@Dezzy Really happy to hear there will be character customization in Cyberpunk 2077. It means I won't be stuck looking at an unflattering design (like Geralt) for 100+ hours. And hopefully it'll add to the sense of actually RPing.
@Dezzy That's the first thing I thought when I read that story. Having a predetermined character adds to the identity of a game. And the characters are way more memorable.
It's also just a lot easier to write good and interesting character relationships when you have a known quantity. People behave differently depending on who they're interacting with. Nearly everyone treats a large muscular man different from an attractive petite woman.
The only 2 solutions with a custom character are 1) either completely remove any kind of distinct interactions and replace them with generic behaviour that can fit any character at all, or 2) write multiple responses and behaviours that change depending on how you designed your custom character.
If they go with 1) too much, it makes the relationships seem robotic, like in Xenoblade X or Skyrim. If they go with 2) it makes the budget significantly larger so they probably can't do it with something on the scale of The Witcher 3.
It also seems highly unlikely they could make something that's larger than The Witcher 3 and is fully voice acted for multiple characters. You can't have just 1 voice set with a character creator. You need a minimum of 2, one for each sex, and if you want it to have any kind of freedom to customise the character, you probably need more voices, as your voice generally changes with your body size.
People forget that the Witcher 3 had more voice acting than almost any other game in history.
@Dezzy Really happy to hear there will be character customization in Cyberpunk 2077. It means I won't be stuck looking at an unflattering design (like Geralt) for 100+ hours.
You're looking at their back for most of that time. How many character customizers allow you to customise someone's back?
@Dezzy I don't need to look at their front side every moment to maintain a sense of their appearance. I'll also see them in cutscenes and dialogues and such.
I can make a proper lady character instead of playing as random grizzled white dude #10, and I'll enjoy the game more as a result.
Only if you ignore the costs of having that added choice, some of which I listed above.
The most likely cost being that your proper lady character (I'm more a fan of improper ladies myself) will be treated as if she were identical to that "random grizzled white dude" in nearly every way. So the difference will end up being purely cosmetic.
The range of possible character interactions and developments will also be heavily constrained as they write them all in a generic way such that they could work with any possible character.
You don't good things for free, there are always trade-offs.
@Dezzy Not necessarily. Dialogue can change slightly based on binary attributes such as the sex of a character. Responses don't have to vary too radically. But, yes, it's primarily about aesthetics. Which is fine. Aesthetics are important.
If I'm playing an RPG, I want to feel a sense of identification with the character, and customization is an effective way to facilitate this.
I'd much rather have this than, say, voiced cutscenes for a character that I'm not really enjoying playing as.
Why on earth do you need a character to look a certain way to "identify" with them?
Almost none of my favourite characters look anything like me. I just completely reject that the main character of a game is supposed to essentially be you, the player. That's ONE approach. But clearly it's not the only one. Most JRPGs don't go with that approach at all. Which character in FF6 is supposed to be you?
@Dezzy It's not always about a character "looking like you" (although this is a factor, and is behind the calls for increased representation of minority groups in Western media, I imagine). In this case, I mean that it's easier for me to identify with a character I've assembled myself, as opposed to a character that was designed beforehand, and who is identical to the character everyone else plays as in the game. Even if the customization options aren't huge.
Of course, this isn't the only valid approach. Some games just do better without customizable characters. It depends heavily on how the game is designed. Crucially, FF6 is a game where you follow a party of people across a variety of scenarios. There is no character who is meant to be "you." And making actual decisions doesn't really happen in the game, either. You're just experiencing a story that has already been written.
When it's possible, though, I appreciate being able to customize my character. It increases my enjoyment of the game.
Well I think the idea that you need a fictional character to look a certain way in order to "identify" with them is a bit like choosing which airplane to fly in based on what colour it's painted. People can do that if they really want but I think the example of books (where you almost never know exactly what the character looks like) show how meaningless that is.
It's also clearly not true that FF6 doesn't give you any decisions. You can choose to leave Shadow to die. You can fail to save Cid on the island. You can fail to recruit various characters.
The fact that your decisions can affect the outcome of the story is not inherently linked to whether it's a first person or 3rd person narrative at all.
Well defined protagonists lend themselves to very intentional narratives told like stories in all other formats. It can feel weird to be playing a character in a game with choices as you're often drifting from whatever the identity of that character is. Like with Geralt when the game gives you the choice to "Be a decent human being" or "Be a terrible racist greedy murdering monster" over and over again.
The dumb version of "moral gray area."
Games with create-a-characters like Mass Effect/Dragon Age and Elder Scrolls/Fallout inherently make more sense to be choice-ified. Even if voice acted, your character doesn't have fears or predispositions to clash with the paths laid out for you. Even Life is Strange, which somewhat of a blank slate protag, goes to lengths to make the choices seem plausible in her life. Being mean or not is a choice, saving someone's life when she has control over the situation is not.
In any case, it sounds like Witcher: Robots is less paradoxical in that one aspect. We'll see if the main story is still padded out across the open world and if the combat is still clumsy, but super punishing and "h4rdcore."
I wouldn't frame it like that. I'd say the different types of games just lend themselves to providing different types of choices. Not that 1 has choices and the other doesn't.
I agree you can't have a game like Xenoblade Chronicles where you can choose to make evil decisions. That won't work because the main character is clearly written to be morally good.
But not all decisions are clear moral decisions. Lots of decisions you make can reveal their moral implications after you've made them. Something like that works just fine with a heavily written character. Like letting Cid die in FF6.
The Witcher 3 works well imo because Geralt isn't that morally pure in the first place.
