When it comes to your main character, do you prefer a Tabula Rasa?

[Death Machine Miyagi]

Who was the survivor of the blimp crash in Arcanum? You can establish a background, but it doesn't really matter. The blimp crash survivor has pretty much zero history beyond what you choose to project onto him/her.

 

Who was the Courier of Fallout: New Vegas fame before the game started? Obviously, the Courier was a courier. Other than that, no family, friends, or connections of any kind are clarified in the game. The character is thus more or less a blank slate.

 

And so on.

 

The advantage of this approach is obvious. It allows you to imagine your character has any background you please, albeit a background which will never be acknowledged by the game itself.

 

The disadvantage comes in the form of possible lack of depth. With apparently no family or friends or background of any kind, the character can feel like little more than a walking set of statistics pretending to be a character. Torment would not have worked anywhere near as well as a story if your character didn't have a very richly defined background, for example.

 

How do you hope the developers approach this issue? How much of your character's background should be acknowledged in-game?

[Hellfell]

IE games had a biography tab. Maybe PE will have something like that with biography generated depending on your character creation choices.

[Death Machine Miyagi]

IE games had a biography tab. Maybe PE will have something like that with biography generated depending on your character creation choices.

 

Yes, but on a sliding scale of 'background undefined' vs. 'defined', BG was still pretty heavy in the 'defined' territory. You were the ward of Gorion and raised 20 years in Candlekeep. Your friend growing up was Imoen. Your mother and (obviously) your father are explained in-game. The background tab could thus be a way of explaining what you thought about all this, and how you acted as you grew up and so forth...but yep, you were Gorion's ward, and your history was pretty solidly laid out for you.

[Ausir]

In PE you are going to have a lot of choice regarding race, class but also culture you come from, so your specific background is likely to be left as tabula rasa.

[Wirdjos]

The disadvantage comes in the form of possible lack of depth. With apparently no family or friends or background of any kind, the character can feel like little more than a walking set of statistics pretending to be a character. Torment would not have worked anywhere near as well as a story if your character didn't have a very richly defined background, for example.

 

Torment was brillant in terms of this background vs blank slate issue. TNO had a rich and important back story that drove the plot forward, but due to the amnesia he was experiencing he wasn't really the same person as the one that did all those important things and the game bothered to point this fact out. I tend to feel uninvolved and uninvested if I'm making decisions for a predefined character. I didn't feel that with TNO.

[Death Machine Miyagi]

In PE you are going to have a lot of choice regarding race, class but also culture you come from, so your specific background is likely to be left as tabula rasa.

 

I suspect the number of possible culture/race combos means that you're right, but as the original Dragon Age showed, there are ways to provide even characters of wildly different backgrounds with their own unique back story. I doubt P:E will ever go so far as to provide a whole 'origin story' for every race/culture, but its certainly possible for them to thrown in an NPC from whichever area you come from who recognizes you and gets into your past relationships a bit.

[Starwars]

I'm hoping it will be kept as open as possible. Arcanum was hugely unbalanced but the character system was *fantastic* for encouraging crazy character concepts, really got my imagination racing whenever I designed a character.

[Haerski]

Mass Effect system with three choices for your background worked well for those games at least. Choosing different background made game feel surprisingly different even though it affects only to few conversations. Maybe something like that or predetermined background like in Torment. Then again why not make that background playable? Why not write family, friends and past into the actual plot? RPGs almost always have blank starts with memory loss or some other excuse or just don't care about players past. Maybe there could be several different beginnings that explain your past depending on your choice of class and race. (like seen in Dragon Age: Origins)

[Kilroy_Was_Here]

There is a sliding scale for player background:

 

None Whatsoever - Elder Scrolls games (F:NV actually does NOT apply here. In the last DLC you find out about a lot of things you did before your brief dirt nap)

Fixed - BG, PS:T, DA2, KOTOR I & II, AP, Fallout

Limited - ME (only referenced in a few quests)

Broad - DA:O

 

Most games fall into the first two categories. No background fits in TES because the personality of your character has literally no affect on anything. A fixed background allows for easy entry into the game's plot because everyone has a common starting point. The broad background is the most work for the devs because if some portion of the game differs based on the PC then there are areas some players will never see; not a good return on investment. It is interesting to note that according to BW metrics more players picked the Human Noble origin than all of the others combined.

 

I believe PE will have options somewhere in between limited and broad. Given the limited voice acting and the isometic camera it would be less work to create unique content based on the PC's personal history.

[Pshaw]

I prefer the Fallout 2 take. Your an important or at least well known individual to a community that the world at large doesn't know about or care about. As much as I don't mind the random adventure comes from nothing but is somehow trust into events take on things I also feel that it can cause you to lack direction in the early parts of the game. That or it just seems really outlandish when suddenly somebody comes before you to say, 'Suddenly you are very important! You're the chosen one and must embark on this quest of great importance!' (I'm looking at you elderscrolls.) I think it's better to come from a humble background then have whatever minor motivation got you started in your journey ends up getting tangled with the much bigger story.

