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This week’s Side Quest is an unfocused ramble on character creation and character limitations.
I am currently playing Gothic II Gold but wanting a change of pace the other day, I found myself eyeing the Fallout icon again. Science Guy and the Diplomat had done their rounds recently – time for the Lucky Sniper? In the end, I decided to check out the new GODS: Lands of Infinity demo to see what had changed…a very nice game from the demo that somehow reminds me a little of Wiz8...but I couldn’t help wonder why a turn-based “old-school” cRPG – a game that will best appeal to the cRPG faithful – has me stuck playing a fixed female-only emissary of the Gods? Character creation is one of the things that made me love the cRPG genre - I’ve toyed with dozens of Fallout creations, created copious spreadsheets for Wizardry 8 and re-tooled teams in The Temple of Elemental Evil and many, many more. I must admit to not quite being a pure roleplayer – I do envisage and try to embrace a role but there’s just a little bit of meta-gamer in me, so sometimes there’s a bit of an internal struggle as I sway between pursuing the true character and maximising the build. And I even love that.
It’s hard to be empiric but in recent years, character creation seems to have taken a back seat. Strangely, the pursuit of a “great” story also seems to have made an impact. I have enjoyed many RPGs that didn’t have character creation – the Gothic series comes immediately to mind – and many games with restricted or limited character creation, such as Kult/Heretic Kingdoms, which had a simple scope and female-only character. Looking forward, there are games like Gothic 3, The Witcher and even the indie GODS: Lands of Infinity mentioned earlier that I am anticipating…in almost every case, however, I think the game would be improved with character creation.
The process serves multiple purposes that all benefit an RPG: allowing a player to imagine and fulfil a role (within the terms of the game), establishing a roleplaying framework, differentiating the early play and helping players strengthen the rapport with the character. While it doesn’t always bear out in the gameplay, I would suggest RPGs with character creation better understand why players are attracted to cRPGs.
I can think of several reasons why developers would forgo character creation: simplifying development, a “straight into the gameplay” philosophy, marketing/promotion and story reasons. It’s hard to argue about development resources but I’d still argue character creation should be a priority for an RPG. Getting players straight into the “action” is easily fixed by providing pre-made characters or some simple templates.
That brings us to story-based limitations. We’ve previously established that the story is very important to an RPG (poll results) but one of the key distinguishing elements of an RPG over other genres is allowing the player to assume different roles and (hopefully) impact the storyline. Surely character creation can only enhance this? Writing a story that requires a fixed character is prioritising the designer’s story over the gameplay and the interactive narrative created during the game. While that may be a valid design choice for many players, I can’t think of a game story that couldn’t be tweaked just a little to allow more character freedom. Let’s have a good story and character freedom.
As always, your comments are welcome. Do you love character creation or am I overlooking the benefits of developing the character from a blank template during the game itself? |
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Side Quest: Playing your Role
