Character Creation is still an exception and not the norm, why? Will it ever change?

Echo · Sep 29, 2018

I love character creators. I will go out of my way to play games with them, and spend hours on it looking for just what I want. (After all, gotta stare at these people for hours and hours!)

Mass Effect proved you can have a character creator, predetermined names, two voice-actors, and predetermined marketing material with a standard design (AKA: Male Shep) to make it easier. Assassin's Creed Odyssey is upon us, and they too have standard designs, two voice actors (male/female), and yet we are stuck with the default designs with no room for customization outside of clothes and weapons. Seems weird to me given how close it's getting to a Bioware style RPG these days.

What about Persona? You could swap a male or female character into the MC slot and customize the heck out of them and not a single story beat would change. Heck, P3P swapped in a female MC, and if I remember right the only thing that changed was romance options. (Nowadays they should account for same-sex relations though.)

Final Fantasy XV flirts with it. For the MP Add-on you can make a character and later insert them into the Single-player. I would love an FF built around a custom character. (Keep the party members pre-made though.)

I haven't played DQXI yet, but would it have hurt the story to let me make a custom character in Toriyama's style? I don't mind if they market a default character but... why not let people change the appearance? Character creators work out great for the Dragon Ball Xenoverse games in Toriyama's style.

Also just seems like it'd be a nice thing to have in these days when everyone is calling for more representation.

You'll say, "but what if devs want to tell a specific characters story?" And I'll refer back to the upcoming AC:Odyssey where the names are already determined (Kassandra and Alexios), the story path is already determined, so what would be the harm in letting me change hair style or color? Skin tone?

Even if you wanted to argue that "they have to look Greek!" that shouldn't preclude customization wholesale I would think.

WestEgg · Sep 29, 2018

I know you mentioned this in the OP, but if the devs had a specific character design in mind and things like other characters, items, etc were designed to accompany that, I'm fine with having a set design. I kinda dislike how in a lot of WRPGs you get a kind of generic title and everyone has generic interactions with you to accommodate character choices you could have made. It works for some games like New Vegas where everything is so mutable, but it's easier to make an icon with an established, consistent, and marketable character.

Dyle · Sep 29, 2018

Persona wouldn't really work with much customization because it would be very hard to do without having to make tons and tons of high quality art, but a female option would totally be doable

Deleted member 43077 · Sep 29, 2018

WestEgg said:
I know you mentioned this in the OP, but if the devs had a specific character design in mind and things like other characters, items, etc were designed to accompany that, I'm fine with having a set design.

.

not everything needs to have a custom character.

ColdSun · Sep 29, 2018

I'd personally greatly prefer a pre-made character as the default, but then an option for "customize" that would allow people the option to create their main character.

808s & Villainy · Sep 29, 2018

It's not the norm because you aren't always playing as an avatar...

Starlatine · Sep 29, 2018

The Boss from Saints Row games is a set character but you can still customize it
I dont think it would work in every case though. But sure, it should happen more often, why not

enkaisu · Sep 29, 2018

I hope so, OP. Character creation is the best, love spending hours making my character and then customizing their outfits throughout the game. :)

Deleted member 1190 · Sep 29, 2018

I'd much rather play a pre set character than go through character customization. Hell, in most games with it I usually just pick the basic/default look just to get through it as fast as possible.

Zhukov · Sep 29, 2018

Hopefully not.

I like character creators, but not everything needs to have one. Sometimes, maybe most of the time, I want a specific story for a specific protagonist.

Having your protagonist be potentially anyone means all the interactions need to be generic enough that they'll fit with whoever the protagonist could be.

It games that have no story or just a token story, sure, customization all the way.

BossAttack · Sep 29, 2018

Because it's a shit ton more work.

Henrik · Sep 29, 2018

Character creation depends on how you design the game's scenario. Linear JRPG would never work.

Influences from Western storytelling and hunting RPG are what I think works best with character creation.

