Which Is Better In Video-Games: Custom Characters, or Pre-Made Heroes?

Dovahkiin & Deadpool: The Ultimate Heroes

When it comes to video-games, there’s a lot of things that can lead a series to success. Be it unique gameplay quirks, tons of content, or just a really nice visual style. A good selling point for a game is the protagonist you get to play as. A lot of games will often give you a pre-made hero, and require you to play through that character’s story. All of his character traits, personality quirks, and other such defining elements have already been fleshed out.

Examples of these are Death from Darksiders, Nathan Drake from Uncharted, Sir Daniel Fortesque from Medievil. Characters that already exist within this world make for good protagonists, giving the designers leeway to toy around with their backstory and motivations. However, within the later years of gaming emerged a new and ever-growing trend: Custom characters.

How can one be a truly great warrior, if one does not grow a rocking beard first?

Custom characters started becoming more of a thing in the late 90s and early 2000s, eventually becoming a fixture for a lot of franchises. It’s hard to play a modern Phantasy Star, Dragon Ball, or wrestling game that doesn’t have this feature inserted into it. A lot of franchises now allow you to create your own characters, allowing you to insert yourself into the story.

Character creation adds so many opportunities for the player to weave their own persona into the game, allowing for more immersion. This begs a very important question, though: Which kind of protagonist is better? Is it the pre-made heroes, or the custom characters?

This is a tough question to answer, as I feel this comes down to personal preference. Some people prefer having a character that the game designers already made, as it allows them to get fully invested in this character and the story from the get-go. Other people (such as myself) prefer having custom characters, due to the creativity and role-play opportunities.

So many choices for one little Jedi!

I often like to create a character and name him Jim, James, Jerald, or pretty much any name starting with a “J”. The thing is that since my name starts with a J, I like to create a character who’s name possesses the same letter. I feel this adds a bit of flair to the character, even before I decide on what the character should look like. Being able to personalize a character is one of the things I love about character creation.

That being said, custom characters can also be a doubled edge sword. Most games prefer not to give your custom character a voice, instead opting to have the character grunt. This means that your character will in most cases not have a speaking voice, which may be a good or bad thing depending on your views. I like having a character who doesn’t talk, but it can sometimes make me feel disconnected from the story.

Also, a custom character will never appear in full during cinematic cut-scenes. This is due to cinematic not running on the in-game engines. Normal cut-scenes will feature custom characters, but cinematic ones will often feature your character obscured or in a different outfit. Again, this is done to avoid breaking player immersion.

“It’s Normal Guy, The Science Jedi!”

This is far different for pre-made hero, as these characters often have a singular fixed design. A hero that was already made by the developers tends to feel like a more fleshed out character than a custom creation.  For one thing, pre-made heroes can show up in all cut-scenes, are voice-acted (sometimes), and feel more like a living breathing part of this fictional world.

More often than not, a custom character can feel out of place, due in part to the insane amount of odd customization options. Believe it or not, some games can often give you some ridiculous creation choices that take out of the game. A good example of this is in Dragon Ball Xenoverse, which gave you so many ridiculous character options. Heck, you could run around with insect wings for crying out loud!

Sadly, this axe was quickly replaced with “The Harbinger” after only a few hours of gameplay. It will not be missed.

Still, some games did do customization right. Fable: The Lost Chapters was a good example of this. In Fable, each character starts out identical to one another. However, your character changes as the game progresses. Choices you make decide how your character looks. For example, if you are evil then you will gain horns. Investing in certain stat trees can also change your hero’s look, such as gaining blue lines on your face if you become a mage.

How the character looks and behaves is determined entirely by how one plays the game. A rather obscure game named “Soul Sacrifice: Delta” has a unique take on this as well. In the game, you play as a prisoner who can’t be customized in any way. However, when he/she relives the memories of the sorcerer inside the book, the player is then given the opportunity to customize said character. In essence, you are just creating an avatar for the actual playable character to use.

So, to answer my original question: Which is better? While I think both pre-made heroes and custom character have their pros and cons, I prefer the latter. Custom characters just have so much versatility, plus it’s cool getting to design my own avatar within the game. Still, pre-made heroes are also pretty awesome, allowing the player to take on the role of an already pre-existing character.

In the end though, it doesn’t really matter which kind of hero I prefer. As long as the game is fun, entertaining, and thrilling, then I’ll continue to play it. Which kind of character the player is given shouldn’t impact what they enjoy too much, as long as the given character isn’t annoying or unlikable to said player. Be it either kind of character, I feel there’s a playable hero out there that every gamer can enjoy.

