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[Drowsy Emperor]

The real question is why?

 

I found even Oblivion's character creator a chore. Whatever you do you're still about as ugly as the rest of them, and in Oblivion you can't see your character's face anyway during gameplay so it could be a cardboard smiley face for all I care.

 

IMO its not worth the bother to go to that level of detail.

[Monte Carlo]

I bet you can spend six hours choosing a hair colour but get three skill choices afterwards.

[Keyrock]

The real question is why?

 

I found even Oblivion's character creator a chore. Whatever you do you're still about as ugly as the rest of them, and in Oblivion you can't see your character's face anyway during gameplay so it could be a cardboard smiley face for all I care.

 

IMO its not worth the bother to go to that level of detail.

Not for you, sure.  Not everyone is wired the same way.  I take great pleasure in fiddling with the fine details of my character.  Heck, I spent a good hour and a half making my last Saints Row 4 character, and had a great time doing it.  As long as they include a bunch of presets for people that just want to breeze through character creating to get to boring MMO that much quicker, I see no harm in including a ridiculous amount of sliders for people like myself to tinker with.

[Orogun01]

I bet you can spend six hours choosing a hair colour but get three skill choices afterwards.

Priorities, are you sure you got yours right?

[Zoraptor]

I spent ages making my femshep look like a goth barbie, and it was totally worth it. Then ME3 refused to import her properly, grr.

[Hurlshort]

 

The real question is why?

 

I found even Oblivion's character creator a chore. Whatever you do you're still about as ugly as the rest of them, and in Oblivion you can't see your character's face anyway during gameplay so it could be a cardboard smiley face for all I care.

 

IMO its not worth the bother to go to that level of detail.

Not for you, sure.  Not everyone is wired the same way.  I take great pleasure in fiddling with the fine details of my character.  Heck, I spent a good hour and a half making my last Saints Row 4 character, and had a great time doing it.  As long as they include a bunch of presets for people that just want to breeze through character creating to get to boring MMO that much quicker, I see no harm in including a ridiculous amount of sliders for people like myself to tinker with.

 

 

Oblivion is a terrible example (or anything in that engine.)  But a game like Saint's Row turns the character creator into a major feature, with an amazing diversity of looks.

[Bryy]

The SR franchise CC is great because it lets you make whatever the heck kind of character you want.

[Keyrock]

The SR franchise CC is great because it lets you make whatever the heck kind of character you want.

Agreed.  While most character creators let you change a decent range of features, they're basically mostly centered around you creating a sexy lingerie model or a super duper hunk.  While you can certainly make a sex bomb in SR, you can also make all sorts of hilarious, ugly, bizarre, or just downright grotesque characters.  Then they throw in outrageous outfits on top of that.

[Humanoid]

It also let you change your character in-game without restarting or using console commands. One big annoyance with character creation systems is often the initial creation screen has lighting so awful that once you get out into the game proper, you look a fair bit different to how you looked initially.

[marelooke]

The character creator to end all character creators?

 

 

It's a Korean MMO, so the game itself will almost certainly not be anywhere near as good as the character creation tool, but, holy sweet mother of butter pecan ice cream what a character creation tool it is!  I might never play the actual game, but I could definitely see myself playing with the character creation tool for many hours.

That looks *a lot* like the one from EVE Online, they aren't using that one perchance? And yes, for a game in which you pretty much never see your character EVE has a stupidly advanced character creation tool.

 

Also I am not too big a fan of these overly detailed character creators, especially when I cannot easily (and for free) go back to my character and change my choices later. I pretty much never end up with a character I'm totally happy with and I very often end up with really weird colours (since nobody ever bothers adding tooltips to color picker presets). Bethesda games are especially bad in this regard as they tend to prefer really messed up lighting conditions for their character creation tools (Fallout 3's one caused lots of trouble for people with "normal" colour vision, let alone those with a visual handicap)

[Lexx]

I usually press the random button until I see something I like. Then I adjust hair and color and be done with it.

[Monte Carlo]

^ Yeah me too.

[Amentep]

I think it was Oblivion that had the character creator where you could spend hours fine tuning the features and STILL end up with a character who looked like their face had exploded.

 

And Fallout 3 put you in the dark so it was hard to see your features.

 

Its weird, but for me the more I can customize my character - either in features or in skills/abilities - the more it makes me want to finish the game.  When characters are set (say Diablo) as long as theirs a look or skill set I like I'm okay, but its not the same as it is with a character you created.

 

But then again, I used to draw portraits for my Pen and Paper characters, so...

[Keyrock]

I think it was Oblivion that had the character creator where you could spend hours fine tuning the features and STILL end up with a character who looked like their face had exploded.

 

And Fallout 3 put you in the dark so it was hard to see your features.

 

Its weird, but for me the more I can customize my character - either in features or in skills/abilities - the more it makes me want to finish the game.  When characters are set (say Diablo) as long as theirs a look or skill set I like I'm okay, but its not the same as it is with a character you created.

 

But then again, I used to draw portraits for my Pen and Paper characters, so...