Deleted member 1413 · Sep 29, 2018

Don't usually care for them. Would rather there be, at best, a male main character and the FeMC kind of like P3P and the newest AC (i think?)

Aly · Sep 29, 2018

My only problem is when there is a character creation, it still feels like there is not enough options or choices to feel like I'm playing me. So my problem is if its there, then it better be really in depth. Looks, voices, and choices. if not, then let me have a preset and be on my way.

lvl 99 Pixel · Sep 29, 2018

Because sometimes character designs are very intentional and specific, especially when modeled after real actors.
It works for certain games, not others, and sometimes completely unnecessary, and I don't always want to play as myself.

Zippro · Sep 29, 2018

It's simple. Time and budget trump creativity. Xenoblade has a lot of character customization with its character's clothing, but it didn't have a real character designer either. All of the official art is traced over the actual in-game models, some even leaving the backgrounds unchanged. It's also not viable in a situation like Persona for similar reasons. P3P also did a lot of rewrites and changed a lot of music for the FeMC and since they like animated cutscenes that's a lot of reanimating to do for a single character. Persona itself might not be niche anymore, but Atlus is still a small company and thus has to keep its attention focused across multiple projects. Xenoblade 2 was one of those "Where's the customization" games, but it's also that it had a much smaller dev team than what would be necessary. It's also sometimes just unnecessary due to how the games are represented, like Sushi Striker being overly 2D. Also, being able to manipulate clothing through customization might also mess with how certain moments are conveyed. Say you want a character to have a specific costume for narrative reasons, be it symbolic or status driven, having customization defeats that purpose and can come across as awkward. Games like BotW avoid this through flashback cutscenes where Link has a specific costume, but should every game abide by similar templates? No, that limits your narrative elements and can dissatisfy the player, especially if, say, you were wearing a costume in one scene, but he was in his fault costume in the next. There's an issue no matter where you turn and the issue is what's more important, your vision of the player being satisfied for simple cosmetics? The answer is simple, only have both if you can satisfy both with next to no issues. Resident Evil can get away with this because you'll experience the intended story and depiction the first time through before you get costumes, so it's fun to see Shirtless Chris or Tofu in the cutscenes in replayed ones. But in Xenoblade 2 where characters have narratively driven costume changes, not so much. Either way, it's still time and money and it might not always be worth it, especially if the visual aesthetics are tied to the piece of armor worn. Jade has a bunny girl costume in DQXI and I personally love it, but it's not the best armor by the end-game, so it's either stay with weaker equipment or upgrade and get another design. The answer is obviously just making the costumes their own equipment slot, kind of like in Xenoblade X or Tales of Vesperia, but not every dev, for some reason, is on the same page and they still require their own rigging to make sure they contort properly with characters and don't have jarring animation issues. Street Fighter V has this issue where characters can have radically different forms or hairstyles depending on their costume where those elements clip into the character, so it's either re-rig/animate it so it doesn't look off or leave it as is, but that's still more time necessary than is worth it, especially for smaller studios. The more customization, the more rigging and animations that have to be tested and in those cases where games have 1000x distinct pieces of equipment it's just not worth it for some. Ubisoft can do 1000x pieces of ridiculous equipment because they've got 300-400 people working on AssCreed. Companies like Atlus and Monolith Soft don't. With actual character customization, like Mass Effect for faces, still not worth it for smaller studios, because as I said, rigging and animation issues.

Derrick01 · Sep 29, 2018

Character creation only matters in wrpgs and only for things like stats and what skills to specialize in or perks to pick. What most people want is visual customization which is boring and mostly leads to generic protagonists that are inferior to well made pre-built ones.

Deleted member 4037 · Sep 29, 2018

A lot of those games you mentioned just wouldnt work for various reasons, its a good thing that not ever game has a character creator, not every game should. Even games like persona where the character is a self insert would simply not work because of how much effort the changes would take in the dialogue, cutscenes, story beats, etc...

Sandfox · Sep 29, 2018

808s & Villainy said:
It's not the norm because you aren't always playing as an avatar...