A true hero walks his own path, which also happens to be a path filled with loading screens.

Elder Scrolls Online: MMO Side-Questing Done Right

“I’VE GOT A BONE TO PICK WITH YOU!”

I’ll be completely honest with you guys, I’m not much of a fan of MMORPGs. In fact, I can’t stand them. I’m the kind of guy who will spend a fortnight downloading an MMO, only to play it for 10 minutes and immediately get bored with it. To me, an MMO needs to hook me within that first hour or so. If I get the feeling that the MMO won’t get interesting until I pour 20 hours into it, then I most likely will not continue with it.

A lot of this comes down to one major factor: Side-quests. I talked about side-quests a couple days ago, primarily those belonging to the Elder Scrolls series. Today, I want to talk about Elder Scrolls Online, an MMO that manages to do side-questing right! In a lot of games, the first thing I tend to indulge are the side-quests. The main story is great and all, but I like to flex my legs a bit and get to know the world! Well-constructed side-content can do just that, which is why I love it so much.

MMORPGs are heavily reliant on this feature alone. After all, a Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game needs to be able to have you play a role in the universe your character exists in. Elder Scrolls Online understands this ideal very well, which is quite refreshing for a modern MMORPG. I found myself really digging a lot of the side-content in this game, since a lot of it tied back into the game and the series itself.

So, what makes the side-quests in Elder Scrolls Online better than most MMOs? Well, a lot of it comes down to the fact that most of the missions aren’t “fetch quests”. Sure, there are quests where you have to get certain items. However, these quests usually lead to you obtaining something unique, or have some kind of twist.

For example, one quest involved you beating up several random mercenaries for a shopkeeper. Once you go back to him, you find another mercenary there who tells you that the shopkeeper has “fled” the land. A new storekeeper is put in place of him, and you never see the old shopkeeper again. Makes you wonder, did he really leave or did these mercenaries just off him?

A lot of these quests really stood out to me, they reminded me a lot of the quests you’d find in Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. That game had crazy quests, including one where you leaped into a painting and another where you tried to solve a murder mystery. This game has memorable quests as well. One of the first quests in the game was undoubtedly one of my favorites.

In said quest, you had to save a random NPC who was captured and held in a cave. The twist was that he was being kept there by a trickster character named “The Frozen Man”. The Frozen Man was the insane ghost of a powerful mage, who mostly just wanted to keep the NPC as a personal plaything.

After you outsmart the trickster using his own insane logic, you are allowed to take his prisoner home. Despite the fact that you never see this character again, I still enjoyed his limited screen-time. His voice-acting was spot on and he generally felt like an interesting character, reminding me a bit of Cicero from Skyrim.

One quest I really dug was one that involved you trying to solve a series of murders. It starts out as you just trying to solve a few killings, but soon turns into an all-out war against a group of Body-Snatchers! The “Skin-Stealers” take on the form of various soldiers in the Ebonheart Pact, and it soon becomes difficult to discern friend from foe.

Quests can have different outcomes, some can even radically change certain parts of the world. Completing a certain quest-line may result in several NPCs dying and be removed from the game, while others may bring new beings into existence. The game boasts over 900 different side-quests, split between three separate factions.

Out of this large myriad of side-quests, I think my favorite has to be “The Thin Ones”. The quest involves you helping a group of immortal villagers, who are cursed forever to be skeletons. The quest eventually gives you a choice: Kill the villagers and end their immortality so they can rest, or allow them to remain immortal and undying. It’s a complex choice, with its own set of positives and negatives.

The best part of the quest is its reward: The ability to turn into a skeleton! Well, sort of. It’s really just a costume you can wear. Still, being able to walk around as a skeleton is certainly a fun concept! I’d love to bring up more side-quests, but I don’t want to spoil too many of them. After all, the fun in the game comes from discovering them on your own!

The last thing I’d like to mention is that the game brings back the NPC reactions from Oblivion. People will now acknowledge your accomplishments as you walk by, unlike in Skyrim. As much as I dug Skyrim, I always got annoyed by how I was always treated like a peasant. Even after saving the world a dozen times, I still get mistaken for the “guy who fetches the mead”. No respect, I tells ya!

My Thoughts On Bethesda’s “Creation Club”

No joke, all that stuff those two are holding will probably cost you 20-30 real dollars. Now that’s highway robbery!

Something that has been making the rounds recently was Bethesda’s controversial Creation Club. This was something announced at E3 last month, and since then has continued to gain infamy with the gaming community. For those of you who don’t know, the Creation Club are a bunch of modders and programmers who are getting paid by Bethesda to make new things for their old games. What’s so bad about this? These are basically paid mods, which is something that is drawing a lot of ire.

