How Immersive & Involved do you want Character Creation to be?

[Theobeau]

Someone beat me to the Ultima IV reference but that was an interesting and at the time unique take on character generation.

 

A prelude if done well can give an immediate boost to game immersiveness immediately thrusting the player into the game world and even add to replay-ability (DA:O is a fair example).

 

However from what little has been said about the game; that the protagonist is a witness to an horrific event which forces him down down a certain path suggests that multiple preludes may not be an option.

[Merin]

It is indeed strange and rather confusing too... The typos don't help either. ^^

 

I don't know why it's that strange. Those are some of the ways that games handle character creation... and it's a "mark as many answers as you want" so if you want, say, what Bethesda has (answer questions, but then get a character sheet to adjust however you want (or, in earlier TES games like Morrowind, the option to skip one of the processes), or you want some kind of tutorial introduction where your stats are chosen for you as you play only, or you want random rolls that aren't explained outside of the manual....

 

It seems pretty straightforward to me.

[JediMB]

Having some sort of "Prelude" or "Origin" where you get to organically determine your character sheet could be a cool alternative to being able to edit it manually.

 

That said, Fallout 3's prompt that let you edit your sheet again just as you left the Vault was horribly immersion-breaking, so that either needs to be presented in a more immersive way, or there should be a switch you can flip in the game's settings to disable the prompt and just go with whatever sheet your choices have generated.

 

And, of course, there has to be an option to skip the prelude entirely and just go straight to the character sheet and then jump into the game.

[Gyges]

Anyone know how much we will be able to determine the appearance of our main character?

[Merin]

Having some sort of "Prelude" or "Origin" where you get to organically determine your character sheet could be a cool alternative to being able to edit it manually.

 

That said, Fallout 3's prompt that let you edit your sheet again just as you left the Vault was horribly immersion-breaking, so that either needs to be presented in a more immersive way, or there should be a switch you can flip in the game's settings to disable the prompt and just go with whatever sheet your choices have generated.

 

And, of course, there has to be an option to skip the prelude entirely and just go straight to the character sheet and then jump into the game.

 

I agree - the Fallout 3 beginning is great, on a first play of the game.

 

But any veteran of TES games will tell you that you should create one permanent save game - right before you leave the tutorial area, right before you can make those final changes to your character - so on replays you can just load there and "create your new character" then.

 

But I also agree - a toggle / ability to switch this would be better. Even better? Tutorial is optional and part of the start menu.