BossAttack said:
Because it's a shit ton more work.

It's because of these things.

Halbrand · Sep 29, 2018

Games like Assassin's Creed II, The Witcher 3, Uncharted, The Last Of Us, Red Dead Redemption, Spider-Man, and God of War all benefit greatly from having a pre-defined character.

Thorn · Sep 29, 2018

A created character requires a hell of a lot more work.

Also CaC usually end up as blank slates that not every developer wants.

I love CaC but sometimes I want a Geralt or Peter Parker.

Crayolan · Sep 29, 2018

I'd prefer an experienced character designer make a character for me to play as than have to do it myself and it inevitably ends up looking awful.

Echo · Sep 29, 2018

ColdSun said:
I'd personally greatly prefer a pre-made character as the default, but then an option for "customize" that would allow people the option to create their main character.

Well, nothing stops people from picking the default Male Shep. In-fact I believe statistics before ME3 came out proved that people had a great preference for the default maleshep. To me, that's kinda disappointing and I wonder if people lack imagination or just wanna rush.

enkaisu said:
I hope so, OP. Character creation is the best, love spending hours making my character and then customizing their outfits throughout the game. :)

Yeah! Even better if you can mess with fashion, cuz I'm a cosmetics whore 'til I die lmao. Nintendo seems to be the only pub with a game to service this itch, the Syn Sophia developed "Girls' Mode."

lvl 99 Pixel said:
Because sometimes character designs are very intentional and specific, especially when modeled after real actors.
It works for certain games, not others, and sometimes completely unnecessary, and I don't always want to play as myself.

MaleShep was based on a model right? But it didn't preclude or stop Bioware from allowing customization.

These aren't demands or anything, I just wish more games would let me customize my dude or lady. You don't have to model custom characters after yourself. I almost never do.

Blind Deaf & Hung said:
It's simple. Time and budget trump creativity. Xenoblade has a lot of character customization with its character's clothing, but it didn't have a real character designer either. All of the official art is traced over the actual in-game models, some even leaving the backgrounds unchanged. It's also not viable in a situation like Persona for similar reasons. P3P also did a lot of rewrites and changed a lot of music for the FeMC and since they like animated cutscenes that's a lot of reanimating to do for a single character. Persona itself might not be niche anymore, but Atlus is still a small company and thus has to keep its attention focused across multiple projects. Xenoblade 2 was one of those "Where's the customization" games, but it's also that it had a much smaller dev team than what would be necessary. It's also sometimes just unnecessary due to how the games are represented, like Sushi Striker being overly 2D. Also, being able to manipulate clothing through customization might also mess with how certain moments are conveyed. Say you want a character to have a specific costume for narrative reasons, be it symbolic or status driven, having customization defeats that purpose and can come across as awkward. Games like BotW avoid this through flashback cutscenes where Link has a specific costume, but should every game abide by similar templates? No, that limits your narrative elements and can dissatisfy the player, especially if, say, you were wearing a costume in one scene, but he was in his fault costume in the next. There's an issue no matter where you turn and the issue is what's more important, your vision of the player being satisfied for simple cosmetics? The answer is simple, only have both if you can satisfy both with next to no issues. Resident Evil can get away with this because you'll experience the intended story and depiction the first time through before you get costumes, so it's fun to see Shirtless Chris or Tofu in the cutscenes in replayed ones. But in Xenoblade 2 where characters have narratively driven costume changes, not so much. Either way, it's still time and money and it might not always be worth it, especially if the visual aesthetics are tied to the piece of armor worn. Jade has a bunny girl costume in DQXI and I personally love it, but it's not the best armor by the end-game, so it's either stay with weaker equipment or upgrade and get another design. The answer is obviously just making the costumes their own equipment slot, kind of like in Xenoblade X or Tales of Vesperia, but not every dev, for some reason, is on the same page and they still require their own rigging to make sure they contort properly with characters and don't have jarring animation issues. Street Fighter V has this issue where characters can have radically different forms or hairstyles depending on their costume where those elements clip into the character, so it's either re-rig/animate it so it doesn't look off or leave it as is, but that's still more time necessary than is worth it, especially for smaller studios. The more customization, the more rigging and animations that have to be tested and in those cases where games have 1000x distinct pieces of equipment it's just not worth it for some. Ubisoft can do 1000x pieces of ridiculous equipment because they've got 300-400 people working on AssCreed. Companies like Atlus and Monolith Soft don't. With actual character customization, like Mass Effect for faces, still not worth it for smaller studios, because as I said, rigging and animation issues.

