setting your character's race, class, etc. basically does nothing to how the world reacts to you - it just changes what powers you have. Old-school RPGs do it a little better when setting Int/Cha/Wis actually changes what dialogue options you have.

 

[theamazingbean]

To my mind, the best-implemented character customization system ever was Saints Row 2. It worked for me through a combination of mind-boggling depth and almost complete superfluousness. I played through half the game barely acknowledging its existence and not suffering for doing so, but once I got to the later stage of the game and had oodles of money spare, I quickly took to spending ludicrous amounts of time traipsing back and forth across the city looking to put new outfits together. The mechanicals effects of wearing certainly clothing were so low that the process was completely divorced from optimization. Whereas most RPGs make you choose your armor carefully to avoid being fricasseed by the next boss, SR2 just let you run however the fuck you wanted to. To the day, it remains the only character customization system I've really gotten into.

 

[Sprinal]

probably the best customization Ive seen was in champions online, you can make almost any kind of hero you want

Download City of Heroes and you will eat those words... So much tinkering to be had.....


OT: Saints Row 2 had a large amount of customisation if you unlock it.

The customisation in dragon age origins is good in that if you are of different lineage you get different options throughout but you cannot really change your appearence too much.

So the question OP is that is it Body modification you want or is it interaction differences you're after? Cuz if its the former you already have said it.

If its the latter. Tell me when you find one that does it well!

 

[Hides His Eyes]

For aesthetics, I'd say Oblivion or Fallout 3. For stats and abilities and things, Neverwinter Nights has still not been outdone IMO.

As to how important customisation is, I think it's crucial in almost any RPG, and nice in other games too. While it's true to say that an RPG with a preset, uncustomisable main character can have a much better story because the hero's past and personality can be deeply involved with the story, it's worth asking how many games that give you a preset main character actually take advantage of this. I think I could count them on both hands. One hand, if I exclude Final Fantasy games. I've recently been playing Dungeon Siege 3, and really enjoying it, but I'm miffed that you have to choose one of four preset characters, because they're just not very interesting or well-written characters.

 

[StormShaun]

Saints Row 2 had the best customisation, ever (Mabey Saints Row 3 will be better), my car was awesome and so was I!

Just need to customise boats, planes, helicopters and weapons, which they might do.

 

[surg3n]

I'd have to say Spore, I mean, you can really customise your hero in that.

But my favorite would probably be Obliviion, it lets me make my character look like a demented freak, which suits me. My Oblivion character looks a bit like the actor who played the Hunchback in the really old black and white movie, with the weird eye.

I do quite like the character customisation in Test Drive Unlimited 2, when you customise your character, you have to pay for it, spend a while with bandages on your face. I'm always tempted to make my character female in driving games tho - especially TDU2, because every male character in that game is a metrosexual douchebag. Plus I get plenty friend invites, which is annoyingly part of the games XP system.

 

[ThisIsSnake]

EVE Online's character customisation is the best I've used for body/face sculpting.

Rather than the commonplace sliders it uses a grabby pully thingy to shape your character, really damn easy to use. The clothing sets and hairstyles on the customisation are pretty lacklustre though, but CCP could definitely make a bit of money by licensing the software out to other developers.

For clothing kind of customisation apparently Asian MMOs have some pretty amazing stuff but from experience I'll say WWE games.

 

[Goldeneye103X2]

Saints row 2 had some pretty good customization. You could even customize what vehicles your gang drive, what outfits they wear, and you could even pimp out all your rides and cribs. It?s my definition of ?your? game.