Mods are a service that’s normally available for free, they are modifications made by fans of a series to a pre-existing game. Now, I have no problems with modders getting paid. They put in all this time and effort into transforming games into things of pure wonder and beauty. They deserve some monetary gain for all their hard work, I won’t deny that.

The problem I have with this setup is that Bethesda is doing this all wrong. For one thing, the mods aren’t really that substantial. They are mostly superficial things, like armor and weapons. Some things I don’t get is “Survival Mode”, which should be in the game itself. I don’t know why Bethesda thinks selling different modes for the game is a good idea. Most alternate modes are more gimmicks than anything else, things tacked to add variety or challenge to the game your playing. Yet, Bethesda is also selling those on their pricey mod store.

Honestly, I think is overall a bad idea. While Bethesda said that the mods wouldn’t clash with the content of the game, I highly doubt so. Skyrim is a pretty buggy game, so I can only imagine all these mods making it even more unstable. Also, once you buy a mod that’s it. There’s no refund option, and there’s no way to refund Bethesda’s made-up currency back for your cash. Oh right, forgot to mention that this “program” only uses a fake currency that Bethesda made up. You have to buy this currency using cold hard cash, and there’s no way to earn that money in game.

Almost every PC game that is popular enough with fans has mods of its own. Almost all of these mods are free in some way. Bethesda is trying to throttle that market, and make it so people have to pay for mods. Will they take down Nexus? After all, that’s the central hub for most of the popular mods. I doubt Bethesda would that site down, but it wouldn’t surprise me. If the paid mods fail, Bethesda will most likely get a bit desperate.

Now, what do I think should be down about this situation? For one thing, I think this “Content Creation” program needs to be dropped. It’s only going to hurt the modding community and Bethesda’s street-cred in the process. Secondly, I feel like Bethesda should be doing a lot more with the mod creators. What Bethesda should do is make a new studio or development team, then proceed to staff it with modders and programmers.

Bethesda should then have this new studio focus on making expansion packs and spinoffs of their pre-existing games. Creating something new and massive like that would be far less of a waste. A lot of people actually prefer the full expansions to cosmetic stuff, so I think this would be a good idea. This way, modders can still make cash, and Bethesda still gets to market those sweet mods to people. Instead, Bethesda decided to just sell a bunch of useless DLC on their store-front. I’ll take a guess here and assume that most of the starting mods won’t be play-tested enough.

I fear we are in for some dark times, as far as the mod community goes. Honestly, I love mods, (I use the lightsaber mods in Fallout New Vegas all the time) but there needs to be a fine line between what is acceptable. A product is being sold here, a product made by the fans for the official game itself. Whether people are willing to pay for this is a whole other story. Bethesda will probably lose a ton of cash doing this, along with a lot of support from their fans. Will Bethesda learn their lesson before its too late? Time can only tell.

Sweet As Syrup: Elder Scrolls IV Oblivion Review

There are few experiences out there that measure up to an Elder Scrolls game in terms of scope or content. Each Elder Scrolls game is packed with so much stuff to do that it almost becomes overwhelming. Bethesda puts a lot of hard work into each successive title and while the results aren’t always the best, there is usually a good experience to be had. Today, I’m going to talk about the game that got me interested in Elder Scrolls and its development company Bethesda. Today, I’m going to discuss Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion.

Need To Know Information

Oblivion is an open-world action RPG that was released on March 20th, 2006. That’s right, Oblivion will be turning 10 years old in just a couple of weeks. The game was originally teased several years prior in a Easter Egg that was planted in Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind. Oblivion was released on X-Box 360 and Playstation 3, as well as PC. Several DLC content packs were made (Including the now-infamous Horse Armor DLC) The version I’m playing only has two of those content packs: Knights Of The Nine and the full expansion The Shivering Isles.

Plot

The game starts off with a narration by Emperor Uriel Septim, played in this game by Patrick Stewart. Uriel explains that he is reaching the end of his life and that a growing threat is encroaching upon the lands of Tamriel. As it turns out, Mehrunes Dagon is trying to enter Tamriel through a portal to a hellish landscape known as “Oblivion”. He is sending down his demonic underlings through Oblivion Gates to ravage the world.

The game starts with your custom-created character in the Imperial City’s prison. What was your crime? The game never tells us, actually. When stuck in prison though, the emperor and his royal guard “The Blades” happen to show up. As it turns out, your prison cell just happens to be an escape route out of the city. The Emperor allows you tag along with you and his guard and you are allowed to escape prison and venture outside once again. Not before everything goes completely wrong and Uriel gets murdered, of course. With the emperor dead, you are now sent on a quest to find his last surviving heir and save the land of Tamriel from this great threat.