Good post. Makes sense.

On cosmetics, the new Tomb Raider games had a neat thing where your costume was carried over to cutscenes. For games which use pre-made, hand-drawn, or CGI cutscenes though I guess it wouldn't work.

Halbrand · Sep 29, 2018

Echo said:
Well, nothing stops people from picking the default Male Shep. In-fact I believe statistics before ME3 came out proved that people had a great preference for the default maleshep. To me, that's kinda disappointing and I wonder if people lack imagination or just wanna rush.

As someone who's spent dozens of hours customizing characters in SoulCalibur, I picked default Shepard every time because the face looked far better than anything I could get out of the character creator.

WillyFive · Sep 29, 2018

Character creation is a feature of specific genres, not gaming in general. And there's no real reason for it to be anything more than that.

MZZ · Sep 29, 2018

Im the opposite of you OP. So far as to say that I look for the canon character name if given a chance to change names. An example of this is in persona series and dragon quest.

Character creators are cool if the default character design is not how you would want the character to look like. I prefer to use default shep as that face is actually unique and is impossible to create in the creator.it also fits the voice well. I edit femshep slightly from the default femshep in the first two. I didnt do that for 3 case we got a default femshep there and thankfully my femshep does not look too far off.

I feel like making a character is another step in self inserting into the story which I hate. I prefer the story being told to me than giving me an avatar in the story. I feel like making the characters affects the story intended to be told by the writer.

With that said, games like saints row and sims, I just rry to insert persona characters in them. Makes it so much more enjoyable playing as Chie in saints row.

Terraforce · Sep 29, 2018

I hope it remains an exception. I'd vastly prefer characters the developers put time into hand crafting and designing with their own personalities and backgrounds rather than a self insert that's more often than not rather generic and lacking in personality. I'd definitely rather play as Mario, Link, and Samus over whatever Thing 1 and Thing 2 I can come up with.

lvl 99 Pixel · Sep 29, 2018

Echo said:
MaleShep was based on a model right? But it didn't preclude or stop Bioware from allowing customization.

ME is designed for male/female and customization from the ground up. Being your own Shepard and forging your own path was a huge part of ME.
Like many WRPG/Bioware games you're not playing as a predefined person, and thats also part of the reason why I cant even remember what the characters face looked like for half of them.

Its like comparing a Mii fighter in Smash to any of the incredible character designs of the rest of the cast.

Echo · Sep 29, 2018

Aigis said:
A lot of those games you mentioned just wouldnt work for various reasons, its a good thing that not ever game has a character creator, not every game should. Even games like persona where the character is a self insert would simply not work because of how much effort the changes would take in the dialogue, cutscenes, story beats, etc...

In Persona, the story wouldn't change much if at all. Dialogue is fixed with a change of pronouns and gender specific language. I'll give you cutscenes though, the anime ones anyway.

Honestly though, if Joker was a girl, what would change aside from romance options?

MZZ · Sep 29, 2018

I agree that it definitely wouldnt work for persona to customize the character. I even shudder at the thought of it.

I want persona to go the complete direction of giving the character his own voice and complete the mc's personality. Joker obviously has his own personality. He should have been a talking character. I'd enjoy the story more if Joker had voiced lines.

Deleted member 4037 · Sep 29, 2018

Echo said:
In Persona, the story wouldn't change much if at all. Dialogue is fixed with a change of pronouns and gender specific language. I'll give you cutscenes though, the anime ones anyway.