No, the Witcher 3 doesn't work because Geralt is some grungy male power fantasy #9387th in line to play Batman (another character blatantly too stupid for their self-seriousness to work) which the game / hype cycle tries to play as morally complicated. The main plot coming down to "be a gud dad" or "be a bad dad" is just Paragon/Renegade in another skin.
And the written by devs / created by the player character dynamic is pretty polarizing. If you write a character to come from a specific background with a certain history, most of the choices you could possibly put to them simply don't make sense diegetically. With a create-a-character you could hypothetically go forever, with a few limits depending on the circumstances the game may have placed you in. Skyrim: prisoner, Mass Effect; human special ops / the plot of the pervious Mass Effect games, Fallout: vault/pre-war culture and more bloody dad stuff.
... the combat is still clumsy, but super punishing and "h4rdcore."
This pretty much sums up my first 15 hours or so with the game. I got both mentally and physically exhausted playing this and I don’t see myself returning.
Regarding the topic, I’m not really bothered either way. As long as my main character is not a truck simulator, I’m open to all kinds of different ways of interacting in a video game world.
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Off the current topic, but now that bloodborne is on the ps+ lineup, I finally have an opportunity to play coop with the bf. But it's been so long, I no longer have the skills to even get past the first area again
Well I think the idea that you need a fictional character to look a certain way in order to "identify" with them is a bit like choosing which airplane to fly in based on what colour it's painted.
Terrible comparison. Is flying in planes a form of leisure activity for you?
Moreover, there are logistical elements that make flying in a plane exactly to your liking inconvenient.
The two things are actually nothing alike in any way, shape, or form.
People can do that if they really want but I think the example of books (where you almost never know exactly what the character looks like) show how meaningless that is.
A book doesn't shove designs in your face (unless it's a comic book).
A book isn't generally interactive like a video game.
Books are not video games. Different factors come into play.
It's also clearly not true that FF6 doesn't give you any decisions. You can choose to leave Shadow to die. You can fail to save Cid on the island. You can fail to recruit various characters.
The fact that your decisions can affect the outcome of the story is not inherently linked to whether it's a first person or 3rd person narrative at all.
I never said it "gives you no decisions." If it gave you no choices, it would barely qualify as a video game. But, IN GENERAL, you're following a pre-prepared script from one moment to the next. There's not a lot of freedom to make choices in that game. Almost none, in fact, outside of certain setpieces, battles, and navigating from one place to the next on your map.
Terrible comparison. Is flying in planes a form of leisure activity for you?
Moreover, there are logistical elements that make flying in a plane exactly to your liking inconvenient.
The two things are actually nothing alike in any way, shape, or form.
It's an analogy. Lol make it into a stunt plane you fly for fun if you think leisure is the driving point. Same issue.
A book doesn't shove designs in your face (unless it's a comic book).
A book isn't generally interactive like a video game.
Books are not video games. Different factors come into play.
Well not "designs", but books can, and occasionally do choose to give you a very detailed explanation of a character's appearance. Like Harry Potter. They then also regularly choose to give you no explanation at all (as if you're inside a first person walking simulator where you can't see your own body), like in Robinson Crusoe (random example).
Yes! Dragon Quest XI is coming Stateside! And in September, to boot, not some ambiguous "Holiday 2018" business. Marking it on my calender!
Also, the free games this month looks good. I almost bought Mad Max and Trackmania Turbo a dozen times each. Now I don't even have to pay a dime!
@Dezzy Re: Character creators vs Premade - Even Mass Effect IMO only worked because it had the same level of cinematic presentation as a blockbuster even with having player choice. Even in The Witcher series, your choices had impact, so they might still work out so long as they can frame it right.
Episode 2 of Hitman is temporarily free on PSN until April 3rd. No idea if this applies to other regions as well.
Wow, so two free episodes total now? (assuming Ep. 1 is still free. I haven't checked, since I got the whole season now) Pretty cool, and that was a great area to play around in.
@CanisWolfred Yeah, Dragon Quest looks good. I'll make sure to check it out when it comes out.
Is there anything else confirmed for September I should be excited for? I'm keeping an eye out for Spider-Man and Red Dead Redeption. And there's that weird game Biomutant from THQ Nordic that looks interesting. But I don't think those have confirmed release dates yet apart from RDR2.
@CanisWolfred Yeah, Dragon Quest looks good. I'll make sure to check it out when it comes out.
Is there anything else confirmed for September I should be excited for? I'm keeping an eye out for Spider-Man and Red Dead Redeption. And there's that weird game Biomutant from THQ Nordic that looks interesting. But I don't think those have confirmed release dates yet apart from RDR2.
Not yet, but it's still a bit early. RDR2 I can easily see making a set date ahead of time just because...it's Rockstar, they know they'll eclipse anything else that comes out around that point. I dunno who else will have the bals to compete, at least as far as "blockbusters" are concerned...but that could just be due to my tastes in games being more geared towards more colorful games, both in terms of actual vibrant color, and just...strangeness. I've been gaming for too long to get excited by RDR2, even though it might still be a good game, because why explore a realistic desert when I could explore a magical land where I don't know what to expect? That's my logic, at least.
Oh, gosh...
Guys, tomorrow on Sunday 1st April 2018, i will buy PS4 Slim White 500 GB Region 3, as i promised from several months ago.
Not an April's Fool joke, this is Real.
Still have mixed feeling between exciting (for The Sims 4) & rejection (you know if i still have negativity with PS4), but i can't denied my Teenhood & College age with Sony machines (that shaped my gaming experience too).
Wish me luck, guys.
Hopefully the PS4 that i will buy tomorrow can entertain me every after despite of my Half-Hearted feeling toward PS4. (I choose White color to make me more engaged with PS4 in term of hardware color)
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