The game’s story failed to grab me to be honest. There were a lot of times where I was scratching my head, and the game seemed to have plot holes that were never addressed. The game’s two major expansions also have their own story. The plot of Knights Of The Nine has you sent on a holy crusade to stop a powerful Ayleid king from resurrecting and destroying the realm. Unfortunately, the plot to this expansion is structured poorly. Most of it is spent with you running around the land to awaken way-shrines and get the blessings of the gods. Even after that, most of the story is spent with you diving further into large dungeons before eventually having to battle the Ayleid king 1 on 1.

The second expansion is called “The Shivering Isles” and sends you on a quest to a realm of Oblivion. This realm is the home of the Madgod known as Sheogorath. The mad-king wants you to do a bunch of bizarre yet seemingly important tasks in order to save his realm from destruction. The story in this expansion is better than that of the last expansion or even the main game. I got invested in these unique and bizarre characters. The expansion felt a bit like Alice In Wonderland and had your character interacting with all these insane characters. It was truly a satisfying experience! Still, it kind of sucks that only 1 of the 3 stories I found to be entertaining.

Gameplay

Oblivion is more action focused than the previous games in the series. Unlike those games, all of your attacks register completely. There isn’t the element of your attacks constantly missing and the combat feels less robotic. The combat is pretty easy to get the hold of. You press a button to attack, another to bring up your shield, plus you can heal and use spells while in combat. Unfortunately, sword combat just kind of felt bland to me. When you attack with a melee weapon, your character will just haphazardly swing his arm around while gripping the sword. This makes the motion of his attacks seem more like he’s smashing a paintbrush against a canvas rather than wielding a mighty magical sword.

Combat isn’t the only focus of this game, however. You see, this being an open-world game there are plenty of things for your character to do. You can entrap the souls of your enemies inside gems, enchant items, use alchemy to brew potions, and explore a vast world full of adventure. The game features a plethora of side-quests and miscellaneous objectives for you to partake in. You can leap into a painting, ride a unicorn, fight off an army of goblins, battle a powerful snow troll atop a mountain-peak, etc. The game is packed with so much entertaining content, which is one of the many reasons I love this game so much.

A problem I had with the gameplay was the lack of meaningful boss fights. Most bosses are just some powerful wizard or some kind of suped-up lich. The Gatekeeper gave me a bit more challenge in Oblivion, but he was still a pushover once you figured out his weaknesses. Another problem I had was with the Oblivion Gates. The Oblivion Gates are special areas you can dive into and complete. The problem is that a lot of Oblivion Gates felt either too easy or too hard. I’d go into an Oblivion Gate and sometimes get a hard and unnecessarily long crawl through a somewhat-open hellish landscape. Other times, I’d just have to run to a toward and fight my way through a gauntlet of floors before nabbing the sigil. The sigils were a good reward though, as they would allow you to enchant you weapons and armor easily and more effectively than with Soul Gems. Despite these minor grievances, I still had a lot of fun with the gameplay overall. They did iron out a lot of this in the sequel, but that is a review for another day.

Visual Stimuli

The game looks pretty good, in all honestly. Armor designs and backgrounds are good enough, though I did notice a bit of pop-in when I played on PC. Character faces look downright horrible, it is easily the worst part of the game. Bethesda probably wasn’t used to designing realistic faces, so the face designs of each race looked equally terrible. Oddly enough, I found the facial designs of some of the characters in Shivering Isles to be a lot better than I was used to. The game has a decent soundtrack of fairly typical fantasy songs, plus an updated version of the Elder Scrolls theme.

The game kept a fairly steady frame-rate on my PC and rarely ever chugged. The voice acting was pretty good in the game, but even that had some jagged edges. Too many characters in the game shared the same voice actors and there were times when the radiant dialogue system would cause characters to spout out awkward conversations. Still, it wasn’t anything that annoyed me too greatly. The presentation is all in all passable, but not without its issues.

In Summation

Oblivion is great, it is a fantastic open-world adventure. It has a forgettable story and some presentation hiccups here and there, but it is all in all a good game. If you can get past the somewhat awkward combat and the dated facial designs, you have a solid action game with a lot of heart and soul to it. All in all, I can easily say this game is as sweet as syrup. I also award the game an 8.5/10. It is solid yet somewhat unpolished RPG fun and easy recommendation for people who want a good ol’ open-world experience.