Honestly though, if Joker was a girl, what would change aside from romance options?

There are things that change based on gender specific events even in P3P, dialogue as well (in P3P if you play as a girl they rewrote the dialogue to acknowledge that), and ya, the animated cutscenes would be a nightmare to account for character customization. The director even commented on this saying that the amount of work put into a new gender option would cause other content to be cut (P5 had a lot of cut content even without a female option), probably cause they dont really half ass it when it came to adding a new gender option, they added new slinks and changed up a lot of the dialogue in P3P. The major thing with P3P though, is it was a remake of an older game that was already largely mapped out and didnt have any animated cutscenes to work on

Phendrift · Sep 29, 2018

Because some characters have an iconic look, or artists put a lot of effort to nail a character's look in a way that fits their persona.

Imagine customizing Mario's face, ew.

Character creators can make things really bland. I just started MGSV and got like a pit in my stomach when it asked me to create an avatar, luckily I still look like snake so I don't know what that was about lol

Echo · Sep 29, 2018

Drewton said:
As someone who's spent dozens of hours customizing characters in SoulCalibur, I picked default Shepard every time because the face looked far better than anything I could get out of the character creator.

Do you feel this was the result of poor tools or poor vision though?

Sometimes character creators are bad. I admit this. The Dragon Age: Inquisition one drove me up a wall for days because the lighting was totally different in CC Vs. the real game somehow.

Aly said:
My only problem is when there is a character creation, it still feels like there is not enough options or choices to feel like I'm playing me. So my problem is if its there, then it better be really in depth. Looks, voices, and choices. if not, then let me have a preset and be on my way.

Is it a lack of ethnic/race choices? There have been threads here and on GAF about how poor the choices in hair department usually is for minorities. Voices is a hard one, so few games offer more than a binary choice tied to gender. Only recent example I can think of with multiple voices to choose from is MonHon World...

Your character doesn't do much talking though, just grunts and stuff lol.

Akela · Sep 29, 2018

There's also an issue of animation - the more customisation a game allows on a character, the more limited and video gamey the animation will appear, simply because a single set of animations have to be adapted on the fly to whatever changes the user has made. It will never look as good as a single, static character.

Even worse in the case of mocap since it's extremely easy to fall into the uncanny valley if the animation isn't completely seamless. Ideally, the best way of having the most accurate, least time consuming, and realistic animation is not only to use mocap, but to apply that mocap animation onto a 3D scan of the actor's body that maps 1:1 with the person that performed it. Essentially, as far away from character customisation as you can possibly get.

KingdomHeartsFan · Sep 29, 2018

808s & Villainy said:
It's not the norm because you aren't always playing as an avatar...

What I came to post.

Zaied · Sep 29, 2018

Phendrift said:
Because some characters have an iconic look, or artists put a lot of effort to nail a character's look in a way that fits their persona.

Imagine customizing Mario's face, ew.

Character creators can make things really bland. I just started MGSV and got like a pit in my stomach when it asked me to create an avatar, luckily I still look like snake so I don't know what that was about lol

When you beat the game, you'll be able to play as your avatar if you want.

Aly · Sep 29, 2018

Echo said:
Is it a lack of ethnic/race choices? There have been threads here and on GAF about how poor the choices in hair department usually is for minorities. Voices is a hard one, so few games offer more than a binary choice tied to gender. Only recent example I can think of with multiple voices to choose from is MonHon World...

Your character doesn't do much talking though, just grunts and stuff lol.

Yeah thats part of it. You get 2 bland sounding voices and as a minority, the skin color often looks strange with a lack of hair options. But then it goes into choices in game design. That's something that usually comes with cc and it's often 4 variations of Yes coughFallout4cough. Its so pointless. Don't even bother if its going to end up like that.

crimsonECHIDNA · Sep 30, 2018

Honestly, with Face Capture becoming more of a norm in these story driven games, I'm kind of falling out of favor with CAC since they tend to look really out of place compared to the more defined faces of the supporting characters.