 

I do like how DA:O handled the starting stories giving various options their own little background. However I'm sure that's a waste of time/money for a fairly low budget project like this. I will say this though if we're going to start out with a fixed starting point let us know about it before character creation. There is nothing I love more than making a grizzled veteran type character only to start the game and have some guy who looks younger than me calling me son (looking at you NWN2) because then I've got to deal with it for a little bit and pray it doesn't continue in the game or restart. So as much as I don't mind fixed backgrounds let us know the set up through before character creation so we can work our characters into it rather than just being blinded sided after I spent 30 minutes to an hour considering how I want to make a character.

[eselle28]

Blank slate, please. I've played one too many games that saddled me with relatives and mentors. A premade, interactive family just doesn't mesh well with the archetype of a misanthropic hermit or a rambler who never stays in one place for a long time. It's also tricky if I don't like the assigned loved ones but am playing a character who's unlikely to be rude or cruel to others - "polite but distant" or "only sees family at biannual holiday celebration" generally aren't among the dialogue options.

 

I used to be fairly tolerant of the young orphan background as long as it let me shed my guardian fairly quickly. That does at least give the excuse that my character hasn't picked up an unusual lifestyle becaues she hasn't had the chance to yet. As I've gotten a little older, I've become less patient with it, though. The young orphan setting out on an adventure might be an old and useful trope, but at some point I've started to prefer to play characters who are closer to my own age. I don't really remember being 20 that well anymore, and I'm not sure I want to.

[Chunkyman]

Blank slate. I want roleplaying potential to be maximized.

[eselle28]

I believe PE will have options somewhere in between limited and broad. Given the limited voice acting and the isometic camera it would be less work to create unique content based on the PC's personal history.

 

I believe the developers have said that the PE player character is just a victim of circumstance, and that they won't be dictating the player's background.

[Kane_Severance]

My preference is:

 

Choosing a backgorund > No background > Single background forced on you.

[Labadal]

In this kind of game, having a blank slate character at the beginning is preferrable to me. Choosing some stuff is fine, like different things about where you were raised, prior life experience, etc. But overall, leave it to the player to roleplay the character as much as possible.

[Jasede]

This being an Obsidian game I'm 99% certain we'll wake up with amnesia.

Again.

[Attero]

I like preset background , i belive its better for story teling you got some reason to be there where you are and do what you are supposed to do. In games like ES there is huuge question - why i want help those ppl ? make friends of some and enemies of others ? why wont i just return to where i came from ?

[Piccolo]

I like choosing some background options when creating my character. Leaving it completely blank and up to my imagination is sometimes fine, but it's nice feeling that your character's background has some bearing on the game.

 

I really don't like having a well-established, detailed background imposed upon my character though, even if it does benefit the storyline.

[Monte Carlo]

First off, I want to spend three hours rolling virtual dice. Then I will spend an inordinate amount of time clicking through my custom portraits, which take up a 1 TB external hard drive.

 

Anyhoo, I also expect to grow up on a small farm on the borderlands (how a high-intelligence half-orc assassin with a semi-Japanese name, an interest in rare poisons and proficiency in throwing stars grew up on a small farm isn't important right now). While I'm killing some rats in a nearby cellar, evil humanoids rampage through the village.

 

I escape, having found a +1 dagger and levelled up twice. I go on to have a number of hair-raising adventures and earn the trust of a Scottish dwarf with mead dependency issues, a haughty but foxy MILF druid and a scarred barbarian with a name containing no vowels.

 

This is all sorts of awesome to me.

[Labadal]

This being an Obsidian game I'm 99% certain we'll wake up with amnesia.

Again.

 

How come?

 

In most Obsidian games, you don't start the game with a character waking up with amnesia.

[Jasede]

It just seems like a plot device Avellone is very fond of.

I don't mind it at all.

[nikolokolus]

The blanker the better. Half the fun of character creation for me has always been coming up with a back story that isn't saddled by a very narrow story.

Edited October 23, 2012 by nikolokolus

[rjshae]

It depends on the plot. I'm open to either experience.

[Monte Carlo]

I think you could do worse than this for a character background:

 

Dr. Evil: The details of my life are quite inconsequential.

Therapist (Carrie Fisher): Oh no, please, please, let's hear about your childhood.

Dr Evil: Very well, where do I begin? My father was a relentlessly self-improving boulangerie owner from Belgium with low grade narcolepsy and a penchant for buggery. My mother was a fifteen year old French prostitute named Chloe with webbed feet. My father would womanize, he would drink, he would make outrageous claims like he invented the question mark. Some times he would accuse chestnuts of being lazy, the sort of general malaise that only the genius possess and the insane lament. My childhood was typical, summers in Rangoon, luge lessons. In the spring we'd make meat helmets. When I was insolent I was placed in a burlap bag and beaten with reeds, pretty standard really. At the age of 12 I received my first scribe. At the age of fourteen, a Zoroastrian named Vilma ritualistically shaved my testicles. There really is nothing like a shorn scrotum, it's breathtaking, I suggest you try it.

Therapist: You know, we have to stop.

[jivex5k]

This being an Obsidian game I'm 99% certain we'll wake up with amnesia.

Again.

At least we won't wake up in jail.