I have that same tendency.  The more I'm itching to play a game the longer I generally spend on character creation (assuming the creation tool is robust enough to allow me to spend a lengthy amount of time designing a character), which seems counterintuitive since the longer I spend in the character creator the longer I delay myself from playing the actual game.

 

And, yes, Oblivion was the worst.  I'd spend an hour making a character, go through the escape the dungeon sequence, then step outside only to find out my character's skin color was many shades different and the complexion looked completely different than what it looked like in the creation tool.  The Oblivion character creator is (fittingly enough) the Horse Armor DLC of character creators.

Edited April 9, 2014 by Keyrock

[Orogun01]

 

I think it was Oblivion that had the character creator where you could spend hours fine tuning the features and STILL end up with a character who looked like their face had exploded.

 

And Fallout 3 put you in the dark so it was hard to see your features.

 

Its weird, but for me the more I can customize my character - either in features or in skills/abilities - the more it makes me want to finish the game.  When characters are set (say Diablo) as long as theirs a look or skill set I like I'm okay, but its not the same as it is with a character you created.

 

But then again, I used to draw portraits for my Pen and Paper characters, so...

I have that same tendency.  The more I'm itching to play a game the longer I generally spend on character creation (assuming the creation tool is robust enough to allow me to spend a lengthy amount of time designing a character), which seems counterintuitive since the longer I spend in the character creator the longer I delay myself from playing the actual game.

 

And, yes, Oblivion was the worst.  I'd spend an hour making a character, go through the escape the dungeon sequence, then step outside only to find out my character's skin color was many shades different and the complexion looked completely different than what it looked like in the creation tool.  The Oblivion character creator is (fittingly enough) the Horse Armor DLC of character creators.

 

I think we have enough experience with disappointment to realize that the best part of most games is the anticipation, it is good to relish it for while longer. In my case i'm fastidious about making things look a certain way, job hazard I guess.

[mkreku]

The last time someone let me loose on a powerful character creator, I found myself playing through the game with a pink thong wearing, obese-yet-oddly-muscular transvestite with long, blonde hair and a black porn mustache. Thank you, Saint's Row 3!

 

Would be fun to see what the girls who play that game create for themselves. I'm pretty confident that approximately 0.00% would create a fat character, for example.

[BruceVC]

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/04/09/the-evil-within-trailer/#more-200413

 

Guys take a look at this trailer for "The Evil Within"

 

As usual I think it looks excellent

[babaganoosh13]

I loved the Tiger Woods player creator. I've made some pretty funny-looking ogre people with that thing.

[Humanoid]

Apparently Grim Fandango has been successfully modded to convert its interface into a standard point-and-click setup. Amazing that something like that is even possible, thus correcting the game's one single flaw.

[Keyrock]

Apparently Grim Fandango has been successfully modded to convert its interface into a standard point-and-click setup. Amazing that something like that is even possible, thus correcting the game's one single flaw.

That is pretty fantastic.  That was the one thing that bugged the hell out of me when I played the game back in the day.

[Malcador]

Apparently Grim Fandango has been successfully modded to convert its interface into a standard point-and-click setup. Amazing that something like that is even possible, thus correcting the game's one single flaw.

 

Still don't get how that was a huge flaw for people, hearing some say they couldn't progress in the game for it. Camera-relative movement was pretty easy for me.  Good work by the modders though

[Keyrock]

 

Apparently Grim Fandango has been successfully modded to convert its interface into a standard point-and-click setup. Amazing that something like that is even possible, thus correcting the game's one single flaw.

 

Still don't get how that was a huge flaw for people, hearing some say they couldn't progress in the game for it. Camera-relative movement was pretty easy for me.  Good work by the modders though

 

I never found it to be game breaking, or anything like that, just annoying.

[Sarex]

http://www.pcgamer.com/2014/04/10/transistor-release-date-announced-is-sooner-than-you-think/

 

Can't wait.

[Raithe]

Gamespot - Watch Dogs : The terrifying power of smart phones

 

Some interesting bits and pieces about Watch Dogs, the development and goals.

 

It'll be curious to see how well some of it actually turns out in game.

 

 

This puts a lot of pressure on the AI. The guards and criminals Aiden deals with need to know what's a coincidence and what's just plain fishy. A steam vent malfunctioning and scalding a guard is one thing. A steam vent malfunction followed by a car alarm and then a citywide blackout is something completely different.

 

"If the player doesn't respect our AI, he won't take the time to use stealth or hacking," says Belanger. "Maybe he's played a lot of shooters and says, 'I'll just shoot everything.' And if he succeeds all the time, why would he change? Why would he try hacking? We want him to have a certain fear of the AI."

 

That means designing an AI system that's both aggressive and a little bit unpredictable. These are not common events that Aiden is using his phone to trigger, and Belanger doesn't want common reactions from the guards.

 

"When you do a hack and you interact with the world, you want to feel like these are humans. It's a bit unpredictable. Having some chaos and noise keeps things interesting. It creates gameplay stories."

[Keyrock]

Child of Light trailer

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8huneeBEI3Y

 

Edited April 10, 2014 by Keyrock