Eila · Sep 30, 2018

For JRPG at a least it's better to me if the characters have personality of their own.

Terraforce · Sep 30, 2018

Echo said:
Do you feel this was the result of poor tools or poor vision though?.

Even if you have all the tools, CaC will always be a self insert with a generally generic background and potentially lack of character as opposed to the clearly intentional backstories and unique personalities.

daniel77733 · Sep 30, 2018

I absolutely hate character creation. First, simply a waste of time creating a character that should have already been created, preset and in the game. Second, the options for them usually suck. Third, if character creation means a silent protagonist (ala Far Cry 5) then all that does it make it all worse because the story no matter how good the antagonists are will still suck simply because there's no interaction between you as the protagonist and the antagonists in the game as well as general NPC's that you interact with.

Games that have preset characters with a background, history, story of their own, etc. is simply far better than any character creation could ever be. This is one of the many reasons why The Witcher III is just so superior to so many games that have a character creation. Imagine that game without Geralt and you have to create a character. Game wouldn't be anywhere near as good as it actually is and if it was a silent protagonist that you create, that twice as bad.

Another reason is that having character creation comes off to me as the developers not wanting to take the time to give me an excellent preset character that I will either care about or will hate. With character creation, no connection or anything whatsoever. The motherfucker could die a billion ties and I wouldn't give two shits simply because why would I? The character is fake and doesn't exist.

So no thanks to character creation. Thankfully, out of the 75 games that I have played and completed this generation, only 2 of them had character creation. The Division and Far Cry 5. The story and characters at best are a 7/10 and that's probably being generous where as the best games this generation have a preset character.

The only game that will have character creation and most likely have an excellent story and characters plus you're not a silent protagonist is Cyberpunk 2077. And while this remains to be seen, at least I know the developer (CDPR) is capable of pulling it off. Everyone else, not so much.

To each their own but for me, I hope it stays the exception and never ever becomes the norm. The only way I would be okay with it is if there's also a preset character who isn't a silent protagonist because I would just play as that character.

Ukraine · Sep 30, 2018

I prefer premade characters....

skeezx · Sep 30, 2018

i'd rather just have the odd game that does CC fairly well rather than most all of them doing it, which would probably be a compromise on quality

Undeniablybiased · Sep 30, 2018

Why should it be the norm? Sounds horrible. Having a relatively even split like we have now is where it's at.

spam musubi · Sep 30, 2018

With games that especially focus on storytelling, making custom characters means making concessions for the animation rigging, which means that the custom characters can never look as good as the 1:1 (plus animator edits) performance capture.

BlacJack · Sep 30, 2018

Why is it the norm now days for people to feel like the developers can't choose how they tell their story, and that they must allow the player to decide that for them?

I will never understand this. Some games let you, some don't. How is this a thing that is expected to be "the norm?"

Mozendo · Sep 30, 2018

Echo said:
Also just seems like it'd be a nice thing to have in these days when everyone is calling for more representation.

Ugh no, it's the laziest way of implementing diversity in a video game.
That shit barely counts.

Windu · Sep 30, 2018

Because making games is hard enough already.

mindsale · Sep 30, 2018

1: it's more work
2: most games have a predetermined role

Even in something like Dark Souls your character creation is mostly superfluous - you see gaudy armors and robes, not purple hair with red eyes belying slight crows feet and a Roman nose and an upturned lip.

Bishop89 · Sep 30, 2018

Echo said:
In-fact I believe statistics before ME3 came out proved that people had a great preference for the default maleshep. To me, that's kinda disappointing and I wonder if people lack imagination or just wanna rush.

I love default male shepards look.

Also not having a pre-defined character just ruins talking about a character. Ruins their iconic look and just messes with Canon.

Can you imagine ppl talking about their favourite resident evil character and they mention Leon has his cool hair and coat, and someone joining the conversation is like "wtf are you talking about?"

Character Creation is still an exception and not the norm, why? Will it ever change?

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