These next two weeks mark some big releases in the gaming world. Skyrim launched just yesterday, the 11th, Saint's Row the Third will becoming out the 15th, Modern Warfare 3 has come out, and Legends of Zelda celebrates 25 years with Skyward Sword later this month. With all these big releases, and a special not for Skyrim and Saint's Row, I've decided to take this time to address a common trend in more and more modern games.
Character creation is great, when done properly.
Lots of games that have player created characters are trying to let them craft their own character for the rest of the story. Games like Mass Effect, The Elder Scrolls games, LittleBigPlanet, and others all had their own form of character creation. There are probably a hundred sliders in most menus that let you change every little facet of your characters...or so they would have you believe. In most cases, there is little difference between what ruggedly handsome man or woman you'll be playing as. Elder Scrolls: Oblivion was so callused as to not even let characters have beards. Many games don't give enough choice to the player when it comes to who they will be.
What I;m going to look at are a few games that do offer good choice. The first being Tony Hawk Underground. I look back on this game favorably, mostly because it was still ridiculous and tight in play, while letting you have loads of unrealistic skating fun in a variety of settings. The part of character creation that was done well here is choice. You could deck out your skater in so many different pieces of costume. I remember my guy had sunglasses, a rice hat, a winter coat, baggy cargo pants, and bare feet, all dyed a deep green. My brother's character looked distinctly different than mine. Underground offered a variety of choices in every aspect, with many kinds of shoes, shirts, pants, and accessories. A good character creation system needs to offer a huge load of choices. Every player will have their own style, and own sense of what is cool. Only having a few choices of any kind is never enough. Saint's Row falters a bit here. There are fun customization options, but they are pretty small in scope. Variety is the spice of life, right? And in a game where you are the character, you need to attune their style to what you like.
The next one we're looking at is The Smackdown vs. Raw series. That's right, WWE's wrestling game. What could these games have done right? Well, outside of some genuinely fun gameplay, they did character creation right in two ways. The first is in layers. The character creation works so well because of the ability to stack. You can choose to put various tattoos on and layer them into new patterns. Other clothing articles get stacked as well. If Minecraft has taught us anything, it's that people will go above what developers expected when given the freedom. If you limit the player to one shirt or top, they'll make due, but when you let them have a variety of options, they'll create some cool looks. The idea here is to not limit to just one choice. It isn't hard to think of adding an open button-down shirt over a long-sleeved T-shirt, and put a trench coat on top. The second area that these games did well was in the animations. Once you're finished building that muscle bound superstar (or unrealistically proportioned Diva) what kind of moves do they get? WWE has offered a very deep selection to choose everything from the basic punches, to ring-in and out animation, to specials. They have even added a pretty valid finisher creator. These games have some of the strongest character creation in games.
With so much emphasis on the player and their character, there needs to be more involved in the character creation. Most MMOs have a problem with this, letting you pick some starting equipment in your own personal flair, then clamming you up in the same dull armor that everyone gets. Some people really put time into what their character looks like and who they are in the world. Developers should respect their players and offer more in this content. The more a character connects to the game, the more they will enjoy the time. That is good for developers, publishers, marketers, and players.
But remember, there will be some seriously messed up player characters out there, we'll just have to live with that.
Just something to chew on.
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