When a videogame opens with so many sliders you'd think it was a 1990s sci-fi series starring John Rhys-Davies, do you dive right in and start adjusting your character? Do you wallow in that thin
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When a videogame opens with so many sliders you’d think it was a 1990s sci-fi series starring John Rhys-Davies, do you dive right in and start adjusting your character? Do you wallow in that thing for hours until you’ve created a face perfect enough to shame God? Or do you just say ‘good enough’ and get on with playing the actual game?
How long do you spend in character creators?
Here are our answers, plus some from our forum.
Chris Livingston, Features Producer: At first I’m really into it! I check out all the hairstyles, followed by facial hair when available. Tattoos, scars, piercings, and so on, always fun to choose. I’ll find the eyes I like, make sure the eyebrows look good, fiddle with the nose and lips.
Then I’ll notice there’s options for, like, cheekbone width. And cheekbone depth. And cheekbone spread, size, weight, shading, sharpness, and 10 other cheekbone attributes and I just don’t have that many opinions about how my character’s cheekbones should look. Then I’ll see options for stuff like ear rotation, eyebag density, neck occlusion, pore diameter, iris clouding, philtrum profundity, and by this point I’m like “Look, I’m sorry I ever came here, please just let me enter my character’s name and leave and I promise I’ll never come back.”
So, like, 5-10 minutes I guess.
(Image credit: Gameloft)
Lauren Morton, Associate Editor: Like, total? Or just the first time? Because I’ll probably spend about 30 minutes in a character creator initially. “I just want to play the game,” I’ll think, trying not to be extra, not to take my face so seriously, just be chill about it, even as I tweak every single slider just in case.
At minute 31 I have to see my character’s face in the harsh light of game day, outside the mood lighting of the creation screen, and oh god her eyes are too far apart and her hair is brighter than I realized and also I chose a really boring hairstyle and I know better. I know I want my character to stand out but I chose that half-pony because I was trying not to be so ridiculous but I should have gone for the extravagant updo.
I’ve spent a lot of time in Dragon Age Inquisition’s Black Emporium changing my face after the fact. And also a lot of cash at Red Dead Online’s barbershop. And real money on character appearance consumables in MMOs.
I dunno… two hours?
Tim Clark, Brand Director: I once blew the first hour of a two-hour Dragon Age Inquisition demo fannying around trying to get the freckles on my character just right, so you can only imagine the amount of time I’m willing to spend once unconstrained. Pretty sure I had to restart Mass Effect multiple times to rectify fish-lip disasters that were only revealed once in-game. Can we do how much time do you spend on MMO character fashion next, because it’s… a problem.
(Image credit: EA)
Robin Valentine, Print Editor: I’m at a point with character creators where I’m happier for the devs to just give me the choice of 10 preset faces. The modern trend towards endless precise sliders is a special kind of trap for my brain—I’m obsessive enough that I need to make my character look exactly perfect before I can start, but at the same time impatient and uncreative in a way that makes me terrible at getting good results out of that great a level of choice.
